I was curious about the concept of flow, and how the Thrill compares to that.
What do you mean? Expand upon that.
[clarification]
So you mean like in the zone, in the moment. The Thrill does overlap with that a little bit, but the Thrill is something distinct. It does give you some of that focus.
Is there anything you're looking forward to illustrating that you haven't had an opportunity to do yet?
Oh, there's a few things.
I want to know what the heck a Thunderclast is. :)
Which order of the Knights Radiant would/are you be in?
Lightweavers is the easy, obvious answer, but we're still learning a lot about each Order so I think it's still pretty early to say.
Do you have any favourites out of the work you've done?
I like the Plate and Blades we've designed. The Axehound was a milestone challenge, and the Chasmfiend was one of those where it seemed to be going badly until it started going well... passing through those is always satisfying after the fact.
What happens if you Compound chromium?
RAFO.
A RAFO happens.
A RAFO happens, yeah. Chromium, come on...
Have you made like a map of the whole Cosmere? Like a star chart or something?
Nope! That's not something that's been relevant to my tasks up to now. If Brandon wanted something like that, he'd probably go to Isaac first, he's the man with the maps.
Do you have any drawings of the Cognitive or Spiritual realm that we haven't seen that you can share?
Not yet... there's a few doodles somewhere of a black sun against a sea of beads, but they're not even close to comprehensive... a circle over scribbles hardly counts.
What are the dimensions of Urithiru relative to something like the Sears Tower?
That's a question for Peter and Isaac. They work out the math. It's bigger! More area, but maybe not taller. I'm not sure.
With Stormlight, the better the gem is cut, the less Stormlight it leaks, and the longer it holds its charge. If a gem was perfectly cut, on a molecular scale, would it leak Stormlight at all?
In a theoretical flawless gem, then no it would not.
Would it actually give off light?
[...] Theoretically no it would not, but it's not what you're thinking...
No no no, that’s not what I’m thinking, I figured that’s something totally different.
Well, actually, it probably would still give off light, because it's drawing out of the Spiritual Realm. So I’d say it still lights, but it doesn't leak. The leaking is not where the illumination is coming from. The illumination is coming from a direct... It's basically a light bulb screwed into the Spiritual Realm.
Do you have a Alethi script symbol for Q? I've been using kuu(kw) for it.
Isaac is the man for script questions, he developed all of the various alphabets we've got so far.
I love your work. It really inspires me to improve my drawing. Do you have any rough sketches of Marsh's/Inquisitor/Obligator tattoos? I want to be Marsh for Halloween.
I don't, the best image is probably the standing illustration of Marsh in the Adventure Game. In all honesty, they were freehanded on the page, so it was more about a general approximation of shapes than a planned composition of glyphs.
Were you at the Shadows of Self release last night? And what was the hardest drawing to get right?
I was not, it wasn't in the cards for me to travel this time. Hopefully I'll make it out for Stormlight 3. :)
I wasn't, and it blows 'cause Isaac sent me a very awesome photo of a Cryptic Pattern costume and I wish I could've seen it in person. Plus, I like signing and sketching in books :)
The Axehound was an early challenge to design... it's not easy to make a six-foot dog-lobster look affectionate! The antennae do a lot of the work.
The Whitespine was an interesting case because I took a design all the way to near-completion before I scrapped it entirely and started again to get the one in the book. I think I like the current one, but I know I hated the one I did the first time.
The Pattern costume was pretty sweet. And your illustrations in Stormlight really helped me visualize many of the... Interesting aspects of Roshar. They are amazing.
Thank you! That is, ideally, why we do 'em. :)
Who, in your opinion, writes the best fantasy today?
Until recently, I would have said Terry Pratchett, without hesitation. People mistake his books for mere comic fantasy, but that man had as sharp a wit as any Algonquin and more heart than a Care Bear Stare. He knew how to turn a phrase like a tango turns the hips. On more that one occasion, no exaggeration, that goofy old bearded bastard actually made me cry.
To reach out and touch another human through time and space and make them actually feel something... that's good writing.
But he's moved on, and there's plenty of great authors at their height today, so let's stick to the contemporary.
For pure liquid prose, probably Rothfuss.
For interesting concepts, I'm digging Guy Gavriel Kay. China Mieville is great as well.
For action, I'm pretty into my man Brandon. Butcher does a good job with that also. Larry Corriea knows how to write a rocking fight.
Joe Abercrombie is the first author I've read who took those boring battle maps with the arrows and blocks and made them into a gripping, visceral saga of honor and commitment and betrayal and vindication.
Dan Abraham is the man who made a story about a rogue banker into one of the best epics since Ice met Fire. That right there is a Copperfield-level trick.
Didn't you do the RoosterTeeth logo and work on RvB animated ?
Can you talk a little about those two ?
I did!
The RT logo came about back in 2003, I think? I was a fan of the first season of RvB and I hung out in their forums. When they sent out the call to redesign their old clip-art logo, I was there. When other artists were offering mascot-style cartoons, I saw there wasn't anything wrong with the icons in their existing logo, they just needed a fully original representation. It's been one of the longest-reaching and most enduring illustrations of my career, and paid off quite well for what amounted to an afternoon's doodle of a rooster silhouette and some cartoon chatterteeth. I wish I'd drawn the key better, it's all asymmetrical and it never stops driving me nuts.
RvB Animated came around in 2008. By that time I was a Lead Animator at Humoring the Fates, a studio down in Florida. Burnieb asked if we could take on some original RvB animated content, and we gave it our best shot. I did the character designs, boarded it, keyed out the animation and put in most of the gunfire/blaster VFX, but the team at Studio Fates did the lion's share of the real work. We produced the whole thing in-house, and with a core team of less than a dozen.
This was before Monty and his team really revolutionized what Rooster Teeth could do with a blend of machinema and original 3D animation, which ultimately was the perfect solution for what they wanted to do. But it was a good early experiment and a rare opportunity that I'm proud to have taken part in.
I'm pretty sure we were the first production to adapt Halo for 2D traditional, we were certainly a year ahead of the overseas work on Legends. If you dig around in the archives of the studio's production blog, you can find all sorts of early design docs and pencil tests.
Is it practical for an Oracle to get more out of electrum than Vin and Elend tried to?
Yes. It is totally possible.
So if you could see your shadow wince when it turned left, you would think "Oh, Mrs. Peabody's around that corner. I probably shouldn’t turn left!"
It is possible to squeeze more out of it than they did.
How much of the novel to you have to/get to read before producing the art?
As much as I can get! I receive an early draft along with the rest of the team, and it's really useful to read the whole book. It's a privilege not often made available to illustrators on first draft novels.
Did you draw this? www.imgur.com/AazzKDl
I was out of town for the WoR signing but my dad went and picked up a copy for me and one of the people signing that night drew this in the front pages. It's super cool and I have been trying to figure out who did it.
I did! I draw a lot of really quick sketches at signings. I can't do it for everyone because sometimes we're trying to move quickly (Brandon draws long lines), but I try to do it whenever I can. On the plus side, no two are ever quite alike!
I love your work and have been wanting to get Stormlight related tattoos. Is there any way one can commission you into doing an original Shardbearer drawing for tattooing purposes? I love the ones in WoR, and want to get something very similar on my left leg!
Thank you so much!
I'm not sure if I can accept a commission to do something based on the stuff I do officially... maybe if /u/mistborn is down with it?
Most folks just take one of the existing illustrations and have that reproduced. Doing something unique would be a different matter.
I'm more than okay with this, Ben.
Did Hoid conference in on Harmony's chat with Wax?
*laughter* RAFO. *laughter*
On Nalthis, can aluminum prevent somebody from Returning? So if you kill somebody with aluminum and leave the weapon in them?
I don't think that's going to be enough. I think that…
Different way then?
Yeah there are totally ways. I don’t think that that’s going to be enough. There's a difference between being inert and blocking Investiture, and actually sucking out Investiture. If you stuck Nightblood inside of a corpse; there are certain things… if you had a larkin or whatever sitting there that ingests the Investiture as it was coming in, that would prevent [Returning]. I think with aluminum you would just have somebody that comes alive with a wound, so maybe... But I think it would just heal around [the aluminum] and you'd just have a spike in you, kind of like Hemalurgy—but not like Hemalurgy. It's inert, but you know what I mean.
Which suggests you can't actually Awaken aluminum.
No. It's not going to hold a charge.
I assume you can't Forge it, either.
No. In fact the unForgable metal-
Ralkalest?
There's an unForgeable metal mentioned.
Could we call it aluminum if we wanted to?
Let's just say that aluminum through most cultures was considered a mythological metal, and when people could actually find some, they considered it more valuable than gold, in our culture. So just sayin'...
Do you have any other Cosmere related art you are allowed to share? Sketches, drafts, or stuff you did for fun? I love your art style
Thank you! :)
There's a lot of development and draft material that goes into the production, but it's all archived... we're only getting started on the third book, so we'll want to collect a lot more before we try doing anything with it.
There's a few things I've done that weren't directly commissioned, which is basically the core of fan-art (un-commissioned illustration), but I've kept it in the same archives... I should maybe see if I can't dig up something to share.
I would like to know what makes Brandon's books so well-suited to visual adaptation.
Thanks!
He describes dramatic events and characters with clarity while including creative action, which makes it easy to visualize but also stimulating to imagine. He's also gotten quite good at giving you enough information to draw conclusions, without giving you so much that you don't need to bother drawing anything... that took some time, his early books are a lot less descriptive, but even with the first Mistborn novel he had some very strong visual concepts.
In addition, he's often combining something familiar with something fantastic (literally). The familiar elements give an artist a basis upon which to map the fantastic. So we have something like Shardplate, which is plate armor (familiar) but it's made *only * of plates, no cloth or chain (fantastic), and that's where it gets interesting to design. Or we have the Chasmfiends, which were described by Brandon to me as "crayfish-dragons" (familiar/fantastic). Or we have the Inquisitors, tall scary men (familiar) with shiny steel spikes through their eyes that emerge from their skulls like horns (WTF).
Thanks to his descriptive clarity and the familiar/fantastic mix, a properly-trained illustrator has the right elements to produce content with enough basis to set a firm foundation, but enough freedom to add their own creativity to the mix.
Plus, his stuff is just fun. Fun goes a long way. :)
I have to say, I really like seeing art done in a variety of in-universe styles. Particularly the old-time newspaper comics - I get a bit of an Out Our Way feel from those.
Is there some character or art style that's particularly fun to imitate?
I grew up (luckily) with access to some great classic newspaper artists like Winsor McKay and George Herriman and R.F. Outcault, and that's been invaluable when it comes to the broadsheets. I don't think I'm hitting anywhere near their marks, but I try to let that background influence the output.
Thank you for the link, I'll have a lot of fun looking through those!
Ever drawn a Thunderclast ? ;)
I have not! Now that the Chasmfiend is settled, Thunderclasts are high on my list. I have some ideas, but Brandon and I have yet to jam on the subject and we probably won't until they make an appearance in the novels. We'll get there though, never fear... it's a Chekov thing, you don't throw a name like "Thunderclast" out there and never come back to it. :)
Didn't a Thunderclast appear during one of Dalinar's flashbacks early in Words of Radiance? (The one in the Purelake.) There was a little bit of physical description of the beastie too... something like a giant stone skeleton with glowing red eyes.
You're right! I just went and checked the WoR text, there is a brief description of a fight between full Knights Radiant and a thunderclast, early in the book, and with enough descriptors to start with. It's been so long since I read it, and it's not a Shallan scene so I couldn't work a page out of it, that I must have forgotten.
Well, now I have to do something sometime, don't I? :)
How much time do you spend from concept to the final design? And do you do many side projects or commission work?
It varies a lot depending on the design... we have a reasonably long development period for Stormlight, 3-6 months, but we also do a lot of communication via email and that's slow.
I always have a couple side projects, things I'd like to develop if I can ever assemble a conjumbleration of loose parts into a single machine.
As a freelancer (part-time now, as I have a studio job during the day) I'm always looking for new opportunities, but for the last couple years I've been keeping a pretty full dance card. It's hard to catch me when I'm not already booked, and I don't usually schedule commitments too far in advance.
How did you first make it in the illustration industry? What steps would you recommend to artists looking to start working professionally?
Short version:
I started drawing cheap quarter-pages and character vignettes for RPG companies at bargain-basement prices, and I slowly networked that into better and better jobs through a general policy of "be nice, don't drop the ball". It took a loooong time and a lot of low-rent work.
I hooked up with Brandon in 2008, when I read Mistborn and drew up some fan-art, posted that to his forums at what turned out to be the perfect time (which I had no way of knowing, so that's my lottery ticket story :)
Longer Version for Aspiring Artists who want to hear some Real TalkTM :
I've been "working professionally" (getting paid to draw) a lot longer than I've been "making it" (getting paid enough to live on just by drawing)... and I've done most of it without mentoring, so my traditional learning process has been something along the lines of "get it horribly wrong, and then fix it, rinse-repeat".
All this is to say I may not be a good role model. But I started out pretty low and I'm doing all right today, so maybe I can contribute something useful.
More than anything, I think it's more important to love doing it than to love being it... If I never make it in The Big Time, I still do it. It's the activity itself you're enjoying, not the status or the rewards. When I do succeed, I often find those rewards and the status are nice, but they're fleeting and the only thing that keeps 'em coming is more work.
You do good work, you get more work. It's an never-ending cycle, but that's a fine thing so long as you love working.
I recommend learning the fundamental basics put forth by classical illustrators like Andrew Loomis. Sometimes all that formal stuff feels boring and static and it's hard to relate it to what you really want to do, like you're being stuffed into a conformity box. But believe me, if you can master that stuff and learn to use it, you can do anything in any style you like and it will always look solid. Look around at the best of the best, see the fundamentals in play in their work, recognize that you can take that stodgy mathy rules-laden stuff and make anything with it.
Persevere. I started getting paid to draw when I was 18. I stopped working at "real jobs" when I was 28. I started getting the work I'm most proud of today when I was 32.
That's a long time, I pretty much went through my entire youth without ever knowing if I'd succeed. But I've been drawing all my life, and I really don't know what else I would do. So even if it meant that I worked a 32 week shift at Sunglass Hut while I drew shitty T-shirt designs for anyone who'd pay me $50, I never stopped working or saw myself as anything other than a craftsman.
Lots of people make it happen faster. Even more people never make it happen at all. But you can't lose the game if you keep on playing.
Have you ever drawn a illustration of a character that is raising his/her eyebrow?
You better believe it. I've caught myself drawing Dreamworks Face on a number of occasions. It's a very versatile expression that exaggerates easily, but I'll admit it's pretty beat to death.
The lake above Elantris... When Raoden goes in the lake above Elantris, he hears a voice. Is that a voice of a Cognitive shadow?
That's an excellent question.
Yes it is. *laughter* RAFO?
RAFO.
How many worldhoppers have we seen?
Oh, I haven't kept track, you've seen quite a few. There's one from Mistborn, did you catch him? I don't think people have really picked out the Terriswoman yet, who makes her way into them, but they're mostly not supposed to be noticeable yet, until you get to know them as characters and you look back and be like "oh that was that person."
Is it the Terriswoman I think it is?
I don't know which Terriswoman you think it is.
Tindwyl?
No.
Since both the mists and Stormlight are very similar in many ways, are there gaseous, liquid, and solid states of Stormlight?
That's a RAFO, but you know that there is a gas and a liquid.
The gas is just the stuff in the storms, right?
Isn’t there the lake?
The lake is liquid. So you know there’s two of the three already. So just sayin'...
Do you have a shardpen, or what? Does it change to a shardbrush or a shardpencil when you have to use those tools? And can a spren change into a shardPhotoShop, or what?
Funny thing is, working digitally is kinda magical. I mean, you can turn back time. You can stack a hundred invisible sheets of paper and draw on each one separately, with the result being no thicker than a single page. You can cut and paste and warp and blur and save a perfect copy trapped in time just in case your next experiment goes horribly awry.
And if you do it right and well, nobody will never know the difference.
It ain't a shard, exactly, but it'll do. :)
Lerasium grants all Allomantic powers when burned. Atium, when used as a spike, can steal any power. Is there a way to create a metalmind that can store anything?
There is a way to create a metalmind that can store anything.
Harmonium?
I’m not saying; I gave you an answer…
Could you Forge an entire human? What if a kandra eats that human?
Yes, you could Forge an entire human, and the kandra can eat that human as long as the Forgery takes. The problem is, once you break the seal, they're going to change back. So that kandra would have to find a way to eat that person without breaking the Forgery. In that case it would just remain.
If an Allomancer ate a Forged metal, what happens?
If an Allomancer eats a Forged metal, there is going to be some Investiture in that Forged metal, but it's not going to be keyed the right way, so it'd be like eating a metalmind... If you're asking if the metal was Forged into a different type of metal, the Forgery will take and it will believe and... that's going to get really weird. I have not considered that. That's a "let me think about it." My instincts say that it's going to work like the metal it's become long enough to burn for a few minutes, and then that's going to break the Forgery, and it's going to snap out of it and become the other [original] metal. That’s my instinct, but I’ll have to think about it further. [...] It's going to be really hard to burn a metal that's Invested like that. The magics don't mix real well.
Eh, you can burn metalminds.
Yeah, you can, but it’s from the same "magic set", right? So...
Is Vasher trying to find Nightblood?
Vasher misses Nightblood and feels responsible for him.
Nicrosil Feruchemy stores Investiture. Would a Nicrosil Compounder be able to gain Investiture up to the power of a Shard by infinitely Compounding?
I talk a lot about that in an upcoming Mistborn book. So that’s a RAFO. The reading is coming. I will explain what it does.
Can you tell me which is the most massive moon [of Roshar]? Not the biggest, but the most massive moon.
I think the biggest is the most massive. All three moons are much closer than our moon is.
Yes, I gathered that. And so is that Nomon?
Yes.
How big is Nomon on the night sky, compared to our moon?
Larger than our moon, but not dominating of the sky.
[Interruption]
I do believe Nomon is, I told Peter, bigger. But he had to run the actual calculations, so he may come back and say, "No Brandon, that's not possible." But I believe it is bigger than our moon in the sky. You're supposed to be able to see moderately well by Nomon.
Does [The] Stormlight Archive happen before or after Warbreaker?
It happens after.
What planet is Vasher from?
He did originate on Nalthis, which is the Warbreaker world, but he worldhopped very early in his life.
And what planet did he get the ability to change his shape, or is that because he's a Returned?
That's because he's a Returned, yes.
So it's not because he's a Lightweaver?
Nope. That is a great question, though. He is mostly what he appears to be, with some hidden parts of his past.
If the spren that bond people scream when they touch a Shardblade, but then at the end of Words of Radiance Kaladin holds Szeth's honorblade and they do not have a problem with that, why does the Stormfather force Dalinar to get rid of his Honorblade at the end Words of Radiance?
So... He does not have an Honorblade at the end of Words of Radiance.
He does not. Oh, I thought he got it from... [Taln]
Yes, that's what the assumption is. If you look very closely, the blade that you think he ends up with is described differently from the one that he actually does.
How did Nightblood get on Roshar?
RAFO.
I was curious if Nightblood was the only one of its kind, or if Vasher and Shashara have made any others.
That's a RAFO. Good question. Very good question. There was a point in time when Nightblood was the only one of its kind, and it may have continued until now.
Which character in your books so far have you had the most fun bringing to life?
Probably Wayne. He's just fun to write. When I get in his viewpoint, the weirdness takes over and it's great.
How long does it take a newly-made chair to start thinking of itself as a chair?
It depends on how- is the perception of the people who are using it.
So if it just drifted together in space magically into a chair...
Yes. It would not actually start thinking of itself as a chair.
So it's a bit like if a tree falls in a forest, and there's nobody there to hear it...
Yes.
Is there any difference between the healing that Feruchemical gold and held Stormlight can accomplish?
There are minor differences, but they work on the same principle, so...
If you spiked out Miles' Feruchemical gold, would he be able to burn his Allomantic reserves [read: Feruchemical reserves using Allomancy] and heal it back?
If you spiked out his ability to heal gold and somehow left him alive?
Yeah, but still having Allomancy.
Still has Allomancy...
And he’s like in the middle of burning a goldmind.
Yes, that would still work. It'd still have a Spiritual Connection to him.
So if you're a Coinshot and you get [spiked] to have Feruchemical steel, and then you lose the spike after making a store, you can still Compound that for speed?
Yes... Yeah, that should still work.
Was Paalm doing that?
That's a RAFO.
Is it possible to Compound aluminum, or will it all just poof away the second you start trying it?
I have actually been asked that. And I RAFO'd them, so I'm going to RAFO you.
What happens if a Parshendi attunes Barry White?
*laughs* I think that if they attune Barry White they immediately enter mateform.
How many Horneater peaks are there? Or is it irrelevant?
It's not irrelevant. You will find that out in one of the books. I’m not going to canonize that yet. Because the honest truth is, I'm wavering on how exactly I want that to look. So that's the "I don't want to canonize it yet" RAFO.
Can Hoid safely have an MRI?
Why do you ask that?
Because if you have metal inside your body, and you have an MRI, which is magnetic, it's very bad for you.
You're just assuming that... That's a very clever way to try to get around a question that I have not answered and intentionally said I am not going to answer, so...
Also, tattoos. You can't have a tattoo with an MRI. The ink has little bits of metal in it.
You can't? Well, I assume there are tattoo inks that are not little bits of metal.
That's true.
