New Home, New Projects!

Moving home is stressful. You won't believe how hugely, mind-bogglingly, incredibly stressful it is... unless you've done it yourself, of course. We've decided that we are never going to do it again... well, that's what we say now. We're settled in (mostly - there are still a few boxes whose contents we have yet to find a home for, and plenty of ongoing projects to claim our time) and I am finally getting back into creative mode.  

If you've kept an eye on any of my websites (www.ejjackson.org, www.neonskybooks.org or www.mindingmama.org ) then you'll be aware that my latest project is a comic book/graphic novel called 'Minding Mama', a future-earth, post-apocalyptic series based on a short story I wrote a year or so ago for a writing competition, but never submitted. Humanity is clinging to life underground following decades of fierce solar flare activity, which has all but destroyed the ozone layer. Only robots inhabit the surface - but without the necessary infrastructure, time is running out for Farmbots like Cyril and Celia, who maintain themselves by cannibalising parts from other defunct robots. Cyril and Celia are running a programme to raise UV-resistant food plants for the shrinking human population in their immediate vicinity - which means that once they are beyond repair, the villagers will eventually starve.

Concept Art

This amazing concept art is by Amanda Fullwood, who in addition to being a very talented artist, also has experience in costume and set design. In addition to providing concept art for the settings and human characters in 'Minding Mama', Amanda will also be helping us with the trailer.

The Farmbots in 'Minding Mama' are the (fictional) human interface end result of  a very real innovation by Farmbot founder Rory Aronson. When I discovered that my fictional Farmbots already existed in the real world, I spoke to Rory who was happy for me to use the name, and I'm happy to link his website here. I hope you'll visit!

It fell to experienced illustrator and story-board artist Dan Schaefer to put a human, er.. robot... face to Cyril and Celia. Here's an early draft concept for Cyril, who becomes Mama's companion, protector and fellow traveller as events unfold. The original short story was written from Cyril's perspective, and he was -and is- a very sympathetic character. He will be voiced in our trailer by David Learner, a name that will be familiar to fans of 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' - because David not only portrayed Marvin the Paranoid Android in several stage adaptions, but inhabited Marvin's body for the television series. We've also got someone lined up for Mama, and will announce her name soon.

Dan has illustrated three amazing pages of 'Minding Mama' for our crowdfunding campaign, which have been expertly coloured by Grant Kempster - and whilst I would love to share them here, I'm afraid we are going to save them for the campaign!

I'm very excited about 'Minding Mama' - it is a story with many possibilities, and once we've crowdfunded the first issue, we aim to complete the story with further editions.  If you'd like to follow our progress, please check out the website!

EJ Jackson