The Banyan Bison: Some Observations

I recently read a post over at Zen Habits regarding creative inspiration hacks. The guest post by blogger Ben Cook lists five sources for inspiration regarding blogging. Initially I was surprised that he listed ‘Art’ as the last and least likely to consider muse, but he’s talking blogging in the regular sense not the stuff we do here at 1000 Days.

I used to collect links to great art that I knew would inspire me once I had the time to pay it some heed. I suspect had I looked harder and sooner I’d have come across plenty of starving artist portfolios. Some not so hungry I bet too. I mentioned Gorilla Artfare before, but I am going to do it again in the same month because right now they are doing it for me. Right now they are cranking out arguments against any writer’s block I might lamely posit as credible. I suspect they’d be able to stave off any casual speculative fiction work stoppage that you might have as well.

I don’t know that any of my prose here would be all that inspiring for an illustrator. If you are one and you find some, then feel free to create a visual derivative. Let me know in the comments if you do.

Today I am riffing on the piece on page 14 of the 2d Artist Magazine Patri Balanovsky was interviewed for….by….in?

The 14-spined Banyan Bison
This native of the forest edges of southern Dilingon Nato is rarely captured on film–at least as far as this author knows. This particular illustration is based on a combination of aboriginal storytelling, second-hand accounts, and distant personal sightings over a number of years spent in the tall-bush.

A Banyan Bull is marked by several outstanding characteristics. Most notable is the one that lends to the animal’s namesake: the unique banyan-like muscles which separate from the lower legs into thick strands and meet back up at the heel of the broad elephantine foot. It is thought that this separation substantially increases the animal’s leverage and therefore efficiency and speed. Further speculation by some fewer authorities–your author among them–suggests that these separate ropey muscles are able to cool more quickly. At twice the size of a Bismark Elephant you’d expect this animal to lumbar sluggishly, but in reality it is quite swift and remarkably nimble.

It’s gaping maw never closes and probably can’t considering the scale and proportion of it’s fang-like teeth. No one has ever found a skeleton of the animal that included the teeth. Most megafauna fans and biologists take Grainer’s word that the teeth are composed much like the horn of a rhino of hair rather than dentine and that the teeth simply decay as quickly as the flesh [Grainer, H.L. (2035). ‘Dentilogical Studies of Mega and Submegafauna’. Nature 749: 632-40].

The barely 14 dorsal spines of the of the beast are of course typically used to cool animals of this size, but the surface area and apparent cartilaginous or potentially even boney make up of the Banyan Bison spines makes them an insignificant heat sink. Most field reports and indeed the most dramatic of all local tales make these out as weapons in mating clashes between bulls. The animal will duck it’s head very low while running at it’s competitor full speed. Just before they clash each bull leaps toward his opponent with his back leading the way. They clash no more than a couple times before the lessor of the two is so bloody and injured that he is compelled to quit the endeavor. Ancient myths boast that following particularly raucous mating the breeding pair may even kill and eat the loser.

Word count: 629
Days <=174

The People Who Illustrate

Recently routed to an art and illustration site called Gorilla Art Fare. They’re sufficiently popular that they don’t need a link through from me, but you won’t be disappointed if you take a moment to go there right now. Of particular interest to this bit of writing is any video of an artist doing his thing. There were several near the top today and I suspect will be more in the future so I’ll leave the hunting to you. Find one. Watch it.

My somewhat recent fascination with the parallels between illustration and writing comes from my reading of a book I gave as a gift. “Making Comics” by Scott McCloud is great for understanding story telling from a visual perspective. More generally I began to see how his specific instructions to artists were practical for writers as well. More about that another time. That’s just some groundwork for where this all started for me.

Two videos floored me. Each showed hours of work in Photoshop compressed to a few minutes. Despite the scaling you could easily see the repetitive and experimental nature of the work. In one the artist paints a face by first painting in the background color of pale mustard–same as the final product. After a bit of indistinct strokes for the face he completely trashes the background with a grey blue. For much of the first half of the video the face looks like a young man of little worldly experience. By the end, the background color has changed at least three times and the portrait of an angry veteran soldier comes to mind. Everything was questioned during the process. Hair color, head shape, ear placement, mustache, lips, eyes, collar, everything. It all took shape, got cast aside, and then reconstituted.

I can’t imagine wholesale near repetition and experimentation like that going on with text to ultimately end up with the same thing just deeper and richer.

Let’s try this with just a few words in series:

entertainer
comedian
clown
entertainer of kids
balloon clown
jester
court jester
Motley Fool

Or something like that, except I wouldn’t argue that motley fool was anything near as robust an outcome as these guys were producing in comparison to their origins.

Maybe when I hit 200 days I should rewrite every post day for day to 400? That might be too tedious.

Word count: 380
Day 158

Day 56: Drawing on the Write Side of the Brain

Is it too early for me to learn to draw?  I find myself increasingly jealous of the talents and skills of artists.  I don’t want to be a painter or well thought of talent, but it would be fun to be able to sketch stuff.

Art and photography are quite an inspiration to my writing in the last month.  I wouldn’t want to under estimate the efforts of these creative folks, but I find that achieving the same outcomes with words to be tough.

With words I have to balance the dullness of complete and precise description with the tone and emoting of a scene.  The words draw the reader in the proper direction, but never to the exact destination.  Subsequent words hone and focus the scene.  With drawing you really can go all the way there–if you want to.

But I can’t imagine how I would wordulate something like “Monsters Inc.”  That’s the challenge I posed to myself when I first started not really doing anything with “The Bringer of Mist”.  I am glad to have written more on it here and expect to continue, but I just don’t think I could capture the full feel a cartoon movie provides.  In some circumstances you could get away with blatantly stating, “Hey these are cartoons.”  Then you could iterate as needed.  But that’s just not the style of writing I am going for in my work.

I’ll just have to keep working on it.

Word count: 240