Steampunk Holmes: The Nautilus

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It took two weeks of trial and error but Daniel Cortes and are proud to present the final design of the Nautilus for Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus project. I want to thank Daniel for his patience and for re-conceptulizing the Nautilus many times until we got it just right.

As we work on this project I'm getting a very good idea of what it must be like to produce and direct a movie.  You have an idea that you share with talented people and they work their butt's off to make it tangible.   I imagine that this must require as much give-and-take as Daniel and I have when working on characters, scenes, and gadgets.  The same kind of back-and-forth I have with P.C. Martin about the story.  Truly wonderful things are not built in a vacuum; they must be the result of passionate collaboration among peers.

To the left you see the final design for the Nautilus.  This is a mechanical drawing that will be featured in the book along with Doctor Watson's Arm, the Black Widow, and other gadgets yet to be announced.

The Nautilus design went through many variations as we experimented with one idea after another.  We have, after all, very big shoes to fill.  If you look at the design of the Nautilus by Disney in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", a steampunk masterpiece, or the versions done by other adaptations such as "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" or many of the animated takes on the story, you'll soon agree that the design must rise to meet the merits of the story.  We knew we had to get it right, and I think we did.  Click on the image to above and judge for yourself.

The Nautilus sinks many ships in the original story by harpooning them to create a great hole in the hull that fills and sinks the ship.  We needed a big-ass pointy thing on the front and Daniel gave us one. I also wanted to make the ship look somewhat organic, but not like a fish.  Look at the curves and I think you'll agree that Daniel delivered on that request as well. I wanted the Nautilus to reflect Nemo's Indian heritage - Something Daniel took to heart adding beautiful India-like decorative designs.  Finally, I wanted the Nautilus to be HUGE! Check out the "crew" label next to the ship.

Below are some of the earlier concepts that lead us to the final design.

Concept Drawings of the Nautilus

The Steampunk Holmes Sound Track

One of the things I'm going to do with our app book, Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus, is incorporate a sound track with the book. This goes beyond simple sound effects where you click a button and mechanical gear sounds are heard - that's a given.  When I talk sound track I mean a sound track like a movie has - mood music.

At the very least I hope to provide appropriate ambient music derived from the instrumentals of songs from Abney Park who has contracted with me to provide music for the book.  It would also be good to provide ambient sound effects so, for example, a scene that takes place a busy street has street sounds in the background.

The idea first came to me last year when a MMOG I played, EVE Online, incorporated a more sophisticated sound track into the gaming experience. If you have the sound track playing in EVE it varies over time and the music gets more intense and changes if you entering battle, engaged in battle, or simply floating peacefully through space. It's really a cool effect.

My original thought, and one I considered submitting a patent application for, was to use eye tracking to determine where the person is reading and to have the music and ambient sound effects change seamlessly according the content.  I gave up on that idea because of complexity. For Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus I plan to base the music on the page you are reading which is technically much simpler.

Yesterday, I discovered an app book developer called Backtrack which uses a sound track for their books, most notably an app/book version of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure of the Speckled Band and The Power of Six a modern young adult novel.  Backtrack has a pretty cool approach. They have a very non-invasive carrot (arrow) that moves along the right side of the page at what they predict to be your speed of reading. As the carrot moves to different paragraphs and even different sentences the ambient music and sound effects change to match the content.  I think you can train it to read at your own speed pretty easily - it seems to have slowed down when I kept double tapping the carrot back to the sentence I was still on as it was way ahead of me (evidently I'm slow reader).  I really enjoyed the experience and I tip my hat to the folks at Booktrack for the engineering and quality of music and sound effects.

Today, I discovered that iOS 5 just might ship with facial recognition APIs in the SDK including eye tracking.  If that is true, and it works well, I can see combining eye tracking with context sensitive sound track and ambient sound effects to improve the experience.  That's a nice to have.

For now I'm sticking with page level sound track as that's is easier and my budget is not unlimited. I hope, however, to incorporate eye-tracked ambient sound and music in an update providing the APIs exist and I have the money to afford to implement it.

There are so many things I want to do with the app/book but I'm going to have to throttle my ambitions if I want to be able to afford produce the book.  However, just because I can't do them now doesn't mean I can't talk about my ideas which is one the main reasons for this blog. I want to be totally open about what I'm thinking and producing.

Why I Develop Interactive Books

Steve Jobs speaking at Stanford's
2005 Graduation Ceremony

This is a bit of a personal note, but I wanted to post it here so folks understand me and what my company, Noble Beast, is all about.  There are a lot of other things I could do that would make me a lot more money than I will ever make on Interactive books, but I don't do them and here is why.

When I was 19 years old I came to the realization that I didn't want to work in my Father's business, which I had assumed I would do since I was about 10.  My father is self-made man from humble beginnings and his business (now over 50 years) is very successful.  When I confided in my father that I didn't think his line of business was of interest to me, he supported me.  He gave me what I think is the best advice you can give to any high-school or collage graduate.  He told me to discover what I love and stick to that.  He warned me not to work just to earn a living, but to work at something I'm passionate about.

It turns out that Steven Jobs gave exactly the same advice during a commencement speech at Stanford more than a decade later, in 2005.  You can see a video of the speech and the transcript here but I wanted to quote a couple of lines from it in the hopes that his words, far more elegant than my own, will inspire other people to follow his and my father's advice.

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.   

-- Steve Jobs

It took me 12 years to graduate from collage with a degree in a field I love, computer science.  I dropped out of collage three times, joined the army for three years, started a few businesses, and then discovered programming.  I was 30 years old when I graduated - an age at which other people are established in their careers. Since then I've done well in my field and have loved nearly every day as a software professional.

Last year I discovered a new passion: Producing interactive books for the iPad.  This still involves my first love, software development, but it also allows me to work with very talented artists and to produce a product that entertains thousands, perhaps one day, millions of people.  I'm so passionate about it that stopped working as a software consultant and spent most of last year earning nothing trying to build my business.  I started the business with a talented individual but in the end we had very different visions of what our focus should be.  In February, I left the company I helped co-found and landed my current position working for a software consulting firm. I enjoy the company I work for and the work I do, but I remain truly passionate about producing interactive books.  Shortly after leaving my first publishing company I started a new one, Noble Beast, which is the company that is developing Steampunk Holmes.  It's through this new company that I pursue my passion and because I do not have to compromise on anything - I'm the boss and only employee - I'm very focused and having the time of my life.

Along the way I have heard a lot of negative things about pursuing production of interactive books. The most painful for me has come from venture capitalists and the like who don't support the idea of a company that is a life-style business.  Understandably, VC's want a company that you can start today and sell for a billion dollars in 5 years. Who wouldn't?  Well, I can't create the company and books I want if that is my focus. I have to put quality before everything else including earnings to create the kind of interactive books I can be proud of and be passionate about developing. I'm creating a life-style business not a venture business and I'm proud of it.

All my life people have been telling me that I can't do this and that I can't do that.  I failed English in high-school and couldn't write a simple note let alone a blog, but in 1999 I wrote my first book and have written five very successful books since then.  I failed math in high-school and had to start out in remedial math in collage, but by the time I finished I had completed three semesters of calculus, a number of math intensive science classes, and was a computer programmer.   Today people are telling me that I don't have the right ingredients to make a publishing company work, but I'm going to prove them wrong just as I proved all the other nay-sayers wrong.  Success, I believe, has nothing to do with natural skills.  It has to do with dogged determination and passion. Armed with these things you can accomplish anything.

I would like to quote once more from Steve Jobs 2005 commencement address. If you've read this far than thank you for taking the time to listen to what is probably a very narcissistic post. I only hope that my words, or more likely Steve Jobs words, will motivate you to focus on your passion and not get stuck doing something you don't care about.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.   

-- Steve Jobs

Steampunk Holmes Technology: The Black Widow's Gatling Gun

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As I wrote in the blog entry "Steampunk Holmes Technology: Mechanical Drawings" one of the Steampunk Holmes book enhancements is to provide more information about the various gadgets that Holmes, Watson and others use or encounter through out the story.  To the left is the mechanical-like drawing of the Black Widow which runs on a H2O2 steam engine and sports a Gatling gun under the hood of the side car.

I did a little research on the design of steam engines and ended up combining two designs available at the time into one.  The Black Widow uses a two cylinder (or compound) engine for quick acceleration and power and a steam turbine as a second stage for sustained speed and long distances.

The Gatling gun fires 300 rounds per minute. At that time (1885) Gatling guns could fire much faster but there would be a problem with storing ammunition so I chose a slower rate of fire but instead of being driven by a hand crank, as was common, the eight barrels turn and fire using the kick-back for the previous round (aka Recoil-Operated).   The ammunition is a smaller caliber .303 Lee-Metford bullet of lead encased (jacketed) in copper to improve accuracy (lead tends to warp its shape when fired distorting accuracy).

I don't know if most readers will appreciate all the work we put into these designs, but I know we are having a total blast developing the story, gadgets and art work.  Stay tuned as we are currently working on the design the Captain Nemo's Nautilus!

Daniel Cortes Art Work for Novus AEterno

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Daniel Cortes, the amazingly talented artist working with me on Steampunk Holmes, has also been working for the folks developing Novus AEterno as a character artist.  Not only has he been developing character designs but he also worked on their web site. Daniel promises me that the Steampunk Holmes web site will be equally as cool when we finally get it finished.

Check out Novus AEterno and the great art work by Daniel and other artists - It looks like EVE on Steroids.  Instead of running a single ship you get to become a Consul General and run an entire space Navy!

Steampunk Holmes Technology: Mechanical Drawings

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In addition to portraits of characters and illustrated and animated scenes from the story, we are also developing mechanical drawings of the coolest gadgets in the story.

This enhances the interactive aspect of the book that much more.  When you are reading the story you can already touch any character's name and see a portrait of that character and a little background.  In addition, when you run across the mention of certain gadgets like the Black Widow, the Nautilus, Weapons, and so forth a mechanical drawing will display showing the device in more detail and how it works.

The mechanical drawing to the left shows the workings of Doctor Watson's mechanical arm.  It's powered by a Hydrogen Peroxide steam (the byproducts are pure oxygen and water vapor) and its movements are coordinated by a small analog computer called a Lepine Caliber Engine.

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I like to think that these details add some realism to the story while also providing more art and background to add to the enhancement of the story.  We've actually done a lot of research and thinking about the world in which Steampunk Holmes takes place and its fun to share some of that with readers. It also forms a solid foundation on which to develop future stories.  To the right is the start of a mechanical showing how the Black Widow functions and is built.  I can't wait to show off all the cool features this motorcycle is going to have - Batman and James Bond would be proud to drive it.

Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus

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We have officially named our story "Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus." To the left is the promotional poster showing Holmes, Watson and Mycroft. I've been calling it just "Steampunk Holmes" for a while now but as we develop the story I can't help but hope it's a success and that we can do other stories with the same world and characters. If that does happen then we'll simply change the subtitles of subsequent storeis to things like "Steampunk Holmes: Jack the Ripper", "Steampunk Holmes: Dracula", or "Steampunk Holmes: Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde" as you can see I already have some follow-ups in mind.

As I've told Daniel Cortes (our artist) and P.C. Martin (our writer) a dozen times, speed doesn't matter. Take your time and produce something you can be proud of. If we release a better product later that's just fine with me.

Anyway, take a look at the movie poster and title and let me know what you think - we would love to do a whole series of books based on Steampunk Holmes and we are working hard to make the first episode the best possible experience.

Homes and Watson Battle Rajput Warriors

If you've been reading this blog than you know the story, Steampunk Holmes, is an adaptation of Sr. Author Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", a story about the theft of submarine plans.

When I started thinking about what the submarine might look like the first thing that came to mind was the Nautilus from the 1954 Disney movie "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", which was an  adaption of a 1870 book by Jules Verne of the same title.  This book is considered one of the classics in steampunk culture.

So, if we are going to have the Nautilus than we have to have Captain Nemo in the story as the villain, right?

With this in mind we started outlining the adaptation.  At the time we were figuring out the adaptation plot-line I got caught up watching this show from Spike TV (via Netflix streaming video) called, "Deadliest Warrior."  The show pits historical combatants that never met in real-life against each other and asks, "Who would win?"  They had shows with mock battles between Apache Indians and Roman Gladiators or a Spartan vs. Ninja.  It's pretty entertaining although the way they figure out the winner (via a computer simulation) is a bit of stretch.

Rajput Armor - 18th Century

Anyway, I watched one episode where they pitted a Roman Centurion against a Rajput Warrior.  What is a Rajput Warrior?  They are kind of like the Samurai of India.

The Rajput weapons are very cool and their style of martial arts is very different from the Asian styles we have seen in movies and on TV.  Captain Nemo, our villian, is also from India.

Well, it took me about 10 seconds to decide we needed to have Captain Nemo's henchmen be Rajput warriors and we absolutely, positively needed them to battle it out with Holmes and Watson at some point.

So now there are two scenes where the Rajput battle it out with the English. The image at top left (click to enlarge) is a scene painted by Daniel Cortes depicting a battle between some Rajput warriors and Holmes and Watson.  I won't tell you how it goes but lets just say its a good thing that Mycroft is on the scene.

Daniel's Steampunk Rajput Armor

I love the Rajput weapons as shown on the "Deadliest Warrior".  The armor, double edged long sword (Khanda), killer frisbees (Chakram), punching blades (Katar) and whip-sword (Aara) are simply too cool.

Of course, Daniel couldn't just use them straight away, he had to enhance them so the Katar, for example, can shoot out trailing a whicked steal ribbon as shown in the image above.  Daniel also steampunkified the Rajput armor. The above image shows real Rajput armor from 18th Century. The image immediately to the right is a close up of Daniel's steampunk Rajput armor.

When you can take a cultural artifact and recast it with googles and brass work, that's steampunk at its finest.

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