| Penumbra credits |
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| Written by i j |
| Friday, 14 October 2011 10:59 |
It has been quite a bit of time since i last published anything in this website, a some of you might already know, the reason is that I have been working on a parallel project that left me very little time for anything else, well, today I come with god news, although there is still a bit of work that needs to be done the fact is that the project is quite completed and I hope that from now on I will have more time for updating the website.
Anyway so you all know what I have been working on today we talk about…
Penumbra The role playing game
I would normally start any article (or row of articles) for the beginning but this time I will start for the important stuff, and what it’s important now is to state how thankful I am for all the people who helped me in completing this little project.
For those that don’t know yet, what had me so busy was the writing of a new pot apocalyptic gothic role playing game named “Penumbra”, I will tell you more about this in other articles.
Writing a role playing game wasn’t quite difficult for me, I have been playing them for 20 years and although playing them is not the same than creating them, the fact is I had quite a solid base for doing it, what was a huge problem for me was how to illustrate it and hot to give it a decent aspect.
I started to write it without having a clear plan on how I was going to resolve those 2 problems, but thanks to one image of Manuel L Salvador I had the idea on how to do it. The key was in this image:
It happens that it represent exactly what I wanted to transmit in a feature that I called “whiteeyed”, that feature allow you to see what it’s inside of the mortal souls. That image had everything I needed, from the necessary white eyes to the look of someone who is seeing everything that it’s inside you.
So I thought: “fuck, this image is perfect for illustrating that feature… maybe I could find more images that could illustrate other aspects of the game?” and So I started to look for photographers that could give me permission to reproduce some of their photos on my book.
The searching wasn’t easy and took way much more time than expected, but the fact os that the end result is quite spectacular, I also meet a lot of great people who helped me a lot in this project and so I’m terribly thankful to all them.
And that’s why I start explaining what is important: to give credits to all this people who made possible what at first seemed impossible for me:
Manuel L. Salvador http://www.manuelsalvador.tk/
Manuel L Salvador already have an article in this Web site, you can read it HERE, anyway as a resume, Manuel is a gothic photographer, you will fund quite dark and erotic images in his portfolio.
Manuel is the responsible of me having the idea for illustrating the book with real images instead than with hand made illustrations, there aren’t many role playing books like that out there (if any), so I suppose that we can say that Manuel has been my muse, how inspired the idea that made possible this book.
Lady Aradia http://lady-aradia.deviantart.com/
Lady Aradia don’t have an article in this Website but he does in the Spanish version of it, as it’s logic once I decided to explore the possibility of illustrating the book with real images, the first thing I did was to take a look to what I already had so I looked into both my websites, if you know Spanish you can read about her HERE.
Hers is the honor of having her image in the title page, when I saw it I though that it perfectly transmitted the desolation, the loneliness, the austerity and the feelings that I wanted the book to have so I couldn’t help it and asked her permission to use some of her images, she agreed and here we are.
Vanessa Salas http://vanessa-photography.com
Vanessa doesn’t have any article in my website but I found her following some images in Angelines Web site (who do have an article in my Spanish website HERE), anyway I started to look in Alassie Website for some images I could use and found some for the steampunk part of it.
Alassie couldn’t grant me permission to use them since although he had rights of using them she didn’t owned the images so she forwarded me to Vanessa (the photographer who took them) and she agreed to help me.
Mist Abys http://mistabys.bookspace.fr/
With MistAbys we get to the collaborators international area, the fact is that soon it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to illustrate the book only with the people I already knew so I started to search through the web… and Inet don’t know about frontiers.
MistAbys is a great person, not only he agreed to let me use the images I chose but he also suggested some more and even volunteered to do the layout (by those days it was a still unresolved problem) although in the end I didn’t needed her to do it she deserves all the credits for being so kind and helpful.
Midnight Digital http://www.midnight-artwork.com/
Behind the name of midnight digital hides Christophe Dessaigne, a French professional photographer that lives in south of france, his images of post apocalyptic worlds were simply perfect for illustrating locations and Penumbra ambient, his images are almost a door to my world and I couldn´t miss them.
Luckily for us all he kindly agreed to help.
Winged Creations http://winged-creations.deviantart.com/
Winged creations is the artistic brand of Ariana Wing, a young lady of 20 years old that I envy, I envy her because he is a great artist, not only for his impressive photos but for her other artistic features like: Modeling, makeup artist, glassblower, photography and lot of other things.
Lot of her darker images would have served perfectly for illustrating toxic places of my world, I asked for her help and he agreed. Thanks.
Brujilla Patri http://www.brujillapatri.com/
With Brujilla Patri we come back to the Spanish artists, I found her in a lucky strike: revising Lady Aradia shots for giving them adequate credits I found that one of them was took by “Brujilla Patri”. I thought that if she had taken that image maybe he took some others that might be helpful too.
Said and done, not only her gallery was full of interesting images but she had one that I had been quite time looking for: an image that showed a special doctor, the kind of people who you would say “I don’t want you to heal me, thanks”, curiously the net is full of images like that but all of them stared by a bloody sadist, I was looking for one who transmitted the feeling of the doctor actually trying to help you but even then being scaring and unpleasant.
KornKidSam http://kornkidsam.deviantart.com/
Under the name of KornKidSam we find Samantha, another young lady of 20 years old (it’s clear that digital world belongs to new generations) that has been playing with digital images for 7 years now.
Her works are quite spectaculars and contribute to give a more sober ambient to the part of the books who need it, it doesn’t matter how much post-apocalyptic this world is in Penumbra there is still some room for elegance.
Lord Bone http://lordbone.deviantart.com/
You don’t imagine how hard is to find gothic images with male models in them, after a month and a half I realized that I almost had no images in which there appeared male people so I decided to actively search for them, that’s surprising considering that most of the contacted photographers where in deed girls…
That’s how I found Lord Bone, a young Belgium guy of 22 years old, he is not a professional model nor a professional photographer but anyway that’s not what I was looking for. Lord Bone was perfect because he perfectly transmitted the feeling of living in a devastated world… in deed it seems that he has been there already.
Logan Knight http://knightmanproductions.com/
I found Logan knight looking for a specific photo. I was searching for a image that showed a burned skin for illustrating te effects that would produce a radioactive exposure (yeah in Penumbra there are a lot of funny ways of dyeing).
The image you are showing here is the one I found, later looking at his galleries I found some more images for adding, thanks to Logan for letting me use them.
Froweminahild http://froweminahild.deviantart.com/
After that complex name hides “Meli”, Meli is a great discovery for various reasons, mainly because she allowed me to use several of her images for the book, but it’s a discovery because she is also a great complement designer.
The Website that I’m going to show you is written in German but don’t miss it, take a look to her impressive Victorian complements with a modern touch (HERE)
J-U-D-A-S http://j-u-d-a-s.deviantart.com/
And now we get to J-U-D-A-S, I found him following the track of a puppet, I was looking for one but was unable to find any, finally I was lucky to find it in his gallery, I say “Luckily” because his gallery was full of incredible images for illustrating the book.
He accepted and from here I extend my thanks to him.
But I can’t complete this article without writing about two more people, the first one is Azahara Pintatel, she has an article in the Spanish Web site because she write gothic poetry (she is also a great gothic dancer), if you speak Spanish you can read it HERE, I contacted her because I remember she had a tale that illustrated perfectly the world of Penumbra, I asked her if I could add it and not only she agreed but she wrote a complete new tale for the book (about puppets).
Azahara is a great girl, she is working in the Zaragoza gothic festival, if you happen to be in Spain for any reason you can find more about that festival here: http://festivalgoticozaragoza.blogspot.com/
And we finally get to Virginia Mate, Probably one of the most important collaborators, Virginia is the responsible of getting everything nice, I searched for the images, created the book itself but it’s Virginia who made everything look cool, the layout work she made is awesome, I’m sorry not being able to include some images of the layout but it’s not completed yet and it wouldn’t be fair to include a image right now.
For now I can only state that she created some spectacular pages design, a great main page, titles, index… A great work and I’m really thankful with her.
If you have some layout work to be done, or maybe some graphic design work, I recommend you to work with her. As I don’t know if she wants me to publish his mail here (under the risk of finding it full of spam later), if you want to contact her just forward me a mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I will get you in touch with her.
For seeing the final result we will have to wait a bit more of time but stay tuned because there will be more news in the future, hope that in a month or so.
For now the book is only in Spanish but I will make a (more careful) translation of it into English as soon as I have time for doing so.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 14 October 2011 11:08 |
