Dangerous experiments in comics

So here’s what’s going on behind the scenes over here folks:

May not be a strictly literal interpretation of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Yes, folks, we have BIG PLANS here at 2dgoggles Comics Industries Inc., crazy, CRAZY, BIG PLANS, that I will tell you all about very soon!

Anyways I drew this because a)I was kind of missing Brunel, and he’s hardly in User Experience (he didn’t used to be in it AT ALL, now he makes a modest Guest Appearance), and b)for some reason Brunel drawings keep appearing on my scratchpad at work by the dozens so I had these around, and also c) I wanted an excuse to plug this book again, because I’m sleeping with it under my pillow:

Quotage: from Brunel’s journals, age 21:

“As to my character. My self conceit and love of glory vie with each other which shall govern me. The latter is so strong that, even of a dark night, riding home, when I pass some unknown person I catch myself trying to look big on my little pony. I do the most silly, useless things to attract the attention of those I shall never see again. My self-conceit renders me domineering, intolerant, even quarrelsome with those who do not flatter. My ambition– it is more than the mere wish to be rich – is rather extensive — but still – I shall not be unhappy if I do not reach the rank of Hero and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in the Steam of Gaz Boat Division Make the Gaz engine work, fit out some vessels, of course a war is required, get employed by government contract– command a fine fleet and fight– take some fortified town — Algiers or something of that style. Be at last rich. Be the first Engineer and example to all others.”

I should say Brunel shows more self-awareness here than you’ll find in the entirety of Babbage or Lovelace’s correspondence.. Seriously this is the BEST BOOK EVER and I feel comfortable making these extensive quotes because I’m sure you will all go out and buy your own copies at once.

Here’s another that will light a fire under you, or (as was the reaction of many of his unfortunate contractors), make you run far far away screaming.. I should add, [sic] as I have not excluded a single comma or other helpful punctuation mark:

“Dear Sir,
It was with great astonishment and regret that I observed when last at the Acorn Bridge that nothing was being done towards the long-delayed erection of the steam engine. I cannot for one moment suppose that anybody would pretend to get the excavation for this bridge without some means of pumping and I see no preparations for any other means than that of an engine and there appears as regards this some cause of delay which is not communicated to me and unless I have immediately a clear and satisfactory explanation of all the present circumstances of your future plans and unless I can be satisfied that these plans are not only efficient but will immediately be carried into execution I shall wait no longer but without delay take all those steps which I consider necessary to regain a portion of the time which has been negligently wasted and proceed with the work in such a manner as I may find necessary. I regret being driven to this decision but the monumental dilatoriness of your proceedings and lately by the apparent abandonment of all attempts to proceed leaves me no alternative. I shall feel obliged by your immediate reply.

I am, Dear Sir
Yours very truly,
I.K. Brunel

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Reposting this on account of technical problems with the first time around…

One of these days I’m going to do a Lovelace and Babbage book. It will consist entirely of the posts where I apologize for not posting a comic, and it will be 300 pages long.

I’m actually far enough ahead on User Experience that I could post the first part, but then I’d have to post the second part in like MONTHS from now, as the churning waters of crunch-time close over my struggling form. So I’ll keep putting up the occassional silly post like Author, Author if you guys don’t mind, until the film is done! But here’s the teaser poster for UX I did for the app (have I mentioned the app? It’s looking pretty amazing, I’ll do a big post about it soon!):

In other news, I got this shiny shiny thing in the mail the other day– The Steampunk Bible! –

You guys know that I don’t really do any shilling for stuff around these parts, but this is pretty sweet and if you’re into steampunk you should probably place a rolled-up order for this in your nearest pneumatic tube, or failing that, Amazon..

I got it for FREE on account of I’m in it! I have a whole page!  Dang I really have to raise my costume game in the comic, Babbage and Lovelace look like a couple of slobs in such distinguished company.

Addendum: to satisfy your mechanical calculating needs in the meantime, check out this beautifully shot piece.. maybe that’s a kind of music Babbage could have stood!

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Greeting Comics Consumers! Toiling away in the echoing vaults of 2dGoggles Amalgamated Comics Industries today, IN SPITE of the beautiful sparkling sunshine and Royal Nuptials replete with (not enough in my opinion) ponies!

Remember when User Experience was going to be the simple breezy little quickie before I undertook the massive Vampire Poets? Ah Lost Innocence! I feel like Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s stakeholders may have done, when contemplating with dismay his blueprints for a modest ocean-going vessel; and I may well have as much difficulty in launching. Hopefully it will not KILL ME.

Many practical difficulties I’ve encountered on this one, but it’s the Human Factor that’s the stubbornest one. You may think it’s an easy thing to order one’s characters hither and thither on amusing adventures, but in truth I’ve been having a heck of a time getting the eminently sensible Guest Star of User Experience to take the necessary actions to unleash the hijinks. Diagram:

It’s very tempting to just pick her up and MAKE her do it but it’s an ungraceful process and The Author’s hand is awfully hard to photoshop out:

It has to be done indirectly, so maybe I need to sketch out a vector diagram or something, I don’t know,

But that’s a lot of math, and I believe I’d run into the 3-body problem pretty quickly.

The time-honoured way to handle these delicate matters is this:

But she wasn’t falling for it.

I could just get another character to get her to do this stuff FOR me, but this only presents the same problem with a different character… and lots of characters are even more difficult to wrangle than our Guest Star. Our Star for instance:

I’m kind of scared of Lovelace to be honest.

This is why Babbage is such a treasure, he’s always ready to expend enormous energy on highly entertaining schemes at the least suggestion–

But it’s not so easy to get him to successfully rope other people in! A difficulty the actual Babbage had in the actual timestream…

So I was a bit gloomy and stuck for a while.

But I’ve had some Ideas! Observe my subtle machinations!

SORTED!

Meanwhile, still looking into possible Kindle edition.. bear with me folks, lots on my plate AND the weather is reaaaaally nice for Pimms out there..

EDITED TO ADD: No identifications of the unlucky victim valued End User, who will be thoroughly tortured guest starring in User Experience? Hint: you will hug and squeeze her and.. No Victorian genius emerges unscathed from the pocket universe!

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So this is what the scenario is, folks:

To everyone I owe an email to– man, I’m SO sorry. Not that I’m the world’s swiftest correspondents at the best of times. Especially to those folks so generous as to make a donation, I owe each and every one of you an apology for not writing you something straight away. I WILL get to you!!

HOWEVER rest assured that when I’m not being ground into the Martian desert by the all-too-multiple limbs of the Barsoomians, I am using every available instant to move forward on “User Experience”. I’m more excited about this story than any I’ve done, especially as I’m using a rare and mysterious technique known as ‘planning’. To this end I am deploying the power of post-it notes-

Highly recommended system!

Especially fun about User Experience is that I’m teaming up with some very clever folks at Agant to do a special edition iPad version, where we’ll be playing with some narrative-bending cutting edge super post-modern storytelling techniques. Also, shiny gizmos! Don’t worry, it’ll appear as always here at 2dgoggles as well– an experiment, this is! A pretty darn nifty experiment though if you ask me..

Speaking of Technology–would there be any interest in a kindle-ized version of the Story So Far? Still the First Draft version I’m afraid, but it might make it easier to read.

What else.. if you guys are craving some more Brunel, Babbage, and Lovelace, and I KNOW you are (at least Brunel!) some book recommendations:

First up, James Gleick’s The Information, available as an excellent audiobook which is a huge boon to the hard-working monster-toe animator. It’s got a whole giant chapter on Babbage and Lovelace, which I confess I listened to with a bit of trepidation.. it’s hard not to start feeling just a little proprietary about those two crazy kids! Happily not only did I not need to start yelling, “No it wasn’t like that at all!!”, but I even got a new Fact. Ready? Here it is: Babbage’s allowance from his hated father, during the period of his dependence, was £300 per annum. By an odd coincidence, this is exactly the sum of Lovelace’s allowance from her resented husband; with the added sting that it was her own dowry that was being dripped out to her.

Okay possibly I’m a little bit running out of really great Facts…

Anyways it’s a fantastic book, recommended to anybody especially if you’re kind of interested in the history of this stuff but aren’t sure where to start.

The other book you should all run out and buy immediately is The Intemperate Engineer, the journals and letters of that other Giant Ball of Awesome, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Crammed with personality and engineering, with terrific opinionated commentary by the author Adrian Vaughan, if you read one book about any of the 2dgoggles characters it should be this one. Contains every possible way of IKB being surprised by the incompetence of everyone around him (“…I do not believe a workman would have thought of using it in the most contemptible worst managed shop in England..” “…I am compelled to believe that the delay arises from the greatest apathy and negligence and a total disregard for my orders..” — I found these by opening to a random page). Also, absolutely fascinating stuff about early railways, etc etc. — and, words to the wise, to a friend considering giving up his day job to be an Artist:

If you give up the school let me entreat of you to slave. To compel yourself to complete certain things by certain times– and let me entreat of you also to produce somehow or other more in quantity each year whether for commission or not — what I dread is the effect of your being left without any irksome compulsory duty– nothing induces more time spending (I must not call it idle) habit than the absence of compulsion…

Brunel demands MORE COMICSl!!! Now back to my irksome compulsory duty..

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I’m pretty swamped at work and drawing the new comic (I swear!!), so I’m kicking back and letting other people do the hard labour this post. Fortunately I have some terrific stuff from the awesome readers around here!

–Firstly! I ought to have put this up ages ago– Epithumia who made the spectacular Albion: 1849 Babbage and Lovelace extravanganza sent me following: One Man Band! Click the image for the big version!

Once again this comic’s fanart has higher production values than its actual art…

– Whilst you read that, you put on some cracking tunes– John Hekert of the nefarious musical collective Not A Teepee have produced a whole album of Ada Lovelace-inspired songs, you can listen to them here, they are pretty awesome!

This reminds me of an odd fact: although several people have written me nice notes to share with me that they named their daughters ‘Ada’ after Ada Lovelace, I have never once had anyone communicate to me that they’ve named their son ‘Isambard Kingdom’ after Brunel. Odd!

– I hear your concerns that many weeks have passed without a footnote. Such a starved existence cannot be long endured! I have no comics this week to provide footnotes to, so in consideration for your plight I provide a retroactive one. Remember when Lovelace had a go at Babbage for getting dates mixed up in The Client? Well I was perusing Lovelace’s collected letters the other day and with a thrill of eldritch forces at work discovered further PROOF that this comic is psychic:

Dear Babbage.
I have not yet succeeded in getting you to comprehend that you were asked for the 18th, Ryan for the 25th.– Why you have confounded the two together I cannot imagine!– We hold you to the 18th. But if you like to come the on the 25th also, do.– What a puzzle-pated phil. you are!– I explained it clearly in my first note.– Why did you jumble it?
Lovelace to Babbage, 1848

The book indicates a double underscore under ‘do’ but it’s to much of a pain to reproduce that in html. Note to self: put more underscores in Lovelace’s dialogue.

Speaking of Lady Lovelace’s eccentricities, I’ve been messing around with some new costumes for her and somehow this came out.. hard luck with the ponies again, Ada?

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Why haven’t I put her in those celebrity-child dark glasses before??
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There was some skepticism on twitter when I put these sketches up as to these being an anachronism, which of course are NEVER SEEN here at the meticulously accurate 2dgoggles. Answer: awww yeah, 1855 baby:

And FINALLY, in the theme of people inspired to do MARVELLOUS things– remember the ASCII kitten at the end of Economic Model? I figured it was theoretically possible for the Analytical Engine to produce such a thing, but GENIUS commenter Tez (this was ages ago, sorry Tez!!!) brings the Pocket Universe one tantalising step closer! Making stellar use of Fourmilab’s Analytical Engine Emulator.. BEHOLD THE AWESOME MIGHT OF THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE:

Click ‘continue reading’ for the punchcards, and you can try it yourself on the emulator Java applet!
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Welcome to new Curious Onlookers sent hither by the divine Kate Beaton, cheers Kate!

I hope no one’s put off by what will be a fairly long string of random meandering sorts of work-in-progress posts; User Experience will take me a while to put together and it’s sort of one big blob that’s hard to serialise.. you’ll see what I mean, eventually.

An unexpected tax refund and the film industry’s continued interest in Giant-Monster-strewn spectaculars resulted my profligate purchase of a 21″ Cintiq, which I got mainly for the large box it comes in in case I decide to do that book and have to move into it. The comic up until now has been drawn on a perfectly capable little 12″ model– if you’re not into these sorts of gadgets, a Cintiq is a computer screen you can drawn on, like an ipad I suppose but you use a stylus and it’s super-pressure-sensitive, so that it’s very much like drawing on paper, except with ‘Undo’. The drawing surface of the old one when you factor in the menus etc is about the size of a paperback book; the new one on the other hand is quite shockingly massive, as big as the big kind of animation paper and it dwarfs my laptop with isn’t small:

Aside from *yawn* actual work reasons, the main thing I had in mind for the bigger screen was backgrounds for the comic. Now I don’t know if you’ve looked closely at the comic at all (I advise against it) but behind those sloppy awkward characters gurning in the foreground are a few straggly lines that are meant to represent The Wider World they inhabit. Not that I’m much of a hand at landscapes anyways but for sure the small drawing area is more hampering there than it is for the characters. First experiments on the new screen:

Room for improvement to be sure, but it would have been much harder to put that kind of detail on the little screen! Reference photos of London of this era I got from the gorgeous book Lost London, and this astounding post from Spitalfields Life (a great source of London lore in general).

This is the 1840-50s London of Lovelace and Babbage, demolished with gleeful abandon by the modernising Victorians and their railways and thoroughfares! Oooh I need to have somewhere Brunel smashing through these lovely old piles with a wrecking ball.. progress, people! While rickety and drafty and infested with mice, these buildings have one great advantage, viz, that there isn’t a straight line in them so it makes them much easier to draw.

The great problem now that the Wide World of Backgrounds is opening up to me, is that it’s tempting me sorely to abandon my commitment to black-and-white. Here at 2dGoggles we live in a binary world of pure good in the form of Science, pure evil in the form of the Humanities, and two states, black and white, which admit of no messy ambiguities. In some ways life is smoother lived this way, except when it comes to drawing backgrounds where it is a bit of a pain in the ass to be absolutely honest. If you look at the first drawing up there even if my perspective WAS correct, which it isn’t, it could never convey the same same sense of depth that two lazy minutes of throwing some grey washes on does:

I could appeal to the Deity for guidance, by whom I mean Will Eisner..

.. but even he used grey washes SOMETIMES! I shall experiment. Most of User Experience is set inside the Engine, which presents a host of difficulties, but maybe not ones of atmospheric perspective. We shall see.

Oh by the way the Difference Engine building is based on two structures at the south side of Tower Bridge stacked on top of each other; in the geography of the comic it’s located in roughly the same place, without Tower Bridge of course which is too late period-wise, maybe a little further east down the river on the swampy, warehousey bit of Rotherhithe… Brunel’s tunnel isn’t far from there.

Each of these buildings is completely nutty in its own way, which is what makes them so very perfect for Babbage and Lovelace to inhabit.

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