About - Back 2 OmniPark (Part 3)

Title Page for Back 2 OmniPark.

For most of the weekend trips I took with my friends to OmniPark there was drinking. This is before theme parks started checking your bags at the gate and you could still gain entrance with a water bottle full of vodka. You didn't want to get completely shitfaced on the grounds. There were too many kids. And while there wasn't a strong security presence on the premises, you always had the sense you were being watched. That said, being a little high made the rides more enjoyable. The Nebula Quest in particular could be quite jarring in parts and taking something to loosen you up beforehand helped. Also, OmniPark themes were heavily rooted in science and you needed at least a modicum of wits to navigate them.

Tales from OmniPark (the first OmniPark anthology) featured a number of artifacts and documents interspersed between the pages of the stories. Some of these elements were repurposed and reused throughout the book. With Back 2 OmniPark Ben wanted fresh content for each artifact. We spent about a week brainstorming ideas and researching theme park equipment and merchandise, putting an OmniPark twist on ideas. In total we came up with about 30 artifact concepts that could have made it into the book. With space and time limited only about 10 made it into print. My favorite of the unused ideas was a baby's onesie sold in The Realm of the Cell inked with the phrase, "The Focus is Mitosis." That one always made me smile.

Ben and I workshopped several of the artifacts, but there were a few that were eventually printed exactly as I presented them. The documents in the book were mostly unchanged. 

One artifact that surprised me was the little known (perhaps fake) scientific volume by Charles Darwin, "The Terrifying Awe of Unnatural Selection on the Development of Man and Related Species." We had a photo of the book which featured the text on the spine. But the editors asked if we could shift the focus to the front cover. None of us actually own a physical copy of the book and mysteriously it hasn't been available for purchase online since about 2014. The solution? Using the perspective tools available in Photoshop. I had to manipulate and pull the existing image to make it appear the book had changed position and angle, ...And what surprised me was how well that manipulation worked. 

Questionable Documents.

In addition to the artifacts we brainstormed, Ben had a number of photos taken from inside the park and a few pictures of the original managerial staff and engineers, which Dalton Teague termed his Technosophers. Once we had the artifacts ready for presentation it was time to move to the next phase, design elements.

One of Ben's favorite anthologies was Lovecraft's Monsters, edited by the unstoppable Ellen Datlow with art and design by John Coulthart. This book was a constant touchstone for Back 2 Omnipark. The primary design elements that needed to be created were a title graphic, contents page, chapter title graphic, and the a detailed map of Omnipark to sit at the beginning of the book. There was a little more time to work on these elements than there had been for the illustrations, and I was able to add a lot more shadow and detail. 

Sketches for illustrations and artifacts.

The map in particular was fun to create, cementing the outward shapes of buildings and the structures of the park. There were a few elements of the map we had to just make up on our own. Most of OmniPark is indoors, inclosed in the pavilions of the realms or within its climate controlled connecting tunnels. You never really got to see the exterior of the park while at the park. And there wasn't much that could be seen from the parking garage before you entered. There are quite a few theories that propose the park was actually much larger than it appeared on maps and structural documents.

The next phase was layout. Again, I'd designed hundreds of pages for magazines, but this was my first book. I'm happy to say, for the most part, all went well. I owe a lot of thanks to Adobe InDesign, for making the process simple. Designing the interior of a book goes fast, especially compared to a magazine. Magazines have lots of pictures, graphic elements, and advertisements that push and take up space with the text. But in a book, once the text starts, it rarely get's interrupted. If there was a trick to the process it was trying to minimize "widows and orphans." Preparing and converting the book, with all its illustrations and artifacts,  for the ebook format was also a grand learning experience. I'm happy to brag that most of the files uploaded into the printers website with few red flags or kickback. 

The editors and I designed the back cover layout, a poster, a few t-shirts and then we were off to the printers.

The last time I visited Omnipark there was an invisible cloud of dread throughout the park. Dalton Teague had been dead for two years or so and while his wife had maintained all that they had created, you couldn't help but feel the spark that fueled the park had smoldered. Cell phones, digital cameras, and the internet were becoming more common and influential. Omnipark never seemed to want to be a part of that global visibility. As far as I know it never had a dedicated website. So it was nice after all these years to work on this book and put to print a record of some of those personal memories (even if not all of them are perfectly believable.)

15 Illustrations for 15 Stories in Back 2 OmniPark

Back 2 OmniPark is available for purchase on Amazon and where books are commonly sold.

 

About - Back 2 OmniPark (Part 2)

Illustrator for Back 2 OmniPark.

During one of my first trips to the real OmniPark I purchased a hardcover book sold in The Realm of Time bookshop. The book appeared ancient but the materials and quality were like new. It smelled off, like a pile of wet leaves. I remember the cover was attractive, an image of a colossal multi-eyed Lovecrafian style monster hovering over a rocky mountain peak. The book was further illustrated in its interior. I've forgotten the title, which was a rather long single word, but when I brought it home I realized it was a book about religion. Or perhaps more accurately, about strategically pulling together the threads of ideas one could use to create and shape a new mythology. An odd thing to find in an theme park. But typical for OmniPark. Mainly I remember the pictures.

Co-editor Ben Thomas informed me we had five months until the publication of Back 2 OmniPark. At the time I thought, "That's wonderful! Plenty of time to layout the book." I started digging online, investigating the differences between book files and magazine files, trying to identify the areas where I might need to better educate myself (flowable ePubs in particular were going to be new territory.) From the beginning I was upfront with the editors concerning my limitations and weaknesses.

Map of OmniPark at the front of the anthology.

Part of designing the book included constructing what the editors categorized as "Artifacts" (realistic images or photographs of objects related to the park.) This mainly included merchandise and documents. We brainstormed somewhere around 30 ideas with about 10 of them making it into the book. Some great artifacts went unused. If there had been more time we'd have included more. Ben has an extensive collection of documents (most copies of originals) relating to the real OmniPark, which he says he's collected mainly from chat rooms, discussion boards, and small town Texas libraries. Many of these are obvious fakes. Or if not fake, too absurd to be believed by the average reader without corroborative evidence. For my part, I tried to chose artifacts which represented the flavor and subtle humor of the park. 

I suspect during this time the editors discovered that I was also an illustrator. I was asked if, in addition to the layout, I would be willing to do illustrations for the 15 stories in the anthology. 

...and I immediately declined. 

The average illustration takes me 3 weeks to complete. There was no way I could produce 15 illustrations in the 5-month window, even if that were my sole focus during the time. And even attempting to do so would have destroyed my hands thanks to arthritis. I recommended they contact another artist, but they asked me again, pointing out that they would rather work with just one person than try to coordinate multiple contributors and slow things down. They said any little bit of artwork would be enough, so long as it was something original for each story. I thought about it, weighed the opportunity to illustrate a book and then agreed to provide the art under the condition that the illustrations be in a much less detailed style than what I normally produce. We chatted about it a bit and eventually picked a simplified, cut-out style of artwork similar to the early poster art and advertisements for EPCOT and Tomorrowland --Solid shapes, few details, with little-to-no-shading. 

I was asked to present a couple of sketches for the first stories. My sketches are pitiful (for evidence just look through earlier posts in this blog) and often underrepresent the finished products. Since these editors didn't know me, instead I presented two nearly finished illustrations. They seemed to like them and I was told I didn't need to show anymore sketches. They trusted me. 

Illustration page from the published hardcover edition of Back to OmniPark.

For two months I produced two illustrations a week, sometimes spending as much as 20 hours over the weekend shut in the office. Most weekdays I would come home from my day job to work on the illos. But I did so with excitement. I knew there was something special about OmniPark. Creative choices needed to be made quickly to keep to the publication deadline. My main rule while illustrating was to find a moment in the story that was evocative and true to the story's details and, above all else, avoided spoiling the ending (which is often more difficult than it sounds.) I would upload two illos to a shared Google drive where the editors could see them and immediately move on to the next two. I liked imagining Ben and Alicia checking that folder periodically and finding the new images that had been added. 

When all 15 illustrations were submitted it felt like quite an accomplishment. But there was little time to relax. I had to change modes and begin work creating the real world Artifacts for the book. 

[More about Back 2 OmniPark in Part 3]

Back 2 OmniPark is available for purchase on Amazon and where books are commonly sold.