INTRODUCTION

WHY STEAMPUNK?

Both cultural theorists and at-home Steampunkers have dedicated plenty of time to exploring the appeal of the Industrial Age aesthetic for artists, makers, and laypeople alike. There are many reasons that people are drawn to retro-futurism, but one that particularly stands out is the variety and contrast it offers to the prevailing styles of recent decades. “For the last thirty or so years,” artist and maker Herr Döktor comments, “design has been a form of reductionism: computers in plain beige/gray/black boxes, streamlining making cars and other vehicles indistinguishable, and so forth. Steampunk (and its ilk) has allowed some to take a new look at the world around us, with an eye to both the past and the future.”

Ramona Szczerba, a psychologist and artist known for her watercolor and collage pieces, agrees. “In terms of design, I think it’s a great balance to ever-more-sleek modernism. While cars and phones and televisions are all becoming impregnable smooth pods that stay inert until you touch them, Steampunk designs favor visible workings and surface ornamentation. . . . Plus, if it breaks, you stand a chance of fixing it yourself without voiding the manufacturer’s warranty!”

Szczerba also notes Steampunk’s flexibility as a tool for the imagination: “As a psychologist, I suspect that Steampunk is a doorway to creativity and imagination in the same way we consider the Rorschach to be a way to access the unconscious. We are all looking at the same blot, but the interest comes from each individual and what of herself she imposes upon and brings to it.”

One thing is certain: Steampunk and the whole of the retro-futuristic aesthetic offer a much broader playground for a creative person, a buffet of intriguing approaches and fresh looks to set one’s work apart from the competition. For the working creator, the flexibility of a bigger toolbox may be exceedingly helpful in the day-to-day. “As a designer, I think and make in terms of appropriateness for the design strategy and message needs; certain projects call for certain visual aesthetic directions,” says Danny Warner. (His pioneering work with motion posters is a concrete example of this principle.) Warner adds, “My first Steampunk-inspired work was in the realm of display typography. I used schemata and other iconography of simple machinery to develop new ideas in typographic form.”

Doktor A is another popular maker and artist of the Steampunk world. His work runs the gamut from zany toys to whimsical sculptures to 2-D art and illustration, and he is particularly known for his Mechtorian series—steam-powered toys that double as the wacky citizens of a fictional world called Retropolis. Doktor A agrees that the lush looks of retro-futurism are a welcome and refreshing change. “I think it’s nice to see people enjoying embellishment again,” he says. “I feel that as technology in particular becomes ever more powerful and ever more integrated into our lives that we should not expect it all to be presented in only one style. I think it’s important that people make it work for them in a way that they are comfortable interacting with, and in a style of their choosing, whatever that may be.”

In many ways, Steampunk is the visual vernacular that defines the current era: both our fascination with technology and progress, and our nostalgic longing for a simpler age. Slowly, the aesthetic has slipped into our films, our graphic novels, our fashion, our interior decor, and even our digital lives. “Retro-futurism, specifically its blend of midcentury modernism and art deco, has heavily influenced everything from skeuomorphic touch-screen interfaces to modern movies,” says Mark Givens, an art and culture scholar and editor in chief of MungBeing Magazine.

Givens also feels that Steampunk is even more deeply tied into the cultural zeitgeist, saying, “[Steampunk] has greatly influenced the look and style of the early twenty-first-century youth movement—the hipsters—with its handlebar mustaches, brass, and muted colors.”

And now, these hipsters, yuppies, and penny-pinchers alike are developing passions that would make their grandparents proud; they’re mastering forgotten skills and returning to the land, practicing hobbies such as gardening, sewing, canning, quilting, woodworking; even making their own cheese, curing their own meats, and brewing their own beer. The desire to tinker with our machines and create something both functional and beautiful stems from the same core impulse.

The best thing about Steampunk, however, is its big-tent mentality. As Givens says, there is room for “makers and tinkers, DIY and craft assemblages, and anachronistic bike riders.” Not to mention, a growing global movement of Steampunkers across the world, who are reinventing the looks of retro-futurism with respect to their own unique cultural contexts.

Still not sure? Well, you’ll discover many more answers to that question in the chapters to follow.

BASICS ABOUT THE CREATIVE PROCESS

At some level, each and every artistic project is unique, with its own problems to solve and its own path from conception to completion—especially if you are the kind of maker who always wants a fresh challenge, a bigger puzzle to solve. That said, there are a few basic steps that usually go into executing a creative project.

Step 1: INSPIRATION. The first step, of course, is getting an idea; this idea frequently emerges as a random burst of inspiration. Other times, the idea evolves as the result of a conscious decision to sit down and brainstorm.

“I pace and think. Or, if sitting in a task chair, I rock and think. This is most of the work. A smaller proportion of the work is actually spending all the labor on the creation of the art itself.”

—Keith Thompson

Step 2: DEVELOPMENT. Usually, an artist or maker will sketch out their idea with preliminary drawings, simple sketches, and some element of text.

“I get inspired, take a lot of notes, and make sketches. I try to wireframe larger projects and whittle them down into stages on paper or in my phone.”

—Libby Bulloff

Step 3: EXECUTION. This is where the creator goes to their workshop—even if that workshop is just the kitchen table—and begins to build. Or draw. Or paint. Or cut. Or saw. Or weld. Or whatever the project requires.

“Depending on constraints such as budget, time, and facilities, you either sit down at the drawing board and create some concepts or you just sit down at the workbench and start playing around with bits. (I have boxes full of random ‘bits’ just waiting to be built into something or other.) Budget is generally the driving force, though—sometimes you have the luxury of a complete design process and can tool specific pieces, other times you just have to stick lots of pieces together and make it up as you go along.”

—Mark Cordory

Step 4: REVISION AND COMPLETION. Sometimes it’s helpful to take a break and come back to the work with fresh eyes. Maybe it’s done—or maybe it needs a bit more work. In a few cases, it may even be time to go back to the literal or figurative drawing board: Step 2. But that’s how the process of creation works.

“Research and organization. Shaping the problem. Brainstorming, and generation of possibilities and prototypes. Testing, getting feedback, honing. Then committing to a direction, and executing it. Then—and this is important—coming back later (once I hopefully have some distance and a more dispassionate perspective on the project), and evaluating where it succeeds and doesn’t, to learn for next time.”

—Danny Warner

Sometimes it can be hard to start a project, but if you take the leap, incredible things can happen. More important, the journey you undertake when you engage your imagination is often as satisfying as reaching the finish line.

USING THIS BOOK

The Steampunk User’s Manual is designed to help you dream both big and small, showcasing both small-scale, practical projects and pie-in-the-sky “big ideas,” to show you the range that’s possible. Some of these projects are so whimsical you might not be able to do them at all—but that’s okay. One person’s unmakeable one-hundred-foot-high Steampunk penguin is another’s plot device for a sprawling Steampunk novel trilogy.

While each chapter varies from subject to subject, delving into territories most relevant to the medium at hand, there are a few sections you can expect to see with regularity throughout this book.

Past and Future: Steering Clear of Clichés

In this section, we take a look at the state of the art in Steampunk, with our interviewees weighing in. We point out a few conventions that are now so prevalent they’ve become cliché (we’re sure you can name a few), and more important, we take a long look forward, exploring the fresh and innovative ideas that may define Steampunk’s future.

Finding Inspiration: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Everyone can use a bit more inspiration at times, but the process of inspiration is a tricky one to pin down. For this section, we asked artists, makers, designers, storytellers, musicians, and performers where they find their best and most innovative ideas. Their answers are inspiring in and of them-selves—and a fantastic reminder that ideas really can be anywhere and everywhere you look.

DIY: Practical Applications for Your Field

What does DIY mean for an interior designer? A storyteller? A musician? This section is jam-packed with personal insight from working professionals and passionate hobbyists alike on what DIY means to them, both as a guiding ethos for their work and as a hands-on aspect of their daily practice.

Back to the Basics: Developing Your Skills

If you want to DIY, you never stop learning. (Which, since you’re reading a book called The Steampunk User’s Manual, you probably already know!) This section contains tips and advice on expanding your tool set and honing your skills.

The Working Process

Our creative experts offer inside looks into their own working methods, whether those take place at the drafting table, the word processor, or the recording studio. Examples abound, as there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to creative work! With their insight, we chart the creative process from brainstorming session to finished product.

Seven Pieces of Advice

In this section, you’ll find valuable words to take to the road; succinct summations from our creative experts on the values and practices that enable their success. You can scribble these nuggets of wisdom on a note card to tape over your desk, or simply browse and be inspired. The aim is to take everything you’ve learned in each chapter and turn it into practical insight for the creative journey to come.

Rather than tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, we’ve let the words of some very talented creators show what has worked for them, with copious quotes that provide insight into the creative process on both a nuts-and-bolts level and the level of idea and inspiration.

It’s your job to take what you find here and apply it on your own, picking and choosing what works best for your own personal passions and skill set. We hope you have fun, and we hope this book helps spark your imagination. We’re looking forward to your own stories of creation.

—Desirina Boskovich and Jeff VanderMeer, January 2014

The Steampunk aesthetic has seized the imagination of artists, designers, and craftspeople of all kinds. At the heart of this enthusiasm is a dedication to both good old-fashioned handicraft and bold new ways of thinking. Steampunk revels in futures that never were, and the past as it might have been. This bounty of alternate ways of thinking about the world offers plenty of space to evolve—and lots of room to play. To create in a Steampunk mode means giving careful thought to how to personalize retro-futurism.

Steampunk can be brassy or demure. It can be kitschy, gothic, surreal, and whimsical by turns—and despite the clichés, Steampunk’s palette, as exemplified by its art, roves far beyond the simple sepia tones of a washed-out Western—from black-and-white minimalism to jewel-toned kaleidoscope extravaganzas.

Take, for example, the retro-futuristic work of Danny Warner, a designer who is pioneering the avant-garde motion poster, a hybrid form that combines animation and design. (You may have previously seen a motion poster at a mall or an airport, where they sometimes display information or advertisements to fast-moving passersby.) Warner’s motion poster for the Steampunk opera The Dolls of New Albion “consists of biomechanical nanoputia churning inside one of the character’s heads, with Steampunk-inspired animated typography and a beautiful slice of the opera’s score for the sound. It’s very minimalist, and inspired by the fusion of biological and mechanical.” The high-resolution poster is locally displayed on a vertical high-definition screen.

Minimalist? Perhaps, and yet the poster also showcases the essential paradox of Steampunk: Sometimes even “minimalist” can mean complex. It also showcases the wonderful way in which Steampunk can reframe the question “What is functional and what is decorative?”

But true minimalism is also possible. Libby Bulloff—one of the Steampunk community’s beloved pioneers—approaches her current work using vintage techniques to cast an antique lens (often literally) on contemporary subjects and settings. Bulloff’s love of the retro-futuristic aesthetic led her to obsessively study wet-plate collodion photography, an early method of photographic processing that dates back to the 1850s, when it began replacing the daguerreotype. Bulloff and her partner, Stephen Robinson, now have a tintype studio where they shoot old-fashioned portraiture and still lifes. “There’s a visceral quality to black-and-white photos with scratches and flaws that perfect, multi-megapixel digital images can’t naturally have,” says Bulloff. “Each tintype Stephen and I pour is completely unique and unpredictable. There are no copies.”

Whereas Bulloff has been moving toward a sparser palette and approach, Brian Kesinger, of Otto and Victoria fame, demonstrates what’s possible to accomplish with vibrant colors. And not just color—in Green Tea, from his Tea Girls series, Kesinger also plays with medium, by tinting ink with actual green tea, and then using watercolor to heighten the colors.

Kesinger gets even more experimental with color in his Otto and Victoria series, and not only because its heroine is a teal-coiffed beauty, although her hair does set the tone for most of the illustrations. In Hiding, Victoria looks for her cephalopod suitor, Otto, who has used his camouflaging abilities to blend in with his surroundings, creating a visual effect that tricks the viewer as well as Victoria. Our eyes are drawn to her teal hair, punctuated by teal ribbons. But Otto has nestled into the most colorful area of the canvas, blending in with the mauve-striped wallpaper, the green rug, the raw sienna of the bookshelf. Eventually, these colorful trails lead us to discover the various guises of Otto’s eight arms.

Driving a bus through all of this—literally—is maker Jake von Slatt, founder of the Steampunk Workshop, whose aesthetic combines both the practical and the decorative, especially on one of his largest palettes, his Steampunk bus. In such creations, you can see the large-scale application of many different approaches to art and making—not just in the way von Slatt, as a tinker, uses throwaway bits of machinery for his creations, but in how he furnishes them. The “punk” in Steampunk is on display, but the impulse toward the beautiful isn’t abandoned.

Von Slatt points out that, “For many years, technology-based hobbies, such as electronics and amateur radio, have been in decline. The magazines that supported [these endeavors] are all either out of business or now purely gadget review rags—and there used to be dozens of them. Many towns had stores packed with kits and components [from] national companies . . . build-it-yourself versions of radios, electric eyes, amplifiers, and even color television sets.”

Because technological hobbies now “lack such defined paths,” von Slatt believes that the current rise in their popularity means that “young people are developing these hobbies later, and infusing them with what they are already passionate about. This is what’s leading to the development of fascinating hybrids like Steampunk.”

In von Slatt’s work, the confluence of art and science is most apparent, because he has an eye for repurposing what other people term “junk,” not just with a tinker’s eye, but with the eye of someone who understands why one abandoned light fixture is more aesthetically pleasing than another. In a field where repurposing is prevalent, that is a priceless gift for any creator.

Creating the Chai Cycle by James MacIntyre with Toni Green

After my first experience of Burning Man, I wanted to make an art bike of my own for the next year, and I really wanted it to be customized for everything I need while riding through the desert all day and night. I wanted something that suited me and would be easy to spot in a crowd of other parked rides.

From there, I considered ideas for either building a bike-and-sidecar combo or something with a modified trike. It all depended on what materials I found that worked, or that found me. I complimented someone on his vintage cargo trike, and it turned out that he is a bike mechanic who had a second vintage trike that he was willing to sell. The trike that found me is a 1970s Pashley Picador from the UK.

I’m a chef by trade and passion, so I thought it was natural to want to be able to nourish people at various art events and random encounters. I didn’t want to deal with the logistics of serving food, so I was drawn to the idea of a good cup of chai tea to warm the body and soul during the chilly desert sunrises.

My ideal was basically a large double-walled Kelly Kettle, which has a fire chamber and another space to brew the tea. I looked at different ways to modify something to suit my needs or to build from scratch, but was lucky to find a fully ornate Turkish brass samovar set in a thrift store.

Most of the wood used in the project came from recycling a pallet, plus plywood that was previously a FREE sign at the end of someone’s driveway.

The storage trunk on the back of the bike is an old sewing machine box that fit perfectly, so Toni made it funky.

The goat skull on the front basket was originally from a desert in Nevada, but was found at a yard sale before Toni decorated it and added vacuum tubes sourced from someone who used to work for CBC Television. The tubes were originally for black-and-white cameras. Rewired flashlights were embedded in the skull to create the “Wandering Goat headlights.” We used recycled metal cowbells from India for the taillights.

When we were fixing up the Chai Cycle for the Steampunk convention at the Empress Hotel, it completely took over our living room. We don’t have a proper workshop (just a small art room), so we had to get rid of our couch to accommodate the Chai Cycle in our house. It was insane. We had two months, while working full-time jobs, to make it look super-fancy and polished. When things got snagged, we found that stepping away and working on another part of the project, or on something else for a while, helped.

Every step started with an idea and an overall look and feel to maintain. We adapted and collaborated on everything as we figured it out: what went where, what worked, and what needed to change. It’s still a work in progress.

“Old Hat”? Steering Clear of Clichés: Goggles, Gears . . . and Clockwork Insects

Taking the old and making it new might be the point of Steampunk, but while some things are delightfully antiqued, others are just old hat. How do you figure out what’s innovatively old? Paying attention to what’s been done to death is important, especially for a culture that’s only been self-defined as such since about 2007: The rate of change can be oddly explosive for an aesthetic that’s looking to the past for inspiration.

Here’s a clue: If you’re looking at these pages through special retro goggles while holding a gear, you might be buying into Steampunk clichés. The now ubiquitous goggles and gears have practically come to single-handedly define the Steampunk aesthetic.

Artist James Ng gets to the heart of the matter: “There are a few things that spring to mind right away when thinking of Steampunk. Airships, goggles, gears, top hats, and corsets.” Goggles and gears are Steampunk’s calling cards, its signature moves. In short, they’re the visual signal that tells us we are in the wild, magical West of zeppelins and steam. In a sense, they’re also a not-so-secret code telling others, “I’m one of you.”

So, given their importance, is it time to retire these beloved symbols? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it’s all a matter of context.

Although Ng points out their ubiquity, he also says, “I wouldn’t call them cliché, because they were things that were relevant to the era the original Steampunk culture is based on.” But there should still be limits to their use. “One thing that bothers me with Steampunk work is when people simply stick random gears on things and call it a ‘Steampunk version.’ There has to be some sort of function or concept behind it for that label to be appropriate, because Steampunk is not just decoration.” As Herr Döktor adds, “I love gears, as they are both functional and beautiful as a design element.”

Further complicating things is the need for storytelling in Steampunk. Usually, the art and making come with fairly elaborate tales behind them, perhaps because the origins of Steampunk are largely literary. Sometimes this idea of “functionality” speaks less to a need for something to actually work than to a need for believable storytelling—that both the creator and the person who enjoys the creation want the tale being told to make sense at the level of the look and feel.

Mark Cordory is a designer and maker whose impressive portfolio includes work for theater, film, and television, as well as artistic exhibitions. He even served for two years as head of props fabrication for the popular television show Doctor Who. So he has quite a bit of experience creating visual set pieces and physical objects that are fresh, fascinating, and compelling. Cordory comments, “I like to see function in things. . . . To me, Steampunk is about invention and function—that wonderful Victorian drive that brought about the Industrial Revolution—and so I’m always happy when it actually looks like a creation has a purpose and has been put together in a way that looks as though it could conceivably work.”

“The best way to avoid what I call the ‘cog on a stick’ effect,” says Thomas Willeford, founder of Brute Force Studios and author of the book The Steampunk Adventurer’s Guide, “is for things to at least look like they function. You are allowed to do anything you like, but put in the effort.”

In addition to putting in the effort, a wider context may also be key. Bulloff’s perspective on cliché is that some Steampunkers need to take a second look at the values they promote through their work. “I have grown quite tired of all the pretend weaponry and implied violence in so many Steampunk images,” she says. “It is not attractive nor particularly clever to parade about in front of a camera with a plastic gun, especially in the wake of the school shootings in the United States. . . . I would hope that we’d be self-aware enough to realize how crass it is to laud violent imagery or pictures that aren’t particularly feminist or intelligent.”

This is an especially essential conversation in Steampunk, as much of the artistry and craftsmanship harks back to a Victorian era with attitudes very different from our contemporary ones. The art we create in this vein can either question and challenge those outmoded ways of thinking, or uphold and promote them—sometimes totally apart from the artist’s intention.

In brief: Visual shorthands such as goggles and gears can be used to great effect, and you can have great fun creating just about anything in a retro-futuristic style, but look for a fresh twist you can bring to your creations. Even beautiful clockwork insects, as pioneered by creators like Mike Libby, can become too usual through the effect of sheer factory-like repetition. There are now so many riffs on the work of the original artists exploring this area that it may become the next widely recognized cliché in Steampunk.

The Telectroscope was a retro-futuristic art installation by contemporary artist Paul St George, exhibited in London and New York City in 2008. This interactive video project linked enthusiastic audiences from city to city, bringing them face to face in real time as they stood in front of the glass on either side of the “tunnel’s” end-points. According to the fictional narrative accompanying the installation, this transatlantic tunnel was devised by St George’s great-grandfather, (the mythical) Alexander Stanhope St George. Reportedly, the tunnel burst from the pier heralded by the business end of a six-foot drill bit.

Pursuing the New: Diversity, Realism, Biotech, and More

Bringing the “new” into Steampunk art and making can be a source of contention within the community itself. For example, there are those who believe that “Steampunk” must always reference the Industrial Revolution or fictional works thereof, as it played out in England and the United States, and, sometimes, Japan.

But what about other periods of technological change that could be fertile ground for invention? For example, the Islamic Renaissance of the eleventh century resulted in the creation of machines that aren’t so different from what we’re familiar with from the Industrial Revolution. The ancient Egyptians purportedly had sliding doors that worked in part through use of steam technology.

So is it a particular time and place that Steampunk celebrates and draws inspiration from, or is it instead “like seeking like” across the ages? For a lot of Steampunk now entering the culture, the answer is weighted toward the limitless bounty of expansion—expanding to allow what is essentially make-believe sometimes grounded in science to find its fullest and most personal expression.

Opening up Steampunk in this way makes for a more diverse community as well: It makes the movement global and opens a thousand new doors, considerably expanding both the story and the aesthetic possibilities.

“I’d love to see more multicultural Steampunk,” James Ng says. “I really like the original Victorian-era Steampunk, it has a feel that can’t really be replaced or replicated, but I think we can come up with some very fresh imagery if we look for inspiration from different cultures. I don’t mean just a person in a Japanese kimono wearing goggles, I mean what that specific culture values, what is important to them, and how they would use the concept of Steampunk to create something new and unique to their culture.” At times, the thought experiments can be quite mind-bending; we delve into the underpinnings and pivot points of our history (and all its alternate versions).

Even within the traditional setting of Victorian England that characterizes much of today’s Steampunk, there is a lot more room for historical accuracy, which in turn would bring something fresh to art and making.

Keith Thompson, perhaps best known for his work on the Leviathan series, creates darkly fanciful illustrations that form intricate and atmospheric windows into other worlds. Still, when it comes to depictions of alternate histories on earth, he’d appreciate greater rigor in the historicity department. “I’d like to see more of an immersion into the mind-set and aesthetics that match the time settings that Steampunk takes its cues from. I’d like to see more art composed in a noncinematographic manner, [reflecting] stories and characters that have mind-sets and motives that exist in their own setting and circumstances, not ours, the observers.”

Jake von Slatt points out, “A young woman [during Victorian times] watching a train pull away from the platform could identify all of the parts that made the engine run. The boiler, the firebox, the great steam piston rod that drove the wheels, and the smaller rod that worked the valve gear; these components were all visible, and their functions obvious.” Shouldn’t even creators working on a small scale with elements of technology need to be able to do the same?

On the other hand, while some want a more historically accurate version of Steampunk, others are interested in a more heavily science-fictional take. Beyond just in novels and short stories, Danny Warner, for example, “would love to see Steampunk grapple more with biotechnological futures and nanotechnologies. Minority Report stuff. Gattaca stuff. Blade Runner stuff.”

In the first issue of the hugely influential Steampunk Magazine, the Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective envisioned the art of Steampunk machines in a similar way: “real, breathing, coughing, struggling, and rumbling parts of the world. They are not the airy intellectual fairies of algorithmic mathematics, but the hulking manifestations of muscle and mind, the progeny of sweat, blood, tears, and delusions. The technology of Steampunk is natural: It moves, lives, ages, and even dies.” Their description evokes visions of a whole new take on biotech, with a vast new horizon for a more sci-fi-focused Steampunk to explore.

Perhaps in the near future, retro-futurism will spawn two new subgenres—a more fantastic subgenre with zombies, vampires, and clockwork magic, and a more science-fictional subgenre with biotech, nanotech, and data pirates.

But whatever the future holds, the point is that there is a future for Steampunk art and making—one where it becomes enriched and deepened by exciting ideas that push beyond conventional definitions while still holding true to retro-futurism’s core idea.

“Everything inspires me! The small details of daily life, the books I read, the picture I discover while surfing the net. IDEAS come to me unexpectedly at odd times, whether it’s when I’m crossing the street, or doing the dishes, or dining with friends.”

—Annliz Bonin

“I’m inspired by the littlest notions: a nicely plated meal, an old photographic lamp in an antique shop, a pair of pointy shoes. THINGS I don’t understand or that get under my skin are just as inspiring as things of obvious beauty. Some of my best work has resulted from awkward situations or oddball concepts.”

—Libby Bulloff

“I just have lots of characters in my head waiting to get out. Every day, I can potentially see something or visit somewhere that will inspire new characters. I have not yet mined this seam dry. So until I do, I have this urge to keep bringing these beings out of my head and releasing them into the world.”

—Doktor A

“INSPIRATION can come from a myriad of sources: sometimes an image, sometimes suggested by a shape or by looking at an object from an angle.”

—Herr Döktor

“When I start a new project, often I do not have a clear scenario. I find something in my mind and I try to bring it to