Bertram Fiddle's Cabinet of Curiosity

Follow me, Bertram Fiddle, Leading Victorian Explorator, on journeys into the unknown.

[bertramfiddle]

A Bleaker Predicklement screenshots! Coming in November! http://store.steampowered.com/app/489930

[bertramfiddle]

Huzzah! Brace yourself! Episode 2 is on it’s way!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/489930

[bertramfiddle]

The hunt for Geoff the Murderer shall continue! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[bertramfiddle]

Just 3 days to go! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[bertramfiddle]

Wow! Tim Schafer backs my game! I can’t believe it.

[pannanim]

I drew a fanart for Bertram Fiddle, an awesome adventure game made by Seb Burnett  and set in the Victorian London. Rumpus Animation has just started a Kickstarter campaign for its second episode, have a look at it!!:)

Bertram Fiddle Kickstarter

[bertramfiddle]

“We want a Lollipop” Happy Trick or Treating Everybody

[bertramfiddle]

The fantastic @inkybat has drawn Bertram for the Art of Bertram Fiddle book reward on my kickstarter! I love it!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[bertramfiddle]

The first hand-painted Gavin reward is ready! Deepest thanks to the amazing https://www.facebook.com/castingsofcthulhu for making him! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[bertramfiddle]

Geoff the Murderer strikes again!

[bertramfiddle]

All the urchins are hard at work to make Episode 2 happen! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[bertramfiddle]

[bertramfiddle]

#Bertram2 from @wj-c Cworr! This will be part of the Art of Bertram Fiddle book if we get funded! Help make this Adventure happen! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763843992/bertram-fiddle-a-victorian-animated-adventure-game

[thehairsonthebackofyourneck]

[briancoldrick]

The 12 Bens #7-12  These were created for The Inn to the West in Clifden. They’re based on loose translation of the Irish names of the range of peaks in Connemara. Posting the full set after their exhibition in the Inn during Clifden Arts Festival.

Prints are available at the Inn… so head out there!

[rumpuslr]

Our #MobyDickLive collab with @WarwickJC for @TSR_Stories is now online! 

[mobydickillustrated]

Here’s a little overview of the other material I’m drawing on for this project! I’ll start posting the art itself on April 1 (some progress already is on Patreon!), so I promise this won’t just be endless hype.

The history and technologies of whaling are elaborately described in Moby-Dick, and an understanding of more of those details than you’d think is necessary to follow the book. You come away from the book with a dense knowledge of an industry that feels much further from the contemporary world than it actually is. I’m interested in presenting these details as competently I can, but also using them in different, abstract ways. The Pequod itself, for instance, is presented in the text as a factory, a world, a nation, and hell itself. Most of the reference material I’ve accumulated has been in the interest of understanding the details of the ship and the fishery well enough to work with that kind of metaphor.

I’ve also looked at a lot of contemporary illustrations of whaling, and at scrimshaw, as conscious stylistic influences. I’m interested in something the looks a little like 1800s print illustration, with heavy shadows and a lot of digressive hatching meant to be suggestive of scrimshaw. Period photography of whaling is hard to find, but illustration’s a little easier. And I’ve also gotten really into Gustave Doré lately, especially his illustrations for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: intense drama in black and white, and a dramatic use of the ship’s rigging.

Typesetting and layout and other big-picture design concerns aren’t immediately important, as the book won’t be put together and printed for a while. I’ve messed around with book design a little, in the interest of getting my bearings and developing a cohesive style for the text and the illustrations and everything else. Basically, I’m relying heavily on the typographical idiosyncrasies of the first American edition, and modernizing it a little less than modern editions of the book tend to. I’m using a display type meant to evoke Caslon’s Two-Line Egyptian (the link is to a new reconstruction of the font), the first commercially-available sans-serif font: it representing the same sort of bridge between classical and modern that Moby-Dick does.