I have to admit that Second Empire happened pretty much
by accident. One thing I was most certainly not planning on doing was
creating an epic length graphic novel about a Dalek civil war.
Originally I was not even a massive Dalek fan, as anyone who has seen my
main website will have realised I am interested in Japanese anime and
the Warhammer 40,000 universe and those interests date back to the
1980s. So why am I best known for doing a Dalek comic strip?
In 2007 my efforts were mainly focused on building CG models of the
gigantic starships that feature in Games Workshop's Battle Fleet Gothic
tabletop wargame, a spin-off of Warhammer 40K, and I had just finished
building two of the
smaller vessels from the game. I had been working on
those two models for the better part of the year, adding layer upon
layer of detail to models based upon metal gaming miniatures no larger
than the last joint of my thumb, until they actually began to look as if
they might be kilometre long behemoths. I had started work on a third
vessel but was making very little progress and I came to realise that I
was actually looking for excuses to to avoid working on the model, my
hobby was becoming a chore.
Working on the principle that a change is as good as a rest, I decided I
would do something completely different for a while and then return to
the starships with renewed enthusiasm. I had been meaning to have a play
with Daz 3D's Daz Studio ever since discovering they had an anime style
character and so putting the starships aside I began work on what would
become the image titled Dock 38. It was a fairly simple project
using Daz Studio's Aiko3 character and various clothing items downloaded
as freebies from the web, as well as a hovering robot probe and several
buildings that I created in Cinema 4D, the whole project took exactly a
week from start to finish. I began work on it one Saturday afternoon and
finished it the following Saturday afternoon and after those multi-month
long starships it felt great to go from nothing to a finished image in
just seven days.
My original plan was that I would have my change that was as good as a
rest and then get back to Battle Fleet Gothic, but after doing Dock 38 I
was still reluctant to return to the grind of detailing that starship so
soon. I started looking around for a new subject to work on and it just
so happened that the Doctor Who story Daleks in Manhattan was
broadcast that evening. At that time I was still in two minds as to
whether or not I liked the 2005 redesign of the Dalek and as I watched
the episode I got to wondering how I would have redesigned the Dalek. By
the time the show was half over I was itching for it to finish so I
could get on the PC and try building a Dalek of my own.
I deliberately did as little research as I possibly could and still have
the model be recognisably a Dalek, I wanted my design to be more
influenced by my rather vague memories of the Daleks in the classic
Doctor Who than by the reality of the props and so I downloaded just
enough images for me to get the right number of skirt panels and
reasonably accurate proportions and only referred to those references
when I absolutely had to.(Which probably explains why my first Daleks
had such flat heads). I was quite pleased with the result, though it
probably owed as much to my love of anime and post Star Wars Science
Fiction design as it did to Doctor Who. I posted some images of the
model on one of the CG modelling forums that I frequented and as the
membership was primarily American one of the first responses was along
the lines of "it's very nice, but what is it suppposed to be?"
I think at that point I had already been bitten by the Dalek bug as I
had only meant to build the one and then get back to Battle Fleet
Gothic, but as I write this in 2012 I still haven't touched those BFG
models since 2007. Having built my first Dalek I decided to learn more
about the species, as working on the model had stimulated my memories on
the subject and I had relised that there had been more than one type of
Dalek in the classic Doctor Who.
When I had done my initial reasearch I had encountered a website called
Project Dalek which had offered free Dalek plans, but because I didn't
want detailed reference I had passed it by. My latest search once more
turned up Project Dalek and this time I decided to register since it was
free. My plan was simple enough, get in, download the plans, leave and
never return. Having got in and downloaded the Dalek plans I decided
that as I was there, I might as well take a look around and see what
Project Dalek was all about. I suppose I was expecting that the place
would be full of Dalek nerds wittering on about what Daleks have for
lunch and how they manage to ravage the unuverse equipped with nothing
more than egg wisks and sink plungers but the reality proved to be far
different.
Nerdy fanboy discussion was actively discouraged and instead the site
was all about building Daleks, full size props, scale models and CG
models. If I had to classify myself, I would say that I am first and
foremost a modeller, I love building models, either plastic kits or 3D
virtual models, and it is the process rather than the result that I
enjoy, modelling to me is about the journey, not the destination, a
finished model is a by-product of my hobby, not the goal. So I found
Project Dalek quite fascinating, a site dedicated to building model
Daleks (to me a full size Dalek prop is a 1:1 scale model of a fictional
alien death machine) and the site quickly became one of my most
frequently visited favourites as I delved ever deeper into the world of
Dalek building.
I posted some images of my CG Daleks in the relevant section of the
forum, half expecting the serious, Dalek minded membership to be
appalled by my treatment of a classic design but they were very well
received, which further encouraged my desire to build more Dalek models.
I also discovered that there was far more to the Daleks than I had ever
imagined. Although I had watched Doctor Who since the Jon Pertwee years,
I wasn't really a serious fan. I owned books and models and videos from
Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and dozens of anime shows,
and I had a ton of Warhammer 40K stuff, but I had never bought a single
item of Doctor Who merchandise, had never even watched a single episode
of the show more than once. So I was quite surprised to discover just
how many different Dalek variants had appeared in the show over the
years. And there was more than just the TV show, there were the two
Dalek movies, I had seen them both several times but had completely
forgotten about them until Project Dalek jogged my memory. There was
also the comic strip on the back of Televison Century 21 magazine, the
existence of which I was completely unaware of (as I was only a couple
of years old at the time they were published, I guess I didn't do much
reading back then).
The Dalek comic strip caught my attention, not just because it was (to
me) a new take on the Daleks but also because a fellow CG modeller, Iain
McLumpha, had used 3D graphics to create some new and original Dalek
comics in the style of the original TV21 stories. Iain's work inspired
me to have a go myself, and as I had never done anything like that
before I decided I would tell a simple story of a renegade Dalek general
sparking a Dalek civil war, that I figured would run for 30 or 40 pages.
Initially I only posted the pages on the Project Dalek Forums but by the
time I reached page 36 it had become apparent that the comic was
probably going to run for more than 50(!) pages and in the meantime my
own website was sitting idle, so I decided to post the comic here too.
As a newcomer to comic art I had completely underestimated how long it
would take to tell my 'simple' story in that format and I have just
taken a break from working on page 557 to write this introduction.
Second Empire has become the biggest, most sustained CG project I have
ever worked on and despite the years I have spent on it I am having just
as much fun doing it now as I was when I first started.And yet,If I had
watched something other than Doctor Who that night in 2007 I might never
have become interested in Daleks and if I hadn't found Project Dalek and
the work of Iain McLumpha I would probably never have tried my hand at a
comic strip.
Second Empire proved to be immediately popular with
Dalek fans, prior to beginning the comic I used to receive one or two
emails a year from people who had found and enjoyed the work on my
website, suddenly I was getting one or two emails a week from
people who were reading my comic, as well as a lot of positive feedback
from the membership at Project Dalek. Amongst those who got in touch
with me was Andrew Wagstaff, who asked for permission to animate the
comic. As I knew nothing about animation, already had my hands full with
the ongoing comic and was not possesive of my models I was happy to send
the Second Empire scene files to Andrew and let him breathe life into
them.
Aided by a group of Second Empire fans who volunteered to do voices,
assist with the animation and create a musical soundtrack Andrew has
been steadily adding a fourth dimension to my 3D artwork and posting the
results on YouTube, the links below will take you straight to the
individual episodes.