ARTS

So recently I've dabbled in this thing called 'traditional art'. See, i hadn't heard of it 'till recently, but apparently you don't use Photoshop and - get this - you don't even use a computer. you just smear liquids over paper like some sort of mentally challenged child who's developed an unhealthy fascination with their various bodily discharges. Though once I'd gotten used to this (frankly prehistoric) mode of expression, i think i managed to churn out some vaguely passable pictures.

These two i made for my girlfriend with watercolours. if you can't tell, they're of Withnail & I and Fassbender's sex addict character in Shame, respectively:

And these pen illustrations are currently adorning the wall of my houseshare living room. the middle picture is of Alice Glass (of Crystal Castles), while the bottom-right one is a landscape of submerged tower blocks in a future of rising water levels, though it doesn't really come across well without colour.

The Grimes one is my favourite though. The weird images which surround her are all derived from her own artwork - anyone familiar with the Canadian music producer will recognise them from her various album covers. I actually kind of think she's a genius, though i guess that's neither here nor there.

THINGS

MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope you got lots of expensive presents, ate your weight in fancy flavoursome food and cracked all the crackers (and put on the silly hats you got from cracking the crackers). My parents have gone to bed, and being back in the ol' family home I'm now sufficiently bored to actually update this fucking blog.

For a while I've been a fairly regular artist for the Brindle Blog, assisting John Brindle and his numerous siblings in their intellectual forays into the relatively uncharted depths of video game critical theory. Blog banner images are pretty fun to do, as the small image size isn't too demanding, whilst still allowing for a lot of creative freedom. Here's what I've done for the Brindles so far. Clicking them will take you to the relevant blog post (with the exception of the first, for which no article exists):

And this is the first image I did for the Brindles, drawn to accompany an article I wrote about how Metal Gear Solid learned some important lessons from, of all games, Pac-Man: 

Oh, and here's a banner image I did for my friend's blog (which you should check out, because it explores some really intense and interesting shit about cold war culture): 

So yeah, that's my bi-annual update done. Now I'm going to crawl back into the fetal position. Ciao.

The Wall Post

WALLS. The unsung heroes of domestic privacy. Without them, we’d be forced to witness the disgusting habits of our neighbours – and they, in return, would bear witness to ours. I, for one, am extremely grateful that Henry Wall discovered the wall in 1869. And that’s why I feel compelled to draw all over them.

First off is my most recent foray into WALLART. I drew a giant skullbot thing on my wall and - for your viewing pleasure -compiled the process into a timelapse video. 

And here’s the (mostly) finished thing (still gonna touch it up a little bit):

And while I’m at it, I may as well show some previous wall murals I’ve painted. The first one is a giant Elmer, and the second a tree full of birds. Both are for childrens’ bedrooms, so I restrained the urge to add some crazy mech shit, or make all the animals cyborg death-bots, or something.

So yeah. Long live the wall. 

Valiant Return

OK, so to the impartial observer it may seem as if I’ve been lazy and haven’t updated this blog in over half a year. To such individuals I would say this; while you may be technically correct in your assertion of the lateness of this post, your assumption of my laziness is not only incorrect but hurtful. I have been incredibly busy. Incredibly busy. I would love to tell you why, but unfortunately I cannot, because I am lying.

Well, now we’ve got that out the way, let’s get on with some HARDCORE ART.

At the tail-end of last summer, I decided to try my hand at Tshirt designs. It was fun, but incredibly difficult to come up with a bold, witty design. Y’know, the kind of design that people would actually want on a Tshirt. And then I got a job and kind of forgot about doing them (incredibly busy). But here are the ones I managed to get to a near-finished state.

This is the first design I attempted, and is probably my favourite. Opium’s coming back in a big way.

This one went through a few revisions before I was happy with it. The tricky thing about designing with the possibility of print in mind is that there are often colour limitations (I submitted most of these through Threadless, which require a limit of 8 colours, including black and white). Mind you, the benefit of this is that it really makes you think about what colours are necessary, and what colours go together.

Unfortunately, the Mega Drive didn’t output in a high enough resolution to depict such realistic visions of Sonic’s demise. This Tshirt is an attempt to rectify that.

This one wasn’t actually finished, as I was going to change the hands, and possibly swap the newspaper for something else. But, you get the idea. HE’S A SPIDER HAHAHAHA

FIRST POST-GRADUATION POST

Ah, to be a graduate. I’ve really earned the blissful emptiness of these days; the freedom to lounge and relax; the gentle caress of the sun on my face and a light breeze on my skin. These summer afternoons are my reward for three years of hard work.

…

OH GOD I’M SO BONE-ACHINGLY BORED

But look, I was productive and motivated once! Here’s all the stuff I did in the last few months of uni! I’M NOT A LAZY ASS, honest

First off, comeeeks. I made one for each issue of my student paper, for the whole year I was games editor. I'll post the first one again for good measure, but other than that, these are all new to this blog (as always, click for full-size):


TA-DA. I think you’ll all agree that my little mini-series ended with a striking commentary on the state of modern student life. Plus there were aliens. Badass aliens.

Let’s move on to some of the Fuse covers I did. You may recognise a certain character in two of them; this is because I’m too lazy to think of more experimenting with different styles. Yeah.

And here’s a header I composed for my friend’s blog, The Deadly Rhythm. He said I could do what I liked with the design, so naturally, I thought of a bizarre flesh-forged guitar headstock bursting forth from a man’s chest while a French lady looks on with an unexplained sexual lust. What can I say? My brain is a complex place.

Oh, and here’s a sneak peek at a Tshirt design I’m working on at the moment. It involves a Victorian gentleman and copious amounts of opium. I'll leave you with his creepy, smacked-out face as a kind of final mark of punctuation for this blog post. HE CAN SEE YOUR SHAME

Belated Christmassy Update 2: Comic Bewk.

Okay, so in my last blog post I said I’d make a follow-up update ‘probably on Boxing Day or something’. It’s now, um, April 2011. Time flies, huh?

In the meantime, I’ve not been up to much. Other than, y’know, FREAKING OUT about my dissertation. Note that I don’t say I’ve been writing it – this would be incorrect – I’ve been freaking out. There’s quite a big difference.

Anyway, last term I was doing this great English module, Dystopias and Utopias. Apart from being really fun in of itself, one of the assessments was a creative project to be undertaken in a group. So our group came up with The Anglican Republic:



Pretty cool, huh? In addition to contributing to the general development of the idea, most of the photoshopped images in the video above were done by yours truly (oh, and I’m in the damn thing, obviously). But what I put the most amount of time into was a comic supplement, which you can find in its entirety below:


Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Front and Back Cover
Introduction / Interview
Civil Defense Info

I was really proud of this, as it took fucking ages. It’s not perfect – I particularly dislike almost all of the dialogue in the first half, and the drawings are rushed due to time constraints – but it felt so good to actually hold a bundle of A5 comic books you’d made yourself. If I didn’t need a looming deadline to actually get anything done ever, I’d probably do another comic sometime in my free time, but really make it perfect. Unfortunately, all I really seem to do with my free time is waste it. Oh, and hunt for secret Nazi treasure all over the world, obviously.

Christmassy Update 1: Space Invaded

Phew, so that’s the penultimate term of my final year over! A few more months and I’ll be cast out into the real world, forced to scrape a living from society’s great, shit-covered boot.

I’ve been hugely busy lately, so there’s a lot to show and tell. Rather than compiling a colossal blog post to rival the splendour of gods, I think I’ll break up my recent work into a few updates.

First up, we have Space Invaders in my uni living room. Basically, I made a giant Space Invader with random cassette tapes and sprinkled a few smaller, Hama-bead ones around it. There’s something strangely ominous about a descending UFO comprised of Michael Jackson singles and Tina Turner’s greatest hits.

A few weeks ago I wrote a couple of introductory gaming features for my student paper, on Fallout and Minecraft. Check them out below - I’m pretty pleased with how they came out.

Anyway, I’ll post another update soon with more stuff from my student paper (probably on Boxing Day or something). Try not to get too excited that you forget all about Christmas tomorrow – I’d hate for my blog update to overshadow a festive event.

Anyways, Merry Christmas to one and all, etc!