A little chat with Clark T. Carlton

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Forgive me friends, I should've made note of this a short while back. Award winning author Clark T. Carlton was keen to catch up and have a chinwag about the makings of the book, which is always agreeable as I discover more about the process in 20/20 reflection than my thoughts and concerns will allow at the time of creation. It was very good to talk with Clark, as he's a very creative writer and thinker and he brought some insightful questions to bear.

Hit the jump at the bottom for the whole article, enjoy :)

Clark - "Would you tell us more about the title of your book? "Salsa Invertebraxa" sounds like 'Latin dance of the bugs' or 'sauce of arthropods.' Is it also a reference to Abraxas, a Latin root for 'moth' or is it in reference to the deity Abraxas that Jung called "a God higher than the Christian God and Devil, that combines all opposites into one Being"?  Your book does depict one world of light and its darker counterpart.

Moz - Your interpretation is as good as mine, actually better, especially the Abraxas details. Originally it was going to be called Chitin, (but spelled Kaitin) the material from which all insects/arthropods are made from, and then I thought that would be too vague or esoteric. Then Dance of the Invertebrates was considered, but that sounded too much like a documentary, so I pondered on my own take of insects and thought to just twist the phrase to the same degree I twisted the insect designs, so that the suggestion was still there, but it's clearly of a different world.

Clark - Could you tell us more about your name "Mozchops?"  

Moz - Mozchops is another skewed word, from the Permian era animal Moschops, which I named my cat after. It stuck to me when I used it for network gaming. Moschops, the cat, mysteriously disappeared years ago, without a trace or a goodbye note, somewhere in the Australian bush, so the name keeps his spirit around at least.

Clark - Please tell us more about your process. How much do you paint each day? Is all your work digital or do you do any actual painting?  What programs and computer do you use? 

Moz - Lately I've been doing commissions, more fantasy oriented for online games etc, but as a whole, not so much painting as before. I'm spending a lot more time with the family, after so many years enslaving myself to the project. I would be spending up to three weeks per painting for Salsa Invertebraxa, going to sleep at 3am every night for years. Now I do all my work digitally, as it's easier to work in layers and control all the separate elements, and re-arrange the composition. 
I start with pencil on paper, and then digitally scan, and from there Corel Painter with a Wacom Intuous tablet, on a desktop PC, with a ginormous Syncmaster monitor. Which is all great, but ultimately there is no short cut — brush strokes still require the same patience, trial and error in digital as they do in analogue painting. My ctrl and z keys need constant replacing.

Clark - You have a very successful background as a concept artist and designer for video games and other media. For the six years that you worked on S.I. were you also working on other projects?  Were you able to devote yourself purely to Salsa?

Moz - It was a modest career.  I left the industry pretty much as unknown as when I started, except for the Re-Volt community, who have kept the game alive for over 12 years, which is remarkable given the brief lifespan of digital entertainment. The video-games paid really well, enough for me almost to survive for six years living on the cheap in SE Asia, so that allowed me to focus entirely on S.I. But I did try to work on it while I was full time employed, with only sporadic progress — it was impossible to make significant progress. S.I demanded all or nothing from me."

Continued @ Clark T Carltons Tumblr blog here ....clarkcarlton.tumblr.com/post/5…



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MetalSnail's avatar
I read this on your facebook :)
I was wondering about the name Mozchops too :)