Iron Triceratops Project?

Yes, you read that right, Iron Triceratops Project. Triceratops, as in the three horned dinosaur.  Why? Close your eyes and picture it for a second. Odds are you don't see the same thing I did when I had the idea. Nor would I want you to. But picture it anyway. Is it funny, cool, frighting? All of the above? But most of all, did you smile when you thought about it? Did you lose yourself in the thought of something totally unreal for just a moment? I hope so. What you just felt is what I call "the ten year old effect," the act of thinking how cool something would be without caring what anyone else thinks, just unchaining your imagination for fun's sake. As a fledgling writer, I prize imagination. It's a skill, to imagine things, as much as riding a bike is. Right now, we're really spoiled, with movies and TV shows that use CGI to do the work our brains used to. In a way, its like having a world of paint by numbers books when all you really want is a napkin and a pen to doodle with, or just your own vision of how something should look. That's how the best stories captivate us for a lifetime. We visualize them, put our own spin on them, make them our own. Imagination makes them part of our life and times, no matter how far away or long ago the story is set. Which brings me to the real reason for the Iron Triceratops: fun with anachronisms. I'm a huge fan of Steampunk, Dieselpunk, and old school pulp adventure stories. Of visions of the future fifty years out dated, or the past as it never was, as  we wanted it to be. Popular fiction has always been rooted in idealizing the past, Some genres just depend on it more than others (Westerns, for example. Gunsmoke and A Fistfull of Dollars no more reflect normal life in 1800's America than Disney's Cinderella accurately reflects romance in 1400's England). My work is no different. It's the freedom to idealize and imagine that draws me to write and draw. I started this blog to explore as much as to promote my projects. To give myself a place to imagine, a sounding board as much as a showcase, but most of all, a place to make my imagination count for something.  

Even if that something is an Iron Triceratops...  

-John,  June 2013