So it came to me one lunchtime, browsing through an old copy of SFX trying to wrack my brains what story I'd like to write and draw for 10thology, a collection of 10 stories, 10 pages in length by the cream of the crop of Welsh creators & creators living & working in Wales from the Small Press & Indie scene to industry legends such as Mike Collins.
My 'cream' was clotting at that moment, then something 'cropped' up...
It's sometimes amazing where inspiration strikes, a flash of memory, a throwaway comment, a image catching your eye - and sometimes when the universe isn't looking, all of these pieces come together.
So, there I am, munching on a soggy egg mayonaise baguette in the half hour's lunchbreak I get in the 'day job', reading an article about one of my childhood heroes - Ray Harryhousen and trying to think of something cool, original and exciting with a 'typically Welsh' flavour; when I spy the sports pages of the local paper my colleague has left on the kitchen table.
There are a few pictures of a local rugby match. I'm looking at the shape of the ball and how some of the players remind me of Neanderthals, with their beaten and hammered brows, squashed noses and general brick s**thouse physiques. I'm also thinking of how horrible this egg sandwich is as I read a paragraph on one of Harryhousen's films, Mysterious Island and something starts to germinate.
I'm remembering my wide-eyed excitement on seeing the giant Phorusrhacos (Terror Bird) scene on the beach (if you're an afficianado of Ray Harryhousen's work, you'll know what I'm referring to, or failing that you've more than likely seen Roland Emmerich's 10,000bc with the Terror Bird attack).
Then it happens, one of those purely intuitive moments when my brain starts to piece together all of these disjointed fragments into one random jigsaw puzzle. More often than not, a simple idea or ideas, twisted, wrung out & reverse engineered into something bizarre but workable. (I'd like to think at this point that a giant Terror Bird came crashing though the skylight window above me and I shouted `Eureka!' or ' I Shall strike fear into the cowardly and superstitious by becoming a Terror Bird!' or somesuch, but no, even I'm not that geeky! ;-P
Now, many of you have gathered I'm Welsh by now (there's lovely isn't it!), my ogn - Unbelievable has a typically Welsh theme and flavour, I am not however 'stereotypically' Welsh.
I don't speak Welsh, I know a handfull of words, a few sentences to get by, my pronunciation isn't bad at all and am not 'ashamed I don't know my own language', I speak 2 languages, English (in a Welsh accent) and Bad language, reserved for the inept, stupid and other drivers.
I don't like Rugby, there...I said it, I'm fine with people who do, play and live it, just not my cup of tea, pint of beer, whatever! I've never been very sporty, I may have 'Rugby player's legs, but they end in clown's feet and I hated playing it in school as I'd spend more time eating grass and plowing the mud with my face than running with a ball and Mamma Wyatt's boy liked his clothes clean and his nose pretty.
However, I digress, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, so I was going to do a story based on the fictitious origin of the game of Rugby, set in a prehistoric valley in primordial Wales.
My 'players' were not only going to look like, but be Neanderthals! Not only that, they were going to be playing the most dangerous game of Rugby ever invented and all for the sake of their chief's breakfast!
Well, that's not entirely true, there was a rite of passage tale thrown in and a bit of sibling rivalry... and lots of giant Terror Birds!
Now I may ruffle a few feathers in the Palaentology field, I am aware that `phorusrhacids' were native to South, then North America, they migrated North during the 'Great American Interchange', its just that, in my universe, a few kept going and crossed Pangea to what was once Wales and then they became land locked!
It's my universe and my 'artistic license' is fully updated with my current details, available on request, you go back to your fossils and I'll go back to my comics.
So, after hatching the idea, the pitch, for what was to become 'The Valley of Gwadni' was submitted to the 10thology* team along with one or two sketches for approval. *At this time, the book was just known as 'The Welsh Book' and went through a number of different names and suggestions.
So why 'Valley of 'Gwadni'? It was partly as an homage to one of my heroes, an artistic genius who put such character into the painstakingly animated creatures who enlivened my childhood curiousity for monsters and mythology and gave us the superb Sindbad movies and the original Clash of the Titans.
One of my all time favourite Harryhousen movies is The Valley Of Gwangi, a tale of cowboys, a Forbidden valley and a nasty T-Rex, amongst other stop-motion dinosaurs! (Check it out, there's a great T-Rex versus elephant battle). What better title for a Welsh prehistoric tale than a 'Valley of .....'?
Subsequently trawling through the 'G' section of an old Welsh/English Dictionary, I came across the word `Gwadni', which translates as 'cut & run' - and for the title of this tale it was bloody perfect!!
As in most of my ideas for stories, they play out and replay constantly in my head (it's pretty full in there sometimes). I kept this one warm for a few weeks, planning and plotting and researching and even offered out (via Twitter) some cameo spots in my tale to the willing. There are a few characters that may be recognisable in their Neanderthal physiques, not all survive and some even include a few of my fellow creators who unfortunately could not participate for the 1st edition of 10thology, had to get them in the book somehow.
10thology is due to be launched at the Cardiff International Comic Expo next month. It's an astounding anthology from what I've seen and read so far and all of the tenaceaous creators involved have brought such an eclectic mix of stories to the table, that I believe it's going to be one of the best all ages UK anthologies out there!
All kudos to my fellow Pen Dragon, Stuart Tipples for organising and co-ordinating this book!
Here are a couple of preliminary sketches and a page of random panel images from my story, `The Valley of Gwadni' for you to enjoy.
(Nik-Nik, D'Than and Sakot character sketches).
(Terror Bird/Phorosrhacos preliminary sketches, having researched, I enlarged the skull and beak to make even more menacing).
Once again, I'm a glutton for punishment, but an 'old school' tale deserves an 'old school' approach and so all of the artwork for The Valley Of Gwadni has been hand drawn, inked and coloured. Never one to be completely satisfied with my work, there are a few panels that I'm 'quite' happy with. Even had to scrap the final page and re-draw from scratch when I learned the hard way, how a simple mistake in picking the wrong inking pen can result in colour bleeds on final artwork! Spitting feathers is an understatement, but on a positive note, it created a different ending which I'm more happier with.
Next time, I'll be blogging about an especially 'egg-citing' piece of original 3D art I'm working on for the Cardiff show, one which one lucky person could get their hands on by `shelling' out a few for charity!
The rest is Pre-History, as they say.
Si
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