•Duality•

ROOK. Favorite. Done.

Alright, so as my post yesterday mentioned, I’m taking a Main Title Design course, taught by Ash Thorp over at LearnSquared. This lesson was about typography. The homework was to choose a sample logline and create three different cast-and-crew mock-ups, using different variations of the same font family.

I chose a horror sample called "Three Points," the logline of which is: A World War I pilot briefly loses consciousness inside of the Bermuda Triangle and upon waking, fails to discover land or water, and his gas tank remains full.

Playing around with the fairly standard font family Agency, I created three shots from three different title sequence options. I tried to keep the font fairly intact, making only a few subtle changes to hopefully connect it more to the plot ideas, of mystery and horror.

(Images 1-3 are one set, then 4-6, and then 7-9.)

@ashthorp

“Low-Earth Diadem.”

Two other bot sketches...

Blue: Bot_tle Rocket. As you can see by the busted light bulb on his head, his ideas are not the brightest... like strapping a rocket to his back.

Orange: Beat_bot. He'll dance on, even if the music stops.

Beginning of a Totally Unrelated-to-Anything Scene

The place was called “Executive Hotel”—it took a conscious effort to keep from thinking what sort of low-life executive would choose to stay in such a pisspot.  It looked more like a prison compound than the “Most Comfortable Stay,” as the sign out front bragged.  Sleeping beneath an overpass might have been better.

White paint peeled from the exterior walls, streaking the dingy surface with scars of brown.  Either it was the paint peeling to reveal half-rotted wood beneath, or it was mildew caused by some awful roof runoff.  I was certain to stay far enough away so the distinction couldn’t be made.  And the cars parked in the lot were in much the same condition, nearly every one of them a beater joint fit to throw a piston and clatter to a stop at any moment.  Paint jobs all dull tans, beiges, and sickly olive greens—or at least they had been, before the rust had begun to corrode the old steel frames—did nothing to improve my already low opinion of this fine establishment.

It was enough to make a man rethink the choices he had made in his life.  And as the shoddy suspension of my loaner car—only earlier that day, I had saved it from the scrapper with a quick exchange of five, crisp one hundred dollar bills—bounced over the broken cracks of the uneven lot, rolling like a drunken mule into the space outlined by two non-existent yellow stripes, I found myself doing exactly that...

Winter Cabin in the Dark of Night.

Final Week!

The Kickstarter is winding down, and I’m full of gratitude for those who’ve backed my vision for this independent dark science fiction project. Of currently-active Fiction Publishing projects on Kickstarter, “Color of a Mirror” is the 9th most-funded. In the world. That’s absolutely incredible to me!

Why, then, is the project not yet funded?

Well, largely because I’m not content with producing a hardcover or softcover book as cheaply as possible. I want this book to be a work of art in and of itself, to feel like it came from a big-name publisher, despite me being just one person. I want to work with a printer that strives for that same type of quality in the options they offer, that gives me the ability to customize this book in a way that makes it sing.

Beyond that, however, I’m also trying to do a limited pressing of a vinyl for the soundtrack. All my metrics for how big a run to do of these various items to make them cost-effective, cross-referenced with a feasible amount of money to raise, has landed me on the $15,000 mark.

(I’m encouraged that there’s currently a novella project from an established, published author that had a goal of $10,000, making me feel like my higher goal was not so far off.)

This may be a bit of a ramble, but I hope it’s an honest look at how I’m thinking about this project, and what I’m trying to achieve.

There’s still time to back! No matter the tier you choose, every little bit helps. It’s going to take a mega-surge this final week to get to fully-funded, but I whole-heartedly believe we can get there.

Ends the day after Cyber Monday, in celebration of the cyberpunk story that it is.

Now, let’s go get higher on that most-funded list!

-Dan/ArtificeLux

Kickstarter

Color of a Mirror: Dark Science Fiction Novel and Soundtrack

A cerebral, slow-burn narrative about mental instability and the lies we tell ourselves, coupled with a cinematic dark ambient score.

ID. id.

O/– (Neutronium Reactor)

Tempest.