Overbury Ink

The Impossible Place is a graphic web novel…. of sorts. We currently publish two (ongoing) narrative storylines which combine illustration and text, either prose or dialogue. It’s a pretty loose format, the rule so far is that there are no rules.


Launched just over a year ago the blog itself is an experiment in creative work in progress using free online publishing mediums.


Ultimately it is about giving my husband (artist and illustrator Chris Worfold) and I (Nikki Curtis, writer amongst other things) the opportunity to collaborate on a project that incorporates the things we love. In this case, stories, art and design.





The longer term goals of the project include editing and paper publishing the stories as well as small scale manufacturing of designed objects. But The Impossible Place as a blog enables us to float ideas and stories as we create them. In its own tiny little way the work can live, breathe, fail, succeed prior to or regardless of destination. It’s liberating to release draft work and flattering when anyone reads it.

To an extent the stories in The Impossible Place are about this – life in progress. In the Impossible Girl storyline the characters have pretty much exceeded their goal expectations but now their everyday is making them miserable. It’s the choices that they make, or have made, that have created this.


It’s the same for the character of Reece in the Evinrud story. Although he tends not to bang on so much about it. Reece is an action man who is only just beginning to question where the hell he is at and how he got there in the first place.





As a writer (artist, creator) you tend to focus on the things that interest or absorb you most. For me appreciation, love, moral choice and responsibility are those things. I’m an incredibly obstinate creature, you can tell me what to do (and depending on the situation I may do it) but you can’t tell me how to feel. Truth to me can’t be told, it needs to be found. (Although I am happy to accept scientific facts once proven).


Clearly as an artist you need to distance yourself (or your own current beliefs) from your work for it to remain uncontrived. In this sense the characters in The Impossible Place are on their own (I take no moral responsibility). Like in all fiction, judgement and personal opinion belongs individually to the reader.


The stories in The Impossible Place all have some sort of ‘fantasy’ theme. It’s nice to be able to remove the characters from the everyday, to make them less (or more) than normal. And apparently it’s more fun to draw.





Impossible Girl has a ‘vampire’ subtext. A year and a half ago when we started drafting the characters there definitely wasn’t as many nouveau vampire stories/movies/tv shows around as there is now. I’m not sure whether we would have changed it if we had known. There is something very appealing about the blood sucker myth. The whole moral conundrum of feeding from something else in order to survive (and prosper) is very powerful. Impossible Girl (and boyfriend Rowan) were never meant to be Vampires in the traditional sense. They’re not immortal, they have a disease, contracted sexually, which makes them both more potent and more vulnerable. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s apparently fun to draw!

The Evinrud story is pure science fiction/action and the new story we will launch later in the year has a mythological subtext.


The illustrative component of The Impossible Place has given Chris a chance to rediscover his childhood love of drawing. It’s Chris’s love of comic books and graphic novels that really inspired the development of The Impossible Place as a blog and project.


As an artist his exhibitions career (in Australia and Asia) has predominantly revolved around painting. As an arts educator he has taught drawing for many years but rarely had the time to draw for himself. The Impossible Place is Chris’s excuse to draw – a lot.


The drawings for The Impossible Place have been rendered on coated paper, skateboard decks and in sketchbooks. They range in size and medium from behemoth two metre square pieces using ink and paint to A4 sized pen sketches.





As a very hands on textural artist, he is not hugely competent technically but does use Photoshop to crop, frame and occasionally recolour aspects of the illustrations for visual use on the blog.


You can read/view both Impossible Girl and Evinrud by clicking on the individual label in the side bar and scrolling (or clicking) backwards and beginning at post one.


www.theimpossibleplace.blogspot.com


Nikki Curtis is a creative writer (at this stage unprofessional but if someone offered me a job or project that paid enough I’d probably take it) who works for cash as a communications and business development consultant. She has a Bachelor degree in Business Communications and an extensive portfolio in extreme partying and fun management.


Chris Worfold is an artist, illustrator, educator and curator with an extensive exhibition history. He is a graduate from the Queensland College of Art and the Queensland University of Technology in Visual Arts and Education. He has been co-director of a commercial gallery, curated numerous exhibitions, written for catalogues and publications. He has completed public art projects and illustration commissions, served on arts committees and taught Visual Arts for over 10 years in Australia. He is dedicated to arts practice and teaches at the Southbank Institute of Technology. Chris is also a dedicated follower of his wife’s fun management regime.


Together, they live on eight steep (unusable except for plonking a massive studio and party deck on) acres of Australian eucalypt forest about 50km from Brisbane central and 40km from the Gold Coast with their dog Caleb and cat Rada (Muffin, Kitty really, she hasn’t been called Rada in years). They are relocating for a brief stint in New York later in 2010.

I aim to misbehave… but first: The Stars, the wrestlers, the Super Heros, the gear, the costumes, the fans, the gaming, the artists – all great reasons to come out to a ComicCon. I hit the floor at this year in Toronto – decked out in BlankMustDie gear, giving out cards and finding who is new and interesting in the comic and graphic novel world. Lots of representatives from indie publications, and quite a few that are publishing solely online.

Chris & Jeff of Dressed for Success comics – released every Wednesday on-line. Alex Corbett and Walter Andrewkowski, two guys thrown together by chance, now making their way in a crazy universe one adventure at a time. All the while trying to stay one step ahead of the mafia and with the hopes of turning a profit. Kinda India Jones adventure, but in space.



Sean Lefebvre and IanMaclean – writer and illustrator for Armitage Mills A story of 6 men and families who secretly run the town using their money, influence and power. Once you see the book, you MUST check the web site

Promises Promises by J.R. Faulkner – Promises Promises is a glib look at diet, fitness and all the struggles and successes that come with achieving a healthy lifestyle. Promises Fitness is the name of the posh suburban club staffed by Fiona and Trish, two well meaning and cheeky fitness professionals, doing their best to keep a very resistant membership in peek condition. It’s bright, witty and hits a very different market than most of the other show presenters.

Brian Evinou is the artist and writer for Don River. A 24 page tale of mysterious suicides surrounding an elusive young girl down by the river. Check out his Blog


Ken Turner, a Canadian film maker and animation artist put together a great indie book called: Eye Candy Volume 1: the Village Idioms. A gruesome look at common expressions, living up to it’s title of eye candy. Find him at his blog


One of my fav reads from this show is: the Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks written by Max Brooks and illustrated by Ibraim Roberson. In his book we follow the millennia of zombie attacks from prehistoric man, Ancient Egyptian mummies, Roman armies to the French Foreign Legion and modern California.



Also a special mention to the Rebel Legion whose Jedi representative made a huge impression on my 3 year old – so much that he picked up the courage to blast 4 Storm Troopers passing by.

and I also bravely stood with a towering Klingon from KAG Kanada

I even scored some props for being a Browncoat sympathizer – especially since Jewel Staite of Firefly was a special guest at the show. Jewel – as charming in person as she played on screen – and the Southern Ontario Browncoats (S.O.B.’s) blog is just starting up and were scoring photos from fans at the show. Hit their site and send them Big Dam S.O.B.’s some support- here

Damian Smith is the Co-host of Kryptographik: a Podcast Covering Horror, Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy.
He’s also the host of Welcome to Heavenside, A Doktor Sleepless Podcast. He has generously sat down to share his insights into the genre.

[Nancy]: Would you tell us a bit about yourself?

[Damian Smith]:  Firstly I’m a comic fan and reader as well as a lot of Sci-fi and horror movies, TV and novels. But apart from that I’m a Podcaster and Blogger. My main podcast is Kryptographik , where My co-host Brian Matus and myself talk about anything horror fantasy and sci-fi but what our main focus is on is Comic Books and Movies. Then there is a spin off podcast, Welcome to Heavenside, which is part of the Reader Feed which is focusing on Warren Ellis’ Comic Book Doktor Sleepless and all the ideas that are in the book and where he could be taking the story. It only comes out every so often as finding time to record and edit it is the hard part at the moment.

Apart from all the recording that I do I’m also a Blogger for my own website The Furnace which in it’s original incarnation was a computer gaming website where I would post a range of computer gaming news. It ran for about 5 years until everything for the site started to die off so I made a decision to pull the plug on it and transfer my blog from over at vox.com to be under my online namesake. I used the blog for reviews and news about anything I’m interested in and as well as those I have had the opportunity to do the odd interview.

[NO]: What intrigues you about comics and graphic novels?

[DS]: I grew up reading comics and Graphic Novels as a treat from my father. Usually he would take me out to a news agency and let me chose something off the stand and as always with any little kid you would ask for the biggest thickest one so you could get the most out of it. With that I would get a lot of these DC Anthology reprints out here in Australia and that would be full of 5-10 page stories about everyone from Superman and Batman to Green Arrow and Captain Marvel Jr.

I wasn’t getting them monthly at this point so I was lucky to get the continuing storyline at that point.

From there I started to get into them more around 86 where I’m ashamed to say I was influenced by The Lost Boys to go out and search for a Comic Store where I was able to find one and also picked up some great Horror titles that were coming out from Australian publishers at that time. And I managed to meet one of those Authors about 2 years back and we have struck up a friendship.

As for what intrigues me with this is I’m a fan of getting the visual with the dialogue. You can get a lot out of one panel when it’s drawn to get the feeling and put across the feelings that you can’t just put down in words. Also with 2 young kids it’s hard for me to find time these days to sit down and read a novel but getting my monthly 22-48 pages I can read one issue before going to bed but with a novel I’m find it harder to get back into one after a week of not having a chance. Also with my son hitting 5 years old and getting into cartoons like Justice League and Star Wars I have had the chance to start sharing the comic hobby with him as well so it’s a good bonding point.

[NO]: What are some of the up and coming trends in the industry?

[DS]: Unfortunately with comics over the last few years we have been seeing a drop in the readership which in turn has seen the number of Comic Stores starting to drop off as well. This shows there is a downhill trend and that the major companies will have to find a way of being about to find alternative markets. That being said there are a number of new downloadable formats coming into existence like Comics by Comixology which is an iphone application which allows you to download a range of free comics as well as purchase any current title that is coming out within that week. Also for a multi platform product there is Longbox which is looking to be a great idea and there are a good range of companies that are jumping on board with it.

[NO]: What are some of the best story lines or best illustrated you’ve come across?

[DS]: This is a hard one answer… Everyone likes different things and I could go along the normal route with The Watchmen which I read at least once a year but there are some that go without much acclaim. For Storyline I’d have to recommend Andy Diggle and Garth Ennis’ runs on Hellblazer, Matt Wagner’s Grendel run from Comico, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (which was what opened my eyes to what you could find in comics), Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency and Doktor Sleepless and the one major book I always go back to is The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

Art is something that generally would come second to me as I seem to get more from the writers over artists. But that being said it was Simon Bisley on his Lobo run that had me noticing artists and from there I would follow his books like his Slaine run from 2000ad and then there was Tim Bradstreet who I first came across from the White Wolf Vampire RPG books and his art has became instantly recognizable to me.

[NO]: Why do you avoid super heroes?

[DS]: It’s not that I avoid Super Heroes, I do read some on a regular basis like Green Lantern, Witchblade, The Darkness and Deadpool to name a few but I have always found more of an appeal of other styles of comics. As I touched on briefly before I had my eyes opened by The Sandman in the 90’s and then all of the books that were coming out from Vertigo at that time. I have great memories of getting The Invisibles, Preacher, The Sandman, Books of Magic and of course Hellblazer that even though I was getting most of the Batman universe I would always save the vertigo until last so I’d end on a high point each week.

I think the main thing that would contribute to what I prefer in my comic books is that when I was getting the odd book with my father all those years ago some of the ones I would also pick up were 2000ad, Eagle and others from Britain which the majority of those books didn’t have much if any at all. So seeing Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and the more adult sci-fi stories had me start to get hardwired for that style.

[NO]: Which genre has the most appeal to you?

[DS]: This is another hard question for me… I read a few different genre’s on a regular basis from the Post Apocalyptic world of Wasteland to the Nihilistic near Sci-fi world of Doktor Sleepless and then I would cross over to the clean war comics Titanium Rain which is set in the near Future and from there I’d dive back into my main love in comics which is the supernatural world of Hellblazer. And on top of all that I keep going back to Brian Lumley’s Cthulhu work as well as William Gibson and Neil Stephenson’s Cyberpunk work.

[NO]: Have you seen a change in the market in the last few years?

[DS]: Apart of the need of a Digital service that I mentioned beforehand I think the major trend that has changed since I started reading Comic Books is that there is a big swing towards the Graphic Novel market. I remember that if you missed an issue back in the 90’s you would have to hunt down the back issues as there wasn’t much of a market for Graphic Novels. And now with most storylines being released in a collected form we have a choice of how we want to read these. This has given most publishers another stream for income by letting them get into the book market as we have been seeing the decline of the direct market.

And the other big thing that has been getting a cross over effect to the comic industry has to have been the Manga explosion that has been going on for at least 5-6 years now. Anything that gets people reading I’m a fan of these days.

[NO]: Is there a storyline you’d like to write?

[DS]: I’m not that experienced with my writing at this point. I had my first 2 page short story published in the Revere comic that came out of Archaia Studio Press in 2006. It came about as Grant Bond had posted some upcoming pictures of what could be in the second storyline for Revere (That unfortunately never came about) and I looked at them and came up with an idea that I through together and posted up on Grant’s forum. Not long after I received an email asking if I would let them publish it which of course I said yes to.

Apart from that I have just finished what will be roughly a 7 page story for some friends and the first collection of their comic. But I can’t say much more about it at the moment until they announce it.

But back to the question about what I’d like to write… I have some ideas that have been beating around in my head for a while with the main one I’d like to do is a post apocalyptic Cthulhu tale. Taking some of the Brian Lumley mythos where you would have the Star Stones holding the outer gods at bay, we’ve had wars which have rocked the very world to the degree that some of these stones have been destroyed and there are continents that are lost to the otherworldly beasts…

I’ll get back to working on that and beating some ideas out of my head soon I hope!

You can find and follow Damian at:

Kryptographik Website

Welcome to Heavenside

The Furnace

Twitter

Art & Design
100+ Old Coca Cola Ads And Posters
This is a wonderful collection of Coke ads dating back to the early 1900′s. Coke’s logo has not changed from it’s inception in the 1890′s, giving it a strong continuity throughout the last 100+ years. From a marketing and advertising viewpoint, it’s fascinating to see how the designs, layouts and focal points of ads have evolved  throughout this time frame. I love how Coke has been described as a “The Ideal Brain Tonic” and “Delicious with Food”. There’s a great triangular bottle carry case design as well. This is well worth the look.

It’s interesting to see how the trends in current swimwear is returning to older styles, ok, not exactly like Miss Bo-Peep in blue, but more styles of returning to fuller fabric coverups, both for modesty as well as protection from the sun.

Seen this interview? “Getting Personal with Richard Darell (@minervity)

Do you know who Richard Darell is?

Maybe you recognized him better as:

Kriselle Laran of Bullfrog Media has the word on Richard and his work. Get the full interview here

The Most Creative And Skillful Corporate Web Designs Of All Times

10 Common Mistakes In Logo Design

30 Best Photoshop Abstract Effect Tutorials

60 Photoshop Tutorials for Photo Touch-Ups | Vandelay Design Blog

10 Eye-Catching Professional Free Fonts

24 Modern Mugs and Creative Mug Designs

Soap Not Spray Can: Reverse Graffiti Art.

Society at Large
I’m a big fan of lists, and the weirder the better. Murder? Mayhem? Famous Filth? Bring it on!

20 Most Prolific Serial Killers of All Time

Famous Things Invented by Accident

15 Famously Filthy People From the Pages of History

Comics

X-Men Universe Relationship map
If you have ever read stories from the X-Men Universe, you’ll find a tangled web of relationships, flirtations, obsessions and unrequited yearnings among the plots, intrigues and efforts at world domination. Wolverine has had enough romantic exploits for 2 lifetimes, oh right – he is over 100 years old. This is a detailed  chart with all the relationships spelled out on the dotted line. Who thought comics were simple?

10 Alan Moore Comics You Must Read! (Besides Watchmen)

Alan Moore is a titan in the comic world. This article lists as must reads: The Ballad Of Halo Jones, Captain Britain, The Saga Of Swamp Thing, V For Vendetta, Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?, 1963, From Hell (Jack The Ripper), The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Top 10. Definitely a list to refer to if you need to fill in the gaps in your collection.

Environment

Living Root Bridges in India
The people in this part of India have trained the trees to grow into living bridges. The root bridges, some of which are over a hundred feet long, take ten to fifteen years to become fully functional, but they’re extraordinarily strong. Some of the ancient root bridges used daily by the people of the villages around Cherrapunji may be well over five hundred years old.

Eco Gadgets: Solar coffee maker

The machine’s battery is charged by solar energy, then used to brew the coffee. I assume you’d have to have a sunny spot on your counter in order for this to work.

Neat, recycle wine bottles into Outdoor Torches

With the blue glass and copper hardware these look very pretty – but one of the comments in the article reads: “…if you fill it with gasoline and throw it it’s a MC. If you fill it with tiki oil, it’s lovely ambient lighting.” I guess it depends on your neighbourhood.

Very Cool: Air traffic in 24 hours Every yellow dot is a plane.

Twitter

11 Simple Twitter Secrets Revealed

Twitter Talkback: What Makes a Quality Tweet?

I’m a big fan of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, urban legends and other such intriguing mysteries. Combine them into a top ten list and I’m all over it. Toptenz.com is a great source to find some far out compilations. This recent post from August 6

“Top 10 Hoaxes of All Time” Posted by Evan Andrews includes:
10. The Howard Hughes Autobiography – A great story, making Clifford Irving a little famous until Hughes called him out on this story and relationship to him – namely that there never was any. The hoaxer Irving and his accomplice eventually spent some time in prison for the stunt, which remains one of the biggest literary hoaxes of all time.
9. Idaho’s Name – that’s right, the state and the potato
8. The Hitler Diaries
“The Hitler diaries were a collection of documents penned by master forger Konrad Kujau and passed off as the personal journals of Adolf Hitler. The scammers claimed that after being recovered from the wreckage of a plane that crashed in Germany in 1945, the diaries were  smuggled out of East Germany by a man known as “Dr. Fischer.”  They were eventually bought for 10 million German marks by the magazine Stern, which published extracts from them in one of its issues in 1983. But the extreme amount of secrecy required to keep the story exclusive meant that historians and handwriting experts weren’t able to properly examine the diaries to confirm their authenticity, and it was only after the article was published that they were revealed to be fakes. The ensuing scandal resulted in several of the magazine’s editors resigning, and Kujau and the journalist he was working with both spent time in prison.
7. Paul is Dead- the supposed death and cover up of Paul McCartney in the ’60s

6. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
5. The Turk

The Turk was a fake “automaton chess player” from the 1770s that gained fame in the courts of Europe and was exhibited around the world for more than 80 years.
4. The Niger Uranium Forgeries – Makes the big list since it allowed a reason for the start of the Iraq war.
3. Piltdown Man – An assembly of parts to make a new whole
2. The Cardiff Giant – a 10′ Giant Fake
1. The War of The Worlds Radio Show – if you’ve never heard a rebroadcast of the original, it is sometimes played around Hallowe’en.

“In what is remembered as the most famous hoax in entertainment history, a 1938 radio play version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is said to have caused mass hysteria and panic among its listeners. The show aired on Halloween and was directed and narrated by Orson Welles, who would later make the classic film Citizen Kane. It was presented in the form of a special news bulletin and interrupted a weather report, leading many to believe that the story’s description of a Martian invasion of Earth was actually happening. It is estimated that some six million people heard the broadcast, and it is said that police stations were overrun with distress calls. In one small town in Washington, the broadcast coincided with a freak citywide power failure, leading many of the town’s residents to arm themselves with guns and flee into the mountains. The media backlash from the broadcast was huge, and CBS radio, which aired the program, went on to promise never to try a similar stunt again. The whole incident did succeed in jump-starting Orson Welles’ career, and it has been said that when Pearl Harbor was attacked three years later, many people initially thought the news reports to be yet another radio prank like the War of the Worlds hoax.”

The post can be found in it’s entirety here

“The Ultimate Joker Article”

This article by Achilles on Retrojunk plots the development of the Joker from his comic debut in the ’40s, his evolution through the ’50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and turn of the century in comic books, television and films. He transforms from the clown thief to psychopathic murderer. He changes from thin scarecrow to gritty and grungy wild eyed killer.

“The Joker first appeared in 1940′s Batman #1, by Bob Kane and Bill Finger…

His look was inspired by 1928′s movie “The Man Who Laughs”

“Originally, Joker was intended to be killed in the very same issue but the idea was dropped. The editor Ellsworth knew it’s too good of a villain to kill him off.
Joker remained unchanged since his creation. Permanent white skin, emerald green hair, red lips, pointy eyebrows, purple eyeshadow and purple gangster suit with stripes and hat. He was a surreal twist on a middle aged cliche 1940′s gangster.”

The ’50s show an expansion of the Joker’s gadgets – his utility belt, squirting lapel, Jokermobile – all with the practical joke edge to them.

By early 21 century, the franchise seems finished after “Batman and Robin” but in 2005 Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies inject new life into the films. This time we see Batman universe being our universe, and the genre is now a crime action drama.

I thoroughly recommend reading the article in it’s entirety here