Good morning! It’s Monday, and that means Dr. Roundbottom has updated his website with yet another scientific discovery. I’m particularly happy with the work on this entry, photographically speaking. The Carrier Snail is quite a nice photonic capture if I do say so myself.
As a teaser for the kind of thing you can expect to receive as a member of the Roundbottom Society, I’ve created a set of desktop backgrounds of this week’s capture.
If you have a resolution that isn’t listed, drop me a line and I’ll make you one in your desktop resolution.
In other Roundbottom news, we had a recording session over the weekend for the first Roundbottom podcast. Thanks to the help of our friend Nate Periat, this thing is going to sound about 100x better than I ever expected it to. You can most likely look forward to hearing that next week!
This four-part story has had some bumps, and if I wasn’t writing without a net, I can see some edits that I would make. I’m going to try to write these things farther in advance of posting in the future so that I can smooth out some of the inconsistencies that develop. It’s far easier to write one-shot observational posts than the storyline based posts. I made some strides towards that goal of getting ahead this weekend, designing a new capture and we’ll hopefully get a podcast made this week as well.
One problem with writing the posts in advance is that I like having Roundbottom being responsive to the comments. one of the things that sets this project aside from the usual fiction serial is this aspect of involving the input of the audience. If you weren’t aware of that–Roundbottom does interact with his readers, so if you want to jump into the story, you’re perfectly able to do so. Just start posting comments. Make up a character for yourself if you like. I’m not sure who my commenters are because of the aliases, and it’s a blast to read what they have to say on things.
We’re hard at work around here on more Roundbottom content. The first podcast might very well be ready in the next week or two. My sound engineer Nate sent me a couple of files over the weekend that were great. The podcast is going to have fantastic engineering. Episodes will be short, running only 2–3 minutes most likely. But those 2–3 minutes will be packed with aural delights, I tell you.
Dr. Roundbottom needs your help to find his audience. Please consider linking to the site if you haven’t done so already.
I’ve been working for the past several days, in between bouts of packing, on developing the new Roundbottom site design. You can check out a static HTML preview here. None of the links work, so don’t click on them, but mouse over them for fun, especially at the top. For newer readers, Roundbottom is my steampunk photography/short fiction project, centered around a steampunk naturalist and his adventures.
A couple of things to note about this new design. The flash video of the gears is still comp and needs to be purchased as well as compressed. It sits at 2 megs right now which is just way too heavy a file for something silly like that. I should be able to reduce its file size considerably once I buy the video.
I’m using, as in the first design, SiFR font replacement on the headers, and SWIFR to style the main images and the gravatar images. These are flash based technologies that are great uses of Flash. They both should degrade fairly gracefully, although the main header font is ridiculously huge without the styling.
I’ve been grabbing resources from all over the place for this one, hence the planned “design credits” page. It’ll include a link back to my portfolio site, but as well list all the free resources I used in the design and link to them.
You might notice the Foundation stuff. That’s laying the groundwork for the Roundbottom club, basically. More on that later. It’s an experiment that will sink or swim depending on a variety of things. The other thing you might notice is the Encyclopedia link. My intent is to set up a wiki page for keeping track of Roundbottom’s world, cast of characters, and so on. I am pretty sure I will open up editing of this to the fans. I’m thinking hard about ways to encourage audience participation here. I want the comment section to be a delightful place of steampunk characters not of my creation. Hence the “More Steampunk” section. We’ll see how that works.
Overall, I think I’ve vastly improved upon the old design. Cross browser compatibility should be relatively cleared up. The images can be larger and more detailed. And the design really says “clockpunk” now.
Please do let me know if you notice any major glaring errors in rendering. There are a few things that IE 6 doesn’t get right, but for the most part, it looks okay there. Obviously, more modern browsers should handle it better.
I can’t wait to get this thing up and running and to start rolling out new, fresh steamy content. I’ve got some great storylines lined up for this summer that I think you’re really going to enjoy.
One last thing! Design type folks, if you have any technical questions about how I did something or why I did something, do please ask! I’d love to talk shop on this one.
The Roundbottom project is in full swing around here, with large chunks of my profits from web design going into expenses. This weekend, I miraculously somehow stumbled upon a going out of business sale at a costume store in Denver. I was trying to find replica revolvers, and this came up. Today was the last day, and everything was 70% off. Needless to say, Sarah and I went hog wild. I’ll be uploading some photos of what we scored later on, but here’s a list:
One men’s frock coat (black)
two pairs suspenders
white cravat
one set of kid gloves (red)
one set of spurs
Asian-styled parasol
gray derby hat
black Bowler hat (vintage)
civil war cap
one cross between a cowboy hat and a top hat (don’t know what the actual name is)
two pairs men’s Victorian pinstripe slacks (one size for me, one smaller)
three men’s tuxedo shirts, varying sizes
Renaissance bodice (red)
Men’s vest (silver)
18th century men’s shirt
three vintage turn of the century women’s blouses
three blouses that are period, but not vintage
five skirts of varying sizes, peticoat styles, etc
one set of military goggles (at military surplus store later)
All this was acquired for $250. Which seems like a lot, but we’ll get dozens of shoots out of this stuff. Woohoo!
So a note to you steampunkers–keep your eyes open for costume shops going out of business in your areas. Great deals can be had at these closures.
Does the New York Times article on Steampunk mean the genre/fashion craze has made the high water mark and will begin to recede from here? What is the shelf-life of an aesthetic movement, and for that matter, what is the sociological force behind this particular movement?
It’s a Stylistic Rebellion
Particularly as an aesthetic movement, steampunk is popular primarily with an under 30 set. This is a generation that has rarely owned hand-crafted objects. Our consumer goods have been mass manufactured, extruded plastic blocks. Aesthetic appeal was rarely a consideration, and even if it was, each product was exactly identical to the other. You could try and stand out through your particular fashion sense and consumer good choices, but more often than not, you ended up looking like a thousand others.
Steampunk is a middle finger to the iPod, but it’s also a blown kiss. This movement says, “yes” to technology and science, but also “does it have to look so antiseptic?” The design aesthetic of Apple appeals to many, as evidenced by their stock prices, but it’s somewhat repulsive to others. And for a generation who has rarely owned hand-crafted objects, the attraction of taking something and modifying it, crafting it, until it is yours and unique–is very strong. The Victorian period was not the last time things were made by hand, but it’s an aesthetic distantly enough removed from the modern that it feels different, more so than the 40s, 50s, 60s, etc. Steampunk is brown and brass, in contrast to the whites and blacks of modern design. It’s metal and wood, not plastic. It’s lace, not lycra.
It is also a callback to a period when objects looked exactly as if they were capable of what they could do. A square block of plastic does not convey its ability to communicate over vast distances. There’s nothing inherently communicative about it’s shape. A steampunk ray gun, on the other hand, cannot be confused for much of anything else. Technology then was cruder, but you could tell what something did by looking at it. You could see the inner workings, and those inner workings were much easier to understand. I think most people feel they could learn to put watch pieces together. Not very many believe they could learn to manufacture circuit boards.
Has it peaked?
Unless you’re invested semi-professionally in the popularity of the genre as I am, then this question doesn’t probably matter to you. Having spent most of my spring preparing a series of images and storylines that draw heavily from this aesthetic, I am a little concerned that the popularity of steampunk is about to peak, if it hasn’t already. If the activity on the steamfashion group on Livejournal is any indication, popularity has already begun to wane. I recently rejoined this group, and I have found that posts to it are increasingly infrequent. Now it may just be that everyone is too busy making things, but I suspect some have already moved on to other fixations. After all, you could make a strong case that the fashion-aspect of steampunk evolved out of Goth culture, and so it’s not unreasonable to believe that it will continue to evolve and fracture off into other sub-cultures. We already have terms like clockpunk and dieselpunk, even if these terms don’t have the same traction in the zeitgeist that steampunk has right now.
The nice thing about a genre and an aesthetic that is based heavily on a historical period is, it probably never really goes out of fashion. There will always be some small subset of fans interested in the time period. Let’s face it: steampunk is freaking cool, and it’s going to take something pretty drastic to change that. Even if that does change, it’s not like being uncool has ever stopped fans from liking something.
I’ve got a few more blackbird shots in reserve, but I figured you would rather see anything else at this point. So I’m back to some of the raw shots from the last steampunk shoot. Consider these outtakes, because they have no post or effects. They’re good images though, at least, I think so.
I did a top secret shoot last night that I really wish I could show off, but instead, I’ll tell you how you can see it later…
This was my first serious shoot with logistics involving a model, costuming, and a shoot location. To spend an hour and a half behind the camera, I spent probably 4 hours doing the various administrative tasks to set up. Here’s an overview of the process we went through to get the pictures I wanted.
The Model
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a general casting call on a site that connects photographers, make-up artists, and models called Model Mayhem. I received quite a few responses, but most of them were from models in the Denver area, which presented logistical problems. I offered $15 an hour as my rate. I received probably a dozen or so interested responses, and I continue to receive responses over time. Michelle was the stand-out of the group, and also, was local, a huge plus.
The problem with a site like Model Mayhem is that there tends to be a bit of homogeny in the look and age ranges of the models. Many, if not most, of the models are young women in their 20s. This is fine for some of my needs, but I also need older models, and male models. Continue reading ›
I am holding out on you. I admit it. The best images from the shoot are going to take some post work to bring up to the level for the Roundbottom storyline, and I think I won’t reveal them until they go live as part of a story. That way you folks will still have something exciting to see… There are some pretty damned good outtakes here though. Like this one. I don’t play with color much because of the Roundbottom sepia thing, but sometimes, I just have to make an image like this one, especially when Michelle has such great tattoos. When I have time, I’m going to write a postmortem of the shoot, examining it for ways that I can improve in the future.
I had my second model shoot tonight. Over the past three days, we sorted out costuming, a shoot location, and actually did the shoot. The model, Michelle, was fantastic to work with, and I look forward to working with her in future projects. I am planning to make her character in the Roundbottom storylines a somewhat important one, so I suspect we’ll be shooting again soon. The other all-star hero of this shoot was Sarah, who is pretty much responsible for the costuming here. She’s a genius a putting this stuff together quickly. I think we’re going to do some shoots of her characters, Miss Watkins, very soon. Miss Watkins will also be narrating a field recordings podcast as part of the Roundbottom project. Right I’m just building my inventory of photos and written pieces and podcasts ideas up unti I have 3 months of constant work to be released on a weekly basis.
Note that this is not a complete Roundbottom image and in fact isn’t very close to the way I do the sepia on those other images. This is a quick and dirty look, just to get a feel on which images I want to develop further in Photoshop. The real Roundbottom images are going to take some time. I was looking, and out of a little over 90 shots, I flagged 45 as picks. That’s an unbelievable ratio of good shots. I have some serious culling to do…
Class :
SF/F Writer 4 / Web Designer 7 / Photographer 6
Stats
Intelligence : Good at math, bad at word puzzles, keen on science. Education: bachelors in Biology from a tiny liberal arts college you never heard of.
Wisdom : Still working on that “sound of one hand clapping” koan.
Charisma : Likable enough, but not going to win any Mr. Universe contests.
Strength : Can take roughly 8 toddlers in a fight before being overwhelmed.
Dexterity : Not to be trusted with fragile objects with a value greater than $500.
Constitution : Survived a semester in Africa eating half the ungulate species of the Serengeti.
My story “Groob’s Stupid Grubs,” a story of a goblin’s hopes for his idiot children, is available in Black Gate 15.
Currently Writing
I recently finished the first draft of a YA novel called Takedown Notice set in the net-mage universe of my stories “Captain Blood’s B00ty” and “One Click Banishment.” What happens when the Magical Association of Atlantis finally gets the upper hand against the net mages in the spell program copyfight?
Photography
Where To See
My photography can currently be seen in the following locations:
Ivinson Memorial Hospital
255 N. 30th Street
Laramie, Wyoming 82072
Know of another place where I can show my photos? Drop me a line, please! I have framed prints ready to go up!