Steam-Funk Studios

A Multimedia Production & Marketing firm that hosts various products and services. Incorporated officially on June 17th 2011, but with various elements and properties predating that, we have featured at and promoted at a variety of conventions and events.

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The Unconventional​: The Long March to Launch

This entire month, keep an eye on the Steam-Funk Studios​ page as we showcase, daily, our various staff, editors, and other glimpses of insight. We'll also include livestreams talking about the upcoming content, and general reflections on this seven year journey, culminating in our pending brand-merger with Geeks Gone Wild​ and others, and the upcoming "THUD-Cast".

Stay tuned, folks!

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With a fair amount of irony, having just returned from a Steampunk Convention in New Jersey, we reflect upon our beginnings. So enjoy a sneak-peek of our celebratory video, and do join us in commemorating 9 years of our endeavors within live performance, media production, LARP & development of our various endeavors, inclusive of The Living Multiverse and the The Unconventional! Featuring stills by M.G.Norris Photography, as well as branding and promotions by Egregore Design! Thank you all, to all of our staff, affiliates, colleagues, clients, playtesters, models, and of course, our fans, in the various communities we’ve connected to, for almost-a-decade of support and collaboration!

Steam-Funk Studios

With a fair amount of irony, having just returned from a Steampunk Convention in New Jersey, we reflect upon our beginnings. So enjoy a snea

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What’s that? Just a friendly reminder from those of us at Steam-Funk Studios to catch our content at Manifest Density Tour: COGS Expo 2! Bharat's Ballads! Cosplay Court Case! And much more! We'll even be exploring behind-the-scenes of The Living Multiverse, our multi-platform fictional project featuring teams of artists, writers and playtesters spanning the continental U.S.! And why YES, we DO have our Performance-Schedule for the carnage! ————————————————————————————

Friday 4:30 - 5:30 pm Airship’s & Arya-Samaj (Salon 3) 5:30 - 6:30 pm Mantra, Mudra, Sutra Mecha (Salon 3) 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm  Bharat’s Ballads (Ball Room Stage) Saturday 9pm - 11pm Cosplay Court Case: Night Court (18+) (Living Room Stage) 11pm - 12am Swagger 303: Hench & Henceforth (Troy Hills Room) Sunday 1 pm - 2 pm       For A Few Dice More (Main Stage) ———————————————————————————— Tales to Astound: Bharat’s Ballads (Multicultural Folklore w/Modern References) A Storytelling Session with Rohan Mauryan Balraj & his band of notorious Silk Road mercenaries, the Dogs of War. Outlandish deeds and daring exploits are retold, to what audience members are not ‘roped-in’ to participate as extras or ‘Special Effects’. The Ramayana as WWE Smackdown? Epic Battles of Devas and Rakshasas as Redneck Olympics? Araungzeb and Shivajii as the most epic of Rap Beefs? All this and more! Mantras, Mudra, Sutra & MECHA!!! (Vedic & SE Asian influence on Sci Fi, Fantasy, & Horror) Being an exploration of the numerous instances, concepts and derivative works, past and present, that have been produced by both Western and Eastern Presses, inclusive of Scripture, Literature, Saga Poetry, Graphic Novels, Roleplaying Games and more. From the Rg Veda to Ramayana 3392 A.D. From Escher to Exalted RPG. Grab your Brahamastra and get ready to Pilot some Vimana. First one to mention Aliens gets hit with the Sanskrit version of the Mahabharata. Swagger 303: Hench & Henceforth - A Finale (18+) Back for one Final Time, One Night Only. A Count Named Slick-Brass and the Titilus Crew have schooled audiences from one end of the nation to the other, with 'Swagger 101: The Art of Shameless Self Promotion' and 'Swagger 202: More than a Hint of Pimp'. Bringing the Trilogy to a close, with this Postgraduate Studies course, The good Count himself analyzes his Crew, both present and historical, and showcases the most valuable arsenal in any Captain, Commander or Overlord has in their repetoir: their Squad. Spanning the Mahabharata to Alexander's Companions, to the Star Trek Bridge crew, and other Magnificent Seven allegories. Strap in, and bring your crew. This one's going to make an Impact Crater. Cosplay Court Case: Night Court (18+), Tesla Tribunal Edition Is your character in need of justice? For the past fifteen years, the officers of Cosplay Court Case have arbitrated grievances across fandoms of all genres with assistance from audience members in this widely-loved improv event. So whether you're a Arthur Conan Doyle looking to file a restraining order against modern fandom for molesting his beloved Sherlock, The League of Extraordinary Gentlement seeking damage against Hollywood for wage theft and Reputational Slaughter, or want Will Smith's Jim West tried for war crimes against Robotic Spiders, come get yourself on the docket! Our Irascible, Irreverent, Malevolent arbitration is HERE for YOU! For a Few Dice More: LMV Design Diaries (Lateral Thinking & Ditching Story Formula). An analysis of the line between internal logic and tropes in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, while engaging with particle physics, brane cosmology, and M- and SuperString- Theories. A quick overview of Campbell’s Monomyth, Dramatica’s, Story-Quartets, and Dan Harmon’s Story-Circle. *restrained Yawn, followed by kicking over a table* These methods have their logic and uses... and moments where they break HARD. We’ll review when these rules should be followed, when they should be AXED, and how to circumvent them with style! Spanning ventures from Tabletop RPG's to LARP to Live Performance Troupes, and back to written product.

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Steam-Funk Studios is roaring out of ‘performance retirement’ with a vengeance! Yes, we know you've been patient. We've been on hiatus, working on launching an online publication and designing gaming products.

Well, we are back. We hope you brought snacks.

We begin the The Manifest Density Tour, by returning in numbers to PhilCon, for the 81st Anniversary. Stage Shows on Vedic Mythology, academic examinations of pop culture, pretty straightforward, right?

Not at all. Because we're not raging across the east coast alone. We're bringing out affiliates in Cosplay Court Case along for the ride! You’ve got salty beef? Well hash it out in Cosplay Night Court’s 18+ antics, at BOTH of our tour-stops, wherein various parties and personalities may collide, be they grievances between characters, or even entire franchises.

The tour continues with COGS Expo in May 2019, for its second year. And for that particular appearance, Slick-Brass and the Titilus Crew are fiending to share some new content. Bringing 5+ items for a veritable lasagna of content, inclusive of debuting the third “Swagger” Course, "Hench & Henceforth". A Finalé for the Count’s long-standing academic lectures in primping, business management and interplanar street-hustle... This one is an event not to be missed!

Have we not rustled your bits enough? Not a worry. “For A Few Dice More”, The Living Multiverse Design Diaries, will arrange various members of our performance and writing cast, to discuss the nuances of implementing content in LARP form, versus Tabletop Playtesting, and the particulars of transcending art-form and media, in storytelling.

All this, and yes, both appearances will have associated closed-set photo shoots for The Living Multiverse, co-produced by Geeks Gone Wild. Further Details of all the above on our Facebook Event: Steam-Funk Studios Presents: The Manifest Density Tour.

"You ... are my Destiny." "No, but this IS your Density." ————————————————————— Manifest Density Tour: PhilCon - https://www.facebook.com/events/1950630431693318/?ti=icl Manifest Density Tour: COGS Expo 2 - https://www.facebook.com/events/417156702021676/

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LESS THAN TWO DAYS TO HAVOC!!!

We at Steam-Funk Studios are typically -STRICTLY- mercenary, and have been focused on RPG production with The Living Multiverse for some time. But, given the massive community outpouring and need to help our vendors, we've decided to saddle up and return to Jersey for the first time in 4 years.  The C.O.G.S. Expo was assembled to assist the various vendors operating at a loss or disenfranchised by the recent upheaval in the steampunk community, and we are proud to be a part of it! Further details can be found at our event - Cry Havoc!!! The Living Multiverse at COGS Expo. We’ve recently updated our schedule for all of our presented content. Hope to see you all there! Schedule follows:

--------------------------------------------------------------- Panel - Release the Hounds! (Creatives, Intellectual Property & Organized Chaos) - 6 - 7 pm Friday, Salon C Every Sky-Castle needs its blood-drenched moat. And sometimes, you really do need to just Release the Hounds. The Steam-Funk Studios team walks through the necessities and nuances of basic Intellectual Property, as well as pitfalls and counterintuitive revelations of creative collaborations in this wild and chaotic scene. No one WANTS to do paperwork … it exists for a reason. We will walk through some of those reasons, as well as the mindset involved in generating something new, and various nuances of how to make the deeply unsexy clerical factors palatable. Stage Show: Tales to Astound - Bharat’s Ballads 6:00 - 7:15 pm Saturday - Miracle Ballroom (Main Stage) A Storytelling Session with Rohan Mauryan Balraj & Huo Shao Lian, of the notorious Silk Road mercenaries, the Dogs of War. Outlandish deeds and daring exploits are retold, to what audience members are not ‘roped-in’ to participate as extras or ‘Special Effects’. The Cycle of Shiva, Sati & Ganesh as a Domestic Dispute? Epic Battles of Devas and Rakshasas as Redneck Olympics and other works of anachronistic nonsense!

Panei - Airships and Arya-Samaj! 9 - 11 pm Saturday, Salon E An analysis of tropes in steampunk such as steam-power, clockwork and airships and their predating the Victorian/Edwardian period in different cultures, specifically India, Persia and other Ancient Civilizations. This will also represent a Design Journal in our upcoming Vedic Fantasy d20 and Pathfinder product, working title “Rajpunk”.

Panel/Stage-Show Hybrid - Wrath of CONNNNNNN!!!! - (Con Horror Stories) - 11 pm - ??? Saturday, Salon E Have you ever had the worst happen at a Con? Your Costume fall apart? Your several hundred (or forfend, thousand) dollar prop break or crack just before you can showcase it? Get into a fight with one of your party, or did some jerk just take a swing at you? A panel on repairing costuming, props, relationships and sundry other “Horror Story” situations, as the flak hits-the-fan at these stress laden and exciting venues, these ‘conventions’. Not only will we relate our tales of Woe, we will illustrate how to AVOID these particular “wrong turns” or what to do once you’ve stepped-in-it. Panel - Just Crewing Around - 1:30 - 2:30 pm Sunday afternoon, Salon C A workshop on how to squeeze the most possible juice out of the Convention Experience for both Kids and Adults. Amongst topics covered in this panel are “Arranging a Group Dynamic”, how to minimize or combine your costs for best value, playing to your strengths (and with them) to maximum effect, distinguishing from standard attendees and even the beginnings of how to create a stage show and business model that plays to the same.

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Season’s Greetings! We had a blast at PhilCon. And now, we at Steam-Funk Studios are hukering down to focus on a series of in-house projects. But not before ONE more Commissioned project, promotion and branding for a new product, from our affilates/sometime clients, the seminal game-producers Damocles Thread Development, and their exciting new Kickstarter campaign!

"Curtain Call", the Card game of Dueling Theater Companies. Face down any number of unforeseen antics and obstacles, while snickering at your opponents' misfortune! Featuring art by Something*Positive's Randy Milholland! Stretch goals include (but are not limited to) art by Star Power's Garth Graham, Magic: The Gathering illustrator Rich Thomas & Sam and Fuzzy's Sam Logan!!! Makes a great post-holiday present for your gamer or theater-nerd loved ones!

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What's that? Not enough Steam-Funk Studios in your 2016? We hear you, and are bringing two scoops of content as well as guest-starring in several others', this upcoming weekend. So if you're in the Pennsylvania area, join us! Everything from discussing the Roots of many Steampunk Tropes in Ancient India and Persia in "Airships & Arya-Samaj" to Jadrowsky's Dune, the monolithic adaptation that was never completed, but inspired everything from Star Wars to Giger's Alien. Philcon ... now enhanced wth Steam and Funk! Check it out this weekend, in its 79th year! Now expanded with 2 hours more content!

Details at our Facebook event: Steam-Funk at Philcon 2016: GET OVER HERE!!!

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Having toured country, from Utah and Chicago to Maryland to New Hampshire, Steam-Funk Studios is proud to properly return to TempleCon 2016! Having featured content from our various performance troupes previously, this year we're 'popping the hood' on our various troupes from Slick-Brass and the Titilus to Rohan and the Dogs of War even Society of the Emerald Tentacle and our other, as-yet unlaunched brands. We'll be sharing our processes and doings over the last two years, with our focus shifted inwards; producing LARP and tabletop gaming products. Instructional Panels on Managing Creatives and dealing with varied personality types in collaboration, as inspired by lateral thinking in gaming. Pro-strategy guides on "How to Min/Max your Convention XP", as each Con is, to an extent, a Dungeon-Crawl. Finally, our more seminal performances such as Cosplay Court Case, Cosplay Candidate and Bharat's Ballads. We'll even be sharing The Wrath of 'Cooooon: Our Convention Horror Stories panel! Details and schedule on our Facebook Event: "Hail to the Beast: Steam-Funk Studios at TempleCon 2016!" The King in Yellow generously produced & modeled for us by Eddie Dierolf of MutatedSoulz Makeup & FX. Photos and Composite by M.G.Norris Contemporary Photography

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We’ve got BIG news in the works for fans of Slick-Brass & the Titilus Crew, Rohan & The Dogs of War, Society of the Emerald Tentacle and our various other projects. Not to mention some teasers #WhatIsPlutarchs #WhoAreTheRooksguard #WeWantAnswers #DamnYouPeople ... Bear with us and stay tuned. BIG news is on the horizon for our various efforts in this MultiMedia Endeavor, for Literature Junkies, Comic Readers, Tabletop Dice-Chuckers and Live-Action Role-Players: The Living MultiVerse Project. We’ve been HARD at work these past two years, focusing entirely on production. The fruits of our labors will be unveiled ... soon.

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These Are The Voyages ...

Been a while since you heard from us, right? Right! There’s a reason for that. For the last 2 years, we’ve been limiting our appearances to consolidate our efforts on two very exciting projects. The first of which is “The Unconventional”, our online magazine and study in "Fanthropology". We have some very ambitious goals, and want to see to it that once we 'launch', none of our content falls short of our standards for quality.

As such, if any of you are people with a Writing or Editorial background, or know someone who is that might be interested, do contact us at [email protected]. We've been producing content from contributors across the continental United States as well as international residents!

It's been a long road. We welcome you to join us on the Journey.

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The Gilded Festival at Historic Cold Spring Village! New Announcements! Now featuring Thomas Willeford of the Reality Show Steampunk’d, Nicole Oliva Soprano, Painless Parker, The Positronic Cats and even LARP content in “The Living Multiverse Project”, a collaboration between Steam-Funk Studios and Damocles Thread Development.

Do be sure to also sample our fine vendors such as Kafe Merhaba LLC, KittyMaille, Twisted Steel Studio and more!

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The Gilded Festival at Historic Cold Spring Village! Ladies, and Gentlemen, we at Steam-Funk Studios would like to humbly direct your attention to the trailer below... for a multi-genre festival of all ages and time periods! Produced by StoryKeeper Events, the minds behind Dorian's Parlor in Philadelphia... Eli August & The Abandoned Buildings, The Wandering Cellist, Captain Zorikh, Cosplay Court Case & Damocles Thread Development amongst quite a few others. Dieselpunks, Steampunks and Re-enactors of all sort welcome! Further details in our follow up commercial with Vendors and other performers! We hope to see you there!

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Ladies and Gentlemen, and various other Sophisticates! Do please direct your attention and calendars for Sat March 21st to Beers and Gears Steampunk at Battlefield Brew Works, their 3rd Steampunk event at Battlefield Brew Works 248 Hunterstown road in Gettysburg, PA. Tickets will only be $10! Click here!

Featuring ... The Positronic Cats, veteran performers at The Steampunk World's Fair, returning to Brew-Works to grace us with Live Music! Joining them will be fire acts by the incomparable Soolah Hoops! For the patrons of discerning palette and age, there will be burlesque by the love Vivi Noir! And finally serving as event emcees and intermittent entertainment, befuddlement and atmospheric commentary will, of course, be A Count Named Slick-Brass & The Crew of the A.S.S Titilus, on loan from Steam-Funk Studios. With many other fun services such as a 3D printing raffle with The Pocono Comic Expo! Definitely an evening not to be missed! Don't delay!!

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That time of year again ... Taking down the various decorations, kicking out the relatives, and prepping for the rest of winter's usual Suck, right? WRONG. Turns out that Santa had one last surprise for you all ... because Steam-Funk Studios is BACK!

Fresh off their 2014 'Heavier Mettle' Tour across-the-country, and ripping into TempleCon 2015: Crossroads as a Last Minute Entry. The Titilus Crew. Dogs of War. Society of the Emerald Tentacle. And with His Honor, the most Sage and Venerable Chief Justice 'The Dude' of Cosplay Court Case infamy, with half-and-half and extremely chill rug in-tow. This Holiday sampler comes with a side of Power Chords and AWESOME.

Their first appearance in 2015, complete with Swarthy Antics and Scheming Fiends! Catch them while they're there, or be left out in the cold!

Saturday Only. Steam-Funk Studios: Alive-On-Arrival. Details at THIS event-link. Photo by M.G.Norris Contemporary Photography.

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Things have been awful quiet over here at Steam-Funk Studios for a while. Perhaps, too long ...

So without further ado, it is our pleasure to announce THE HEAVIER METTLE TOUR! Recast with the Tensile Strength of Steel, and Wills of Iron. Slick-Brass & The Crew of the A.S.S Titilus. Rohan and the Dogs of War. And an all new performance brand, waiting in the wings... the Society of the Emerald Tentacle. Also with photography production and filming with Geeks Gone Wild

Featuring a whole new content suite of Workshops, Stage Performances and Academia. Even family friendly content! That's right, we're backing up our rants with credible metrics and quotable research. You KNOW our critics are gonna just HATE THAT. 

They've tried banning us from events.

Tempered by critics, slander and a few Social Justice Crusades. Hamstrung at every turn, we still clawed our way out to the public.

They tried to keep us out. They failed.

The Provacateurs of Convention Comedy Are Back!

In 2014, We Ride Again...

Updated details available on our Facebook event! --- Links to Specific Tour Appearances follow --- Previous Appearances: April 2014 - Steampunk Bridgeport May 2014 - Bedlam & Blitzes: Steam-Funk Studios at SPWF 2014 July 2014 - The Heavier Mettle Tour - Connecticon 2014 August 2014 - The Heavier Mettle Tour - SteamFunk @ SteamFest 2014 AND The Heavier Mettle Tour - Steam-Funk @ Intervention V December 2014 - The Heavier Mettle Tour - DerpyCon 2014

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Phil & Kaja Foglio are Seattle-based writers, artists and publishers. The Couple founded Studio Foglio, LLC in 1993 as a venue for Kaja’s Magic: The Gathering art prints, but quickly expanded into publishing. Phil has won the Hugo Awards for Best Fan Artist (1977 & 1978) and Best Graphic Story (2009 & 2010) and is still waiting for the wealth and unlimited power he was told this would bring. His prior catalogue includes illustration and a comic adaptation of Robert Lynn Asprin’s MythAdventures series. They co-write the comic series Girl Genius, with Kaja as the chief graphic designer and web mistress for Studio Foglio and Airship Entertainment. You can read Girl Genius comics online at www.girlgenius.net. Other projects include joint work on What’s New with Phil and Dixie, a long running comic presenting an irreverent take on gaming culture, as well as the science fiction noir strip Buck Godot – Zap Gun for Hire.

1. Is there a character being depicted in this picture?

Kaja Foglio: If you mean, “are we dressed as characters,” then no. We are basically dressed in our outfits. Just the clothes we wear when we go out. And I will admit, I toss on more Steampunk-style accessories when I go to a convention versus going to the grocery store.

Phil Foglio: Not me!

Kaja: <laughs> Phil just has to wear a waistcoat and a pocket watch to make people say, “Oh I love your costume!” It’s kind of embarrassing at times.

Phil: All I say at this point is, “thank you!”

Kaja: But people in the regular world, they see something that isn’t a t-shirt and… Well, it’s hard for them. Locally, we have an anti-pajamaification league. “Don’t go out in your pajamas! Dress up like a person!” they say. Now, they mean a happy, fun adult! Not a boring adult who hates their life. Big difference.

That said, have you ever created any RPG characters within the Steampunk genre?

Kaja: Oh, of course! Long, long ago in the early days of Girl Genius, when GURPS IOU came out in 1995, one of our friends ran a campaign for it. We actually made Agatha and Krosp just to get a little more into our characters’ heads. You know, for the fun of it. We ran that around for a while, and yes, that was fun! I don’t think the characters have changed that much since then, actually! <laughs> Krosp (a talking cat) would refuse to go into a room because it was dangerous, saying that only an idiot would walk into a darkened room. And so I would pick him up and throw him in. From a gaming perspective, that worked really well! We’d find out what was in the room. Because it would try to eat him. You know, I think that was the last time we were actually able to play an old-school role-playing game. Because then we had children, you know. So then we got busy. Ah! There was a Paranoia game one of our friends ran!

Phil: Mostly, when we’re at conventions, if we do anything, we kind of adopt the persona of “The Professors Foglio,” who are people narrating…

Kaja: Are you adopting a persona when you do that? I hadn’t noticed! I thought you were just being you!

Phil: Yeah well…

Kaja: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m really bad at the fakey stuff. Even when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons, all of my characters were basically aspects of me. I was never the sort to pretend to be someone else. When I’m on stage talking to people, I get a LITTLE more “in-character.” More so if I’ve had a couple of drinks… <hushed voice> Um, no, I don’t do that before I go on stage. That would be bad. I’d fall asleep on the lector!

Now, we do the emceeing for the San Diego Comic Con. They’re the best audience ever! You get out in front of them, and they give you enough energy to feel like you’ve already had two drinks!

2. What are your short term and long term goals with Steampunk in general and Girl Genius specifically?

Kaja: I would like for more people who love Steampunk to know that Girl Genius exists! It’s a really fun genre because a lot of people are coming to it from a lot of different places! Some are coming to it because of the literature. Some are coming because they’re fans of the music… And what I’ve discovered going to a lot of Steampunk conventions is that there are many people who’ve never heard of it! Now, that’s good, because it means there are a lot of people I can introduce to the comic!

Phil: Steampunk is very much a more relaxed version of science fiction, I think. For a long time, science fiction has been rarified, as actual science is starting to step in and rule on what’s really plausible. We’re looking at how it’s impossible to have a colony on Mars, to travel faster-than-light, or find dinosaurs or any of the other dreams we use to have as kids that we “knew” were going to happen! Steampunk looks at these inconveniences and says, “I choose to believe!”

Kaja: “What are these tiresome facts with which you present me? I do not see them! My goggles block them!”

Phil: Exactly! There used to be an old classification called “science-fantasy” that almost no one knew what to do with, except Jack Vance. I think Steampunk has adopted that particular literary ethos, while marketing itself with a brand-new label. At this point, people are discovering they really like it! It’s something they wanted, even if they didn’t know it at the time!

Kaja: Plus, these clothes look good on everybody! Old, young, thin, fat… You can dress up and look fabulous!

Phil: Yes, there is that!

Kaja: I kind of like that people are rediscovering the joy of dressing up, in ways that look good and are comfortable, rather than just prescribed ways that might make them very uncomfortable.

Speaking of which… Do you have a favorite choice when it comes to costuming or clothes or outfits?

Phil: Well, Steampunk is all about layers…

Kaja: Not always, but it can be!

Phil: I think that’s why a lot of the genre is set in London. That city is more conducive to cold, wet, miserable conditions that might require layers!

Kaja: We’re from Seattle, so when we talk about cold, wet and miserable, we know of which we speak! But having done this a lot and having worn many different outfits, I’m very fond of throwing on a foofy skirt and shoes I like… and I have a couple of these brown t-shirts with a mechanical skull and crossbones that I picked up at a convention. They’re so comfortable that kind of just throw that on and some Steam-bling and think, “well, I’m not as fancy and dressed up as some of the other people here, but I can at least run my booth!”

Phil: As Kaja said, there’s assorted levels of Steampunk. There’s the gentleman adventurer, all the way down to the everyday mechanic.

Kaja: For ladies we would say, “You can dress like the queen, or the empress… or you can dress like Kaylee in the engine room on Firefly!” <laughs> “What? I’m covered in grime. Because I’ve been working!”

Phil: Both of those are Steampunk, and both of those suit totally different situations and characters.

Kaja: And when you’re dressed like the Queen of the Universe, it’s really annoying to run the convention table. But the thing that always kills me is when people talk about what “is and isn’t Steampunk” (which I take as an excuse to run away and find a cup of tea) and I always laugh at them. They’ll say, “Is this outfit really Steampunk? It’s just sort of pseudo-Victorian.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I reply, “but the time machine I came in is parked outside.” The idea that you must have dials or a bit of brass glued to you in order to be Steampunk is hysterically funny. I think people get far too worked up about it because people like talking about and classifying things.

3. Have you had an extensive background in theatrical arts or performance? If so – What were your favorite experiences? If not, what inspired you to start/get involved?

Phil: Let’s see – Kaja’s done Shakespeare; you did Kate in the Taming of the Shrew!

Kaja: I did indeed! I got to scream and thrash around a lot. I’m really good at that. Running and screaming is the essence of comedy!

Phil: We both did dance demonstrations for the SCA.

Kaja: Well, we were part of a group that did that. We actually had a pair of instructors who were just fantastic! They made it so much fun. And that’s a lot of my background really. I did a bunch of stuff in school and amateur groups.

Phil: I did fifteen years of improvisational comedy off and on, so that was my big thing. And we both enjoy getting up in front of an audience.

Kaja: Oh wait, we do radio plays!

Phil: Oh, of course! Girl Genius radio plays!

Kaja: We do! We have a series of very silly, non-canonical radio plays that we do at conventions, pretty much whenever anyone asks us to! And so, a lot of times, even if we’re at a convention far away, we grab a lot of audience members and have them read cold off of a script. We have a LOT of fun with it!

Can I ask as a follow up, what inspired each of you to get involved in the theatrical arts? Phil, your improv…

Phil: Let’s see… The first group I was with was actually Mobius Theatre, which was a Spanish group. We all saw Star Wars back in ’77, and we felt like doing a parody of it. We had two performances of that at various conventions. And people loved it so much; we said, “Man, we ain’t giving this up!”

Kaja: So you guys kept doing improv comedy – Did you mention that it was called Stage Wars and that is was nominated for a Hugo award for best theatrical production?

Phil: It wasn’t! This was probably the last year before Best Dramatic Presentation was one of those bastard stepchild categories. We figured out later that if everyone who had been in the production had nominated it, we would have–

Kaja: Oh, it was The Capture that was nominated! Robert Asprin and Phil did a slideshow. Robert wrote it, Phil drew the pictures and it was a sort of live-performance, radio-style slideshow about a cruise that get captured by aliens in the Bermuda Triangle. And the cruise ship is filled with science-fiction fans. This causes a lot of trouble for the aliens, and THAT was what was nominated for the Hugo. I’m getting a lot of my family stories wrong here… Now for me, doing theatre was just something I fell into when I was in high school. When I was in junior high, I was in a group that did hand-drawn puppetry. My church’s youth group shuffled me into that, as I was one of those children who in turn shuffled around nervously looking at others and keeping my nose in a book. I had some severe social issues. So somebody thought, “you know, maybe this would help.” And it did help an awful lot! From there I was just more and more exposed to the kind of people who do theatrical things and performance work. I was in drama in high school and went on to do some in college… But yeah, the kind of people I hung around with and the kind of people I knew were always involved in some kind of performance and getting out there, showing people what you can do. I just really enjoyed it! I have terrible social issues talking to people at parties and conventions, and I’m getting over that. But when I look out over that big audience, I’m fine! I love it! I guess I just always need a big audience, and then I can hide in my hotel room! … It doesn’t work like that, does it? Ah well…

On that note: have either of you ever LARPed? And feel free to say no if that’s the case.

Phil: I’m trying to remember… so I guess “no.”

Kaja: I have! I remember long, long ago – in the BEFORE time – when I was in high school or college, I can’t remember which. I was taken to a local group, the Fantasy Alternative, which I have no idea if it’s still around or not. It

was the first time I’d ever heard of LARPing and it was really fun. These guys had their own characters they were playing, things they were doing… They would take flowers all nicely wrapped up in a paper towel, and those were magic missiles! You had to be very careful with your “spell components,” or they would go off early. And you always knew when they hit! But that was a long, long time ago, and that was pretty much my experience with it. I certainly know a lot of people who were active in the Camarilla back in the day, for World of Darkness.

Phil: I don’t even know if they’re still around!

Kaja: Oh, they’re out there. There’s a bunch of them.

You were both members of the SCA. While that might not qualify as LARPing, would you say it sits on a similar shelf?

Kaja: I think it does. But in a much more freeform way. You don’t have rules for confrontation. Now I haven’t played in the SCA in a REALLY long time, but I loved it. The problem I had was that once I discovered hotel rooms that did NOT have puddles in them, I was in heaven! “Oh, I can go to a convention and sleep in a bed and not in a puddle in the mountains!” I’m lazy. We actually met through the girl who sold me comics when I was in high school. When I was in college she was still a friend of mine and she said “Phil Foglio’s living in town, and you should meet him!” So we all went out to dinner, and that’s how I met Phil. Later when we were friends, we went out to the SCA dance practices as well as and at the University of Washington every week to help. Later when my boyfriend and I broke up, Phil asked how he was doing. I told him we were breaking up and he said “Oh really? Well isn’t that interesting?” And that’s kind of how it happened! But we were introduced in proper Victorian fashion by a mutual friend and everything! So guys, it’s easy if you use the right tone of voice!

Phil: That’s my theatrical training…

Kaja: Well yeah, to tie it back into the main point.

Phil: Well, that’s the thing with relationships. If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made!

4. Outside of Girl Genius, which is nothing if not Steampunk, can you tell us about your other projects? Do they relate to the genre?

Kaja: Well, all we do is Girl Genius. These days.

Phil: Pretty much, yeah. Before Girl Genius, I was pretty much associated with science fiction and gaming. Kaja was mostly known for gaming, as her first big thing was Magic: the Gathering.

Kaja: Oh, my first big break was art for Magic: The Gathering cards! I had done a couple of fan things before that. So Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire is definitely hard science fiction. Larry Niven says so! So you know it’s true! And the MythAdventures are very much fantasy parody, and What’s New With Phil & Dixie – which ran in Dragon, then the Duelist, then back in Dragon – that’s gaming humor. The Steampunk aspect came about because Phil would doodle stuff like that. And he’s got doodles from the 70s, like airships and Victorian cats. I said we ought to do something with them, and Phil said there wasn’t a place for that. So I said we should make one!

5. Does Girl Genius operate within the tropes of Steampunk or defy and expand upon the definition?

Phil: Well, trying to define Steampunk… We’ve never actually called it Steampunk…

Kaja: It’s Gaslight fantasy! Like Jules Verne! And then we don’t get yelled at for doing it wrong. It’s terrific!

Phil: Yes. It seems everyone is trying to fit the genre within this gritty, London-shaped box.

Kaja: And the box seems to have gotten so much smaller over the years! When people first started throwing the word around, it seemed to have so much more potential. Now if a magazine runs an article on Steampunk, you have a good idea of what the illustrations are going to look like. And while I do like that, I also like to see it branch out.

There was a beautiful series of paintings making the rounds – still out there… There’s a lovely, non-Western Imperial Court, with lovely Chinese automatons… Wow, it was pretty stuff. His name is James Ng. He labels them things like “Chinese Steampunk,” and they’re just astonishing. They’re as Steampunk as you can possibly get. I was at a convention where I met him years ago, and we had a very good time afterwards sitting around and chatting. He’s very nice, and he’s so good at what he does!

At Salt City Steamfest, we’re looking to expand the definition to more Anachronism in general, as seen in Doctor Who and other Steampunk-adjacent franchises.

Kaja: Right! Doctor Who had a real Steamy look for the last couple of seasons, didn’t it? <laughs>

6. What do you love most about the Cosplay and convention scene?

Kaja: My favorite conventions are for Steampunk and anime. I love Steampunk because it’s so beautiful, I love the outfits and devices people build. And anime cons, everyone’s just so full of energy and it’s a wild and bouncy time. I love manga and I love anime, so I’m happy there. Steampunk conventions have such excellent manners and such an age range.

Phil: The nice thing about the Steampunk conventions, which makes them different from all the others, is that it’s a lot more participatory. Anime can tie it, but you have all these people saying, “Look at this thing I did!” I mean that’s very, very interactive and reminiscent of LARP! But with Steampunk, people make their costumes and want to tell you about their character! They’re very much involved! They enjoy talking with people about their thing and finding out where they might fit in any particular world. It’s not like other conventions where you head straight for the dealer’s room or possibly take in a panel, or every so often find yourself talking to someone. Whereas at Steampunk and Anime conventions, you’ve got more of an interactive community.

Kaja: Which sucks for people like us. I mean, if we go to a convention we want to be paid attention to, because “hey, we’re authors!” You say that at a Steampunk convention and you’re told, “Hey, I’m an author too.” Suddenly you’re a much smaller fish… but the pond’s still cool.

I think in Steampunk especially, there’s a lot of fancy fish in that pond. And they’re often fancy, unique fish. You have musicians, writers, painters, jewelers… all these different things coming together.

That’s certainly true for other conventions. But I think because Steampunk is so relatively new, you’re getting a lot of enthusiasm from people who are making other kinds of fandom inspired work for some time now. People are coming to Steampunk from somewhere else, and seeing what amazing twists they can make on what they already do.

Phil: If people have been doing something for ten or fifteen years, they get good at it. But let’s be honest: If you stay in one particular fandom, everyone in that fandom has mostly seen everything that you’ve done. If you go into a different genre with this new group of people, your old party trick becomes fresh and new again!

Kaja: Which is absolutely terrifying! What if they don’t like it?

Phil: But it’s a new group of people brought together by a love of something different. A lot of people are finding that things they used to do and show their friends in their old science fiction fandom are new to people in Steampunk. Any artist fears getting into a rut, and Steampunk, as a new genre, gives people a chance to experiment and do something different. I really don’t know anyone who would suffer by doing something new.

7. Where do you see the Conventions, Cosplay and Clockwork themes headed in the future? If you had to make a prediction, what would it be?

Phil: Well, I don’t think that big Steampunk has really hit the mainstream yet. So I think there’s a lot of room for the genre to grow. There are a lot more people out there to tell about it.

Kaja: More people are going to discover Steampunk and think, “this is fun!” I think it is bound to stay part of the convention scene. I think at some point a lot of the artists and costumers who are having a fun time with it right now

might find themselves doing something else later. Because who wants to do one thing all their lives? But I don’t think that would mean they’d stop liking it or start to hate it. One of the reasons people like it so much is that things from our childhood had aspects of this. Movies or books from our childhood embody something of it.

I actually associate Disneyland with Steampunk because with the right eye open, you’re going to see clockwork and music boxes everywhere! And they’ve been doing that for a long time. I don’t think it’ll stop being popular once it goes mainstream. People will keep finding new things to do with it, like they do with superhero comics and the like.

8. Could you talk to us about the joys and trials of starting your own studio?

Kaja: When did we start our studio?

Phil: 1993!

Kaja: No, that’s when I bought a business license.

Phil: That’s how it starts! Kaja actually started Studio Foglio as a way for her to market her Magic: the Gathering prints. So that was making enough money that the accountants insisted that everything be done professionally. We eventually said, “Why are we letting somebody else publish the comics?” We already had an established business that was able to do it.

Kaja: Phil, you’ve been doing professional artwork since you were in college, haven’t you?

Phil: Yes, that’s true. I’ve pretty much always worked with what you would call independent comics. I was with Paleo Press, worked with Dave Ketter. And after a while I said, “if I’m going to work with someone it might as well be my wife.” Work with me, WORK WITH ME!

Kaja: Poor Phil, I’m just always around, giving him a hard time. He can’t get away from work. Well, there’s always the bar. So I’m looking at my bookshelf at all the Steampunk books. There’ve been a lot of books coming out recently on how to make Steampunk jewelry, cocktails and such… I’ve been trying to amass a small collection of them! It’s so interesting to see the things that are coming out. Here’s a Steampunk Apothecary!

To follow up on that: Could you expand upon juggling your business mentality versus working in the arts, and balancing those two?

Kaja: We’re completely soulless.

Phil: You have to compartmentalize it. It’s pretty much a truism that there are a lot of people who try to convince artists to divorce themselves from commerce. Those people are trying to hire us for a little as possible.

Kaja: Now, we walk a line. There are things we could have done with Girl Genius to make it more marketable to certain demographics. We didn’t, and that’s because we’re making it for ourselves and having a good time with it. It’s so hard to remember to change your work to suit someone else. I got this from James Ernest at Cheapass Games – who got it from someone else – that you should make what you want, first. Then there will be other people who want that. It’s a very good way to do creative work. Trying hard to make something that someone else wants … <sigh> that’s no way to live.

Phil: And then you’re always trying to play ‘catch up’!

Kaja: Yeah! And this is why I don’t read the comments on our page anymore… Because you know I cannot please the people going ‘You know, you should do it this way and you should do it that way, and how dare you make it LIKE THIS!’ My response is <dramatic gasp> ‘I’ll just make it this way! There! It is DONE. Do you like the thing? Great! If you do not like the thing, there’s another thing right over there!’

The lovely thing about the web is that it allows you to put what you’ve made out there and say ‘Hey, here’s what I made! Does anyone like it?’ The people who like it will find you, and the people who don’t like it will either go read something else or hang around telling you why you should have been doing it differently.

Phil: Once you decide that this is a business, and this is what you want to do, so you don’t have to y’know, be a barista or something.

Kaja: Some people really like being baristas. But I would be TERRIBLE at it, so yes … ‘This is what I made, you will DRINK it! Or not…’

Phil: Yes, you have to treat what you do like a business. You have to respect yourself as a businessperson. People will always want to get free work from you. And as somebody famous once said, ‘Free work is a way to always guarantee you get free work.’

Kaja: Free work gets you more free work. Now, we do that sometimes.

Phil: We do stuff for conventions, you know for the promotional aspect since we’re guests.

Kaja: Ah, but James does pay us for that. We just finished a set of card game illustrations for James Ernest of Cheapass Games for his Pairs decks. That was fun. It was a Kickstarter. He was involved with Patrick Rothfuss, who wrote “In the Name of the Wind.” They did a couple of decks with has scenes from Patrick’s world. They’ve done a deck for our world, one Dork Tower deck for John Kovalic (with a bunch of cute C’thulhu monsters called ‘Shallow Ones’)

Phil: Our colorist, Cheyenne Wright did one around Professor Elemental, the chap-hop artist. If you’re not familiar with Professor Elemental, he’s a delight.

Kaja: He’s brilliant! If you haven’t seen the “Cup of Brown Joy” music video, about how wonderful tea is, you need to! Oh, if we could have it intraveinously…

Phil: His deck looks great!

Kaja: Almost better than ours! His is the one I chose in the Kickstarter. Sorry Phil!

Phil: Traitor…

Kaja: You knew I was treacherous when you married me!

Phil: That was one ofyour selling point.

9. So what makes Girl Genius tick? Pun notwithstanding. How much of your own personalities have you invested into the characters and storyline?

<They both laugh evilly in turn>

Kaja: Let me just say that if we didn’t have to do our own laundry, we’d never get any writing done. Before we had children, we used to take these long walks at 2am, around our neighborhood in North Seattle. We’d talk about the story – and a scientific study came out recently saying that you have better ideas when walking. That’s how you know it’s good! Science says so! Since we have kids now, who can’t join us at 2 am, we throw lines back and forth at each other while doing laundry. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they said or did this?” And that where a lot of the detail and the color comes in. Phil, please add something to that, please? Otherwise it’ll just be me talking to myself!

Phil: I don’t really have anything to add. It’s one of those things where, you know; make stuff that you want to see. Well, what do we want to see? We wanted Storylines about mad science, with intelligent women in the lead. It’s pretty mucht the distillation of everything we enjoy!

Kaja: How much of us is in there? Pretty much all of us. We have Cheyenne doing digital painting, but he loves this too. It’s all the things we love, that make us laugh. <sigh> All the dumb jokes we throw around.

10. What do you think has the most mainstream appeal in these genres we work within?

Kaja: Oh boy…

Phil: … Everybody likes airships!

Kaja: Mainstream appeal… Possibly that Phil can wear his lovely waistcoats anywhere and pretty much everyone can appreciate them. People can always appreciate pretty gadgets, especially when you can see how they work. I remember long ago one of our employees and I went down to Gamma in Las Vegas, and somebody asked her if she was a swimmer. They were welding goggles! <laughs>

11. Have you ever found an experience unnerving, off-putting or sublimely rewarding within the realms of role-play and performance? Describe it, if you would.

Phil: Not really. Everyone is actually pretty cool. Things have changed a bit. When we first started putting out “Girl Genius,” no one had ever used that phrase before.

Kaja: Not true. I’d found it here and there. Sometimes it’d refer to Sailor Mercury. Well, I’m not certain. I don’t watch Sailor Moon… Not certain if she’d been called that in the story or if the fans called her that later on, while we worked on GURPS IOU, one of the characters was described as a ‘girl genius.’ And I went “Ahhhh! But that’s the thing we’re working on!” Steve Jackson laughed at us for being idiots. Which we are, frequently. We’ve heard ‘boy genius’ around forever, for nearly one hundred years. But ‘girl genius’ just wasn’t used very much. Now, rewarding experiences… too many leap to mind to pick. I love seeing what others are working on, and hearing people come up and tell us that what we do makes them happy! What makes me happy? After years of being made fun of for liking what I liked, I found this giant amount of similar material that has a large fan-base, and that tells me I’m not a freak! The Internet and conventions taught me that it’s totally mainstream to like this stuff! Yes, I have a bitter place in my heart for someone who just discovered Lord of the Rings? Why did I have to suffer so much in third grade when it comes in a happy meal now? <laughs> But yes, it’s been amazing!

Phil: I discovered conventions years ago. I remember walking into the first one and thinking, “Wow, I’m going to die here.”

Kaja: See, I thought, “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life!” Not that I was going to die there!

Phil: Oh I thought that too. Didn’t say it was going to be that convention specifically.

Kaja: Remember the time we went to the biker convention on accident? Was it WorldCon?

Phil: My first one was in 1973.

Kaja: Sorry I couldn’t go with you!

Phil: You were three.

12. Please describe your sources of inspiration, beyond academic influences, besides your usual witty banter.

Phil: A lot of sci-fi and pulp. Particularly, H. Rider Haggard.

Kaja: When he wasn’t being dreadful. Ok, he was a product of his time

Phil: We both love a lot of anime and manga. And we love how they can get away with nearly anything!

Kaja: It’s terrific! I read all this cheesy shoujou manga and marvel that the editors didn’t stop the writer! Now, I’m really fond of the history of science. I love reading about early natural history, discovering the scientific method. It’s wonderful watching it move from alchemical tinkering to the kind of stuff from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and as it progresses all the way through. The Enlightenment is so fascinating, what people throw things together, and trying to figure it out. I love Automata for the same reason because it gets subjective about what life is, especially if we create it. And the histories give me ideas for referential jokes we can use later. There’s an old gasworks near us where Steampunks go to take photos. Reading history, especially specific histories are very inspiring. Such as Gasworks Park in Seattle, with its inspiring machinery there. Alot of beauty that can be found in rotting old mechanical things. When you’re thinking about something alot, then you see it alot too. Trotting the world makes you remember things that you come back to later to find out how it was made.

13. What is your creative process for the comic?

Phil: We both pretty much sit around and figure out what the next part of the story is.

Kaja: All that walking in the 90’s got us talking. We have a general framework for the story, but it’s very much a sketch. There’s all the filling in of scenes, what exactly they say and do. There’s do many directions we can go trying to figure out how the scene will play out. Phil illustrates things with… what do you call them?

Phil: My first pass.

Kaja: Yeah, kind of a storyboard. I’ll say, “No I hate this, do it again!” Or “it’s perfect!” I keep track of facial expressions and the like, reminding Phil that maybe someone should look confused.

Phil: Then I’ll draw it out on actual paper. We try to do it on, well…

Kaja: Phil uses a Bristol board and paper, with a hard no.2 pencil. He draws it all out. We often have to check and make sure we gave Agatha her glasses.

Phil: A lot of artists these days draw on the computer. That’s very interesting, but we like having the originals.

Kaja: We like having stacks of paper around our house!

Phil: We’re also not one solar flare away from being forgotten. Once it’s finished, we clean up, scan it into the computer, then Kaja generates two copies. One for our colorist, one for Kaja to do lettering.

Kaja: Once I scan it, I run some levels on it to make whites brighter and pencil lines more bold. I send a copy back to Phil to touch up. Once Cheyenne sends me a digitally colored page, I’ll add sound effects (which I hate). I’ll export that afterwards. One for the book, and one for the website. We post at Girlgeniusonline.com, DeviantArt (because why not?), and LiveJournal, since our old servers used to break a lot. A lot of our readers know they can catch it on LJ if the server crashes. Not that that happens anymore since we ponied up for more servers. Once a year, we have a book (13 right now!). Kickstarter has been wonderful for showing us how many we should print, as well as funding the whole endeavor.

14. Do you have a Final Word for our readers and attendees?

Kaja: Play nice! Have fun! Make sure to have a good time!

Phil: Regarding Conventions – The first time you go, nobody knows you! Nobody has any expectations! You can be the person you want to be, as no one as preconceptions of you! No one knows you, so everyone has to accept you as who you say you are! So, y’know, make sure you’re someone they want to talk to!

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[steamfunkstudios]

Ben Hamby has been a costuming, acting and creative consultant for a considerable amount of time. A founding member of the Sky D.O.G.s, he first encountered Steampunk as a specific, named entity back in 2005 and was immediately inspired to create costumes and character. He is a prolific LARPer, public speaker and prop designer, as well as occasionally a voice-actor, now hired all over the country to lecture on the subjects of Steampunk, DIY, prop and costume design. As author of the “Arcana Imperii” series, he has researched a number of matters both Ecclesiastical and Apocrypha and is acknowledged as a Vatican Scholar. Furthermore, Ben is a counselor at Camp Half Blood: Austin Branch. He can be found via SkyDogs Emporium of Negotiable Ephemera on Facebook.

1. What is your depicted character here in this picture? How did you devise or create this persona? Does it reflect some deeper aspects of yourself or is it a departure entirely from “you”? What were your Inspirations for this character?

Well, for starters, let’s begin with the rest of my crew. Now, that’s kind of a misnomer, because on the Delirium of Grandeur EVERYONE ON BOARD is a Captain. Now, to explain my character, it’s best just to roll on into it. Honestly, it’s easiest just to let him talk about himself, which makes me sound like such a lunatic. But, you know, that’s just the way it is…

“I would be Captain Samuel Taneous, of the Delirium of Grandeur. I have a brother, Simon, so you can guess how we were born. Oh, our poor, poor mother… Our mother is, of course, Lucy Taneous… Big-Girl-Likes-to-Swim. Our father is Winston Taneous…

You can probably tell that we do not take things very seriously on board the Delirium of Grandeur. Otherwise known as the D.O.G, so our shortened colloquial name is the Skydogs! Ooh, aren’t we clever? Now, I hate the term ‘Airship Pirate’ when it comes to describing the Skydogs. We are… let’s call it ‘pre-wreckage, salvage-engineers’! We HAPPEN to know that your airship is about to crash, and we kindly remove your belongings from it. We’re very green that way!”

Ooh! A very low-carbon footprint! Probably because you took all the carbon…

“Exactly!”

Now, stepping back out-of-character, the Captain is a loudmouth, chatterbox salesman. He’s 98.9% me already. The character, like most of these things, is developed organically. We developed this hugely running backstory for all the characters… How they met, how they got on board, why everyone is a captain…

About that last bit: backstory-wise, the reason why we’re all captains is because we’re all lunatics! Now, that came about as I was on the Internet one night. For various reasons, I was looking up asylum records from the late 1800′s in New Orleans. You know, like normal people do… And while I looked through, I noticed that what we would now call a “delusion of grandeur” was instead listed as a “delirium of grandeur.” Honestly, I thought that was the best name ever! It more-or-less reflected the character, as well as the ship.

So the dress and everything for my crew is rather varied, one of our main standing tenants is that we like the idea of clothing as opposed to costume. I would rather look as though I’d just stepped out of an airship rather than sleek, cut lines and perfect… well, everything. If it comes from our ship, it’s going to look a little shady. Even our Symbol, which is a cog with a dog’s skull in the middle of it.

2. What are your short term and long term goals with regards to Cosplay, Steampunk and the creative arts?

First, to make certain the “Dog ‘n Cog will be seen everywhere… eventually! Of course, there’s always the NEXT costume and the NEXT outfit. Whatever we’re working on. It could be a Steampunk beast, it could be Mad-eye Moody. It may not even be in the Steampunk genre, but I digress. Currently we’re working on a Steampunk X-Men project, done from the perspective of Marvel’s Ghost Boxes comic. It’s honestly the first time we’ve decided to replicate something out there as opposed to going our own. Pretty unusual for us.

Next, our long-term goals are more shows, getting our name out there, making more unique products… So my holsters and guns and props will become marketable, of course. We also embroider tons of different things, and we’re just expanding that now. Of course, as an author, my third book is on the way. Which brings me to a tangent…

I finally had someone cosplay as one of my characters. So I should just go ahead and say “I’m done.” That’s the end of it right there, you know? What more do you ask for? “Great, that kid’s dressed up as one of my characters! Now I want everyone to dress up as MY CHARACTERS! Seriously, even the minor ones that no one remembers!”

Does it give you a surreal feeling when you run into someone cosplaying as you or one of your characters?

And this is the part where I really wish I could be all cool about it. When I first saw a kid dressed up as one of my book’s characters, I absolutely LOST MY MIND. I cried like a baby! There are pictures of me doing a flying-tackle on this poor kid and hugging him! He was dressed as a character from one of my novellas, as he hadn’t read all that much. I rectified the situation by giving him copies of the other books I’d written. Rest assured, when the newest one comes out, it’ll be in his hands the moment I see him!

3. Have you had an extensive background in LARP or theatrical performance? if so – What were your favorite experiences? If not, what inspired you to start/get involved?

I’ve been doing Renaissance festivals since 1987. So as far as theatrical experiences, they’ve been outrageously blissful. I’ve worked multiple shows, and I’ve also travelled with a jousting troupe. I lovingly refer to that as FMOTG, or “Fat Man On the Ground…” I did ride, buried my spurs and things, but I was mainly there to be the big, loud, boisterous voice, and master of the lists.

I was also was in a stage show at the Texas Renaissance Festival called “Wine, Women and Song” for three years, which was probably my favorite as far as being twenty-three minutes of tight comedy and song! I worked with several beyond-brilliant actresses.

As far as LARPing goes, I was helping out with slots at Dallas-Fort Worth NERO, and have played characters in those games for years. I unintentionally wrecked a live-action game of Vampire: the Masquerade while dressed as my NERO character, being unaware people were playing at the goth club I was attending (‘The Church’). You see, my war-paint was based on a white tiger, so the players thought a Were-Tiger had entered their game! One made the signal for activating his stealth ability while slamming his back into a wall. I couldn’t help myself… I sauntered on up to him, leaned in close and growled, “I can still smell you.” They proceeded to scramble about … it was glorious!

Anyway, I also played Avant-Garde LARPing, but I really liked the additional role-playing that came with NERO. Once I was able to assist with developing plot, making props, devices, monsters… Basically running D&D and Warhammer games live, I was hooked!

You mentioned a Vampire: the Masquerade game. Did you have any World of Darkness groups you’d like to call out to? Perhaps “One World By Night” or the like?

Honestly, I’ve been out of it for so long. But if they’re still playing at ‘The Church’ in Dallas, I’d just like to say, “Way to go guys! I’ve had more fun messing with your game than I’ve had in some full-length events!” The Storytellers immediately incorporated me and let me run amok, and that was amazing!

4. Please describe your costuming, props and makeup, as depicted here and elsewhere. Are there any particular vendors or craft-techniques you favor?

Absolutely! The vest that I’m wearing is a Raven’s Wood leather vest. They’re extremely expensive and extremely worth it! It’s like the old Curtis Mathis TV ads that I remember… because I’m old… They’re not the most expensive out there, but they make beautiful products, and I wear something of theirs in nearly all of my costumes.

Second, there is a coat, that was built off of the pattern from Johnny Depp’s character in Pirate’s of the Caribbean. It’s a mid-1800′s admiral peacoat. The pants are high-waisted, up to the nipples, from Gentleman’s Emporium. They have an amazing array of items. Some of them are mass-produced, others are high quality. These pants are absolutely the latter.

Now, in Austin, we have hatmakers on 6th Street, a touristy area, and subsequently expensive. But there is also an amazing array of craftsmen throughout the city who are still making olden-time items to this day. I build my old goggles, leather-gear… In the picture, I’m wearing a brass codpiece, because why wouldn’t you? Safety first! It’s hypnotic, which always keeps people gazes right on my crotch! And then I wear square-toe, sanded boots, which are not in-period with the rest of my outfit. However, they LOOK more period than period, which I think counts for a lot more.

5. How much of what you do is seen as “Steampunk?” Do you operate within the tropes of the convention or defy and expand upon the definition?

The entire thing with Steampunk is that it’s own world. What makes your hypothetical reality any more valid than my hypothetical reality? Are we worried about having the proper time period? The one where “Steampunk was real?”

That said, we are pretty heavily within the definition of Steampunk, since we’re cozily nestled in Victorian science-fiction. We don’t time travel, we don’t have things from out-of-period. In the books, I start with inventions from the point where they were conceived. In my universe, Charles Babbage built his difference engine, as opposed to just designing it. It worked, and the Information Age began in the 1840s as opposed to the 1940s. Computer-aided design begins, and subsequent technological advancement is exponentially faster than it was in our world. With that as a basis, you see where the rest of our material comes from.

Regarding inaccuracies in Steampunk, it’s both a literary movement and a “maker” movement. Both of these qualities are contributing factors that created what we see today. Sure, people look at it today and just get excited about the toys, but we forget that the Victorians were already effectively writing Steampunk stories. H.G. Wells’ own Time Machine comes to mind. And when Jules Verne wrote about the Nautilus, submarines didn’t exist at the time! Higher technology was already being grasped for. I think that defines Steampunk more than any movement that might come out, and that we have a much wider and broader playground than some believe.

6. What do you love most about the Cosplay and convention scene?

First off, the creativity. I’m a proud member of the Red Fork Empire. “If you must be a tool, be a Red Fork!” Fighting against the dull, the lack of creativity in the world, and adding everything you can to it… Cosplay embodies this like nothing else! Since it’s become mainstream now, even though it’s been around since time immemorial, that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve seen more innovation and creativity than I’ve seen in some major sci-fi features! People have made armor from foam, made amazing products such as war gloves and simulate things that would otherwise require an advanced knowledge of metalworking or a similar field. Cosplay is what’s making it possible for a kid to watch YouTube and figure out what he needs in the space of the weekend.

7. Where do you see the Conventions, Cosplay and Clockwork themes headed in the future? If you had to make a prediction, what would it be?

I think it will continue to expand, as it has, for a while. That said, I’m already seeing some of the problems that happen when a group becomes sizable. There are some instances of bad blood, jealousy, elitism… The latter we see in professional cosplaying. People making money going from convention to convention, doing for profit what we do for fun. I think eventually that will blow up. It just isn’t sustainable. But with nerd culture the way it is now… well, let’s face it. Nerd culture is now pop culture. It is now popular to do what we do! It’s popular to find a way to Comic-Con and otherwise live the nerd lifestyle. I think prizes (?) are rising to meet that, and I think eventually they will all drop.

8. I’d like for you to talk about your specific body of work, especially as it pertains to Steampunk and cosplay.

Well, on the cosplay side of things, I do Beast among others. I’m working on my very first muscle suit, since it’s easier than developing muscles… We hand-pull the hair through, not unlike a wig, as opposed to simply covering it with fur. Also on the cosplay front I’ve played Mad-Eyed Moody for years. Well, I sold that costume, and am making another. It’ll have a fully articulated, moving eyeball-patch.

As far as Steampunk goes, I’ve continued to hone my leather-crafting skills. This is on top of building aged harnesses, shoulder-holsters, custom pieces for replica guns… I now also do fully accurate replicas of Captain Mal’s holster from Firefly, as well as Zoe’s holster rig, Jayne’s sidearm with metalwork… I just finished making a cast for replicas of Johnny Depp’s gun from Pirates of the Caribbean, and that’s all just surface stuff. We continue to build props, some of which have made it into feature films. Recently I began making replicas of the Hellraiser cubes as lamps! They’ve become pretty popular! 

The rest of my group is continuing with embroidery and custom costuming from head-to-toe. The builds are getting more intricate, more complex. We soon hope to have things that not only move as articulated, mobile clockwork, but also are functional. We’re very excited!

  9. So… Tell us about Camp Half-Blood!

Okay! For those of you who are familiar with the first books in the Percy Jackson series, I work for Camp Half-Blood, and Rick Riordan has declared “the REAL Camp Half-Blood,” down in Austin, Texas. It’s run by BookPeople, a group headed by a brilliant man: Topher Bradfield! I play Mister D, who is the god Dionysus, sent to Earth and forced to take care of children. This was due to a transgression involving one of Zeus’ favorite nymphs, which I won’t share the details on…

But yes, I basically get to play Mister D, as seen in the books! I’m a raging jerk to the kids, because the original Camp Half-Blood was in Rhode Island. I’m clearly using a Jersey accent. There’s no getting around it: I’m channeling Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

An in-character example, presuming you’re a new kid at Camp Half-Blood:

“So, anyway… I need to let you kids know that first off, you stink. And I don’t necessarily mean physically, although you do… You’re just really bad at this. Like, you’re REALLY terrible at being demigods. And I’m pretty sure you’re all going to die. And as long as you don’t do it here at the camp, I pretty much don’t care.”

The latest illustrations of Mister D have been modeled after myself, as Ric Reardon met me and said, “Oh yes. YOU’RE Mister D!” Highest compliment I could get!

There are a hundred kids between the ages of nine and fourteen. We have one session where we allow kids who have been attending for years to come back, and I believe the age-cap on that goes all the way up to sixteen. We try to keep that as thirteen to sixteen year olds in general. That’s the portion where we go REALLY crazy with the special effects. Blood, squid… We have martial artists and parkour artists who do our fight coordination and choreography. We’ve had monsters come running down the side of a wall at the poor, terrified children… who love it! We teach them Greek fighting techniques, and because Ric has added Romans to his series, we’ve added Camp Jupiter within Camp Half-Blood! As a result, some of the kids get taught Roman fighting techniques on top of the Greek training.

We have an overarching story that runs the seven weeks of camp, but every week has a goal that the kids have to meet to continue all the way through. Yes, it’s pretty much LARP 101. I’m incredibly proud to be asked back year after year.

And yes, we also did a Star Wars camp, with the blessings of Mister Lucas himself! Everything we do is canon… since our contract pre-dates the Disney buyout. We’re on good terms with them though. We’re working on another camp, for which we’ve already built a full-sized Jedi Starfighter.

10. What do you find has the most mainstream appeal in these genres you work within?

I really don’t think that Steampunk has crested the hill yet. Everybody thought that Justin Bieber would single-handedly kill Steampunk, and that didn’t happen. The future in the Steampunk genre is almost limitless only because of the creativity, based upon concepts rather than patterns. It can’t stagnate until people run out of ideas. We’ve seen the cross-play items, in terms of genre blending. Everything you love, can be combined with something else you love. As long as people keep making things, like a giant Steampunk Iron Man, people will continue to be impressed and wowed.

On LARPing, I remember having to pretend I was doing something else on my way to LARP. Those were the days of having a horrific stigma attached to the word “nerd.” With nerds culture becoming mainstream culture, thanks in part to films like “Knights of Badassdom” and “Role Models,” LARP has run screaming into the spotlight. Both did their thing cleverly and well. Yes, people got laughs out of it, saying “look at the nerds doing their thing!” They also saw the appeal. People in the audience had to say, “They’re living out their fantasy world. How is that any different from me picking characters for my fantasy football league?” It’s all role-play.

LARPing is physical. It’s exhausting. Provided conflict resolution isn’t using rock-paper-scissors or dice, it’s also excellent exercise in the outdoor world! Escapism is escapism no matter what the flavor. It’s all around us, from movies, which don’t have much audience interaction, to the immersive world of a video game. You want to press on and continue the story. When you role-play, and it’s no longer linear, and it’s only limited by your imagination… I LOVE IT! It still has a stigma on it now, but then so did video games and comics five years ago.

11. Have you ever found an experience unnerving, off-putting or sublimely rewarding within the realms of Roleplay and performance? Describe it, if you would.

So I’ll start this story with an interesting fact. Did you know that those sprinkler systems in hotels are very sensitive? Who knew, right? Ah, yeah, how I know that one. I once, with the help of a magician friend, had a wrist-mounted flame thrower. I would tease Boba Fetts at conventions by waggling it at them and saying, “Mine works! Ha ha!” So anyway, I would demonstrate it at ‘How To’ and ‘Maker’ panels, as you can see in the picture there. Yeah, indoors. Not my best idea. Aaaaanyway, I decided that at the next convention I would take it outside. Responsible, right? So my next show was in Oklahoma, a fun show called Tokyo in Tulsa. After doing my Steampunk DIY panel on Saturday evening, I told the attendees that if they wanted, that I would demonstrate it outside. It was already dark out and I led a merry group of patrons out into the parking lot area and was doing… well, what you see in the picture, to the oooohs and aaaaaahs of my new friends, when a guy in a con security shirt walked over. I stopped and asked, “Am I too close to the building?” and he just said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” I said sure and we walked a few steps away. He asked me where I was from, and I said Texas. He responded with kind of a weird, terse expression on his face, “So you crossed state lines with that?” I nodded, feeling a little less like the cool kid rock star that you can’t help but feel like when you have a flamethrower. He blinked a lot, and then said “I’m an off duty police officer, and you do realize that that thing on your arm is a Weapon of Mass Destruction, right? And you crossed state lines with it…you DO know that by the Homeland Security laws, that makes you a terrorist?” I immediately disconnected the fuel canister and threw it across the street and said, “No, I’m a guy with a really weird lighter,” with the straightest face I could muster. He chuckled and said, “Smart. Go pick that up.” This is the reason I no longer carry WMDs to shows.

Whenever you’re doing performance, you’re playing a character. You’re out there, creating new facets of that character. You may have guidelines, but in the end, the field is still wide open for you. That being said, sometimes people think that character is you. That can get quite twitchy and unnerving. The character I played for “Wine, Women and Song” was a VERY wacky character. As a 16th century Italian character, he was skilled in… various arts. Now, I was married at the time, but that didn’t keep people from trying to take advantage of said arts.

Now as far as rewarding moments go, I remember being the master of ceremonies at the Texas Renaissance Festival. We’d have theme weekends, differing every week. For the last weekend, it was Celtic Christmas. For this, I play Father Christmas. It’s a completely different experience from playing a mall-Santa. There are moments where the kids would run up, each having written their names on a giant whiteboard, allowing me to call out the children by name. You’d watch them change from the stereotypical cringe of a child being forced into a Santa photo, and truly begin to believe that THIS was the real deal right in front of them! You get to FEEL the belief! Now, there is some heartbreak, such as kids wanting their parents to get back together. When kids would ask for world peace, I’d tell them, “I can only give that if everyone asks for it.”

The most rewarding moment came after a kid was done asking for stuff, and went over to my elves, saying “we found him!” An elf asked him what he meant. “Every year, I go to see Santa. And every year, I get one of his helpers. But this year, we found him!” To this day, I still get chills, goosebumps just thinking about that.

12. Please describe your sources of inspiration beyond academic influences. What sparked your creativity within this milieu?

Your first inspiration for anything is the creativity of the people you meet. You see something amazing [that] someone’s made, and talk to them about what they made. So you go off, and make your own unique thing, which in some way branches off of their thing.

My first Steampunk spark was in 2004 at DragonCon. I met Danny and the Outlanders, who were already doing this Steampunk thing. Now, I’d always loved the aesthetic, but I’d never known it had a name. I went from there and built my very first, turn-of-the-century outfit from everything I could find. From there, I wanted to make a gun to go with it. I did some research, looked around, and immediately had tons of inspiration.

LARPing has that wonderful, underlying structure where someone else has created a world. They’ve generated a universe for you to play in. And then you go attend an event! For those interested, I’d suggest finding a Nero chapter, joining monster camp, becoming an NPC, and becoming something that inspires other people! Yes, you might get crushed a hundred times as a goblin, but you’ll learn the system, and you’ll get the inspiration to create your own concept later! As an NPC, you also get sent in to meet people you might otherwise have never interacted with. And you can play other things, such as the old man with a secret! If you’re like me, you can get into the storytelling aspect of it all. It’s all a feedback loop, and my initial concepts come from it, talking to other people about what they would love to see and what they’ve seen too much of. It’s the best jumping off point, as opposed to simply replicating something.

13. What is your creative process? Would you describe it as hands on, solitary, collaborative?

Um… YES. All of the above. There are times when I don’t work well without others around me working, and there are times when I like to bounce back ideas with people. This is basically how my books are written, co they’re all collaborative projects.

As far as building things, I often just dive into the research. I hyperfocus, and return to the real world six hours later, slightly dizzy. My creative process is all over the map, mostly because my mediums are all over the map.

14. Do you have a Final Word for our readers and attendees?

Don’t stop. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Do not desert your Art. You’re going to make something, and it’s possibly going to suck, but you made it. That makes it Art! Keep going. Everything that every artist does keeps going. Whenever you stop doing that, whenever you give up on it… that’s giving up on a piece of yourself.

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