Kurt Wilcken is a compulsive RPG player and ninja cartoonist. He is best known for his furry art, being somewhat furry himself, and has written and drawn numerous stories for Antarctic Press and Radio Comix. You can contact him at kurtoons@charter.net
Quote of the Day:
I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. -- Woody Allen
Reviews of 'Great Book of Dragon Patterns' and 'The Flight of Dragons'
By Kurt Wilcken
The other week, about an hour and a half before I had to go to work, our oldest daughter Gamera Rose announced that she had to research the History of Jazz for school and asked if I could take her to the library. After the fact, I realized that I should have just said "Look it up on the Internet; I'm taking a nap!" but these things never occur to me until later. Being the concientious father, I grumpily ferried her to the Public Library. Good thing I did, too. If I hadn't gone to the library, I wouldn't have found this book.
Great Book of Dragon Patterns by Lora S. Irish does not at first glance look like a gaming resource. It's a craft book, a collection of patterns that can be used as the basis of either drawings, paintings, or ornamentations on other craft projects.
I've been drawing cartoons since I was knee high to a wyvern and drawing dragons for almost as long, and I must admit I have a rather snobbish attitude towards these kinds of "101 Dire Wyrms You Can Draw!" type books. "Oh, they're okay if you can't draw," my inner snob tells me, "or if you don't have any imagination."
This, of course, is rubbish. Any artist can use a book of visual reference and every artist copies; it's how they develop their own style. Pattern books can be useful inspirations for coming up with original designs. Great Book of Dragon Patterns goes beyond that.
It has chapters on draconic anatomy, encouraging the artist to go beyond the surface shape of the dragon and consider it's body structure. The author compares different body types for dragons based on existing animals and explains the logic of how the structure fits together. In another chapter, she uses the example of a crocodile skull to show, step-by-step, how to build a dragon's head where the horns, fangs and ridges grow naturally out of the structure of the head. Another chapter goes into detail about different methods for rendering scales, a matter I had frankly never thought much about , but she explains not only how to, but how to do it your own way.
The book isn't just artsy-stuff. The author also describes different types of traditional dragons, both the western, gold-hording, maiden-devouring species and the more benign, snake-like oriental dragons. She talks about dragon characteristics and lore and relates the stories of several famous dragons of legend and their slayers, such as the one slain by the Greek hero Cadmus, and the dragon of St. George. I found this background information interesting and informative. Much of it I was familiar with, but a lot was new to me.
Great Book of Dragons is by no means an exhaustive treatise on dragons in myth and legend, any more than it is a encyclopaedic survey of the dragon in art; but if you are the kind of gamer who would like to make a dragon slipcover to go over his Monster Manual, or thinks the idea of having a dicebag embroidered with a fire-drake would be cool, I would say it's well worth picking up. Even if you aren't interested in drawing or in crafts, the background information is entertaining enough to warrent checking it out of the library.
Who knows, you might decide to try drawing a dragon yourself.
Great Book of Dragon Patterns Lora S. Irish
Fox Chapel Publishing Co. Inc.
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Througout Great Book of Dragon Patterns, the author maintains the Tolkienish pose that the dragons are real, and that the legends she relates are memories of actual living, breathing creatures. This reminded me of another scholarly book of dracology, The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson.
It was part of the boom in the late '70s and early '80s of coffee table art books purporting to be scientific books about creatures of fantasy that followed the enormously successful Gnomes by Will Huygen & Rien Poortvliet. Unlike most of these book which elaborate on legend and folklore and present it as research, Dickinson's book gives a detailed, and reasonably plausible, rationalization for how dragons could have existed.
Dickinson starts by addressing how the dragons could fly and comes up with an ingenious suggestion. He then shows how this method explains many of the aspects of dragon lore and legend and speculates on how such a system of flight and such a life cycle could have evolved. Throughout the book, he supports his speculations with passages of dracology: classical writers, medieval and rennaissance scholars, Nordic and Chinese legends, and modern day fantasists. Sometimes his thesis stretches a little thin, as in his explanation for the dragon's fascination with riddles, but he is always entertaining.
I don't care so much for the illustrations by Wayne Anderson. They sometimes whimsical, sometimes grotesque. The art is by no means bad, but it is not to my taste and does not to my mind present a unified whole. To me it looks very much like the publisher had a manuscript about dragons and portfolio of dragon art and shuffled the two together. In a few places captions try to explain how a given picture applies to a salient point of the text, but, for the most part, the art provides an atmosphere for the text rather than illustrating it.
Nevertheless, The Flight of Dragons is a fun, thoughtful book and I recommend it for any dragon-lover.
The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson
Illustrated by Wayne Anderson
Harper & Row
The Flight of Dragons was also adapted as an animated film by Rankin-Bass, the wizards who animated The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn. The Rankin-Bass version is actually a morphing of two books: the plot is taken from Gordon R. Dickson's classic The Dragon and the George and supplemented with scientific asides about the Natural History of Dragons from Flight. (And, if I recall, the visual design of the dragons was based off the Wayne Anderson drawings, but I may be mistaken about that).
Like Rankin-Bass' other animated fantasies of the '80s, Flight of Dragons holds up remarkably well. The plot is based on the dualistic notion of Magic vs. Logic, which I personally disagree with (to me, Fantasy does not mean freedom from Logic, but rather a different reality which must possess it's own internal Logic; but that's a whole different argument), but which gives the story a little more philosophical meat than your typical quest against an evil wizard usually has. The film also features voice acting by favorites like John Ritter, Harry Morgan and the incomperable James Earl Jones.
It is certainly worth renting, and if you are a fan of dragons or have children who are, I'd say it's worth buying too.
* * * * *
I got an e-mail this past month about my interview with Phil Foglio from Elizabeth McCoy, who has written for Steve Jackson Games and edits their line of "In Nomine" games.
Hiya! Was just reading the interview and while I cheer all of it, I do want to clear up one teensy
minor point that is near and dear to my heart...
IOU was not _directly_ anime-influenced. We got into anime, starting
with Ranma 1/2, because of playtesters saying that those should be
listed as inspirational material for IOU. (I.e., read/watch this, and
be inspired!)
However, IOU _was_ influenced by Teenagers from Outer Space, which definitely
has roots in anime and manga. And I can't remember if our liking for the
American manga, GoldDigger, predates or post-dates IOU. *grin*
So the influences are only there via roundabout routes -- we'd probably
have stuck in catgirls and kitsune if we'd been properly anime-indoctrinated
at the time.
Still, that's a minor point, and the interview was very keen! I'm glad
to have found it!
My apologies, Beth. GURPS: IOU (Illuminati University) is one of those books which tempted me when it first came out, but which I've never gotten around to buying. At the time I felt that using a realistic system like GURPS for a beer-n-pretzels comedy game was overthinking things and that TFOS was the ideal system for the genre.
Much as I like GURPS, I still prefer using TFOS for all-out comedy; (that or TOON). But GURPS: IOU does sound like a fun book, eminently full of bits worth stealing -- that is, resources for the Game Master. I will add it to the list of fine Steve Jackson products I reeeeealy really want.
I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
Addendum: Speaking of Steve Jackson Games, another thing I should have mentioned. A lot of customers have had problems with pages falling out of the new GURPS 4th Edition Basic Set (which I reviewed here)
This is their statement on the problem:
If you are having problems with GURPS Basic. . . please e-mail mailto:orders@warehouse23.com. Even if you bought at another store. Even if you are outside the US. We really, really want to make the situation right for our customers, and knowing how many books are affected helps us figure out how to reduce/prevent the problem in the future. Please do not e-mail other members of the SJ Games staff, they just have to forward it onto orders anyway. We appreciate your cooperation and patience in this matter.
In short, if you have a copy of the first printing of the 4th Edition Basic Set, they will replace it with a copy of the second printing, which has a much stronger, more durable binding. I have not gotten around to doing this myself (my binding seems to be holding together okay, so far) but the people who have say they are impressed by the promptness and helpfulness of SJG in fixing the situation.
* * * * *
And another piece of business, There's still a week left to plan for Fire and Ice, the gaming show that made Sheboygan famous. Wait, no actually it was bratwurst that made Sheboygan famous. In any case, this year's event will be a three-day extravaganza of dice rolling, card flipping, miniature fighting goodness; running February 18, 19 and 20th. On Friday, there will be a day-long showing of the Entire Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings!
If you can't make it, don't forget to make a detour over to our Nifty Pop Thought Forum There you can leave any thoughts, comments or questions. Or you may e-mail me. I live for feedback!
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