01. November 2009

The 'Wormworld Saga' is a project that today consumes most of my personal creativity. This is the first time that I present an overview of this project to the public. My goal is to mark the point from which I step out of the shadows of my creative cave and develop this story in the bright light of an international online community. My dream is to tell this story and to find listeners for it. The more the better. But let's start at the beginning!

The first fragment and essentially the very core of the 'Wormworld Saga' emerged out of nowhere in 2003 when I scribbled an iconic depiction of a serpent or dragon, captured inside a mountain, bound by three magical runes.

I followed this theme in a second sketch where I invented the prelude to a little story around this idea.

At this point I lost track of the story for some time. I can't really remember what made me pick it up again but two years later, in 2005, I started to fill a small notebook with more ideas around the mystic Worm and the Worm Mountain. Also, I rediscovered a character that I had painted the first time in 2003 and he eventually became the villain of the story.

Shortly after having started my notebook I painted 'Rise of the Firelord' and complemented it with a short story fragment that connected this character with the Great Worm.

From then on I frequently added new ideas to my notebook. I had a mystic background and a dark villain. All I needed now was a hero to save the world from evil! The grandfather sketch from 2003 already hinted at a young boy to possibly be the hero of the story. In the tradition of classic fantasy stories I decided that the hero should not be an inhabitant of the fantastic world but that he should come from our real world and enter the fantasy world with the quest to defeat the evil Firelord.

Other popular fantasy worlds were entered through books, mirrors or wardrobes, just to name a few. Being a painter I came up with the idea that my hero could start his adventure by stepping through a magic painting. In 2006 I painted an elaborate piece about that idea. 'The Journey Begins' plays an important role in the development of the story because I discovered it to be a strong concept which many people were able to sympathize with.

In 2007 I decided to create a first map of the world through which my hero would have to travel on his quest. It features all the places that I would have liked to wander around myself - a deep forest, a long ocean shore, a high mountain range and an endless desert. In it's center sits the Worm Mountain, where the Great Worm lies, waiting for his fate to be fulfilled.

I also worked on the mystic background story. I wanted to give the imprisonment of the Great Worm some meaning and therefore I turned to the quite popular concept of the four elements. The Great Worm obviously represented the element Fire. So I imagined the God of Fire to be captured and imprisoned by the other three Gods of Earth, Water and Air. The first version of the Worm Seal therefore shows the Great Worm, bound by three lesser Worms.

Up to this point I thought about the whole story to be not much more than a nice background story for future paintings. 'Trapped!' was the first sequel to 'The Journey Begins' and shows the hero on one of his adventures inside the Wormworld.

Essentially, at that point I had everything that I would have needed to paint a whole series of fantasy artworks. My hero was adventuring through a nice fantasy world and I had a bunch of goblins and an evil dark knight to fight against. I could have started to paint right away from all that material. If there just would not have been all these questions suddenly rising up in front of me!

I started wondering about what exactly the plan of the Worm was. What was the mission of the Firelord? How was it, that a young boy from our world was destined to defeat evil in a distant fantasy world? How did this boy find the magic painting anyway? And - most important - who painted it? I got totally distracted from painting by these questions and had to realise that all the pieces I had gathered up to this point were just the first steps of a much longer path.

Over the years I had deeply fallen in love with the fantastic animated movies of Studio Ghibli, especially with those that were directed by storytelling mastermind Hayao Miyazaki. What I like most about his films is, how they are concentrated on characters and their motivations. You can identify heroes and villains in his stories but there rarely is a purely evil or purely good character. There are bad deeds in Miyazaki's stories but they are not necessarily commited by evil characters. If you can learn one thing from Miyazaki's film, then it's to look differentiated at the concept of good and evil.

I realized that, compared to stories like 'Princess Mononoke', 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' or 'Spirited Away', my own story framework looked quite dull - an evil beast spits out a dark Lord who wants to destroy the world. The only way to save the world is, to destroy the villain first. From a western point of view that might have developed into a robust story but there just had to be more.

Therefore, most of the questions, which rose out of the material that I had already collected, concentrated on the motivations of the characters and I figured out that the whole story had to be much more complicated then I thought it to be in the first place. I discovered the origin of the magic painting and I found out about the events that led to the imprisonment of the Great Worm. I encountered new characters that were all playing their own games and I revealed their true motivations. I found out about connections between events and characters and was able to understand the deeper meaning of them. Although the whole story grew in complexity all the time, everything started to make more and more sense. After collecting the pieces of the puzzle for over a year and writing them down in my notebook in accelerating pace, I had to come to the conclusion that I would never be able to tell this story by merely creating a series of paintings.

What I also realize now is, that there is no way back. Not telling the story simply is no longer an option. I often read about authors who described the characters of their stories as autonomous beings who are developing their story on their own and who are literally forcing the author to do their bidding. Call my crazy but I begin to understand what that is all about.

I considered to write a novel from the material. I even did some writing tests but I have to admit that I'm a lousy writer when it comes to prose. I get distracted by visual detail and scenic descriptions all the time. I'm a painter, for heavens sake! Also, I don't really feel confident that I could attract an audience with pure text. Especially, if I'm aiming at an international audience and therefore would not be able to write in my mother language, which is German. To be honest, I'm already feeling guilty right now for making you read so much text in this exhibition and showing so few images.

However, even if I don't consider myself being a writer, my progress on the Wormworld Saga since the beginning of 2009, was pure writing. The last image connected to the story, with the title 'Into the Light', I painted at the end of 2008.

Well, in fact it wasn't the last image but the last artwork that was more than just a scribble or sketch. Of course I complemented my writing with occasional rough sketches and one of these sketches eventually made me start to think into a new direction.

It made me remember the time, over 15 years ago, when I was selling selfmade comics on the schoolyard. The people loved these comics. Even the teachers, although I was making fun of them in my stories. In fact, I remembered that I had been drawing comics through my whole childhood. I drew comics about just everything - about my friends and me having great adventures in the woods, about films that I had watched and even about computer games that I had played. Comics were a big part of my life until my professional work started to point me into new directions. The last 10 years I was heavily occupied with getting better at painting concept artwork and illustrations. Working on my Retrospective Exhibition really helped my to understand that. Today this experience serves me well but I also had a growing feeling that I was missing something along the way.

Now, that I actually have a story to tell, it makes sense to revive my old passion. To be honest, I feel quite intimidated by the prospect to start such a huge project. But I really want to tell this story to as many people as possible and the internet seems to be the perfect place for doing that. My current plan is, to present the 'Wormworld Saga' as an online graphic novel which will be published chapter by chapter. Right at the moment I'm breaking down the story into storyboards and I'm designing characters and locations. Of course I will post updates about my progress on the Blog.

I hope that I was able to catch your interest and that you will check from time to time how the project develops. Thank you very much for your time!

Back