Podcasts about tolkienesque

Remember the little murder bears in Return of the Jedi? Well, they got a couple of made for TV movies from back in the 80s. This month we're discussing ALL Star Wars movies, both feature film and TV movies, in a true and final chronological order that is not up for debate. Sorry but we got the final word on this one but we're excited to present to you your new opinions and we got a couple of Ewok movies that fit snugly between “Empire Strikes Back” & “Return of the Jedi”. They're pretty well panned kids movies and the one we're starting off with “CARAVAN OF COURAGE: AN EWOK ADVENTURE” from 1984 definitely takes its critical lumps. But y'know what? That kid is kinda cute running around with Wicket on their little Tolkienesque adventure but that brother of hers, Mace? Oof. What a little shit. They have to save this kid from himself so many times. He gets the heroic feat at the end but are we gonna have to sit through another movie with this character? (More on that tomorrow) Also, those spiders. Yeesh. They cleaned these up and put them on Disney+ so I couldn't pull many good scenes of Mace constantly crying and almost dying. Why is he dressed like an X-Wing pilot? Subscribe to us on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJf3lkRI-BLUTsLI_ehOsg Contact us here: MOVIEHUMPERS@gmail.com Check our past & current film ratings here: https://moviehumpers.wordpress.com Hear us on podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6o6PSNJFGXJeENgqtPY4h7 Our OG podcast “Documenteers”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/documenteers-the-documentary-podcast/id1321652249 Soundcloud feed: https://soundcloud.com/documenteers Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/culturewrought

In this week's Flashlight, we explore a very old ruleset for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, First Edition! Reilly attempts to befriend a sloth, Jake covets Reilly's dice, and we speculate on the role of a sociologist in a Tolkienesque fantasy world.Finding an old copy of the rules can be tricky. OSRIC has compiled a set of first-edition rules (excluding the flavour text, which is subject to copyright) which you can read in more detail here.Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.Do you run your own home game? Tell us about a cool homebrew item and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. Give us a call and tell us about it at 724 320 2020.

Somehow this science fiction version of the Omen, featuring Tolkienesque levels of backstory about a girl being chased by space gods/police, infiltrating the world government and the perils of basketball team ownership was a little too confusing for the unhip audiences of 1979, but luckily we've evolved since then. 

Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, which he still calls his hometown (despite the fact that he left the place before he reached his first birthday and now only goes back for weekends). Lincoln seemed to have acquired an interest in writing as early as second grade, when he wrote a short story entitled Bumble the Elephant (now believed by scholars to be lost). Along with two dozen short stories composed during his youth, he wrote a science-fiction novel in tenth grade called Second Son of Daedalus and a shamelessly Tolkienesque fantasy in twelfth grade titled The Darkness to the North (left unfinished at 400 manuscript pages). Both are exquisitely embarrassing to read today and are kept under lock and key by the author.

Strap yourselves in for an epic length cast as this week Jim revisits Fringe, Elton gets into a road rage incident over birds (and 90s Rapper Shaggy), Darren (the real one) returns from Rhodes but ends up on a Tolkienesque journey to sort out his electricity meter and Lee gets rather annoyed about the DC movie that would quickly be referred to only as Baldy Walnuts. After that its on to this weeks movie, which is either a sharp satire on class, privilege and the general pointlessness of the 1% or a blunt stick to hit obvious targets; Triangle Of Sadness

Issue 15: March 2023 Our favourite foodie Will Maidment takes us on quite the adventure, one euro at a time. The aim of the game? Find something to eat for 1 euro, 2 euro, 3 euro, 4 euro and 5 euro. As always, Will and Julia take us on their “Tolkienesque” journey through the city. But where do they end up? Can one still eat on a budget in Berlin? And does beer count as lunch? You'll have to listen to find out! To wrap, Will shares other cheap but worthy mentions of places to grab an affordable bite. Eateries covered in this episode:Melek PastanesiVerwöhn dein BäuchleinCurry-KeuleHot Dog SoupBanh Mi StableSahara ImbissWraps and BowlsWok ShowAzzamEschenbräuAnother CountryOur theme music is from Lucas Carey, with audio from Epidemic Sound. Cover art by Sian Amber Fletcher. This episode is brought to you by Julia Joubert and Jill Beytin for Bear Radio. If you're a producer based in Europe and have an idea for an URSA story, we'd love to hear from you! We're always accepting new pitches.Support for this podcast comes from our Patreon - if you like URSA and all the incredible stories that come with it - then please consider supporting us at patreon.com/ursapodcast. The price you'd spend on a coffee would go to supporting us and our contributors each month.

Join us for our season finale and our 75th episode with Michael Koep, a local author, musician (drummer) and swordsman/jouster as we talk to him about his fourth book, Gigmentia: a love story to his music, bands, bandmates, son, and mostly his mother. This memoir with posts from his personal journal is inspiring, funny, and totally engaging. The book is due out in March of 2023, but we got an early release copy, and could not put it down. By the age of 12, Michael B. Koep had written a complex, Tolkienesque fantasy with its own number system, language and runic alphabet. He continues that tradition with his fiction debut. Koep has been called an Inland Northwest “Renaissance Man”. An avid world traveler, educator, accomplished visual artist, and a touring rock musician, Michael's spirit is imbued in the arts. He is a co-founder of a North Idaho fencing consortium, but he is best known as a drummer and lyricist for progressive rock group KITE, as well as the percussionist for the variety power trio The RUB. He is a winner of a Costello Poetry Prize. He lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho with his family.   You can find out more about Michael and his books, including the Neuwirth Trilogy, at willdreamlyarts.com, and about his band on Facebook @rubtherub

Blood of Elves, Chapter 7 FIRST THINGS FIRST: Our Substack is live! We've put together a new platform that will allow us to analyze more works of art and better interact with the Second Breakfast community. Subscribe for free, or become a premium member for $5/month: https://secondbreakfastpod.substack.com/ GIVEAWAY: All listeners who sign up for the paid Substack subscription within the first week (by Friday, August 19) will receive a free Second Breakfast sticker, plus a chance to win a $25 credit to our Threadless merch store. Yay stuff! THE CHAPTER: The finale of Blood of Elves was not at all what we expected – but in the very best way. Sapkowski took us on a Tolkienesque journey, catching us up on the characters we've been missing, but without wasting a second of our time. We understand more about Yennefer and Ciri than we ever have, and we in turn understand more about Geralt, despite his distinct absence from the chapter. In another Middle Earth parallel, birds and the weather make several appearances, warning us of the dangers to come. We also learn the rules and volatility of magic, and an old metaphor returns in a new light. Feedback & Theories: secondbreakfastpod@gmail.com Instagram & TikTok: @secondbreakfastpod Threadless Merch Store: https://secondbreakfastpod.threadless.com/

Does Ryuden deserve forgiveness? Is Chiyoshoma secretly a Tolkienesque villain? Will Gagamaru play drums in our band? The only thing we know for sure is that we're actually kind of glad the Nagoya basho is over now. Check out our shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/SumoPunx/ Or toss some coin into our tip bucket: https://ko-fi.com/sumopunx Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PunxSumo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sumopunx/ Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/SumoPunx/ YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZSJfEMaD2Jk Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0TZO9Bszi3voDkVwO9jhDf?si=a691ab22d5ed49b2 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sumo-punx/id1615858347 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84MjIxNzQyNC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/B09VZVR5DX?source_code=ASSOR150021221000N Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/5464c866-ca0c-487e-a2cd-f63965df6823/sumo-punx --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sumo-punx/support

Canary Cry News Talk #479 - 05.02.2022 OPERATION BIRD ABSURD LINKTREE: CanaryCry.Party SHOW NOTES: CanaryCryNewsTalk.com CLIP CHANNEL: CanaryCry.Tube SUPPLY DROP: CanaryCrySupplyDrop.com SUPPORT: CanaryCryRadio.com/Support MEET UPS: CanaryCryMeetUps.com Basil's other podcast: ravel Gonz' YT: Facelikethesun Resurrection Gonz Archive Youtube: Facelikethesun.Live App Made by Canary Cry Producer: Truther Dating App   LEAD 5:34 V /  BIRDS ARE'T REAL   Clip: BAR founder interviewed on 60 minutes Clip2: The “Partners” of BAR speaks on 60 minutes note: BAR might have been a CIA op all along   CYBERPANDEMIC 24:40 V/ Volunteer hackers converge on Ukraine conflict with no one in charge (NY Times) leading to all of this → Declaration for the Future of the Internet, US, EU and others (CommonWealth.org) Clip: Why we need internet regulation, Elon bad (CNN)   INTRO (M-W-F)  43:33 V/ B&G Update V4V/Exec./Asso./Support   FLIPPY 48:13 V/ Clip: This robot just broke records for highest jump, skynet (Hot HardWare)   [Party Pitch/Ravel/CCClips/text alerts]  1:02:07 V/   UKRAINE 1:05:11 V/ Clip: Ukrainian detractors arrested, viral clip taken off Reddit (Alleged source) → Nancy secret visit to Ukraine highlights US Support (The Hill) → Ukrainian ambassador calls Pelosi visit “special delight” (ABC)   WOKE/POLYTICKS  1:19:54 V/ UK woman marries her cat to overcome leasing conditions (Times India) College admission horror show (Town and Country) → Why Biden won't go big even if he cancels student debt (Boston Globe)   [TREASURE/SPEAKPIPE/BYE YOUTUBE]  1:41:01 V/ COVID/BILL GATES  2:09:06 V/ Bill Gates: Pushing for new Pandemic Task Force (Insider) → Bill Gates grieving Melinda (Times UK) → Bill Gates, Epstein was a mistake (NY post)   WACCINE  2:22:02 V/ Clip: Severe Mystery Hepatitis in Children, WHO warns! (ABC) Colorado man becomes first bird flu in US (Wash Ex) Clip: Australia Elvis Festival…is pandemic over?   [TALENT]  2:34:323 V/ ANTARCTICA/SPACE  2:49:09 V/ Black Moon seen over Antarctica and southern nations (SPACE) Melting Ice Revealed Uncharted Island in Antarctica! (The Weather Channel)   [TIME/OUTRO]  3:11:25 V/   EPISODE 479 WAS PRODUCED BY… Executive Producers Clara H** Spears Desert**   Producers Kishan, Robert R, Julie S, MORV, Gail M, Cloud Suriel, LX Protocol V2, Sir JC Knight of the TechnoSquatch, Sir Casey the Shield Knight, Sir Scott Knight of Truth, Jackie U, Runksmash, Ernesto Q, Veronica D, Sir James Knight and Servant of the Lion of Judah   AUDIO PRODUCTION (Jingles, Iso, Music): Psalm 40   ART PRODUCTION (Drawing, Painting, Graphics): Dame Allie of the Skillet Nation, Sir Dove Knight of Rusbeltia   CONTENT PRODUCTION (Microfiction etc.): Runksmash: A haggard Basil makes his way through the White Desert hauling a sled full of inanimate robots that once housed his friends. He arrives at the rectenna, battery depleted after the Tolkienesque journey, and begins to rebuild it according to the ELi.   The Sentinel: Basil roller-skates around the warehouse in his beat up off brand skates. Skate-sei Gonz instructed him to complete 50 laps of backwards skating before he returns with lunch. BANG. Basil falls again, his elbows have begun to bleed. Skate-sei Gonz's words echo “Balance key to Roller Skating, learn Balance – be Alpha Skater.” 49 laps… 49 falls. Basil refocuses, tightening his core while letting his hips remain loose. He breathes in, his mind becomes still, he begins to skate his final lap. BANG. He falls again just as Skate-sei Gonz walks in. He groans in frustration. “Basil-san, why are you mad? You improve every day. This is success.” “Yes Skate-sei, but I keep tripping up in these skates” Basil says panting with exhaustion. “I know. You not bad skater, only have bad skates. Here, gift for you.” Skate-sei Gonz extends his arms out with a gift box in his hands.   CLIP PRODUCER Emsworth, FaeLivrin, Epsilon   Timestamps: Mondays: Jackie U Wednesdays: Jade Bouncerson Fridays: Christine C   ADDITIONAL STORIES: Microwave tries to murder man after being given AI (LADBible) Why is Canada euthanizing the poor? (Spectator) NASA Perseverance Rover Begins life hunt (Inferse) Your Metaverse Doppleganger Buddy on Trace Network (Economic Times) Food: Fertilizer shortage, can we survive (Bloomberg) Polyticks: Biden expertly roasts GOP (Indy100) VR: Sweden using VR headsets to train postal workers (Reuters) The Brain “Rotates” Memories to save them from new sensations (Wired) IMF director, it's too late, printed too much money → My pillow guy gets back on Twitter, then gets banned right away (Daily Beast) “Ghost of Kyiv” doesn't actually exist, Ukraine admits (NY Post) Former CDC chief says Trump blocked his agency from briefing public (ABC) In Italy, babies will automatically carry both parents surnames (Fatherly) → NASA Perseverance Rover Begins life hunt (Inferse) The Great Resignation is about to become Great Midlife Crisis (Vox) Clip: This robot just broke records for highest jump, Skynet (Hot HardWare) …more Antarctica → Film about MSU research in Antarctica reaches international audience (NBC) → Australia to increase Antarctic clean up efforts (Antarctica.Gov.Au) → Headline: Losing Britain's Archeological “Atlantis” (Indy UK)

A solid but rushed fantasy series I enjoyed a lot. I recommend it for other fans of Tolkienesque fantasy. If you want to support the channel, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment. You can also find Lore & Valor on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube! If you're interested in what I write my latest releases can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Freehold-Defiance-Michael-Z-Williamson/dp/1982125365 https://www.amazon.com/Romanov-Rescue-Tom-Kratman/dp/1982125705

Frank Herbert, author of Dune and other works, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, Lawrence Davidson and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded July, 1981 at Westercon in Sacramento. During the July 4th weekend of 1981, the Probabilities crew, Richard Lupoff, Lawrence Davidson and Richard Wolinsky, went to the Westercon Science fiction convention in Sacramento. One of the guests that weekend was Frank Herbert. By that point, he'd written several novels, including what had become known as the Dune trilogy – Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. Earlier that year, a sequel to the trilogy had been published, God Emperor of Dune. The three managed to corral the author for an interview that lasted, including some socializing, to just under a half hour. Back at KPFA, it turned out that the tape had screwed up, and the final portion of the interview had speed variations that made it unlistenable. Perhaps ten minutes were aired at the time. Digitizing it in 2021, it became clear that at least some more of the interview could be manipulated sufficiently to allow listeners to follow the conversation. The final question in the interview did not survive. Here's what happened: In 1977, Ballantine Books published a novel called Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. After reading the novel, Richard Wolinsky drew up a long list of plot points the book shared with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so many in fact that the publisher, Judy-Lyn Del Rey, also the publisher of the Tolkien books, admitted with a nodthat any other publisher could have been sued for plagiarism. What turned Sword of Shannara into a best-seller, however, was a very positive review by Frank Herbert that appeared in the New York Times. Dick Lupoff became obsessed with the review, and how it ignored the similarities between the two books. In that final question, he asked Herbert about the review. At first, Herbert admitted that he overlooked the Tolkienesque prose style because most new authors copy others. When Dick pressed him further about the content, Herbert finally said that he had never read Lord of the Rings. After that answer, he said abruptly, “times up.” After 1981, Frank Herbert wrote two more Dune sequels, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune before dying at the age of 65. After his death, his son Brian Herbert along with Kevin J. Anderson used Herbert's notes for several other novels and one collection of short stories, which at this point stands at 15 additional books set in the universe of Dune. The chronological history of Dune concluded with Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007)  based on Frank Herbert's original chronology and outlines for the final books in the series. The David Lynch version of Dune came out in 1984 and is streaming on HBO Max. The story of the Dune movie that was never made, Jodorowsky's Dune, was released as a documentary in 2013 and can be rented on various streaming services. A new version of Dune, (first of two parts) directed by Denis Villeneuve, opens in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22, 2021.             The post The Probabilities Archive: Frank Herbert (1920-1986), 1981: “Dune” appeared first on KPFA.

We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast Mentioned in this episode: Glitter + Ashes edited by dave ring Silk & Steel edited by Janine A. Southard  Grace's Links: Website ArtStation portfolio Twitter Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz) [Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music] Rekka: This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books. R: Today we are talking to Grace Fong about book art. Now we've had someone on in the past to talk about cover art and art-directing a commissioned cover. However, I think Colin would forgive me for saying that you do not want Colin to do the artwork. Kaelyn: He would, yes. R: Yes. [laughing] Would you like to introduce yourself? Grace: Hi, I'm Grace! My pronouns are she/her, I work on the narrative design team over at Wizards of the Coast for Magic: The Gathering. I am also a sometimes-writer, and for the past five years I've been doing illustration work for various speculative fiction magazines, such as Strange Horizons, and some anthologies like Silk & Steel and Glitter + Ashes. K: Rekka this is our first like, real artist. R: It is difficult to get an artist on a podcast. I have tried - K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: - for this podcast and the previous one and it is a tricky business. So Grace, you live up to your name in showing up. G [laughing]: We don't like talking to people, we just like sitting at our computers. R: I completely understand, but doesn't mean I'm gonna give up trying, so. We've finally done it. K: Awesome. So I have been involved in some cover art not as the primary person but as the editor, where I have to look at it and go ‘yeah okay that kinda tracks with what's happening here.' We have talked a lot on this podcast before about what to expect out of your cover art, and how involved the writers are going to be in it, and the answer is typically not very, at all. So, when you're doing this, who is it that you're primarily working with? G: When I do work for magazines and books I'm usually working with the editor of the publication, so for the anthology it's usually an anthology editor, or for a short fiction magazine it is usually the art director of the magazine or the editor of the magazine. K: Can you walk us through the process of how you get started on this? They're obviously not coming to you with a blank slate, they're coming to you with a series of stories that may or may not have a theme. How do you get started working with this editor? G: It really varies, depending on the type of publication. So for anthologies, because they cover a lot of different narrative ground, usually we try to come up with an image that encapsulates the theme of the anthology. Like for Silk & Steel, I was doing one of the promotional postcards for them. We knew we were doing femme-femme, high fantasy, sword-and-scorcery kind of stuff. So I knew that those characters would have to be reflective of the book's content. Sometimes editors will give me a particular story that they aim to showcase for the publication, in which case I'll usually read the story if it's under 6,000 words, and try and come up with a composition that fits it the best that I possibly can. This is how I work with Strange Horizons. K: At what point do you usually come into the process? Are you typically involved right from the get go, or do they kind of wait until they have most of the story material? G: Usually when editors are doing their selections, they will wait until they have the written content first, because the written content is gonna dictate which artist they're gonna go to, to look for. Whose style best captures the feeling of their product? It's actually similar to traditional publication as well. The art directors at major publishing houses usually have a manuscript or summary for new debut authors whose manuscripts are already completed, and then they find an artist based off the existing manuscript. Some covers are completed beforehand, if the publishing house knows the author, knows the brand of that author and knows the kind of proposal or piece they are in the middle of working. K: You're gonna be sitting down with the editor, they're gonna give you a story that they particularly wanna feature, they're gonna give you an overall feeling or theme or - how much creative license do you get? R: I wanna interrupt because you just skipped like a really huge part: the creative brief. K: Yes. R: So what you just said, they're gonna give you a mood, they're gonna give you a theme or whatever, this is a whole step. Don't smooth it over like that. And this is something that actually Grace's got a little bit of a reputation for her knowledge on. So Grace I know you in, I believe it's November, are doing the Clarion workshop about creating a brief for a cover artist, right? G: Yes. R: So let's give this the spotlight it deserves! [laughing] G [overlapping]: Okay. K: Yeah, I've written a couple, I shouldn't have skipped over that, so apologies. G: I mean it's a specialized skill not everyone has to do them, so yeah. R: Well I definitely want to highlight it a bit, ‘cause you helped me with one - G [laughing]: That's true! R: What goes into the creative brief? Kaelyn named a couple of things, and this sort of forms the silhouette around which Kaelyn's question pivots, which is how much creative control do you get as an artist? So what's in the brief that you consider sacred, and what's in the gaps that you get to play with? G: So, that - K: Well first, and I'm sorry to cut you off - I'm sorry - can we say what - [laughing] R [overlapping]: I'm gonna interrupt you back! K: That's fair, that's fair. Can we kind of say what a creative brief is? G: Oh yeah, sure. So essentially when you are starting to work with an artist, an artist does not have the time to read an entire manuscript of 400+ pages. Their pricing is usually based off of the time that they're gonna spend creating your artwork. So you need to provide them with what is known as a creative brief, or art brief. And these are small documents that are very instructional, no more than like a page or two long, that explains the kind of image and feel that you are going for, for this assignment. The assumption is that you would have done your research and sent this brief to an artist that you think would do a good job for the publication that you're sourcing art for. So you're not gonna go to someone who does only black and white work if you want to sell your book with a big, bright, neon, 80s kind of cover. G: ‘Brief' is kind of the keyword here. You're essentially writing instructions for an artist. Don't try to lead them in using prose writing, tell them what they're gonna be drawing. It's a bit like a recipe list. So if it's a story about vampires and you want your vampire main character on the cover, you would specify that that's what you're looking for. Or, let's say you're trying to sell more literary up-market fiction, which doesn't use as many figurative images. Then you would maybe make an explanation about like ‘oh this book is about a woman's time when she was living as a child in Philadelphia.' In which case you would sometimes kind of refine that into a visual or item metaphor that you would ask the artist to render in a specific way that captures the mood and feel of the book, and leverages the imagery that's common to that market, so that it can reach the correct audience. K: Gotcha. Okay. So then you're gonna get this brief, and presumably dig into it. Do you ever receive a section of text, if there's a scene in particular that they'd like illustrated? G: Specific scene commissions tend not to be used for covers, because they're not very good at selling a publication. Scene work tends to be done for interior illustration. So these the the images that go along in the story; you look at these images as you are reading these scenes. But for the front cover you're trying to provide one image that sells the entire mood of the story to a particular audience. So in general you want to avoid using specific scenes, unless that scene comes in very early, because you don't wanna spoil the ending of the book. You only have one picture to play with for a cover, meanwhile with interiors you tend to have a series. You can do like a chapter header, like in the original Harry Potter American versions. K: It's funny you say that, because I was thinking about how I remember when the Harry Potter books were coming out, and there were always the American and the British cover versions, and everyone would be over-analyzing and try to pick apart ‘okay what's in the background here, what's happening in this scene.' But yeah because those covers were all more or less specific scenes from the book. They were a little abstract. G: Exactly, but it's - the keyword as you just said it is that they were scenes but they were abstracted. Actually tapping into that same visual metaphor that I mentioned earlier, for literary up-market, it's just because they're cramming so many things - what they're actually doing is creating one image that forces you to look harder at it to find all of those metaphorical connections with the story inside. If it has the hippogriff on it and the Chamber of Secrets journal and the Goblet of Fire, these are all singular items that you don't actually see in those covers how they relate to the story, but you know that this is an important item in the story. Ergo, which Harry Potter volume this cover revolves around. K: Do you get scenarios where somebody says ‘I want you to draw exactly this and I want it to look like this,' or do you generally give them a few different ideas or rough sketches and then go from there? G: Generally the things that I like to have control over are color palette, camera angle, the stuff that would be considered very technical for an illustration. Perspective. Whether things are shot from above, shot from below, because these are all illustrator tools that help dictate the mood of a painting. And the mood is actually the thing that I usually ask my clientele for. Mood translates to ‘how are we supposed to feel when looking at this?' Because feeling is very closely tied to genre. G: So, what kind of book am I trying to sell? Is it a horror book? That dictates what kind of colors, what kind of camera angles that I'm going to use. But if somebody tells me ‘I want a top-down shot of something-something,' then that feels a bit invasive to me because I feel like if I am an artist then I can select the camera angle to best convey the drama that you're asking for. But the things that are really good for me are the object or character or focus, and if there is a character the kind of action that is being performed. A lot of times we get character description but no action, and the action is actually what tells us what the character is like, and separates it from the design. K: Yeah so you don't just have two characters just standing there looking straight forward at the camera - G [overlapping]: Yeah. K: - dressed the way they told you to dress them. G: Yes. [laughing] Because basically that would be really difficult to create an interesting illustration for. K: Absolutely yeah. [laughing] G: It's kind of like going to the mall and you see the clothes being sold on mannequins. Like it helps sell you the clothes but it doesn't tell you what the story is behind the people wearing the clothes. It helps to have stuff like props, backgrounds, and actions to help convey like, ‘oh yeah if this character is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, is this t-shirt and jeans part of an urban fantasy? Or is it a part of a YA contemporary romance?' K: How much back-and-forth do you generally have with the editors you're working with? Like what is the first thing you give back to them? G: This generally varies per artist, including the artists I work with. So usually what I do is between one to three thumbnails or sketches that I hand in to the editor and ask them ‘what do you think of these directions,' ‘which one of these thumbnails' - which I then proceed to refine - ‘do you think hits the target best?' Then if it's a very large piece of work I might work on a more refined sketch and pass it in, or like base colors and pass it in, and minimally it's usually the thumbnails plus the finished drawing. So that's two to five back-and-forths, depending on the size of the piece. R: How much do you let the art director or editor you're working with go back to the start? I know you probably don't let them past a certain point, like ok you approved the thumbnail so we're moving forward, we're not going back to thumbnails after that, but what if they don't like any of the initial thumbnails? G: Yeah so basically most artists I know have what are called revision fees, and these are generally written into the contracts that you sign upon working with them. Basically saying ‘you get this many thumbnails, you get to give comments this many times, and if you go over those times there'll be an additional fee.' Because artists are basically charging - it's a service-based industry, and your haircutter charges you per hour, and so does your artist. And generally if they aren't happy with the thumbnails, then I would then incur the revision fee, but also I ask for further information. G: So, if you as a writer or editor aren't happy with what your artist is turning back, you need to be able to explain what you're not happy with. So you can explain like ‘oh I don't think this color palette is appropriate for this target market. Here are some images of other books that have come out in the same area that we think would be good inspiration for you.' The only time that revision becomes really frustrating, outside of a timing frame, is when your client says ‘I don't know what I want but I'll know it when I see it.' R: I knew you were gonna say that. [giggling] As a graphic designer I also hate those words. G [laughing]: Yeah. K: It's like okay I guess I'll just keep throwing paint at the wall and see what happens. G: Like revisions aren't bad as long as the client is able to convey what needs to actually be changed. R: Not a series of no-thank-yous. K: Have you ever come across a scenario where you've kind of had to take a step back from the project and say ‘listen, I think maybe I'm not the right person to do this.' G: Usually I'm good enough at heading that off before a project even begins. K [laughing]: Okay! G: That is something you come to with experience, you understand your style, your way of working as an illustrator, and knowing like ‘hey this type of thing is going to be too out of my ballpark,' ‘this type of thing is not gonna pay enough,' ‘this type of thing is just too much work for what I'm capable of doing right now.' That is kind of like you're responsible, as most freelance artists are independent business owners essentially. They'll usually say so up front minus extenuating circumstances. Like at work we've had people drop out because they acquired COVID in the middle of an assignment, so - K [overlapping]: Oh god. G: - there's really nothing you can do about that. [laughing] K [laughing]: Yeah. Have you ever been presented with a commission, talked to the person, and thought to yourself ‘I don't think they have a good enough handle on what it is they're looking for here, and this may just end up being a headache'? G: Yes. That has definitely happened before, ‘cause I don't have much time. So if I feel like the client either lacks the direction and communication to give me what I need, or if they're simply asking for too much, then I will usually politely decline them, within the first couple of emails. K: Obviously you're not reading all of these books and you're working off the creative brief. Is there anything in particular that you get these, you're trying to make sure you're communicating in the feel of the book rather than an exact representation of what's going on there? G: Yeah. So I'm not trying to recreate a 1-to-1 specific moment from the book. I'm trying to generate a piece that, as you said, evokes a major theme. A lot of times I'm asked to do character work, mostly because that is something that I enjoy doing and specialize in; I love character and costume design. Like you've never seen a spaceship in my portfolio because I'm really bad at it. K: I looked through it, I didn't see one. [laughing] G: Yeah, don't put stuff in your portfolio that you are not good at painting and don't wanna paint. Like people come to me because they're like ‘oh this person does kind of anime-inspired fantasy characters,' and so that's kind of like a niche that you can reach other people who like anime-inspired fantasy characters. So things for me that I consider important is, I like to know a character's build and ethnicity. G: Stuff like ‘oh the character's mouth is a Cupid's bow' or like ‘they have eyebrows that are waxed to a certain angle,' that's a bit too specific. Or like ‘they wear ten rings.' Because if you mentioned that the character wears ten rings, it automatically makes those ten rings really important. And you have to wonder, are those ten rings really important to actually selling who this character is? Do those ten rings have a narrative function in the story? If so, do you wanna include the rest of the character, or do you wanna focus on that character's hands and the rings, as a way to say ‘hey this is what this story is about'? Because it's very hard to include such a small item and such a big item together on the same image. There's a lot of physical limitations to representational art; similar as it is, it's really challenging to get a photo with both your shortest friend and your tallest friend at the same time and not have a giant gap between them. [laughing] K [laughing]: Lot of negative space and awkward positions. G: Yeah. R: Well this is where your control over the perspective comes in, right? So that would be a shot from below. K: Or above! Really above. [laughing] G: Yeah. So one of the things that I like to ask for is no more than two or three key items, I would call them, that differentiate who this character is from all the other characters. Like you can say ‘yes, she is a Black woman' or ‘yes, he is a muscular man of European descent.' But Aragorn is defined by Andúril, his sword. Once you stick that sword on Aragorn, you know ‘hey this is a high-fantasy Tolkienesque property.' So I'm looking for a handful of items like that, to help show who this character is and how they differentiate and help sell the genre, setting, and time period. K: Covers are telling people things without explicitly telling them that. Like you mentioned you give Aragorn his sword or a similar character, you're stating ‘hey this is a high-fantasy book.' If there's a background in it and it's castles built into rolling mountains, that's also indicating things to somebody who might be potentially interested in reading it. Do you spend a lot of time or give a lot of attention to trying to signal to potential readers that this might be something they're interested in, or do you kind of let the cover do what it's gonna do? Like how much do you try to work elements into it that are telling you things about the book without telling you things about the book? G: I usually try to focus on having as I said up to three of those key items - K [overlapping] Okay. [laughing] G: - because, as you said, castles are really common in a lot of European-based high fantasy. So you can leverage that castle, change it up, be like oh is it a floating castle that implies that there's a certain kind of magic? Is it a castle that's built into a hillside that implies another sort of magic? And so when I'm doing that I'm not necessarily looking at other pieces that are within the same genre, because the same genre-ness comes from the castle itself. I'm trying not to make a cover that looks exactly like every other cover out there, because this writing is probably not like every other fantasy story out there. K: Mhm. G: I'm actually specifically looking for those key items that differentiate it within its own genre. K: Any good stories, or interesting things that've happened here, your favorite piece that you've worked on or something that was particularly challenging? Maybe not just cover art but any commissions in general? G: All of my really funny stories are actually just from when I was doing random stuff for anime cons. I've had to draw a woman making out with Loki, but the woman is not herself, the woman is Kate Beckinsale. Fandom's strange. R: So you drew Kate Beckinsale making out - K [overlapping]: Making out with Loki - [laughing] G: Yes. R: And let the woman believe it was her? G: There are certain things you simply cannot draw. You cannot draw the flow of time. If you have a single image, it is very difficult to have anything that goes from step one and step two. [chuckling] And convey two images in a single image. K: Those Animorphs covers used to do that. G: That's true. And they had the little flipbooks in the back. K [laughing]: Remember that? G: Yeah. K: What advice would you have for somebody who, like let's say they're going to self-publish, or maybe somebody who hasn't really done this before but is looking to commission a piece of art - what advice would you have for them? G: For prospective clients, I generally ask that they do their research beforehand, essentially. Like working with artists, we have our own system, our own language, essentially, for technical stuff, for our materials, our use of camera angles, our use of colors. And to kind of understand what is within and without our control. So don't expect an art piece to be able to capture your entire story, because your story has some form of linear time in it, which art inherently will not if it's a single image. And that usually requires a lot of trust on the part of new authors, because this is their baby, right, they spent a lot of time on it and they wanna give it nice clothes. K: I love that by the way - G [overlapping]: [laughing] K: - they wanna give it nice clothes, that's perfect. [laughing] G: And like, a lot of us really understand this, but it's really helpful for us if you are to distinguish things that are and are not concrete. If you have a story that's based on music and you want your cover to celebrate the fact that it revolves around song, artists cannot draw a song. Unless you have synesthesia, you're probably not gonna look at a piece of artwork and hear music. So you're gonna have to come up with concrete visuals to convey this. G: So that main character, how do they produce this music? Are they a violinist? In which case yes, a violin can be drawn, that's very clear, very easy. And so just coming up with those small as I say key items, that would probably be one of them. Coming prepared with those and trusting the artist to interpret that - you can always say ‘hey, my book is about song, that is why I'd like to include these items,' but don't throw them into the wind with ‘my book is about songs' and - K: ‘Draw me a song.' G: Yes. K: You had mentioned revision fees, now again a constant theme in this podcast is contracts and read your contract and check your contract. Typically if you're going to engage an artist they're going to sign a contract with you. By the way, if the artist is not interested in signing a contract with you, and this is a custom piece, maybe that's not the artist to work with. But you're going to have a fee schedule, you're going to say ‘okay up front this is how much I'm estimating this to be but there are additional fees and costs for revisions, for changes, for going back.' K: We've definitely had to, with artists we commissioned for covers, go back and say ‘hey listen, something came up and we need another version of this, can you tweak these things?' And that's fine, it's just an additional charge. Is there anything in particular you would say to the people who are looking to commission an artist to just be aware of and expect, so they're not 1) shocked or 2) completely overlook something, in terms of costs associated with this kind of thing. G: Art is skilled labor. K: Absolutely. G: It's gonna vary per artist. Some people work faster, some people work slower. The type of publication is also going to affect the cost. But do not be surprised if an artist asks for a living wage, in terms of hourly money, because this is what they do; it's generally not a side job. K: Art is a skilled work that needs to be paid accordingly. There's a reason you're having to go out and find somebody you need to do this, because it's not an easy thing to do. G: Yeah, you're gonna be looking at prices significantly over part-time retail, because this is full-time work. Artists pay taxes on top of their stuff, and they are in charge of maintaining their own tax books. The high prices also cover their cost of living, the materials, 30% of it automatically goes to taxes, so those rates are going to be relatively high. A lot higher than I think what people expect. I feel like sometimes when people are new to commissioning, they'll expect it to be something in the price range of like ‘hey, I'm asking someone to in their off-time help me out at home with this, etcetera, or babysit my cat.' R: They wanna pay you 20 bucks and an extra pizza. G: Yeah. K: Well they're looking at it in like hourly rates, not realizing that it's not just hourly. Like you said there's taxes, there's material, there's - you don't get something then immediately sit down and start drawing it, you have to read some things, you have to think about it, you have to process, there's a lot of invisible hours that go into this as well. G: Yeah. R: You might spend - random number - 12 hours working on a cover, but that skill that you developed to create that cover is not 12 hours worth of skill-development, that is the lifetime that you have put into being an artist. So if anybody is thinking that ‘well the cover for my book is just a box I need to check off on my way to publication' - G: Yeah and that high hourly rate encompasses the work of emailing back and forth and sending the revisions and all the administrative stuff that the artist has to do. Artists generally do not have assistant teams, and they are not big publishing houses. K: The phone call was two minutes, it took me five minutes to read this thing, and ten minutes to write a response, but all of the stuff in between is additional time. All of your back-and-forth with your artist, all of the discussion that you're gonna have, all of the time that you the artist have to sit and think about this and do some sketches and stop and walk away and collect your thoughts, all of that is your valuable time. R: We've been talking about hourly rates. But every time, in my personal experience, that I've commissioned a cover, I have been given a flat number and then the contract as we've discussed talks about how many revisions or whatever are included in that number. I assume this is the practice of this person doing covers so frequently that they have a general ballpark of what they need to earn to justify what a cover is. But that's still based on a living wage that they're creating for themselves. G: Correct. That's usually it. R: When somebody gives you a flat rate it's not that this is a flat rate and someone else is going to just give you like ‘$85 an hour please.' G: Yeah. K: Well are you calculating your flat rate based on how many hours you, in your experience, know this takes? G: Yes, that's exactly what most artists do. Because clients tend to not want to bill per hour, because it's a single gig, most artists will give a flat rate based off their previous experience of how long something is going to take, which is why when back-and-forth gets too much, we incur revision fees. Because usually the flat rate is based off of our average experience of a client who spends this much time talking with us, and this much is gonna have to go to taxes, etc. And because flat rate is generally easier for clients and billing as well. R: Yeah rather than an open-ended number where they have no idea, and there's probably some paranoia that if you don't know the person well you might just keep billing them for stuff. G: You're gonna find contracts that specify hourly rates for longer term stuff, like visual developments or several character designs, or if you have a world that you're trying to build out for a TTRPG or concept art for a new video game or something like that. But for single one-off jobs, it's usually the artist will give you a flat rate number based off of their estimation on how long the gig will take, which is why sometimes these flat rate numbers look gigantic. But remember, again, that's based off of an hourly rate. R: Now do you ever get an email from a potential client and you go ‘oh yeah I better double the number, based on the way this email is written'? G: Yes that has happened before; the asshole tax is a pretty common practice - K [overlapping]: [laughing] G: - among artists. We are factoring in how long something is going to take as well. K: And by the way along the flat rates and the contracts and Grace I don't know if this is how you typically handle this, but when we would do book covers it was usually half up front, of the flat rate, and half when the work is finished plus any additional revision fees, which for us was always just a like ‘hey here's the down payment if you will to show we're serious and to get started.' Artists put a lot of time into this, and if you say ‘well I'm gonna pay you when this is done' and then they go ‘I don't like it. Forget it. I don't want it anymore,' that's a lot of time and energy that the artist has now wasted for no return. G: Yup. Most artists will not start without half to full payment upfront. I'd say like 95% of them won't. ‘Cause everybody has been burned very early on in their career by somebody who asked for work and never paid for it. So you only let that happen once. [laughing] Yeah. Always be prepared to have the money ready, like half the money ready, before the artist will start working. If you have a relaxed deadline, a lot of artists are really chill about just letting things kind of be like ‘oh I have this email of somebody who's interested' but it doesn't become real and doesn't actually get scheduled until there's money down. K: Artists have schedules. And they have open time slots and things that they might not be able to fit you into. How much of a lead time would you say they need to leave, in order to have a fully completed piece of art ready to go? G: I'd say at the minimum one to two months. I know people that can turn stuff around in two weeks, but if you're looking to get something done in the one month range, you're probably looking at a rush fee. Artists usually keep one to two jobs forward, like they have something but they're working on something lined up, and they usually have maybe another one lined up. And so if you demand something immediately, then that means they have to rush the next two. K: Mhm. G: So usually they will include a rush fee for that. K: I mean essentially it's overtime - G: Yes. K: - at that point, like I'm having to work extra hours outside of my regular schedule so that I can get to your thing faster. G: Yeah. And the lead time will very specifically vary per artist, because if you're trying to get someone who's like super super popular, who has a large number of clients already, you may be waiting like a year or two. Like. [laughing] K: There're science fiction cover artists out there that, like two years, if you want anything from them. Some of those people have incredibly long lead times on these, and their schedules are just full like over a year. G: Yeah. Like for me, I tend to be booked out about four to five months in advance, personally. But I generally, I will do rush fees and I'll also do smaller client pieces here and there that I know I can fit into a weekend. But again it really is up to that individual artist. I know how fast it takes me to complete a piece, but when I have 50 things going on, yeah it might take 20 hours to do, but if I have ten things that all take 20 hours, then I have a lot of time management that I need to figure out. K [laughing]: Yeah absolutely. When you finish a commission, when you finish a piece, how are you getting it to the person who is actually going to use it then and turn it in for the publication? Because a lot of these pieces are, they're very high resolution, they're very large files, and what does this look like - First of all what kind of a file is it, what does it look like? And then 2) how are you getting it, and how do you set it up so that they can manipulate it the way they need? G: So usually for clients I send a flat image, unless a layered image is requested - R: And let the artist know that at the beginning. G: Yes. K: Yes. G: Yes, layered images will usually incur a higher charge, because it implies that you will be editing the image afterwards. And so basically you need to buy some rights, the editing rights, from your artist. So that'll be a higher charge up front, when you write your original contract. Usually because I do a lot of web work, I just deliver a high resolution JPEG, high resolution PNG, and that's fine for my clients. For other major work especially if you need a layered file, PSDs, Photoshop files, are generally the common way to do it. In which case you upload a massive, massive file to a file transfer service such as Dropbox, or a lot of companies often have an internal file transfer upload - you log onto their system and upload directly to their system. K: If you're getting, especially one of those huge high-res layered images, you need to have a program that can manipulate it. You might need something additional on your end to even work with the image then. But also like, these files are huge. Typically they can't just email it to you. There's actually file transfer services as Grace mentioned, where you drop these and it's just in there for like two days. And you've gotta go get the file within that two-day period. G: Yeah. I think for major transfers I generally lean on Dropbox and actually just sometimes Google Drive. They're not exactly super secure, but like - K: [laughing] G: - few very people are going around sneaking your self-pub cover, like. [laughing] They'll just delete it after you've got it. K [laughing]: Well, you never know, Grace. Maybe someday somebody will steal something that you've done and leak it to the public, and - G: That actually would be really bad. [laughing] I work for Wiz of the Coast, if it happens then it's bad. R: Secure FTPs from here on out. [laughing] K: Multi-factor authentication in order to get these files. G: Yeah. R: So Grace, I happen to know, because I am on the inside, that you are - at the time of this episode coming out - you are the guest art director on the next issue of The Deadlands. G: Yes! Yes I am. [laughing] R: So from the other side of the table, how do you go about picking artwork on behalf of who are essentially clients here for their magazine issue? G: Cool. So, for The Deadlands I worked with Cory, who is the main art director, and I looked through the existing repertoire of work that had already been selected for Deadlands publications. Cory was very helpful too in kind of summarizing up the visual style of the magazine, as stuff that's more dark, more photo-real, lots of use of textured work, and I could see it in all the previous selections that'd already gone through. So based off of that, I was using my knowledge of my time in the art community to find pieces that I thought would resonate with that style. G: I was also provided a showcase short story essentially, for that issue, that they thought like ‘hey it would be good if the cover resonated emotionally with this written piece.' So I was looking for stuff that leveraged the visuals within that story, visuals of growth and forestry in particular, goes with a nice visceral story. They gave me the rest of the stories to read too, but as just more background information. And so I went to the portfolios of some of the artists that I knew worked in that kind of emotional field, like artists that did a lot of dark work, artists that do a lot of work in monochrome spaces, and so I looked in their portfolios for work to license that fit the forest-y theme of the showcase story. G: And so I took a couple of pieces that I thought were good, showed them to Cory, Cory showed them to the editor, and we moved forward with one of them. I contacted that artist; they spoke English as a second language so that's another thing you have to watch out with artists, so you have to be very clear and direct in your emails to make sure that you can be understood when your email gets thrown into Google Translate. And then I put Cory in touch with the artist for final contracts and payment. R: This is coming out on September 14th; the new issue of The Deadlands should be out on the 19th, so make sure you check that out, because you will see the cover that Grace picked, and the art that fit into the style, and I happen to know from behind the scenes that everyone was really enthusiastic about your choices. So you made a small mention, but we should probably highlight just a little bit - this is licensed artwork, the artwork already exists, you didn't commission something new, this is a piece that the artist already created either on commission or just as part of their creative process on their own. And so the artwork is available for license, which means that in a limited capacity it can be used again. Can you explain a little bit more about licensing? G: Yeah. So licensing is essentially buying rights to print an image, whether it be like a t-shirt or whether it be like your book cover, and it kinda goes through a separate route than commissioning. So commissioning essentially you are paying for a service, you're paying for an artist's time to make custom work for you. For licensing, it's closer to buying rights, and you're saying ‘I want to pay you x amount for the right to use this image in my piece. And generally artists are pretty lenient about licensing, especially if you are doing a non-exclusive license. It's basically free money for us, like you're paying us for something that we've already created, there's no additional hourly time that we're gonna have to handle other than administrative fees, which are usually more than covered in the licensing. For that you just generally email them and ask them if they have a licensing fee already, or you can generally look for standard licensing fees for products of the same type as yours. G: Most magazines and such will print how much they pay for licensed covers, in part of their artistic submissions and generally you can offer this rate for similar products within the field. When you are commissioning, though, these rights and usages will actually be factored into the contract. For example, if you want to be the only person who can use this work, you want the artist never to sell this work to another licensee, then this will factor into the cost of your original contract. The flat rate that the artist gives you might be higher, because basically you're saying they can't make future money off of it by licensing it to somebody else. ‘Cause copyright-wise, the image I believe is retained with the artist, unless the rights are completely bought out in the contract. Like I believe most contracts are they pay for the work and they pay to license the work, so an exclusive license would be the license fee but higher. R: Kind of like the layered file, like you know that this person wants to own this image and do whatever they want with it, so you kind of charge extra. G: Yeah. I'll charge even higher if somebody is like ‘you can never show this in your portfolio,' like you can't even use this to get more work later. K: I don't understand why anyone would want that. R: Yeah. K: Ok. G: It really has to do with intellectual property NDA-type stuff, so if they're like ‘this is a super-secret project, this is too early on,' ‘cause usually it's like artists get to post in a portfolio once the thing has been released, but if they're worried a project is gonna be canceled and they wanna hold onto the image in case they wanna use it for another project, then that would bar them from putting it in a portfolio. This is more common practice among artists who work in video games and animation, where their projects are constantly like revolving, canceled, there's a lot more asset reuse, yeah. R: Alright so. There [laughing] is a lot of information on licensing, on contracts, on payment structures. Be nice to the artist, ‘cause look at everything they're already balancing. K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: So any final thoughts, Grace? Anything we haven't touched on that is a bugaboo for you, that you wanna make sure we warn people or - G: I feel like we've covered a lot. R: - invite people, it can be inviting too. G: I dunno, come to my class November 13th. It's a free business class on how to write effective art briefs. [laughs] R: Yes, that's through Clarion West. G: It'll be through the Clarion West, yes. R: Yeah, so we will put the link to that in the show notes. Hopefully the - is it unlimited spaces, or is it limited? G: There are one hundred spaces, I think like 40 of them are already taken. R: Okay! So by the time this comes out there'll be less than 60 available, so make sure that you go find that link in the show notes for that free workshop, because I think a brief is going to make you as compatible as possible with the person that you commission. Because you wanna make their job easy, so that they don't wanna charge you extra. K [overlapping]: [laughing] R: And also so that they still love your project by the time they get to the final artwork. K: Yeah, so they don't have some sort of visceral shudder reaction every time the name of that book or project comes up. [laughing] G: Things also go around. Artists talk to each other, so if you give one a terrible time, then a lot of them will not wanna work with you anymore. K: Yeah this is something not just in art and publishing, but I think most industries - people who work in the same field talk to each other. Artists do not exist in a bubble, they are not all hiding in some dark studio bent over an oil painting that they've been devoting their life to - G: I mean we are. K: Okay. G: But we all just have Discord open on the side. K [laughing]: The room has internet access, yes. Grace thanks so much, this was great. I think this was a lot of really good information that people kinda dipping their toe in the water here may not be aware of, or know how to find easily. But speaking of finding, where can people find you? G: Ah, you can find me on ArtStation, at artstation.com/fictograph. It's like pictograph but with an f instead of a p. That is the same on Twitter, where it's mostly cat photos. K: [laughing] R: Alright we will put those links in the show notes too, so you won't even have to spell anything. Just go find a link, and go find Grace because Grace has a lot of amazing artwork to look at, and also might be the perfect artist for a future project of yours!

Michael B Koep  Was always to be an author and his books would one day be on film.   By the age of 12, Michael B. Koep had written a complex, Tolkienesque fantasy with its own number system, language and runic alphabet. He continues that tradition with his fiction debut the Newirth Mythology.   Koep has been called an Inland Northwest "Renaissance Man.”  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gary-fox2/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gary-fox2/support

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Giles and Robbie sit down with Kate Madison, director of the phenomenal web series Ren, a fantasy saga complete with swordplay, magic and homages to everything Tolkienesque.   Kate tells us about how she gathered a loyal following of fans, from helming the Lord of the Rings fan film Born of Hope, all the way through to financing the first season of Ren with an impressive crowdfunding campaign.   We discuss the benefits of enjoying a production as much as the final result, the best ways of motivating your crew and how to make the most of your locations when working on a tight budget.   Kate and her team are currently rallying the troops again with a Kickstarter campaign for the second season of Ren, find out why it's worth backing and why even the smallest pledge can change the course of the future...     REN season 2 Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythica/ren2   REN http://www.rentheseries.com/   Kate's website http://www.katemadison.net/   LINKS SPONSORS FREEBIES EVENTS & PROMOS    The Dare is released on March 3rd in US - Pre-Order The Dare here: apple.co/32fSWox   WATCH The Dare trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5aZVm2drjY     The next MAKE YOUR FILM event is on the 25th March. Get your early bird tickets here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/make-your-film-v8-tickets-94482566901   WATCH A Serial Killers Guide to Life (OUT NOW) www.aserialkillersguidetolife.com   RAINDANCE Saturday Film School 20% off with code code: Filmpod2020 https://www.raindance.org/courses/saturday-film-school/   The techniques and tools described in this information-packed day are the ones used by filmmakers like Edgar Wright and Christopher Nolan. It has been taken by over 15,000 filmmakers and screenwriters worldwide.   Giles Alderson's website    Subscribe, listen and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get you podcasts but more importantly, tell you pals about this podcast   Follow us on Twitter @filmmakerspod @gilesalderson @robbiemckane  @Food4ThoughtDoc@35mmdop@Cjamesdirect @dan710ths  @FangedUpFilm@thedaremovie @philmblog @DirDomLenoir   Music from musicbed.com   Part of the www.podfixnetwork.squarespace.com

The planet Mars boasts the most dramatic landscapes in our solar system. Kevin Fong embarks on a grand tour around the planet with scientists, artists and writers who know its special places intimately- through their probes, roving robots and imaginations. As we roam Mars' beauty spots, Kevin explores why the Red planet grips so many. Beyond its alien topographic grandeur, Mars inspires the bigger questions: are we alone in the cosmos, and what is the longer term destiny of humanity? Was there more than one life genesis? Will humans ever live on more than one planet? The itinerary includes the solar system's greatest volcano - Olympus Mons. It is an ancient pile of lavas more than twice the height of Everest, with a summit crater that could contain Luxembourg. The weight of Mars' gargantuan volcanic outpourings helped to create the planet's extreme version of our Grand Canyon. Vallis Marineris is an almighty gash in the crust 4,000 kilometres long and seven kilometres deep. That is more than three times the depth of Earth's Grand Canyon. In some place the cliffs are sheer from top to bottom. A little to the east lies an extraordinary region called Iani Chaos, a vast realm of closely spaced and towering rock stacks and mesas, hundreds to thousands of metres high. One researcher describes it as Tolkienesque. This unearthly shattered terrain was created billions of years ago when immense volumes of water burst out from beneath the surface and carved another giant canyon, known as Ares Valles, in a matter of months. Imagine a hundred Amazon rivers cutting loose at once, suggests Professor Steve Squyres. The catastrophically sculpted landscapes are part of the plentiful evidence that in its early days, Mars was, at time,s awash with water and, in theory, provided environments in which life could evolve and survive. That is what the latest robot rover on Mars - Curiosity - is exploring at the dramatic Gale Crater with its central peak, Mount Sharp. Expert Mars guides in the programme include scientists on the current Curiosity mission, and on the preceeding rover explorations by Spirit and Opportunity. Kevin talks to hard sci-fi novelist Kim Stanley Robinson whose rich invocations of Martian landscapes form th narrative bedrock of his Mars Trilogy. He also meets Bill Hartmann, a planetary scientist since earliest generation of Mars probes in the 1960s and 1970. Bill has a parallel career as an artist who paints landscapes of the Red Planet. Planetary scientist Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute begins Kevin's tour with a painting he created - an imagined view of Mars from the surface of its tiny moon, Phobos. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker, BBC Radio Science Unit

My guest today is Charlie Gere, who hates the Lake District; so much so, in fact, that his new book is unambiguously entitled I Hate the Lake District. But it's not a diatribe against fudge shops and coach tours. He writes in his introduction:‘I love the North West of England, but hate the “Lake District”, and the way it's fetishized and sacralized as some kind of “unspoilt” paradise, a consolatory Eden to which those battered by contemporary life can retreat. ‘I also love it, guiltily, for the very reasons that I hate it. I am overwhelmed, for example, by the experience of the mountains of the North Lakes in the autumn light, and uneasy that the pleasure I feel is a false appeal to “nature” as redemptive.'View from Kirkby LonsdaleSo Charlie's attitude to the Lakes and the sort of post-Romantic, anti-modernist, mystical, almost Tolkienesque attitude to nature that they are often made to embody is complex, often ambivalent. He wants to see beyond the tourist vistas in golden autumn hues and reintroduce some chiaroscuro into the landscape, let in a bit of shade and darkness. So the stories he pursues are of the people and places normally omitted from the tourist guides: of nuclear catastrophe barely averted, eccentric artists, bodies in lakes, UFOs, even a failed theme park devoted to the nightmarish children's character Mr Blobby. It's a view of the North West that lets the uncanny back in.[There is a] largely unacknowledged uncanniness of the Lake District, the sense that underneath the tourist veneer there lies something far stranger and discomforting, something apocalyptic.The post Charlie Gere hates the Lakes appeared first on The Hedgehog and the Fox. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to the NotACast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week! In this episode, the pig-faced shit-knight Amory Lorch wipes out Yoren of the Night’s Watch and most of his charges. It’s not all bad news, though; at least Arya saves Rorge and Biter! This week, we: - Go through some of our favorite and "favorite" Apple Podcast Reviews - Talk about the unsettling feeling of dread settling over the scene well before Amory Lorch shows up - Talk about the Tolkienesque aspects of this chapter and how George reinterprets Tolkien's critiques of the crimes against nature.  - Discourse on Yoren as an idealist and how his ideals aren't so far removed from the current time of the story   - Battlechapter! Battlechapter! Slaughter ... chapter?  - Address why Amory Lorch as a war criminal takes backseat to Gregor and Vargo Hoat Next week: Tyrion III, in which the Lannisters react to His Grace King Stannis Baratheon’s letter declaring them traitors (fuck yeah, righteous) and Tyrion begins work on a project for his metalworking class that probably won’t turn out to be important at all.   Our patreon: www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our twitter: twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/289889118235797/   Our youtube page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmDfPdG…iew_as=subscriber   Emmett's twitter: twitter.com/PoorQuentyn   Jeff's twitter: twitter.com/BryndenBFish

Episode Notes Squatch Smasher Comedy Podcast WebsiteSurrounded by deadly Timmybots and with Vlad near death, the team searches for answers!Squatch Smashers was created and produced by Darren EslerThis episode written by Darren Esler and George Pete Caleodis, and Matt McDonald.Vlad, Football announcer were played by George Pete Caleodis. Twitter: @caleodis IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1241020/?ref=nvsr_1Elvis was played by Phil Porter. Phil is a 30 year veteran of the Columbus, Ohio improv community and likes to serve as a cautionary tale for young improvisers.Jenny was played by Mary Ellen Clark Mary Ellen Clark is a nurse ninja, pitty mama, and instapot guru who fell out of a TARDIS. She wrote that herself. Probably using speech to text.The Brundlematic and the old timey news announcer played by Matt McDonald. Timmy Pilows bots played by Charlie Weirauch. Fan favorite Charlie Weirauch. Twitter: @weirauch Check him out on IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0918641/Everyone else was played by Darren Esler. Twitter: @smashmysquatchGo to our website squatchsmashers.com to see more details including links to IMDB Presents pages and twitter accounts and how to contact us. You can also get T-shirts. We have some available but if you want a customized shirt with a favorite line from the show, just let me know and I will make it for you. Please submit all of your fanart of the crew hiding near the huge Tolkienesque tree to smashmysquatch@gmail.comIf you have time and use ITunes or Apple Podcasts, please leave a rating and review. Apparently that is important to some people. Jason Paige wrote and performed the awesome new theme song and cool end credits song. He also sang the Pokemon theme song on the tv show and the video games. So why is he on our dumb little show? Again, I do not know but he is incredibly talented and you should hire him. Find out how on his webpage. http://Jasonpaige.comThank you for listening and go have a beverage! Support Squatch Smashers Comedy Podcast by donating to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/SquatchSmashersFind out more at https://SquatchSmashers.pinecast.coThis podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-9fa1b6 for 40% off for 4 months, and support Squatch Smashers Comedy Podcast.

The planet Mars boasts the most dramatic landscapes in our solar system. In a programme first broadcast in March, 2013, Kevin Fong embarks on a grand tour around the planet with scientists, artists and writers who know its special places intimately - through their probes, roving robots and imaginations. As we roam Mars' beauty spots, Kevin considers why the Red Planet grips so many. Beyond its alien topographic grandeur, Mars inspires the bigger questions: are we alone in the cosmos, and what is the longer term destiny of humanity? Was there more than one life genesis? Will humans ever live on more than one planet? The itinerary includes the solar system's greatest volcano - Olympus Mons. It is an ancient pile of lavas more than twice the height of Everest, with a summit crater that could contain Luxembourg. The weight of Mars' gargantuan volcanic outpourings helped to create the planet's extreme version of our Grand Canyon. Vallis Marineris is an almighty gash in the crust 4,000 kilometres long and seven kilometres deep. That is more than three times the depth of Earth's Grand Canyon. In some place the cliffs are sheer from top to bottom. A little to the east lies an extraordinary region called Iani Chaos, a vast realm of closely spaced and towering rock stacks and mesas, hundreds to thousands of metres high. One researcher describes it as Tolkienesque. This unearthly shattered terrain was created billions of years ago when immense volumes of water burst out from beneath the surface and carved another giant canyon, known as Ares Valles, in a matter of months. Imagine a hundred Amazon rivers cutting loose at once, suggests Professor Steve Squyres. The catastrophically sculpted landscapes are part of the plentiful evidence that in its early days, Mars was, at times, awash with water and, in theory, provided environments in which life could evolve and survive. That is what the latest robot rover on Mars - Curiosity - is exploring at the dramatic Gale Crater with its central peak, Mount Sharp. Expert Mars guides in the programme include scientists on the current Curiosity mission, and on the preceding rover explorations by Spirit and Opportunity. Kevin talks to hard sci-fi novelist Kim Stanley Robinson whose rich invocations of Martian landscapes form the narrative bedrock of his Mars Trilogy. He also meets Bill Hartmann, a planetary scientist since earliest generation of Mars probes in the 1960s and 1970s. Bill has a parallel career as an artist who paints landscapes of the Red Planet. Planetary scientist Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute begins Kevin's tour with a painting he created - an imagined view of Mars from the surface of its tiny moon, Phobos. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Might as well Jump into this episode with our new segment: Mini Music Movies! Plus we talk witches and Tolkienesque prophecies with the Salt Lake City based mystery of Hobbitville.

We here at Gobbledygeek are avowed fans of big-budget epics, be they superheroic or Tolkienesque. But independent film is an important part of any moviegoer's diet, one many don't have access to. Which is why Paul and AJ are thrilled to speak with Kurtiss Hare of the Nightlight Cinema, the new arthouse theater bringing indie film to Akron, OH. Kurtiss talks about the Nightlight's origin, the incredible response to the project's Kickstarter, and how he hopes the theater will grow. Plus, Paul gets an education from some Masters of Sex and AJ revisits the classics. Next: we stop picking fleas off each other long enough to discuss the latest in the modern reboot of the classic Apes franchise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Kickstarter backer Juan Soto brings you Retronauts Pocket episode 20, which explores the very small world of RPGs with modern-day settings. Why do we find them so captivating, and why do the majority of RPG developers rely on Tolkienesque fantasy? Listen in for answers to these questions and more with the help of Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, Jeremy Parish, and Kat Bailey.

Kevin Fong concludes his grand tour of the planet Mars, in search of water. Some of the most spectacular Martian landscapes were carved by vast and violent quantities of water in the planet's past. The Tolkienesque terrain of Iani Chaos is one such place as is the great canyon Ares Valles. Kevin also talks to scientists on the current Curiosity Mars rover mission about water in the deep history of Gale Crater and its central mountain Mount Sharp. The journey concludes with gullies on cliffs and craters, suggesting that water still gushes on the surface of Mars today. Could this mean that life exists on the Red Planet today?(Image: Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around Mars Copyright: ESA- Illustration by Medialab)