Worlds of MythCraft

Here’s a progress report on the mask-making project that I first posted about a couple of weeks ago.

It ended up taking a while for me to get back to the project because, honestly, I think I might be trying to do too many different things at once with my creativity quest. But that’s another post for later. Back to the mask-making…

To summarize, I used an instant paper-mache product called Celluclay and formed it over a cheap plastic masquerade mask that I bought at Michael’s. I followed the instructions pretty rigorously, except that I went ahead and added the Celluclay right over the mask instead of putting a layer of cling-wrap over the plastic first. I did this on purpose because I intended to leave the clay on the plastic permanently. Well, Celluclay is supposed to dry in a day or two, but after a week of waiting, there were several parts of the mask that were not dry. I realized it was because 1. I put the Celluclay on really thick – too thick, and 2. I realized that Celluclay sitting up against solid plastic will take ridiculously long to dry because no air is getting to it. Oops.

What I decided to do was to try to get the Celluclay off the plastic form while keeping my mask as intact as possible, so that the non-dry parts could get air.

That was a mistake. Imagine if you will what happens when you try to rip something that is partially dry and partially wet off of a form that – when dry – it is designed to stick to. No matter how carefully you try to do it, what you get is something like this …

Yeah, oops.

But I’m sooo glad this happened. Best creative thing to happen all week. Because 1. screwing this up really taught me a lot about how to work with Celluclay, and 2. Frankly, in its own way, those broken shards of mask actually look pretty kick-ass. Imagine those pieces painted up to look like old distressed crimson-colored metal and partially buried in some rocky sand or dirt.

Do you see it? That’s a thematic provocation right there. It’s a story. I’ve accidentally gone from making a bit of wall decor to creating a visual story-hook for The Scarlet Masque. Maybe even the cover of the rpg, should it ever come to that.

So, this ‘failed’ first attempt is sitting on my work counter waiting to be further transformed into an accidental masterpiece.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a second (and currently intact) mask drying on the work counter, too. I’ll share more about that one in future posts. I’m also itching to try to make one out of leather, and I’ve got some cool ideas about decorating the cheap plastic mask as well.

See what I mean about working on too much stuff at once? If you’re counting, that’s FOUR mask projects at one time. And that’s just masks, it doesn’t count the paintings, mandalas, and digital work I’m trying to do as well. Clearly I’m taking too much on at once and not focusing properly on any of it. But like I wrote earlier, that really ought to be its own post.

Step 1: Celluclay over a generic plastic face mold.

After letting my bag of mixed Celluclay sit untouched in the fridge for over a week, this weekend I finally decided to try to make my first venetian mask. I formed the stuff over a generic plastic face mold, then spent about an hour smoothing it around, filling in gaps, and adding some bulk to the nose and brows to customize the basic shape. Now it’s sitting on my oven drying – a process that’ll take about 24 hours.

Celluclay is a form of retail paper mache that behaves a lot like clay, then hardens into a solid form that can be sanded and carved and cut to a nice smooth finish, then painted or decorated. This is the first time I’ve worked with anything like Celluclay, and I think I like it, although I am definitely going to need to get a few masks under my belt before I feel like I have a good sense of how to work it and mold it to my satisfaction. This feels like a pretty good first try, though. I’ve made masquerade masks for theatre productions before, but it was over 15 years ago and back then we used different materials.

I’ll keep taking pictures and sharing what this process is like. I plan to make several masks in the future and I want to keep a record of what it was like to create the very first one.

Wherin we continue our discussion of the possibility of playing a Primetime Adventures series based on the following premise:

“a show about a time-traveling William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln zooming across the heartland of America in a stolen ‘67 Mustang with a goth-chick waitress who’s on the run from the Irish mob in Chicago.”

Daniel Perez, Chuck Hedden and I have been flirting with the notion of taking this seriously. Some ideas came up in another thread and this post is here to keep the pitch discussion going, should anyone wish to do so.

I’ve been amazingly prolific over the past few evenings with the project I hinted at in the post entitled “What’s All THIS, Then?” and I’ve been having a lot of fun doing it. What began as a vague idea of my own custom-optimized roleplaying setting of swashbuckling romance, intrigue, piracy, and tricorn-hatted adventure has blossomed into a full concept.

Below are a few basic things I want to share up-front. More details will probably come later on the new Website I’m building to house the project.

• I’m doing this for me – as my own creative outlet, because it is percolating inside me and won’t stop bugging me until I’ve made it manifest in some form outside of my mind.
• This is a worldbuilding project that I plan to use for roleplaying campaigns. But I HAVE NO INTENTION of publishing, marketing, promoting, or selling this as a product. I will make this thing, then I will hopefully play it with my friends, and if it is any good then I’ll toss it into the aether for other folks to play if so desired.
• I’m proceeding on the notion that the system I’ll use for this project will be FATE. I imagine I’ll grab appropriate FATE concepts from Diaspora, Dresden Files, Starblazers, SOTC, whatever works to support the kind of cinematic swashbuckling intrigue vibe I want for this. But at this point, I’m working on color, flavor, setting, etc. And since I’m not going to try to publish this thing or sell it to anybody, I don’t feel any need to worry about focused design. I’m making a game for me and my friends to have fun with.
• I’m sort of going old-school with this project relative to my own evolving notions of rpg-setting design. What I mean is, these days I’m much more likely to socket into collaborative setting creation. I tend to avoid the sort of designs that results in what Judd calls “museum games”. Nevertheless, here I am making up what will probably be a fairly detailed setting all by myself, my own way. I can’t help you reconcile why I’d be doing this at this point, but I am. I want to, so I am.
• Because I’m not planning to publish this or promote it, I’m not going to fill up this blog or any other forum with lots of info-dumping. I will use a Website to act as a journal/wiki/gallery, but I won’t be forcing any of it down anyone’s throats. Most of the things I write from here on out will be on the project site, not here on the Monkey.
• Because I’m not planning to publish this thing, I can unapologetically and openly admit that I’m stealing a lot of ideas and concepts from several of my favorite genre sources – most particularly I’ll be stealing from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards world – and also from Joe Abercrombie’s world, and from previous rpgs like 7th Sea.
• This will be a world that bears a fairly overt evocation of Venetian carnival masks, tricorns and rapiers, alchemy, traveling theatre troupes, piracy, and the number 7.

So there.

I now have a solid working-title: Tales of the Scarlet Masque. Below is an as-yet unfinished map. The islands and main locales are done – I just need to start naming things, but that will come after some research.

Enjoy. You can see a much bigger image if you click on this one:

There’s an interesting thread going on over at Story Games called “In X, you play people who Y” and I decided to try to put Vegas After Midnight through the wringer, because I think that explicitly and concisely being able to state what players do in any given game is a good thing. Certainly it is in VAM. Answering questions like this has been a challenge for me, but that’s all the more reason to keep at it.

My first few attempts have been sub-par, and I’ve gotten helpful advice and criticism from folks to encourage me to step up. Well, I figured I’d do that here, so as not to threadnap the discussion over there.

This is stuff coming mostly off the top of my head, so who knows what I’ll end up writing. But I need to try out a bunch of different ideas. Some will be dumb, some funny, some might even actually hit the mark. Your input and comments are welcome.

Here we go …

In VAM, you hack up DRYH and dump a bunch of Vegas pastiche all over it. No wait, I do that, not you.

In VAM, you play deranged Elvis cultists in sequin jumpsuits who kick the snot out of a bunch of evil clowns who are trying to kill you and take your stuff. Potentially true, and capable of hooking attention, but too limited in scope and a bit snarky.

In VAM, you play characters who wake up into the neon-drenched madness of a nightmare pastiche of Vegas and match wits, blood, and sanity with deranged Elvis cultists, Rat-Packer gangsters, and evil circus freaks in a high-stakes game of life and death for the fate of reality. Entirely accurate, but too long and probably confusing. The actual statement lies within this one, but needs to be distilled into something concise.

In VAM, you play characters who wake up into a neon-drenched nightmare pastiche of Vegas and decide to play instead of being played, no matter what the cost. Grrr. Cleverness without clarity is not cleverness.

In VAM, you play …

Well, tell me what impressions YOU have, based upon what you’ve heard and read. I’m not above stealing good ideas.

First, a mini-catchup:

I am sitting here while Liam plays on the Playhouse Disney Website and there’s all kinds of stuff rolling around in my head. There are several things I want to write about. I literally have two partially-written posts in my drafts waiting to be finished and published – a political post about Bill Maher and a personal post about an epiphany I had during my recent trip to Cleveland. And this morning one of my newest Facebook friends, Tammy (who happens to be a significantly memorable high-school girlfriend and a fellow thespian) asked me to elaborate on something I mentioned in an earlier tweet about my “ALT experience”. “ALT” is insider shorthand for Amarillo Little Theatre, which is where I spent almost nine years in my 20s trodding the boards. So adding to my other posts-in-waiting I want to write about my years at ALT in more detail than I have ever done since I began to blog.

But what I will actually be doing in this post is writing about Vegas After Midnight again – because during lunch Liam and I were rocking out to my VAM playlist and it reminded me of a conversation I had with my lovely Leah a couple of days ago that I want to share.

So, the actual point of this post, as promised in the title, is … Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Daniel Perez, the sexiest male voice in podcasting, sent me a little gift in honor of my recent posts about VAM and Picchiatello Jack. It’s an audio version  – with sound effects! – of the recent intro speech I shared (see this post).

Click on this player to listen/download:

[wpaudio url="http://www.harpingmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/VAMJack.mp3" text = "Daniel Perez as Picchiatello Jack"]