Just stuck this marvellous pic by Leo up on our Mirabilis blog. He actually drew it back in 2003 - and that's only halfway back to when we first started trying to get this project off the ground. I was all set to give up at one point (say around mid-2002) as I can make an indecently good living in videogame design and it's only for the pure love of storytelling that I choose to live as a derided pauper instead :-)But, just on the point of taking up another proper (ie paid) job in the games industry, my wife gave me a book of interviews with Martin Scorsese, and he was talking about Raging Bull and how it had taken him ten years to get it going and he'd mortgaged his house and had several false starts, nearly got to principal photography two or three time only for the studio to pull the plug. And I thought, "Hell, if Scorsese can keep on going on sheer faith and willpower, then so can we!" And jolly glad we did so too. No salary you can earn in a regular job can ever equal the sheer joy of bringing something into existence that you really believe in. I'm sure that goes for all of us here.
Great drawing. like one of those illustrations around the edge of 'Trivial Pursuits' :-)
ReplyDeleteRe Mirabilis; and you have Nikos colouring. Great artists in his own right and at this very moment sketching in Athens to raise money for DtWT :-)
We're Roxy Music and Nikos is our Brian Eno :-)
ReplyDeleteWe have a whole bunch of scripts written that aren't part of the main Mirabilis storyline. Stand-alones that put me in mind of old Creepy stories, though not horror. Martin McKenna pencilled one of those - and did a very nice job too - but then kind of Sienkiewiczed out on the rest. So I'm hoping to persuade Nikos to finish them.
Wow, that's a beautiful drawing!
ReplyDeleteCredit to you for sticking to your guns and pursuing your dream by the way, it's very much paid off!
Thanks, Zak. I always think of guys like Iain McCaig, who comes up with brilliant, zany, exhilarating ideas like Dinosaur & Wolf, but he has to struggle to find the time to develop those personal projects coz some Hollywood guy would rather pay him squillions to draw pictures of Darth Yawn. Yet it's all the deeply personal projects that really enrich the world by bringing something new and different into it. And letting creatives do their own thing is usually more profitable in the long run too - but for some reason the investor types don't see it that way. It's gonna be different when I win the lottery :-)
ReplyDeleteinspiring post, dave!
ReplyDeleteand great drawing.
And of course I should have added that without David Fickling, Mirabilis and all the other brilliant DFC creations might never have seen the light of day. (I'm sure we've all acknowledged David's contribution elsewhere, but it can't be said too often!)
ReplyDeleteAwesome. I wasnt to fly an airship like that one!
ReplyDeleteLovely, I want one and I want it now! It's got to be better than getting the 149 up the road.
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