Kitsurada - Land of Foxgoyles

One of the many new projects I'm determined to set time aside for this year is the developing of a few pieces of the larger fantasy world I have been creating. Fleshing out characters, timelines and histories, locations etc etc so that, in the not-too-distant future, I can create more stories and, hopefully, complete books about them. From children's books to fantasy shorts and perhaps one good full length book/novel or two somewhere down the merry road.

I began diving into this idea at the end of 2015 to allow myself a "running start" at the mountain ahead this year. :)

The first project I chose, though I was already strongly leaning towards it in November an December, was decided by a few lovely reviews and a message I received about my gargoyles in Bewilder and Pine. The review was from a customer who purchased a Fennec Foxgoyle and custom ordered one other Catgoyle to go with it.

The note was actually from a customer who purchased one of my very first Bewilder and Pine Foxgoyles almost a year ago and who kindly wrote to let me know that she not only loved it when it arrived but, that a year on, she still looks at it every day and smiles when ever she sees it in her home.

That note came just as I was beginning the long process of creating the map you see below and, with just a bit of doubt creeping in as it tends to on any new. . . and large. . . project, it was the last little "push" I needed to allow me to dive in fully.

Kitsurada is the mythical home of the Foxgoyles in my fantasy world. I have so much to flesh out so I cannot tell you much more right now but I chose this project to begin with for two reasons. One, I LOVE maps! Old maps especially and most games I played or made up as a child included some sort of treasure map, star map, forgotten world map etc etc.

I've always made them, even in my 20's and 30's I'd doodle them here and there on napkins or scraps of paper. And I cannot fathom a fantasy novel that does not include a good, informative map! And as I may have mentioned before, the series that brought me back to rediscovering my love of comics and really, my desire to delve deeper into the makings of childhood too, "Mouse Guard" by David Peterson, first captured my heart with the lovely map of that small mouse-centered world.

The second reason is my love of the many varieties of Foxes. And the idea of making the mythical creatures of this part of the world something based on "stone magic" appealed to me greatly. 

Of course, the mythical creatures have their very own mythical creature too. . . ahh so much for reality. :) 

But this is Kitsurada. . . still very much in progress itself.

Part 16th Century Map and Part Digital art and a Lot of Imagination

This project began with an old 16th century map. Though I altered the main island, the form of it just seemed perfect and, being in the public domain, I borrowed that main landmass.  wiping it clean of it's interior, I set about adding the forests, the lakes and towns, the ring of volcanic formations, the portolan lines, compass rose and scrolls. . .  and the Japanese inspired wave pattern that runs through the oceans was what really brought it to life for me. The whale and ship are from another 15th century map and I created the Kitsu Isles to the right arranging them in a somewhat fox-like formation. :)

The volcanic spires in the sea that surround the land protect it from raiding parties of ogres and trolls making it an almost insurmountable defense. . . almost.

Each of the seven forests are named for one of the Foxgoyle Breeds that inhabit/protect the populated central part of the island. Fennec, Kit, Swift, Red, Corsac, Azaras and Sechura. There is also the mythic tale of a nine-tailed creature living on the Kitsu Isles. . . very much like the modern Kitsune Foxes.

There is a developing backstory to the foxgoyles origins and their purpose.  But what is most fun for me is that the story grows with each iteration. I just finished the first of the Fennec and Kit foxgoyles for the shop this year (see a few posts ago) and just making those has given me a whole added dimension to the story as I went along working on them.

In the end, later this year, I hope to have the Foxgoyle story as a stand alone mini-book, hand-bound and printed with map included, to offer thru the shop or as a special addition to a Foxgoyle figure.  Perhaps the book will have a mini-mini Foxgoyle to go along with it? Who knows!

Anyway, welcome to another part of my world. . . I hope it inspires and delights!

Thank you for looking!

nicolas

The Long and Short Of It All - Edition #1

One of the things about my way of creating that gets wonky sometimes is:

I have a longstanding habit, when choosing the "What next?" from my list of ideas, to go with the smaller, most immediately rewarding ideas. Often this is at the expense of moving forward the larger, more complex ideas that I really want to bring to a completion but that I can't seem to keep moving forward on as time allows. Instead, always seeming to choose the quick idea, or a multitude of them as it often goes, to "finish something".

Nowhere is this more relevant that my 2014 To-Do list and I am resolved to do something about it! 

So first, why is that an issue? I make oodles of fun creations that actually move through my shops very well. They make me infinitely happy to create them and I always find time to write a bit of a story to go along with almost each one. . . couple that with an ever growing list of requests and custom pieces and the time left to work on the larger stories and idea is already at a minimum. 

But those ideas haunt me as they are always the thing I most want to do every day.

Internally those larger. story based projects are the direct reflection of everything I loved about my childhood and want to re-embrace into the fold of mid adulthood and beyond. They are the lifeline from that era, the link in time to all I am and all I do.

They are my "Tardis" through time and space that take me back to the most wonderful and,  yes, sometimes less wonderful of those years too.

And ohhhhh I am a time traveler above all else. . . 

I am hoping, that by sharing the ideas here in a series of posts of their progress and intent,  the visual reminder of them each time I come to my blog will remind me that they are waiting for me to grow them into full reality.And with each large project I will also post a small, quick idea that came to fruition too. :)

So then

The LONG of It:

The Noble Ice Elves of Spangladasha:

Started this massive idea at the beginning of the year and it is only in the last 4 weeks that it sort of fell off the radar a bit. The little guy below, Fenewen, was the first to appear here. He toldme his story and I was beyond hooked. . . T

he idea is to create a total of 50 Noble Ice Elves ( not all at once mind you) and send each one, as it is adopted, off into the world with an atlas/maps of their land, Spangladasha, and scrolls that tell the story of the elves journey to our world and their purpose here and beyond.

The very-large of the idea is to send quarterly updates to each person as the elves are adopted letting them know the general location of other elves across the globe (by city/country only) and continuing the story through mailings of scrolls, symbols, etc etc as well as updating the Etsy listing with the story as it progresses as new elves appear.  So even I will not know exactly where it is going until it gets there.

Fenewen

I LOVE his furry compact body, the crown of polymer clay bones and his "petrified" driftwood power source with it's "ice crystal" attached!! And the ever growing map of the land he and his kind hail from:

Spangladasha - Realm of the Noble Ice Elves

Soooo much more to do obviously. Scrolls, books, wax seals, printing the maps, special packaging etc etc. The Noble Ice Elf story is about 5 pages now. That's about as long as I want it so I'll have a years worth of updates already in the bag. I just need to rewrite, edit and re-edit. 

Hoping to have 6 or so of these guys ready for Fall release! 

And that, my dear friends, is just ONE of the large ideas brewing in this brain lately. :)


The SHORT of it:

The Shen Amulet

So, the Egyptian pieces in Shadow of the Sphinx are a direct link to my early creative worlds  I imagined myself often in that time, often as a simple scribe or lay-person working for a Pharaoh. It was a far broader role to me than to rule all of Egypt. lol

The endless list of ancient pieces I have to inspire me has allowed me to continually experience a new thrill when working on these amulets and statues. And often, the ideas allow me to create quickly as with the Shen amulet below.  There must be hundreds of iterations of this one amulet/symbol alone.  So the inspirational source is endless.

Shen Symbol - Polymer Clay Amulet with Bronze Patina Finish

Trouble is I often get caught up in the fun of making smaller things and just let the larger ideas sit a bit too long. . . but then again, Fenewen is always on my work table and he won't be patient for long I suspect. . .

Wishing you all a creative and magical day!

Soon again. . .


nicolas

The Mapmaker's War

The Mapmaker's War. . . I am currently submerged in this wonderful book by Ronlyn Dominique

Often it can be the first line or few paragraphs of a book that really draws me in. . . this one went beyond pulling me in with the following early narrative. . .

With meticulous care, you planned your provisions, though not your expeditions. 

Adventure wasn’t in the hunger to come but in the quest of what to follow. You packed your pouch | nuts and fruit, soft bread and hard cheese | along with parchment and ink, cloth scraps and straight edges.

You mapped the hidden worlds when you were still young enough to see them.

Spiderwebs and honeycombs taught the wisdom of symmetry. To you, everything before your eyes was built upon invisible lines and angles. The very spot where you stood only a point among many. A girl is not always in her place, you thought. A girl can be many places at once. And so you were. When you settled upon a space in the forest or meadow, you made a grid on the earth with small steps and tiny flags until there were row upon row of even little squares. You took your seat within the grid. You moved from square to square, noting what stood still and what passed by. All day long you observed and measured, sketched and colored. That which was off the edges appeared on the parchment as well. There were mysterious realms of bees and ants and creatures never seen before, with tiny castles and bright gardens.

 
In my previous post, Paracosm, I spoke about the beginnings of my imaginative childhood worlds and how they have been with me all through my life, even when I tried to put them aside. . .

This book took me immediately back to those days and the themes within it, mostly mythic and universal, truly touched a part of my soul that recognized it instantly as kin.

I feel like this is my charge again, among the worlds that others often neglect and, in some cases, never see. There is work to be done and many uncharted places to visit here. . .

Mapmaking is much more than pen to paper

It is about perspective and acute observation
It's about seeing with something more than our eyes
It's a visual poetry

When we look at early maps, what do you see? Do you see the world as you now know it NOT to be and think, "Oh, they had it so wrong then!" or do you simply surrender to the wonder and beauty of it, of the time and place and the impossible motivation that made people create them?

How we see maps tells a lot about us too. . . 

What a good mapmaker sees, or what a mapmaker reads are more than pinpoints and land plots.
There is nothing finite about a map and the good ones seem to have no beginning and no end.
Like the art of writing kanji, each line begins off the page and then, on the other end, the motion and movement which are always present, carries the brush off the into space. 

It is not a series of points.  . but the motion of a living, breathing entity.

It does not end.

And so, again, I hammer home the point (to myself) that where we come from, the formative parts of our imagination, the maps we made, have no end.

If we try to constrain it to a page
A part of our history
A finite set of coordinates
It is incomplete.

Maps of all kinds change too
Constantly

There is a second story I love and often return to that has this same effect on me. You can, of course, read this one too but you can also HEAR it read on the podcast, Selected Shorts, if you are inspired enough to dig for it online.

It's called "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez

Of course, the pattern here, for my own purposes, is telling.

I am always returning to the mapmaker within
The charts and excursions of my youth.
My landscapes

Nothing stays the same and that is why we should, I believe, revisit and remap those spaces too. . .
it's why I intend to do so for the remainder of my days . . . my motion in a lifetime that also began off the page, appeared, and will one day exit into space again.

And through it all, I will remember this line from "The Mappist", to help keep my sense of placeas I go

“don’t make the mistake of thinking you, or I or anyone, knows how the world is meant to work. The world is a miracle, unfolding in the pitch dark. We’re lighting candles. Those maps- they are my candles. And I can’t extinguish them for anyone.””

Make your maps. dive into YOUR landscapes, and most of all tell and retell your stories as your miracle unfolds.

~nicolas