Now in its fourth edition, Fantasticon is known as the “Symposium of Fantastic Literature” and is Brazil’s primary conference dedicated entirely to speculative fiction.  It gathers an impressive number of Brazil’s top writers and editors.

I’ll be there Saturday and Sunday, and I’ll participate in a panel discussion on Sunday about using different media to publicize speculative literature, a subject I’ve learned a lot about through my work here at The Elephant and Macaw Banner.

If you’re there, please drop by and say hello!

Douglas Cohen gave me this amazing quote for the release:

“Truly memorable characters within sword & sorcery literature are rare.  As numerous authors have learned over the years, it is a Herculean task to step out of the shadows of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser.  Perhaps a handful of others can be added to this list, no more.  With Gerard van Oost and Oludara, Christopher Kastensmidt has given me reason to hope this exclusive club has just admitted its two latest members.  This duo is fresh and different–as is the setting of a magical colonial Brazil–yet at same time their adventures hearken back to everything that makes me love this field.  It is a merger of old and new, and I look forward to the next installment in this universe.”

It’s a quote that is impossible to live up to–but Douglas has read multiple stories from the series and I’m extremely appreciative of his continued support.  Thanks, Doug!

For those who speak Portuguese, you can read the release in its entirety here:

2010_08_17 Press Release – Brasil Colonial Faz Sucesso nos EUA

For those interested, I’m going to use this post to give a rundown of those first six months, and talk a bit about what is coming for the future.

First off, I’ll share some numbers.  There have been over 4000 page views since we’ve launched.  That includes close to 1000 unique visitors from 67 countries.  If you add in the Live Journal statistics, that adds a few hundred more unique visitors a couple thousand more hits.  I don’t have data for Twitter and the RSS feeds, but I know those have been active as well.  We’ve had two big peaks to date, one after Cory Doctorow tweeted about the story launch and one after M. G. Ellington interviewed me for Apex Book Company.  Thanks again to both of you for your support!

And most important, thanks so much to everyone who has dropped by, especially those who have linked to or friended the site!  EAMB also has over 70 followers on Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal.

I hope everyone has enjoyed the artwork so far, I know I have.  I won’t be posting any more for a while, although some is waiting in the wings for the next story launch.  I would like to take this chance to publicize the artists, all of whom do freelance work and all of whom are a pleasure to work with.  If you enjoyed their artwork and have some potential jobs for them, please look them up on the “Links” page.

Coming up: For the “World” section, I still have one more set of posts to wrap up all the references from “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”.  Specifically, I’ll be writing posts dealing with the final arc of the story: the encounter of Gerard and Saci-Pererê.  After that, I hope to start putting up posts about the other stories.  There is much, much more to come.

More stories are on their way, I promise, but the publishing world moves at its own pace.  Even though publication takes time, I still hope to publish the stories through magazines.  Not only do I want to expose as many readers as possible to the series, I also to want to make sure the stories are top quality by the time they are published.  The editors do a great job of pushing me to make them the best possible before they go to press.

So thanks again!  If you have any questions, just drop a comment or send me an e-mail.  I’ll be around!

Here are a couple of examples:

“Le Baye de Tous les Saints” by Albert Dufourcq

“S. Salvador / Baya de Todos os Sanctos” by Claes Jansz Visscher and Hessel Gerritsz

Hope you enjoyed the paintings!

The first is this version made to look like an old map.  Fantastic!

Since all the Elephant and Macaw Banner artwork to date has been character-focused, I thought it would be nice to add a scenery piece to give some feeling for the world at the time.  I chose Leonardo for his excellent concept work and use of color, which you can see for yourself in his portfolio here.

This scene was inspired by Gerard’s arrival in Salvador, just before the events of “The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara”.  A lot of research went into this piece to make it a faithful physical representation of Salvador at the time, while allowing liberty with the colors to give it a touch of the fantastic.

There is a lot more to tell behind the creation of this piece, and I’ll be writing a full “making of” sometime in the future.  For now, anyone who reads Portuguese (or just wants to scan the intermediate tests) can see Leonardo’s own description of the process on his blog in the post “Virando a página“.

Born Diogo Álvares Correia, Caramuru was a Portuguese who shipwrecked in Brazil around 1510, at the age of 17.  Despite his inauspicious shipwreck, he had the fortune to swim ashore just ten kilometers from the Bay of All Saints, one of the greatest natural ports in the Western Hemisphere.  He also had the luck to shortly thereafter meet Paraguaçu: daughter of Morubixaba Taparica, a great Tupinambá warrior-chief in the region.

Caramuru arrives in Brazil (by Ernesto Frederico Scheffel)

It is told that Caramuru first impressed the natives by shooting down a flying bird with one explosive shot from a harquebus.  But what truly saved him was the love of Paraguaçu.  They soon became husband and wife, and with a few other shipwreck survivors and many Tupinambá, he settled his own tribe in what would later become the city of Salvador.  The Tupinambá gave him the name Caramuru, which probably came from the Tupi word for the moray eel, in reference to his long, “stinging’ harquebus.  There are some, however, who claim it is a distortion of “caraymuru”, which means “wet white man”, since he washed out from the sea.

Caramuru sculpture

For years, Caramuru worked with the French and others who visited Brazil looking for Brazilwood and other plunder.  The French came to know the area where Caramuru lived as “Pointe du Caramourou”.  There are tales of him saving shipwrecked Portuguese, French and Spanish sailors, and rescuing them from other Tupinambá tribes which would have killed or in some cases even eaten them.  Charles V, Holy Roman Emporer, once sent Caramuru a letter of thanks for his aid.  Some shipwreck survivors and deserters remained with Caramuru, marrying his daughters or other natives.

In 1526, Caramuru and Paraguaçu travelled to France.  In 1528 Paraguaçu was baptized and given the name Katherine du Brézil in honor of her godmother, Catherine des Granches (wife of the famous french explorer Jacques Cartier).  Upon their return to Brazil, Caramuru and Paraguaçu became the first Christian couple in Brazil on record.  As far as is known, no other Christian women were living in brazil at the time, and very few would move there even to the end of the century.

Caramuru portrait

The Portuguese soon became interested in taking advantage of Caramuru’s excellent relations with the natives for their colonization attempts.  in 1536, Francisco Pereira Coutinho arrived in Brazil to found the Captaincy of Bahia.  He allied himself with Caramuru and officially granted him his tribe’s land: right in the heart of modern Salvador.

When the time came to set up the General Government of Brazil, John III, the king of Portugal, decided to locate the capital in Salvador: in large part to Caramaru’s presence there and his prestige with the local natives.  Several other settlements had failed because of fights with the natives, and the Portuguese needed somewhere stable to make their base.  John III sent a letter to Caramuru in 1548 asking for his aid in establishing the new government, which Caramuru provided on the arrival of Tomé de Souza a year later.

Caramuru died in 1557, and Paraguaçu in 1582.

Statue of Caramuru and Paraguaçu in Viana do Castelo, Portugal

The name Caramuru became immortalized when José de Santa Rita Durão published an epic poem under his name in 1781.

And if Caramuru had never shipwrecked near Salvador, the entire history of Brazil could have been radically different.

For this first “making of” post, I’d like to tell the story behind the first EAMB illustration ever made: The Capelobo by Paulo Ítalo.

I chose the Capelobo as the first illustration in order to get some practice at directing the art process before moving on to the protagonists.  With these first commissions, I wanted to try and put my vision of the characters on paper.  To that end, I sent Paulo specific instructions.

My first instructions were to work in black and white and make the illustrations as realistic as possible.  Paulo is a specialist in this type of illustration, which is one of the reasons I chose to work with him.  That, and the fact that we’re great friends!

For references, I began with the head.  The classic Capelobo of Brazilian folklore has the head of an anteater.  For my version, I chose the Giant Anteater as the reference.

Giant Anteater

I did, however, feel like the anteater’s head is too narrow for the sense of massiveness which I wanted to impart on the creature.  So for a face reference I used the Brazillian tapir, which Paulo later modified into a more birdlike head.

Brazilian Tapir

For the body, I required a bipedal creature with a lumbering walk, similar to the classical troll image.  I chose to have humanlike proportions, yet with an immense musculature.  Even hunched over, the Capelobo stands a full seven feet tall.  The beast needed to exude power.  This was complicated a bit by the need to cover that musculature in a thick layer of fur, head to foot.  For hair thickness, length, and coloration, I used the musk ox, which also turned out to be an excellent reference for the beast’s huge hooves.

Musk Oxen

The upper legs would be human and terminate as ox legs, with hair covering everything except the hooves.

For the hands, I discovered the wonderful reference of the southern tamandua, which has some of the most wicked claws in the animal kingdom.

Southern Tamandua (anteater)

I wanted to work with a semi-profile view, and wanted the Capelobo to feel as ominous as possible, since the anteater snout could easily make the creature look comical if not done correctly.

Taking all that into account, Paulo came back with the first set of sketches:

Paulo did a spectacular job with this first set, and the pose on the right is the one we used in the final version.  I did, however, ask him to add hair around the entire body to better fit the image from the story.  For the first full illustration, Paulo also changed to a different pose.

However, this one felt too “active” for me, less menacing than I wanted.  Also, it still didn’t have the thick, long hair I associated with the beast.  For the final version, we returned to the original pose:

And there it is, the Capelobo in all its ferocious glory!  The Capelobo appears in the second adventure of Gerard and Oludara, “The Parlous Battle of Gerard and Oludara against the Capelobo”, where it creates no small amount of trouble for our protagonists.

Special thanks once again to Paulo Ítalo for doing such a fantastic job.

Please let me know if you enjoyed this “making of”, and I can plan more for the future.

(Photos: Wikipedia)

In her introduction, M.G. writes: “Christopher Kastensmidt’s ‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’ was my main reason for subscribing to Realms of Fantasy this year… Christopher gives his readers the best of both worlds. The story is a swift moving adventure, carefully constructed for a seamless flow of information that paints in the landscape and the period without bogging the reader down.”

All I can say is, “Wow, thanks!”  Read the full interview here.