The Creative Process
Welsh mythology, my brother, sculpting clay, the on-line game Runescape, the Marvel supervillain Green Goblin, time travel, a person I knew from Reality's End, the on-line game City of Heroes, my own madness, jackets, the curator of Kirby's Rainbow Resort, goblins from folklore, the color green, and the White Stripes song Seven Nation Army. What could any of these possibly have in common? They were each stepping stones in a year long creative process for Frederick Greenborne.
It seems odd, but this is how my mind works. I have little rhyme to what I do, and it is more a collection of random events invoking little changes here and there that eventually amount to a very big change. It happens to pretty much anything I have ever thought up, and will probably continue to happen to them. My creations are always evolving, and sometimes diverging, as time goes by. What follows is an insight to the most recent of these... that I can account for.
It all began about a year ago. VinnyD, an acquaintance of mine from my brother's web site, Reality's End, told me about this fun, new game he had discovered. Normally, his revelations are far less than spectacular, but I bit anywise. It turned out to be Runescape, which I grew determined to play because of the difficulty my computer gave me only to have VinnyD quit playing the game shortly after I had gotten myself started and hooked.
Being as massively trafficked as it is, I had difficulty selecting a name. However, Bimblesnaff is never taken anywhere, as it is a name I made up. Wanting to be true to the name's and my own goblin roots, I was hoping to make a goblin-esque character. Sorely disappointed by the lack of such, I did the next best thing and just used my basic theme: orange hair, purple pants, and, since my skin could not be green, a green jacket. Jackets are staples for most all of my characters, from Beany Joe, to Jackdaw, to Avyron, to even the early Mad Goblin. And so he was born, Bimblesnaff of Runescape.
Within no time, I began elaborating on the character, giving him personality, common wears, and a bust. Particularly, he went without any armor and only wore a cape and a religious symbol about his neck. Using some sculpting clay, I got tired of dishing out nymph forms of Shadoura monsters and decided to give something different a go. I loved the piece, and I fell deeper into Bimblesnaff-mania. Pictures galore followed, feeling out a distinctive drawing style for him, and a name and origin soon followed. He would be man raised by goblins, Frederick "Bimblesnaff" Greenborne.
Time passed and he continued to grow. One of his growths came when another acquaintance, KindarSpirit from Kirby's Rainbow Resort, kept begging for me to play City of Heroes. I was reluctant, but still planned for if the event were to occur. Having already made several hero characters, it was difficult trying to fit any into the bounds of the game, so, not wanting any classics marred, I turned to junk characters. First on the list was Jackdaw. The concept seemed to work pretty well, so then I brainstormed with all my junk, which largely comprised of the former "jacket wearers". New in the list, however, was Greenborne, as he was more often called to separate him from Bimblesnaff Bogg the Ghobling.
An idea sparked in my mind to use the character created for the first on-line game I played in any on-line game I would play, serving as a good base design. He had been branching out rapidly from his origin. The game related object around his neck was replaced with an original creation, the Amulet of the Sky, to make him more home grown. However, he had a medieval theme and needed a reason to be in present day. With this, I tossed out the unoriginal idea of time travel. It was not explained, but I was certain it would be later. To make him see more hero-ish, I tossed on a pair of goggles over his eyes, substituting a mask, and gussied up his wears a bit. The make-over seemed good.
Completely unrelated to this, I was having an internal conflict at the same time. I was questioning why goblins were green despite them never being stated, in folklore, as green skinned. In some less-than-deductive tracing, I noted the Green Goblin, who had to specifically specify that he was both green and a goblin. This made me begin to think if Osborne, like the Deviled Ham mascot, set the trend for the fiend. I tossed around the idea that, for my site's seventh anniversary, I would change my goblins to have the traditional gray skin as the legends tell. My brother, of course, pointed out an error to this process. "What about Greenborne?" His name came from the goblins that raised him. He, of course, also had an explanation for the green skinned goblins in that green was the color of all feys and such from Welsh mythology.
So, I was faced with a nomenclature confliction, an unanswered question of time travel, and a character growing too fast for his own good. So fast, in fact, that I did not want Greenborne restricted to the narrow realm of fan work. All of this recent plotting occurred at a time where I was radio soaked, hearing the song Seven Nation Army quite frequently. As I do with a lot of songs, I try to fit it to a massive fight scene. There's no reason for that, but I just like to. Greenborne had been appearing in a lot of this internal music videos and really shined in this song, often being considered for an idea to dish out in a Flash animation. Then, something snapped in my head, and Greenborne was reborn.
His origin would be basically the same. Rather than goblins, he will be picked up by general monsters from the Welsh Otherworld, who commonly take human spawn. The affiliated color there, of course, is green. Also noted there, time travels much faster, something like a day is a year on Earth. So, the name problem was solved, the time travel was explained, and when that time was spanned, he would emerge in a world ruled by seven nations, fueling ample reason for the fight Flash and/or his own scenario.
And that is just a sample of how my mind processes ideas. It hurts just to think about thinking about... thinking... ow...
