Tales of a Time Traveler: 2012

Post #1

Hello , my name is Marshall Huxley I was never much for introductions and frankly who cares who I’ am your only reading this so you can see where I’ve been or when I’ve been that is . Any way I’m a time traveller well more of an adventurer to be more precious you see time travellers are always getting lost in time and trying to getting to somewhere where I like to go off and explore different time periods.

Ok so let start at the beginning if there is such a thing

I started life as a humble inventor in Victorian England as a I was barely scraping enough to get bye times where rough but eventually after years or working away I constructed my master piece my time machine. It was originally an art piece which is why it looks so impractical but it does the job. I was an artist to i used to love sketching the many places i visited,

below is a sketch of my workshop where I built the time machene.

At first I used to jump around randomly to different time periods I was always careful to avoid damaging the timeline eventually I settled in 2012 in London say want you want about the prices it certainly a lot more homely than the London of the 1800’s was.

It was fun for a time I had a proper job and for a while my time machine remained untouched in my basement gathering dust but eventually the adventurer’s spirit called me back and I began my next adventure. But this time I decided to post my new adventure on my blog so people could see where I was going next.

The Middle Ages was my first port of call it wasn’t the first time I’d been hear one of my first trips was to see Arthur remove Excalibur from the stone of get it from the Lady of the Lake however I didn’t see any of this instead I ended up being chased around by a black knight cliché I know but it’s what happened.

This time however I as at King Arthurs Castle the Time Machine materialised right onto the round table thankfully it was empty at the time that would have been hard to explain. Any way my little quest to get a look at Excalibur was proving to be harder than expected. However I did get some beautiful shots of the castle. (You can see the sketch below )

photography my other passion one I discovered when I jumped forward to my now new home in London, the futuristic holo-cameras I saw in the future might be technically impressive but in my humble opinion nothing beats a good photograph.

Anyway I know when I’m beat so unfortunately there was no Excalibur for me today but I did get a good look at this Dragon attacking the castle which probably why I choose to cut my loses and run back to the time machine unfortunately in my haste I sent us to another time period instead of back home, but more on that next time.

Post #2

Nice to see you back, ah the Wild West nothing beats it well actually that’s not true it full of psycho’s and killers and if you can stay alive for more than 6 months then you’re doing well. With that in mind I made quick work of getting the time machine ready to take me home but fate had other ideas.

I’m not really sure why I designed it like this but my time machines runs on diamonds well not just diamonds any gem will do but diamonds are the best. Sadly gems of any kind are hard to come bye so I like the time machine braking down like this is a bit of a problem now that I’m stuck in the Wild West.

Yes nothing but the dusty desert and tumble weeds for me, sounds Hollywood I know but you’d be surprised little shanty towns are on their own out here. I wouldn’t call the scenery a picture of paradise or natural beauty but it does feel very organic for lack of a better word.

There is an upside to this though I managed to get some great pictures this place would make a great little holiday destination in the future who knows maybe it is one.

This is where i parked my time machine in the wild west Desert.

Anyway I’m getting side tracked again since you’re reading this and my internet doesn’t reach back in time you already know I got out and back but I bet your wondering how.

Well I’d like to say it involved me battling a gang of cow boys around the deserted desert streets you know the whole western Clint Eastwood scene, unfortunately by version is a little less heroic it seems diamonds and gold where being discovered all the time around here.

Being the expert adventurer I’m it didn’t take me long to find some small scraps of gold i found in an abandond mine and get the time machine running again. However there was one tiny problem that I didn’t account for but I’ll get to that next time in the meantime hear some more photos

Post #3

Ok so like I said there was a tiny problem the gold was enough to time travel but not enough to get me home. You see my time machine as a really weird mechanism you see travelling to the future takes less energy than travelling to the past or the present it just seems to be easier to go forward in time than going back..

So with only a couple of strands of gold I didn't have enough to travel back to the present so I had to travel to the future. Finally when the time machine materialised I found myself in the year 3450.

I'd never gone this far into the future before but it turns out there wasn't really a lot to see from what I could gather the whole earth was deserted. Maybe everyone moved to another planet for some reason but the place was empty.

To be honest it was kind of creepy being the only person on Earth not saying I would have liked to see some killer mutants or anything like that but some animals would have been nice hell even some plants would have been an improvement.

However this creepy loneliness didn’t last long I soon found myself at the entrance to a wondrous robotic city. It kind of looked like a gigantic industrial robotic rollercoaster with floating building scattered around it. The robots seemed to ignore me at first they were strange little things they kind of looked like robotic barrel shaped machines.

Well some of them did there were loads of them so Idecided to sketch some of them.

some robots where flying around the place, in what looked like flying cars . However the most notable robots I found looked like a cross between Darth Vader and a Medieval Knight (like from earlier in this little adventure)

Straight away I though these guy where going to kill me you’ll know why when you see the sketches I did of them.

However it turns out they was one of the robot leaders of this city and was willing to help me get back to my own time or house me in the museum since I’m technically a fossil (compliment or what!) well I choose the former.

Anyway eventually he or she for that matter (they’re a robot how do I know) gave me some diamonea, some kind of futuristic diamond I think. So after grabbing a handful more photos of this place I headed home.

I’ve learnt a lot from this little adventure and got some great photographs but what I really discovered is time-travel is hard work so I decided to do the best and most sensible thing possible sell the time machine on eBay! Interested drop me a message I’m sure we can negotiate the price .

For my honours project I wanted to do something completely unique and different from anyone else. At the same time. I wanted to do something that would give me the opportunity to create a wide range of art work, so I came up with the idea of creating a short story s that would revolve around a blog. I wanted the blog to tell a story as well as have pictures which would give me the opportunity of doing some narrative-story work as well as my final idea. This was to do a time traveller,s blog where the time traveller would tell the stories of his various adventures in distant lands and across time, giving me a wide range to work with. The blog will consist of two parts. The first part will be the time traveller's story. The second part will act as a production diary where I explain and display my ideas and concepts for the project.

I started off by creating this fictional blog for my character how will feacher in the short story. Has a began my research in to this I found that There are many character blogs on the Internet, and it has recently become popular among games and TV show producers as a means of promoting their work . In the last few they have also become an outlet for fans of TV shows, games, movies, and comic book, to play and interact with characters.

I discovered in my research that there are three types of fictional character blogs the first is Official Character Blogs created by companies which will publish an official blog for their characters. These are often produced for marketing purposes. The second is an Unofficial Character Blog which are usually set up by fans of certain genres is very apparent in the star wars universe with the most famous example being Master Yoda's Blog which is popular with fans. The third and final type of blog used in this way are Fantasy Character Blogs which is choose to create their own original characters and story all of these kinds of blogs have grown in popularity over the years

After this I started researching other stories about time travel. For ideas I looked at some of the more famous stories like The Time Machine by H. G. Wells as well as some more obscure stories, like Ray Bradbury's science fiction short A Sound of Thunder, which was suggested by my tutors. It tells the story of a hunter named Eckels who pays to go travelling back into the past on a guided safari to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. However Eckels eventually changes the future because of his actions. When he gets back to the present he notices subtle changes like words are now spelt strangely and people behave differently, and so Eckels must travel back into the past to undo the damage he had caused.

I started by designing the main character, the time traveller himself. I wanted to portray him as an explorer always looking for new adventure, so I created my first mood board where I researched famous fictional explorers like Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake. Although they don't use time machines they have a kind of adventurer's spirit that I wanted to replicate in my own character.

Character Mood board 1

Character Mood board 2

One thing that became clear was that many of the characters I looked at have similar fashions. For example both Nathan Drake and Indiana Jones wear very similar 1940s and 50s style clothes. Another example of old fashioned clothes that occurred to me was the Time Traveller by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine. I decided to take elements from this when designing my own character.

Character Concepts

I wanted my time traveller to have originally come from an early period of time, so I decided to show this in his clothing and styles. At the same time however I was thinking of adding components from the future that he might have acquired on his previous adventures.

Early character concept for the traveller showing possible future gadgets

Here are Character designs and facial expressions. I wanted my traveller to be a little bad tempered

Character design colour version

The time machine itself has been quite tricky to design, so I decided to gathers some more mood boards of famous time machines. After looking at some of these time machines I decided I wanted to design something that would enclose the character in a confined space as it travelled through time, like Doctor Who's' Tardis or the Delorean from Back to the Future.