Maxwell Gets Drunk: Hal-Con Post the Sequelning! Drakaina Muse

This will be my last post about the events of last weekend. I got to spend some time at Drakaina's panel. Before I talk about the content of said panel an aside;

I had never heard of a professional muse before this last weekend. The first thought that came to my mind upon hearing this (and I bet to Drakaina's chagrin she gets asked something to this effect all the time) "So she's a model". Ben very swiftly (and painfully) corrected me. However I checked out her site immediately after getting home from the Con (read: waking up hung over on Ben's apartment floor). Just to try and wrap my head around the concept of a modern day muse. Drakaina explains the evolution from model to muse here. She does it much better than I believe I can.

"They didn’t want me to be only their model anymore, they were looking at me as a Muse … The time of Drakaina the fantasy art Model was long gone, it was now the Era of Drakaina the Muse... Inspiring painters, drawers, poets and writers, as well as several models in my native France, where Fantasy art Modeling was finally recognized as a true form of artistic expression"

I think I've come to an understanding as to what a modern muse does. However it is very hard to dispel the image of a starving artist furiously at his chosen craft gazing up at Drakaina (wearing a billowing robe of somekind, let's say made of satin) as she eats, grapes or playfully leafs through a magazine or simply reclines on some kind of abstract chair basking in the sun (as images go it could be worse). To make a long story short it's a cool job and I would love to be a professional inspire-er (or source of inspiration may be a more apt way to put it).

Now the panel!

AR'no, Drakaina, and Dominic Marco watching AR'no about to eat an imaginary watermelon.

The Panel's focus was on CrimsonDK, a dark urban fantasy comic. Dark urban fantasy has hit the mainstream hard in the last ten years or so. What sets this comic a part from its predecessors is the concept behind the creation of the comic.

The concept is somewhat similar to gamebooks, also known as CYOA books (choose your own adventure book, not to be confused with the series by that title which allowed the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative), in a sense that the story will be influenced by the various places Drakaina will appear as a guest in Conventions, as well as the (real) people she meets along the way, starting at Hal-con 2011 and ending at Hal-con 2012.

Some of the characters in the storyline are loosely based on existing people, and we will give the audience the opportunity to become part of the story (contest form, or investors). The reason behind this is that we wanted to make the product interactive for the reader: You inspire us to become one of the characters, we send our concept to the artist, the artist does an artwork inspired on our concept of “you” and in the end you get to cosplay yourself (or the “yourself” generated by the inspiration of a group of creative minds).

Let me tell you right now, I got a full blown case of the vapors when they said Choose your own adventure. There are three things I love, Chicken Shwarma, European cut swim shorts, and Choose your own adventure books (novels if you prefer). The story will be focused around Drakaina (obviously), she has been sent or displaced from her home (the Dragon Lands) to an alternate reality (our world) on a quest to save/redeem souls of people from the Dragon Lands. While this is happening she will have contracted a degenerative disease (my memory fails I think because of the displacement from her world to ours, souls are part of it) and therefore will be in a race against time to save the people from her world.
The choose your own adventure aspect sounds like it will open up a realm of possibilities. It will be interesting to see what paths Drakaina takes (as AR'no put it "She likes happy endings, but I like sad ones so we'll see") and how they play out the duality of our world and her world (it was mentioned that you might see Darkwing Duck/NegaDuck situations arise with certain characters). I will be keeping up to date with the comic as its released. Below are some pictures of us, Drakaina, AR'no, and Dominic Marco (who's art is fantastic by the way).