Found Footage: Amundsen and "At the Mountains of Madness"

One of the things I enjoy about Lovecraft's work is the way it relates to actual historical events. Lovecraft wasn't shy about acknowledging the things that inspired him, and things as diverse as the exploration of Angkor Wat and Ponape to the theories of Albert Einstein influenced his writing. The way he incorporates fragments of the real world into his stories helps make the fantastic more believable even today.

In the case of "At the Mountains of Madness" he used contemporary accounts of Arctic and Antarctic exploration to help fill in the details of the ill-fated Miskatonic expedition. In particular, Roald Amundsen's unsuccessful attempt to be the first to fly to the North Pole in 1925. ATMOM is filled with details drawn from the flight, from the way fuel was cached to the use of Dornier Wal's as the party's aircraft of choice.

To an extent, I'm following in Lovecraft's footsteps with my own "From the Mountains of Madness" project. Accounts of the Amundsen expedition have been a valuable source for photographs, text, and documents in my attempt to recreate the historical record of the Miskatonic expedition to the Antarctic. That's why I was excited to discover that someone has uploaded video transfers of the old Pathe newsreels of the Amundsen adventure to YouTube.

The quality isn't the best, but what can you expect from film that was shot over eighty years ago?

Steamed

I wanted to thank Aether Chronicles, a blog focusing on the steampunk community in Second Life, for adding me to their blogroll. Stop by to learn more about the Denizens of Caledon and their amazing airships.

As an aside, I was surprised how much response the FAI pilot's license generated from the steampunk folks. If I have time I'll see about fiddling with the fonts to make a version that is a bit more genre appropriate.

The Dyer Sketches- Elder Thing

This is the first of the finished Dyer sketches.



It was done by the incredibly talented Danny Cruz and I couldn't be happier with it. Click through for the higher res, CC licensed version. I'll be offering a larger version commercially, but you're free to use this one under the terms of the Creative Commons license found at the bottom of the page.

Obviously, this is a bit of an experiment. I've been very happy with how my approach to open licensing has worked up to now, but I think this is a big step forward in, literally, putting my money where my mouth is.

From Below

A kind emailer pointed me towards a treasure trove of fossil reproductions after reading of my inability to find affordable specimens for the "From the Mountains of Madness" project- Prehistoric Planet. Their larger pieces are pricy, but the small hydrostone and resin reproductions are very reasonable. And few things are more Lovecraftian than critters with spiny, multi-segmented bodies.

Pre-Flight Check

I have some running around to do this morning, but by tonight I should have the first draft of the period pilot's license finished. Once I get some feedback on it's accuracy and usefulness I'll take care of any final tweaks and post the final version.

I'd also appreciate any suggestions you might have about switching to PDF's for prop documents like the license. I know JPG's are more convenient for the clip art type stuff, but I'm not sure how much of that actually gets used. If my logs are any indication the Miskatonic University logo is the only graphic that gets any significant traffic.

Update: Okay, I made it just under the gun. I've tried to arrange the interior and cover so that they'll naturally align even if your printer automatically scales them down. Just print out the interior page and then re-feed it into the printer to print the cover.

Pilot's License Interior



Pilot's License Cover



For reference, here is one of the source images I was working from. I had a few other shots of the FAI license from the 20's showing the picture area as 2" by 2", so I modified that half of the document to create a hybrid that should be reasonably accurate for any time between 1921 and 1931. The "Dated" line was left generic for that purpose as well.

The King In Yellow

I'm not altogether happy with how this cover treatment for "The King in Yellow" came out, but it's not bad for a first pass. My illustration for the Hastur-tainted play is based on the first-edition cover of Chamber's collection of stories. I was going for an artsy look with the wings, a detail from the original illustration, but the more I look at it the less I like it. It's a lot less artsy and a whole lot more "Dude, haven't you ever heard of perspective? His wings aren't, like, attached to him."

Up, Up, And Away

I'm trying to bang out a period international pilot's license, so I had to recreate the logo of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Here are three different versions, including a colored one for letterhead and the line art and black and white versions for documents. Just click through for the high res pics.