Steampunk~ FRANKENSTEIN

THE CONCEPT -

The Making of Frahnknshtyne

Frankenstein, from 19th century monster to 21st century dark hero
Hello friends,
In this part of my blog I am writing about the making of Frahnknshtyne as I develop it. I am grateful for the amount of interest and support I've been receiving since starting this blog at the urgings of some good friends. It’s all part of this grand experiment in transparent development where I am posting and sharing the work as I go. As I’ve covered earlier in the blog, I can’t share everything since some of this work needs to be read and experienced for the first time in whatever form the story takes in its first telling. What fun would it be to know everything before experiencing it for the first time? That being said, there is a lot that I think can be shared if you have the interest. Below I will be posting and adding some of the background reasons and motivations for why I am making this property. Through these posts you will get some peeks into the characters, the place, the narrative purpose and a bit more. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to email me or post comments at any time. To be clear, this isn’t open source development. I don’t believe that story creation is a large group effort. This is more in the vein of creatively sharing what I do because I believe there are others out there in our community whom might enjoy it as I enjoy seeing their work and…well this is the age we live in isn’t it. Thanks again for the level of interest and very rich encouragement I've been receiving from around the globe.
Cheers, Kevin Mowrer

Why Frankenstein and Steampunk?
Most everyone is reasonably familiar with one of the 20th century popular media expressions of Mary Shelley’s gothic horror tale Frankenstein if not the original manuscript itself. Aside from being one of the great horror novels of all time, this narrative takes its place at the loggerhead of speculative fiction and Steampunk with it’s early science fiction parentage, Tesla-coils, brass gears, goggles, and darkly alternative themes. Though the Victorian Era didn’t actually start until 1837 (The Reign of Victoria), and the first publishing of the novel was almost 20 years earlier in 1818, the popularity of the book grew significantly stronger during that era. For me, the nature of the story’s DNA and where I wished to take it suggested a very fun fit with todays living Steampunk movement.

Frankenstein has even become a modern verb “Frankensteining: To assemble something from unrelated and often disparate parts.” (If that isn’t an underlying tenet of Steam Punk I’m not sure what is).

He says -

Steampunk has barely been tapped
I've always been a huge fan of the steampunk aesthetic. It encompasses such a wide range from victorian proper constructs quaintly puttering along to grungy and industrial contraptions and a whole lot more. I'm in the process of rethinking the Frankenstein myth and Steampunk is where I'm drawing inspiration from.

I'm not going to go into the details of the story in this blog but focus more on the art exploration and finding the visual notes and forms that bring out the narrative.

For this project, I'm looking for a metal-heavy, sooty look with forms and shapes that aren't just barrels and brass but suggest a more profound alternate industrially based technology that has reached a high level of functionality and power but isn't plastic and electronic nor wood and horses. There's two levels of technology in this story. One that is almost magical in it's ability to make things move and another that is much less sophisticated. This "steamier" technology is still created by the same folks who make the amazing technology but is purposely dumbed down to keep control of the larger population.

As this development organically progresses I'll bring out characters, places, world structure and eventually moments from the story. I hope you all enjoy some of what's on the blog and I would love to hear any thoughts or feedback you have.

I'd also like to say a special thanks to Shanth Enjeti, Nick jainschigg and my wife Gail. No one could ask for three better sounding boards and a great mixture of knowledgable and practiced art and illustration feedback and inspiration. it's good to have friends and family who push you beyond your comfort zone some t

GREAT -gun- !

That is a marvelous design.

Steampunk portrait of an Aether Kill -

The painting of Lacette the Aether Assassin and owner of the Aether Rifle from an earlier post, is finally done. It's an homage to those shots taken in Africa when a big game animal is taken down. I've added some of the in-progress shots under the final for anyone who wants to see the process I go through building up a painting.

STEAMPUNK " Darth Vader "

THAT is chilling. ....and intriguing.

Looks like a great campaign setting to me !

The tech really split the Gothic-horror/steampunk difference well .

fun characters-

Awesome.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_klzpNPsXHas/TQqqVgyPsnI/AAAAAAAAAK0/vlzOCP_6IXI/s1600/...

the MAN -

Meta-story creator, consultant and lecturer, Emmy and Gemini award winning producer, writer, artist/illustrator/designer, with a long history of Meta-story development of big worldwide franchise stories for mass-market, multi-media, intellectual properties.

the "Dragon Ship" -

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_klzpNPsXHas/TRviZMS_s6I/AAAAAAAAALs/B6p3GOvAfq4/s640/S...