Inspiration.

Inspiration.

The process of creating a huge graphic novel like Veil of the Gods hasn’t just involved writing the story, sculpting the characters and preparing the digital artworks. I’ve also been creating typefaces. This was a hobby of mine 20 years or so ago. In 1996 I designed the font for my little book- The Moon on the Lake- published by Random House. Then I typeset the whole book with it. I mention this because it’s such a pleasure to have an excuse to build new typefaces. The graphic novel is full of them. Indeed these various typefaces are integral to the story… Here’s the proof page for two I finished today. They’re inspired by Tibetan scripts.

Inspiration.

Seth (Set), son of Geb (Earth) and Nut (sky), brother of Osiris, was god of the desert, foreign lands, thunderstorms, eclipses, and earthquakes. Seth was a powerful and often frightening deity, however he was also a patron god of the pharaohs, particularly Ramses the Great. He protected the dead on the way to the Afterlife.In Egyptian mythology, Seth killed Osiris in an attempt to become the ruler of Egypt, however Osiris and Isis’s son, Horus, defeated Seth in combat. Seth then was adopted by the sun god Ra. He became the thunder in the sky and protected Ra from the chaos serpent Apophis during the sun’s nightly travel through the underworld. While Seth has been depicted in a variety of animal forms, he is usually depicted as a dog-like animal with a forked tail, called the “Seth animal.” Seth “The God Of Chaos” Talon ABRAXAS

Whipjack Thraw the Cacodaemon.

*sound on

Countless ages ago a disgruntled Cacodaemon retreated from the world to seek refuge deep in his underground lair. And there he would have remained, at peace, far from the squabbling masses of humans who had crowded him out, but for the appearance of a certain Mahjee who was looking to make a name for himself.

This Mahjee worked a Mahjuti Meta-Glyph on Whipjack that bound him within a space-time bubble. In other words, he doomed the Daemon to repeat the same 30 seconds or so of his life over and over, endlessly into eternity. Without respite.

The trap took Whipjack completely by surprise. He’d just finished a poetic warning to the Mahjee that Cacodaemons are immortal and that no Mahjuti tricks could harm him, when a series of glowing Glyphs appeared before his eyes. The ancient daemon, who long ago had proved he was invincible, found himself cocooned in a veil of shimmering sky-blue light. And that was that. He was trapped.

Video games employ two basic motivations to keep players engaged. These are termed Extrinsic motivation and Intrinsic motivation. Games based on, or balanced in favour of, Intrinsic motivation keep you engaged because playing the game is a lot of fun. The entertainment value you get from the game is enough reward in itself. Extrinsic games are designed around the drive to earn lootboxes. Extrinsic games are intentionally designed to be addictive. They specifically exploit the human brain’s tendency toward gambling addiction. This is why people who play extrinsic games tend to suffer higher rates of depression than people who play Intrinsic games. With Extrinsic games there's always a feeling of withdrawal as soon as the players can’t play the game. Now, I want you to consider how much things would change if we, the players, all ignored the Extrinsic motivations that arise when we play the game of life and focused a bit more on the Intrinsic experience... 

A Mahjee is a master of the Mahjuti technology. Mahjuti is such a broad subject, taking in a dozen disciplines. Menutra Menoo is still technically in training. However, she is also a master, a master of Light.

Inspiration.

by Hasui Kawase, early 20th c

My lastest piece listed as an NFT on Foundation

https://foundation.app/@Ziggetai/~/128586

Exhausted from another fourteen-hour shift, Yonani Khan sat back in her favourite armchair with a sigh. She only meant to rest her eyes for a moment, but she slipped into a deep, coma-like sleep straight away.

Yona rarely recalled her dreams. She joked, that there wasn’t anything worth remembering about them. This one, however, was different. She was walking along an inexplicably familiar hallway lit by piercing cyan. As much as it felt like home, she had no memory of the place and that startled her a little.

A large glass bubble enclosed her head and the air pumping into it was sweet. The scented freshness reminded her of the pristine mountain ranges that stand at the edge of the known world. Yona frowned.

How could that be? She’d never actually been anywhere near the southern continent. She’d never been out of the city. Her head was buzzing with questions. A little stab of anxiety fluttered her heartbeat. Somehow, she suppressed her confusion and determined to walk on without distraction. An instinct told her, that she could not afford to be late.

That first sleep-vision was the most straightforward one. After that her dreams got really, really interesting.