Tuesday
Jun272006
John Howe, D&D and The Time Traveler's Wife
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 1:21PM
Thanks again to Bruce Adelsohn for letting me know about the John Howe talk last night; Bruce had seen it in Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog. I usually check this blog regularly but have fallen behind in blog-reading lately because of current writing and illustrating projects. John Howe, for those of you not familiar with the name, is one of the illustrators who helped inspire Peter Jackson's vision of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. His famous Gandalf painting is one of my favourite desktop images on my laptop.
Allison and I had dinner at Queen Mother Cafe on Queen Street before heading over to the Learning Annex, where we picked up our "Preferred Seating" wristbands and were told to go to the MuchMusic building at 8 pm. I had been in the building a few times over the years: once when I won a Breakfast Television Valentine's Day contest and had to drag Jeff along to the show, once when my friend Helen and I went to see Joey DeVilla play his accordion on MuchMusic for Accordion Awareness Month, and probably one or two other times.
Upon arriving, we had to check our belongings and waited in a holding area while other audience members arrived. After a washroom run, we were all led through the corridors to the Bravo! studio, passing other studios along the way. I was surprised at how small our studio audience was: perhaps 20-25 people, with half a dozen crew members sitting in as well; this made for a much more intimate setting than the last time I had seen John Howe, which was in a large auditorium at an sf convention. One of the women was a librarian for North York Public Libraries and remembered Urban Tapestry from when we performed there over 10 years ago!
The front of the room had been set up with two comfy-looking armchairs for John Howe and Caitlin Sweet (a Toronto fantasy author), with a giant relief map of Middle Earth as a backdrop. During the talk, samples of John's work were presented on large monitors on either side of the stage.
Caitlin Sweet was a good interviewer, with much more interesting questions than the usual artist interview. And though John Howe claims he doesn't really like public speaking, both Allison and I found him to be remarkably eloquent, with a wry sense of humour. He talked about his work with the Lord of the Rings movies, but also about his early influences, how he got into art, his philosophy of art, his opinions of digital art and manga. There was an audience Q&A session afterward. The show is supposed to air this fall on Canada's Learning Channel (thanks to Allison for the link!).
It's been fun seeing how many other roleplaying geeks there are out there, with some still involved in roleplaying. I loved some of your first character names, like Meliah Foulbreath and Leila DeLuxe. :-) For the record, I -did- own the very first D&D set with the stapled manuals, which I ordered by mail. I have no idea where it is now, though. I've also played Rolemaster and Heroes.
Recent read:
Allison and I had dinner at Queen Mother Cafe on Queen Street before heading over to the Learning Annex, where we picked up our "Preferred Seating" wristbands and were told to go to the MuchMusic building at 8 pm. I had been in the building a few times over the years: once when I won a Breakfast Television Valentine's Day contest and had to drag Jeff along to the show, once when my friend Helen and I went to see Joey DeVilla play his accordion on MuchMusic for Accordion Awareness Month, and probably one or two other times.
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Upon arriving, we had to check our belongings and waited in a holding area while other audience members arrived. After a washroom run, we were all led through the corridors to the Bravo! studio, passing other studios along the way. I was surprised at how small our studio audience was: perhaps 20-25 people, with half a dozen crew members sitting in as well; this made for a much more intimate setting than the last time I had seen John Howe, which was in a large auditorium at an sf convention. One of the women was a librarian for North York Public Libraries and remembered Urban Tapestry from when we performed there over 10 years ago!
The front of the room had been set up with two comfy-looking armchairs for John Howe and Caitlin Sweet (a Toronto fantasy author), with a giant relief map of Middle Earth as a backdrop. During the talk, samples of John's work were presented on large monitors on either side of the stage.
Caitlin Sweet was a good interviewer, with much more interesting questions than the usual artist interview. And though John Howe claims he doesn't really like public speaking, both Allison and I found him to be remarkably eloquent, with a wry sense of humour. He talked about his work with the Lord of the Rings movies, but also about his early influences, how he got into art, his philosophy of art, his opinions of digital art and manga. There was an audience Q&A session afterward. The show is supposed to air this fall on Canada's Learning Channel (thanks to Allison for the link!).
It's been fun seeing how many other roleplaying geeks there are out there, with some still involved in roleplaying. I loved some of your first character names, like Meliah Foulbreath and Leila DeLuxe. :-) For the record, I -did- own the very first D&D set with the stapled manuals, which I ordered by mail. I have no idea where it is now, though. I've also played Rolemaster and Heroes.
Recent read:
 | The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I bought his book on Allison's recommendation, and I loved it. I've always been a big fan of time travel stories. I'm sure cynics will point to the this story and sneer, "It's been done before!" but y'know, there are only so many basic plots out there...the challenge for writers is to add their own unique twist. Audrey Niffenegger certainly succeeded, in my opinion, and I also loved the romantic aspect. |
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