I was taking a break from editing the manuscript for Chrysalis Emergent, and decided to create a concept rendering of one of the alien races that feature in the Legion Universe, this one also a Starwolf.

It’s not entirely how I visualize both this alien’s species, and the implants of Starwolves, in my head, but it gives you a good idea.

Alien Starwolf Concept Art

Figure originally created inside Poser, with heavy use of SixthSense’s wonderful ‘Wired’ figures from Runtime DNA.  Figure was posed, then imported into Vue.  The Wired figures were enhanced using Vue materials and effects including the glow effect on the wire cores.  Background is one of Team Dystopia’s old City Blocks, sky and lighting is mine from scratch for the image.  Postwork was minimal as this I consider a scrap.

Comments

• June 29, 2010, Mark Caldwell (1 comments) writes: Really like the skin texture and the red wire cores look really cool with all the subdued tones in the rest of the image My recent post Speed – the Modern Mercury

After a little bit of CSS hacking, and some new versions of a couple of the images used for the site, I’ve finally managed to create a single column page layout, and can now post more of the writing material up without it looking all squished.

To celebrate this minor piece of design tweaking, it’s maiden outing is a sneak peek at “Chrysalis Emergent“, a K’Arian Legion novel I’m re-working at the moment.

I hope you enjoy the site changes, and especially the fragment of Chrysalis Emergent!

With prompting from a few people, I’ve started working on re-tweaking a Legion Universe novel, with the intent of actually risking the dreaded rejection letters again.

But, me being me, I decided to do some cover art as well given the recent release of some new meshes.

Oddly, working on the character from this cover idea helped me to get a better understanding of some of the concepts the Legion Universe explores.

So, as I doubt will come as a surprise to anyone, I present to you a cover for Chrysalis Emergent, long before the words are even close to decent.

I’m Irish, what can I say?

Chrysalis Emergent Cover Art

Comments

• June 2, 2010, @impworks (1 comments) writes: Very Nice :-) My recent post Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-31
• June 18, 2010, Becca (2 comments) writes: Wow.........sister can't wait for the read.

I’ve uploaded three of the renders I did based on parts of the vampire Promise novels I’m writing to the graphics site.  I also added the short story snippets I wrote when I originally created the renders to the first and last ones.

They are, in order:

• A Promise Sealed With A Kiss
• Grey Death
• Awakening To Eternity (Not safe for work)

(Awakening is flagged NSFW due to minor female nudity)

Go take a look, and enjoy the teasers (the stories, not the nudity)

How many of you have seen the excellent movie “Equilibrium”?

Christian Bale, Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee … With talent like that, it’s easy to just get lost in the movie and ignore the plot.

Well, it is for me. But I digress.

Back to the plot of this entry – Do you remember how things were “Rated EC10 for emotional content”, banned, and burned, in the movie?

Now consider the idea of “age banding” in the UK.

The premise is simple – publishers want to start tagging the covers of children’s books with “age recommendations”.

You’d think this is a good idea, right?

Nope.

This will end up, one way or the other, reducing the amount kids read.

You think a 14 year old kid is going to want to be seen with a book tagged as being for 8 year olds?

Given the totalitarian democracy nature of the UK, it’s only a short step before the recommendations become requirements, just as they do with movies and keep trying to force on computer games.

So that same 14 year old might end up not being allowed to buy a book tagged for 16 year olds. Or older.

It’s a completely arbitrary set of “standards” that will do nothing more than add an extra control onto the activities and learning of children in the UK, and given the UK’s predilection to micromanage as much of its citizen’s lives as possible, it will get feature creep into censorship.

We already see it with movies, how they are edited in order to gain specific ratings – you really think publishers aren’t going to start pressuring authors in the editorial process in order for a ’script to gain a targeted rating?

Let’s think of a couple of hypotheticals a moment. Harry Potter, JK Rowling’s wildly successful series, and Terry Pratchett’s equally successful Discworld series¹. What sort of rating do you think they would have gotten in the past? 10 year olds and younger? 12-18 year olds only? What?

Then think of when you read them, or you introduced your kids to them.

Books like those have become so popular because they are “suitable” for pretty much everyone, young or old – yet age banding would stifle the potential audience, based on nothing except age.

The whole idea seems to be nothing more than a half-assed attempt by publishers to appease an outcry that hasn’t yet materialized in the UK.

I think they’re running scared, that the whole video games ratings controversy has them thinking they need to appear to do something before they become the next favourite target of people who make Mary Whitehouse look like an unopinionated libertarian on steroids.

Age banding will have a huge chilling effect on authors and publishers, and threatens the natural inquisitiveness and learning ability of our kids.

Whilst publishers have stated they’ll engage in “full consultation” with authors, we know just what that’s worth – less than the cost of the cover in paper itself. Publishers should have, and likely did, expected a backlash from authors, but they’re being sneaky in their approach in trying to promote the idea.

In many ways, it seems to be a fait accomplit already.

If you think having someone behind a desk decide what’s age appropriate for your children to read, and don’t mind the idea of someone else controlling your child’s development for you, then you probably won’t be interested in seeing just how many people object to the idea of age banding, or signing up yourself to express your own objection to the idea.

1. Both authors have signed on to the No To Age Banding campaign [back]