Do Not Trifle With the Big Brain! Also, a T-Shirt sale

Filed under Works in Progress

The Big Brains have moved into Retropolis this week: their teeming minions started out by invading my T-shirts, but before I knew it they’d moved out from that beachhead into my coffee mugs and mousepads. The way things are going I can’t predict where they’re likely to show up next. It’s a problem.

In order to solve that problem, at least on the T-shirt front, there’s a sale this week on my shirts: you can save $5 on an order of $25, $10 on an order of $50, or even a big brain-boggling $20 on an order of $100. That sale runs through November 20: note the informative banners at the sites where the sales are running.

That’s the T-shirt sections at Retropolis, as well as the Celtic design shirts at Saga Shirts.

So where did these invaders with the immense brainpans come from, anyway? They’re based on a minor (but important) character from my Thrilling Tale in progress, The Lair of the Clockwork Book. Once I saw how the little guy turned out I couldn’t help but put him on shirts and whatnot aimed at the Big Brained among us. Because there’s just not enough rampant holiday merchandising that’s aimed at people whose brains are bigger than Venus, is there?

Hey, I find a niche, and I decorate the crap out of it. It’s my mission. Or at least that’s what my mind believes is happening… ever since the Big Brain trained his glowing, thought-controlling eyeballs on me. Also, I make him sandwiches.

Eric Joyner’s Robots and Donuts, a book of his Tin World paintings

Filed under Found on the Web

I can’t imagine how I’ve managed to miss the paintings of Eric Joyner, but now that I’ve corrected that I can at least enjoy sharing them with you.

A San Francisco illustrator, Joyner has painted this series of pictures that combine larger than life, vintage toy robots with other toys, world domination, and – inevitably! – donuts.

His Tin World series shows us a universe where giant robots really do look like old tin toys. Let the rest of the world beware! Shown above is what’s possibly my favorite: Fog of War, in which the situation does look pretty dire. Giant donuts roll out across the landscape amid the punishing fire of robots in their pressed-tin rockets, while robot soldiers march over the battlefield with their sparkers sparking and their lights flashing.

Robo Kong, on the other hand, is a more intimate view of the top of the Empire State Building… where the eponymous robot swats at determined baby pilots in their tin toy airplanes.

The series is all wrapped up in the book Robots and Donuts, while individual pictures are also available as prints.

Thrilling Tales: Lew Stone’s Lab, Continued

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I think I’ve got the major elements of Lew’s laboratory pretty well set: there was a lot of shifting and moving involved because at one point, which you’ll see if you embiggify the image, Lew’s experiment is underway and you have to have a pretty clear view of what’s going on.

I still need to do a little rework on the Chiralitron (that’s the big machine in the left foreground) and run some cables across the lab. But it’s pretty well set at this point.

Of course I’ve paid so much attention to that important view that when I pull back out to look at my other angles I’ll find some more to add. But it’s definitely getting there, if by "there" you mean here, but a little more so.

The first couple of dozen illustrations for The Lair of the Clockwork Book include Lew’s adventures, which begin in this room and end up somewhere inside the orbit of Venus. I decided to do this bit first because I want to be fully back up to speed when I work on the opening scenes and the illustrations of the Book itself.

Genuine Thermos Thermal Containment Units Available at Retropolis

Filed under Works in Progress

‘I wouldn’t dream of entrusting my thermally sensitive materials to anything less than a genuine Thermos® device.’

– Harry Roy, Shift Supervisor, the Ferriss Moto-Man Corporation

Harry Roy knows his thermal containment devices. As you can guess, his work at the Ferriss Moto-Man Corporation demands the most effective thermal containment possible in today’s modern world: whether Harry brings a flask full of coffee to work or – daringly! – if he abandons convention and brings a flask of lemonade instead, Harry’s position requires him to keep that vital fluid at a constant temperature.

But how can it know? How can any thermal containment unit keep hot things hot, while also keeping cold things cold? How can it possibly know the difference?

Well, it’s just lucky for Harry (and for you!) that the mad geniuses behind these stylish, stainless steel Thermos® units have solved that problem for us all.

It’s great to live in the Future, isn’t it?

Yep. Like Harry Roy, you too can keep your hot things hot and your cold things cold without wondering which way to throw the switch, through the advanced retro-futuristic technologies of Retropolis, and those Thermos® guys.

Thrilling Tales: Yet Another Mad Scientist’s Laboratory

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’ve got a small backlog of neat things I haven’t yet linkblogged to because once again I’ve got my nose pressed to the wheel, which is sort of uncomfortable, and honestly, a little embarrassing, should anyone notice… but I digress. That sentence was meant to end with a description of what I am doing but you can see a little piece of that above: click on it to see a bigger version of the whole scene.

This is a work in progress view of Lew Stone’s laboratory for his story in The Lair of the Clockwork Book. I guess it’s my third mad scientist’s lab for Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. I’m enjoying the way they each have a different atmosphere because all three scientists are such different people. Cornelius Zappencackler’s lab (even more fireproof!) has a cozy and cluttered character; Doctor Rognvald’s lab is shadowy and sinister; and Lew’s lab, shown here, is a bit lighter and more… well, rational, because Lew’s greatest problem as a student is that he isn’t really insane enough for his vocation.

I have a couple of devices to add, all part of Lew’s experiment in progress, and then some additional set dressing after that – and just to make things more interesting I’ll also need a demolished version of this room. Because, you know, that’s just what happens.

In other news, I took a few hours off yesterday to explore. I was looking for a good used book store in my adopted area – after six years I’ve yet to find one that makes me want to take a deep breath of dustiness and mustiness, make myself at home, and trade in my excess books. I think this is the biggest thing I miss about living in California: near pretty much any of my old neighborhoods in Long Beach, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, Ventura, or Los Angeles I always had a fantastic assortment of used book stores to haunt. Here, on the other hand, I’ve found just one that was sort of interesting. It’s a sad state of affairs, I can tell you.

There’s just one more possibility I know of, out toward Cleveland, that sounds promising: but I’m not sure if I’ll get there before Winter sets in.

More Enhancements to the Retropolis Mug-O-Matic: Now with Optional Randomness

Filed under Works in Progress

I’ve been welding enhancements onto the Mug-O-Matic with no regard for my personal safety, and lots of regard for automatically generating the strangest pulp sci fi titles in history… on coffee mugs. Because coffee is important. And it gets all over your lap if you don’t use a mug.

The Mug-O-Matic now has a panel you can use to enter your very own, not-random titles; also, I’ve added a selection of premade mugs with some of my favorite titles, like "Vengeance of the Librarian of Chaos", "The Atomic Brain of Doom", and "The Astronomer That Misplaced the Galaxy".

I’m thinking about decaf now. It might be a good idea.

[tags]random title generator, title o tron, retropolis, mug o matic, pulp science fiction, coffee mugs[/tags]

Thrilling Tales: Clockwork Book Update

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I don’t do a lot of analytical thinking about where a story is between its first draft and the point where the changes I can make aren’t making the story better any more. What I seem to get are these stages:

1. First Draft! Woooo!

2. OhMyGodWe’reAllGoingToDie

3. All done

Number 2 can go on for quite awhile.

But today The Lair of the Clockwork Book has come out of the OhMyGodWe’reAllGoingToDie stage and hovers at what I guess is about Step 2.9: I’ve made all the big changes, medium sized changes, and tiny polishing changes that I’ve ever meant to do. So the sensible thing is to leave it alone for a day and then give it another complete read-through (it’s always difficult to read it like I’ve never read it before) before what I think will be a final polishing stage. Of course, my mileage may vary.

But the upshot is that I’m now very close to the point where I can start in on the illustrations. Once I’ve got about 24 of those done the story can go live, a page at a time, at the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual site. And I can then turn back to Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS – until I start to run low on Clockwork Book illustrations, anyhow.

The interesting ride that is that plan will be starting… sooner, now, if not yet soon.

More Retro (ish) Sci Fi Interactive Adventure at Epicsplosion

Filed under Found on the Web

Tauhid Bondia, formerly of the webcomic Good Ship Chronicles, has now embarked on a graphical multiple-choice adventure series called Epicsplosion.

This is so much like my own Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual that it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside even though feeling warm and fuzzy inside is kind of a scary thought, when you think about it, which now that I’ve done it is something that I discourage.

Epicsplosion uses animated gifs for its illustrations and can be a little harder (as in ‘more likely to be fatal’) on the characters than what I do in my stories. What really interests me here is that Tauhid seems to be posting updates to the stories live. I ruled that out because it wasn’t possible for me to keep up with all the possible threads in anything like a timely way. So I’m really interested to see how that works out over there.

Tauhid’s also either bravely or foolishly using the trademarked phrase "Choose Your Own Adventure". We’ll see how that works out, too. I’m in your corner, buddy.

So pop on over and sit in the driver’s seat of Tripp Roguestar’s Space-filled Adventure!

Note that there’s some language there that may not be safe for work or for religious fundamentalists, each of which will have to take its chances.

Igor Sez: The Mug-O-Matic ith Online and Ready to Make Mugth, Mathter!

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Web Development, Works in Progress

Through the liberal use of lasers, faceted coprolites, sub-aetheric rays, and a 3/8" open end wrench, I’ve now completed the MUG-O-MATIC edition of Cornelius Zappencackler’s Pulp Sci-Fi Title-O-Tron. It’s glowing where it ought to be glowing and it doesn’t make that high-pitched noise that attracted the squirrels any more.

Though I always liked that part, myself.

So you, too, adventurer, can now harness the awesome power that is the Mug-O-Matic: it randomly generates the titles of pulp science fiction stories that don’t exist, but often ought to*, and then it slaps your favorite titles onto coffee mugs, travel mugs, and mugs of other mysterious and malevolent kinds that it were not well to mention here.

Okay, not really: I just got tired of listing them. Fun little toy, though!

*every now and then it manages to re-create a title that does, in fact., exist. Which is even stranger than the thing with the squirrels.

Coming Soon: Custom Random Title Mugs from the Title-O-Tron

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

This isn’t online yet, but I’m sort of jazzed about it anyway: I worked out a way to connect my Thrilling Tales Pulp Sci Fi Title-O-Tron to my online shop, so that by clicking on a title you can automagically generate a coffee mug with that title on it.

So soon you’ll have a chance to create mugs with a Thrilling Tales logo and, say, "The Astronomer That Misplaced the Galaxy", or "The Airship of the Phantom Horde", or even "The Great Cephalopod of the Moon". Which (as I calculate it) will make your life complete. No thanks are necessary: I do this for the good of Humankind.

I’ve got practically no control over the typography, unfortunately, but when I’ve spiffied up the mug backdrop and made a pretty web interface for it this should be going into my Retropolis site in the coffee mugs section.

This picture’s from a screen grab of the whole astonishing mechanism in action. It’s aliiiiive!

UPDATE: The Mug-O-Matic is now live!