Archive for July, 2006

« Older Entries

Book Signings

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Brandon invited me to sign books with him for his book signings in Pocatello and Idaho Falls this last weekend. So I took Friday off from work and spent the day at the Pocatello Waldenbooks, where Ryan (the manager) and his staff were very friendly and accommodating.

It was a ton of fun to get to talk to Brandon’s fans and have them ask me to sign their maps. Having two people at the signing was nice, too, because while one of us was talking, the other could snag interested people and hold their attention long enough sometimes to get them to buy books.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Idaho Falls Barnes and Noble. Julie, the marketing manager, rolled out the red carpet and got us drinks, kept the display stocked, and even called three local television stations in to do interviews.

Both signings were very successful from a book-selling standpoint, and what’s more, I’m recharged and motivated to finish my own book to get me closer to the day when it won’t be just the artwork that I’m signing, but the book as well.

Posted in Updates | No Comments »

Video Game Music

Friday, July 28th, 2006

You ever play a video game and say, “Man, I wish that I could get the soundtrack to that”?

Or have you found yourself whistling the tune from one of your favorite 8-bit Nintendo games?

I have. I love video game music. And for those of you who are with me, check out the following websites. I think you’ll like what you find. Plus, the downloads make for great writing music.

Overclocked Remixes

The Minibosses

The Minibosses will be in Mesa, AZ today. Check their website out for details. This might be an interesting show to catch.

Posted in Cool Stuff | No Comments »

Mistborn Maps Response

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

My friend TAB left a great comment under yesterday’s post.

I just got my copy of Mistborn today, and I have to compliment you on your maps, especially the world map: it’s kind of small, but it isn’t square. I think this is the first non-square map I’ve ever seen in a fantasy book. I like the three-dimensional globe curve.

The city map is good, too. It looks big and confusing, like a large city should be. I want to ask if there is any significance to the major gates being named for metals. If not, I’ll just have to assume that Sanderson was running out of metals when he named “Pewter Gate.”

Rather than answer this comment with a comment, I decided to make a post about it.

I do agree with that the world map is a little small. I plan on fixing in Book 2, Mistborn: Well of Ascension, which is tentatively scheduled for a release early next year.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with the name “Pewter Gate,” unless you’re implying that the gate is made out of pewter, which isn’t a great metal from which to build something if you’re looking for structural soundness.

There’s no significance (that I know of) for the names of the metals applied to the gates. I don’t think the gates themselves are made of the particular metal that they’re named after either. In the Mistborn world there are eight Allomantic metals, and as there happen to be eight gates in Luthadel, each gate received the name of a metal, going in order of the metals clockwise from the west.

The first eight symbols of the metals shown in the glossary (and in the front of every chapter, except the prologue and the epilogue) correspond to the directions that are on the compass on the Luthadel map. (For example, Tin is the symbol for North.)

There’s plenty of symbolism in the maps and chapter icons. So if anyone has any questions, send them my way! Thanks for the comment, TAB!

Posted in Mistborn | No Comments »

Mistborn Interior Art

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

It started sometime in February or March of 2005. Holly, Heather, Brandon and I went to dinner at Macaroni Grill and were waiting for our orders. We all pulled out the provided crayons and started doodling on the paper tablecloth. Holly and Heather were drawing trees with strange curlicues, Brandon sketched symbols from his then-forthcoming novel Elantris, and I roughed out a few faces like I normally do in my sketchbook.

Brandon looked over at what I was drawing and said, “Hey, those are nice. You want to do the maps for my next book?”

I read an early version of Mistborn: the Final Empire, made hundreds of sketches, and turned in the final versions of the maps, symbols, and tables sometime in December of 2005.

Today is the release date for Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Although I saw a copy of the finished book a few weeks ago, Saturday I was able to go to Brandon’s book signing and get one of my own.

Mistborn: the Final Empire

The symbols throughout the book are representations of the different Allomantic Metals. I went through probably a thousand little doodles before striking onto the look I was seeking for what I began calling the “Steel Alphabet.” I drew inspiration from some reference photos of old, bent-up, rusty nails.

Steel Alphabet

Most of the book takes place in the city of Luthadel, so the map of the city became the more complex and detailed of the maps. I chose to keep the world map relatively simple, leaving only the major landmarks and border delineations so the reader has a sense of direction and place. You wouldn’t be able to navigate by the world map, but I hope you’d be able to use the map of Luthadel to find your way to any of major Canton’s or to Kredik Shaw . . . if you were crazy enough to actually want to visit it.

Map of Luthadel, Mistborn, the Final EmpireWorld Map for Mistborn the Final Empire

I’ve updated the gallery with much of the artwork that is used in the book (and photographed in the pictures above). I’ll add more to the Mistborn Gallery as the year progresses. For now, I hope you will enjoy Mistborn Gallery #1.

I’ve focused a lot on the interior artwork in this post. Stripped of all the artwork altogether (and even of its beautiful cover by Jon Foster) Mistborn the Final Empire is one of the best books of fantasy I have ever read. If you love fantasy and haven’t checked this one out, go take a look. I think you’ll be surprised.

Thanks to Brandon and to Tor Books for allowing me to do something I’ve long dreamed of doing!

Posted in Cool Stuff, News | No Comments »

Cloning Clyde Comic

Monday, July 24th, 2006

I’ve been preparing to get my artwork up and ready for the official release of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, so today’s post will be short.

People are enjoying Cloning Clyde. This guy has already posted some fan art for it in the form of a one-panel comic. Pretty cool.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a link to the first Mistborn gallery, which will include the interior artwork used in the book.

Posted in Cool Stuff, Updates | No Comments »

More of Clyde

Friday, July 21st, 2006

I riffed on this earlier in the week, but more reviews and interviews have come out for Cloning Clyde, and I can’t help but share the links.

XBox 360 Fanboy interviewed John Nielson earlier in the week and posted this review wherein me and the rest of the team are mentioned by name!

IGN has posted their review of Cloning Clyde, giving it a rating of 8.1 out of 10, which is pretty dang good. To see how it stacks up with other recent releases, you can check out this list of their recently reviewed media.

Posted in Cool Stuff | No Comments »

Cloning Clyde Release!

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Cloning Clyde for XBox 360 Live Arcade was released today. This is the first console game that I’ve worked on, so I’m pretty excited to see how the gaming community receives it. So far the reviews have been positive.

The creator of the game, John Nielson, was interviewed over at IGN earlier in the week. He had some interesting things to say about the premise of the game.

Who is Clyde? He’s the dumbest person imaginable. That’s all I can say about him. Try to imagine the dumbest guy you can imagine, that’s Clyde. He’s this guy who very willingly, voluntarily accepts to be part of an experiment, where he gets cloned a bunch of times. It’s part of a huge company that is illegally cloning humans. The experiment goes bad and he ends up getting cloned hundreds of time. The company locks down the building and tries to hold him inside, and so now he and all his clones, which are just a little bit more dumb than him, need to escape. That’s the story behind the game.

In addition to being creative, John’s also a great guy to work with and made a great leader for the whole Cloning Clyde team.

Clyde’s also a very fun game to play, so if you’ve got an XBox 360, go to the Live Arcade and download it.

Posted in Cool Stuff | No Comments »

Groovy Waves

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Well, I’m back into the writing after a three week hiatus. Part Two of Nethermore is outlined, and I started the actual writing of it last night. Rather than run myself into the ground by writing three and four thousand words a day, I’m going to keep my goal reasonable (1000 words a day) in order to maintain some kind of a balance in my life. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing more than that. It’s about an hour of work each evening. I think I can do that.

My friend Shawn Boyles has set up a blog over at blogspot. It’s called Spike the Surf Dog, and today he posted a picture of . . . well, Spike the Surf Dog. I love the story about how he came up with the name, and I love that dog’s Hawaiian shorts—gotta get me some of those.

When I was 19 my family took a vacation to Hawaii, and me and my Dad learned to surf from a guy who called himself Spike the Surf Dog. I had never heard somebody actually pray for Groovy waves before.

Well, that’s what I’ll be praying for as I continue to write this book. Groovy waves. Groovy waves for everyone.

Posted in Blogroll, Cool Stuff | No Comments »

Planet of the No AirCon

Monday, July 17th, 2006

Air conditioning stopped Sunday afternoon for no apparent reason other than it’s the only day I spend at home. Luckily the temperature has only been hovering just above 100 degrees. I’d hate to be without AC in Phoenix or Death Valley. I bet there are laws in Death Valley against not having air conditioning.

It makes me wonder about the rights a person has once he signs a contract to live somewhere. Seriously, this is the equivalent to leaving a dog in a locked car in hot weather. There are people—self-proclaimed vigilantes—who check parking lots to save aforementioned dogs from heat stroke.

Who goes around to the apartment buildings checking to see if the management is keeping the AC in tip-top condition?

That’s it. We live in a world where dogs have more protectors than do humans. I hear that there are crusades to save the monkeys, too. We’re becoming slaves to the animals.

What’s next? Planet of the Apes?

Posted in News | No Comments »

Outlining

Friday, July 14th, 2006

Spent the evening organizing notes for Part Two of Nethermore. Whizfolders, the program I mentioned a few days ago, is a superb tool for outlining a novel. It’s also great for organizing the random notes and things that come along with writing. In the future I can see using at least two of these files for each novel. One would be for the book’s “bible,” which would include notes on the characters (descriptions, motivations, etc), notes on the countries, magic systems, languages, and whatever else I need as far as reference. The second file would hold the outline and storyline brainstorming.

The program is surprisingly simple. It has a two-pane window which you can customize to be side-by-side or top and bottom. The left side has a hierarchy of notes with titles that represent what is contained in each note. The right side shows the contents of the note that is selected.

I started by creating three notes, labeled “Part One,” “Part Two,” and “Part Three.” From there, I started filling in the gaps, focusing primarily on Part Two, since that’s the part that I’m about to start writing.

Whiz Folders

Anyway, I’ve been searching for something to help organize the book, and I think Whizfolders is the solution. I’ll definitely be buying the full version when my 30-day trial runs out.

Posted in Blogroll | No Comments »

« Older Entries