SCONEHENGE

Character Designs: Sonic The Hedgehog

2010-09-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Back in the mid-late 90s, I had a minor obsession with the Sega Saturn (I know, right?). Other than Daytona USA and Die Hard Arcade, all I ever really played on it was Sonic Jam. A compilation of the main four Sonic The Hedgehog games from the Mega Drive era. Basically a pre-gamecube era Sonic Mega Collection.

I do very much prefer Sonic Jam to Mega Collection, mainly for one reason. It fed my interests of the development of things I liked. In this case, the Sonic series. As we've already discovered, the game was pretty much my favoutite thing ever when I was a child. I just loved the spiky little blue rodent.
Sonic World was a small overworld for Sonic to explore (also I suppose Sonic's first proper 3D environment), with a lot of mini games to be found, but also buildings including the Music Shop (soundtracks), Movie Theatre (movies and ads), Hall of Fame (timeline) and Character House.

Character House would show some very interesting development artwork for the character designs. I used them as a reference to structure my own character designing back in the day. I used to do a shitload of face charts especially.

Here are a few from the gallery of Sonic and Dr. Robotnik:

Ah, a height chart! Something we all do, right?

Ah the many faces of Sonic. A lot of these not seen from post-Sonic Adventure Sonic. I wonder if the top right drawing is based on Felix The Cat?

How to draw Sonic. Yes, I did it.

Nose-tap.

A selection of poses. Love the third drawing. I think it was these designs where I discovered Sonic's shoes had buckles.

Perspectives!

Robotnik is quite big in comparison to Sonic.

I love how ridiculous his original design was. Back when he was just chasing down jewels and turning small animals into robots.

Unlike the heroes of this story, this guy had very good manners.

Robotnik love and Egg-Snow-Mobile. Whee!

What I'm guessing is a Sonic 2 era Egg Mobile. Good detail you never saw in the game itself. Oh god if only Sonic 4 was like this...

Jacky

2010-08-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Storybook Form.

Part of me would have preferred to have referenced the original lyrics for this project, but this is probably far more sensible considering what little grasp I have on the French language.

And as a guide, here is Scott Walker's rendition of the song:

ROBOTS!

2010-01-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

Let's start off 2010 with some chocolate obsessed robots!

Pixeldogs

2009-12-20T22:11:00.000-08:00

I think listening to Squarepusher and Joemus is doing strange things to my work...
Check out Pixeldogs in the real world under the cut!

Hairstyles Through The Ages....

2009-12-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge.

Some pixel art I did the other night. A medium I haven't practiced since like, 2002.
Doesn't look too bad actually. Might try it again sometime.

I was split between the two backgrounds so I'll just put up both this time around. Opinions?

87,658 Hours later...

2009-10-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Turns out ten years ago this month, David Bowie released Hours... His 21st solo studio album, as well as his last album of the twentieth century. Promising a new more laid-back Bowie and slow acoustic 'pop songs', the press anticipated this album would be the new Hunky Dory.

As it turned out, Hours... was pretty unremarkable by Bowie's standards. Especially considering it was standing between the drum & bass beast that was 1997's Earthling and 2002's Heathen, an album which the press kept referring to as Bowie's "return to form" and the rather clichéd "best album since Scary Monsters".

It's pretty unfortunate that Hours... turned out the way it did. Much of the material was as good as anything else that he produced at the time. It was just these small elements which held it back. I think the biggest problem is the mix job by Mark Plati. It's just too clean! It works for some of the songs, such as the first track of the album, Thursday's Child. But it takes the kick away from songs such as the guitar-driven The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell. Had Bowie and Tony Visconti patched up their differences sooner, they'd probably have a great album on their hands.

Fortunately, a few of the songs from Hours... were greatly improved in a live environment. Mike Garson's tickling of the ivories complimented the music a lot (he was unfortunately wasn't available during the recording of the album, instead touring with Billy Corgan).

I find the songs Something in the Air and Seven most improved live. Both of which have fortunately seen official releases. In fact, the former was remixed to sound more like it's live counterpart for the film American Psycho. The latter, which sounded much too overproduced for an acoustic song benefited from a more emotional vocal performance on the bonus third disk

of 2000's Bowie At The Beeb.

The sixth track of the album was something interesting and new for the time. It came about as a lyric writing contest on BowieNet. Contestants were to download an instrumental from the website and come up with some interesting lyrics for it. The winner would not only meet Bowie in the studio, but would also have their lyrics recorded by Bowie himself. The winner was one Alex Grant, the song was titled What's Really Happening? A guitar driven piece still possessed by the spirit of Earthling.

The following track, The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell wouldn't seem out of place on a Tin Machine album. As I said, it's a shame the mix was too polished for a song that should really sound much grittier. An alternative recording previously appeared on the Stigmata soundtrack.

The penultimate track was an instrumental called Brilliant Adventure. Bowie's first instrumental since 1993's Buddha of Suburbia. Nothing really to say about it other than it helps the end of the album flow. Not really a track you'd pull out of the album to listen to alone. Although it does have a very "Heroes" feel to it.

And the final song of the album, I must admit, successfully wraps up the album nicely. The Dreamers is something of a minor epic. Certainly one of my favourites from the album.

I think perhaps the reason much of this album is so weak may be due to lack of communication. Most importantly between Bowie and Reeves Gabrels, who wasn't really interested in this new direction Bowie had taken (he and Bowie parted ways very early on during the Hours... tour). He was apparently not happy with Bowie's interest in making a Ziggy musical. Also the rerecording of his 60s material for his next album. (Both were eventually cancelled anyway.) Besides that, many of the musicians for Hours... had never worked with Bowie before and never did again.

Other than the 2004 two disk reissue, that's it for the music. The two music videos released (Thursday's Child and Survive) were pretty dull in comparison to say, Little Wonder, Dead Man Walking and I'm Afraid of Americans. One was David singing at himself in the mirror, while the other was him floating around the kitchen.

One thing I absolutely love about the album though is the cover art. The front features a piece by photographer Tim Bret Day, featuring Bowie's previous Earthling persona, exhausted. Dying in the arms of his long haired successor. I liked this photo enough that I bought an hours promotional poster a couple of years back. It's not been on the wall since I moved unfortunately. My current bedroom is much too small for it.

So there we have it. I'm critically analysing a David Bowie album. I can do it! I'd rather talk about an album I'm indifferent about than one I love (Outside or Low). More to talk about, more conclusions to draw.

"Indie"

2009-07-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with a friend of mine on a coach yesterday about the current music scene. It became interesting for me when he said he absolutely hated "indie" music, which initially made me sit and think. My understanding of the term was 'any band on an independent music label.' How can you hate a band solely because of their current label stands on it's own legs in the music industry?

But then I remembered. Thanks to Q and probably some perverted game of Chinese Whispers, indie has a million-and-one meanings nowadays, and changes from person to person. I asked him what indie music was.

"Indie music is an (English) northern man singing over four chords about how he looks forward to a good piss-up on Friday night."

Of course! Taking his response loosely (as I often do), I realise he's obviously talking about Arctic Monkeys indie. He's talking about Kaiser Chiefs indie. And if for this example, we replace

"northern" with any strong accent, The Libertines, The Kooks, The View, Klaxons and so on. I'm sure Kate Nash would make it in here, she's like the lady version of these guys.
If I were to use his definition, I would have to agree with him. I also am not fond of indie music.

But then again, I like music that other parties would class as indie,

such as Psapp or Ambulance LTD or Final Fantasy. All three very different from each other, but still pigeonholed in the same

genre. More importantly, all three don't sing

about working class situations in a strong english accent. In fact, all three are from the other side of the Atlantic!
Of course, the whole western world also get into a confused mash of what indie music is.

Very popular acts such as The Arcade Fire, The Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon, Radiohead and The Killers are also listed as indie. As with Björk, Death Cab for Cutie, Beck, Franz Ferdinand, Placebo and so on.

Then you get older bands often grouped with indie in some kind of pre-indie link, such as My Bloody Valentine, Josef K, The Stone Roses, Jesus and Mary-Chain, Talking Heads and even The

Velvet Underground.

Instrumentation might have something of a hand in this. They don't want to impress you solely with their guitar, nothing too metal, nothing too progressive. They might not care about a rich perfect recording, imperfections can be welcomed with open arms. Some of them aren't afraid to use a xylophone, saxophone or stylophone if they wanted. Acoustic guitars will be found somewhere or everywhere.

Lyrically, they can sing about absolutely

anything. Alcohol, semen, robots, girls, Franz Kefka, whatever.

Indie is the worst music genre.

There is no common link that holds all indie bands together. Every other genre works like this:

a has x
b has x
c has x
x is common in this genre.

With indie it's like

a has x
b has x and y
c has y
d has y and z
e has z
a, b, c and d are all indie because they can be linked together.

But I assure you, a doesn't sound a thing like e.

This leads me back to my friend's definition and the bands he considers indie. Why are those

bands considered indie at all? I think it's one of two things:

These artists, as with most artists, started out on small labels. Making them remain "indie" even after they are bought out by EMI.
Lyrical content is often very explicitly brought down to the consumer's (i.e. the common working-class man's) level. And usually each word can be taken at face value without the need for thought or imagination.

The latter point is most likely what also makes it so popular, since these kind of people make up a majority of the popular music consumers in the United Kingdom. That's also the reason why bands like that never make much of a mark stateside, these songs just reek of British culture.

In twenty years these songs will sound so unbelievably dated. I've been trying to avoid politics throughout this post (which is really impossible when writing about a music movement), but they will most certainly purely exist as a reminder of what the country was like

back when no one wanted to do anything. That is in the hope that people will be doing things by then, of course. People would be wondering if Britpop ended at all.

God, it's like the greasy, unmotivated stepson of the punk movement.

I prefer to consider indie music the same way I'd consider any other art form with "indie" in

front of it (indie film, indie comics, indie design). A small collective of DIYers standing up against the mighty publishers and labels and forming a small, but successful little niche for themselves.
This would include bands like The Delgados, who owned their very successful scottish music label Chemikal Underground Records purely from scratch and with little money in 1994. This will also include lo-fi royalty like Daniel Johnston, R. Stevie Moore and Nick Currie, who prefer making albums in their own home with often terrible self-production and absolutely no input from their music label, but still release brilliant records nonetheless.

But now I don't have a genre. My definition does not describe a style of music. It decribes a style of making music, but not a style of music.

If any genre can be pulled from this, it'd be that the music doesn't necessarily have to be pleasing to the ear. It can deviate entirely from the poptone laws that create the perfect number one hit, and it usually does. But it doesn't have to as to be "indie".

All in all, I hate the use of the term "indie music". Not even a thousand word article brought me any closer in understanding what it all means. From what I can tell, it's just a lazy blanket term for artists that can quite easily be put in a more suitable slot.

Tune in next week when I rant about how much I hate the "alternative" music genre! Or not.

GeoCities 1995-2009

2009-07-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

So it turns out the best free webhosting service of the 90s

is reaching the end of it's life. Last week, the once powerful Yahoo! sent an email out telling it's users that GeoCities will be shut down on the 26th of October 2009.

It doesn't affect me too much, I mean since I got FlamingTurnip.co.uk, I haven't updated my GeoCities website for over six years. In any case, even if it is just nostalgia, it'd be sad to see it go.Since the dawn of social networking websites such as MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, the free webhost service's days have been numbered. Indeed, it's just a matter of time before Tripod and Angelfire sends out their closing down messages.

The most unfortunate thing about how these social networking sites are slowly replacing the

'personal website' I think, is the sheer lack of input the user has on the page design. On GeoCities, the user was very much forced to design their own page from scratch. Thankfully for the HTML-impaired, PageBuilder could help users around that, while still being able to keep the 'personal' in 'personal website'.

On the other hand, in my free time, I love to browse the abandoned primitive websites of the 90s.

Back before Flash was popular and websites were just covered in Animated GIFs of spinning globes, digging workmen and dancing babies, sign my guestbook, send an email, download

some icons for your desktop and check out some MIDIs.

...I'm pretty sure GeoCities held the majority of these internet ghost towns.

Casting the nostalgia aside and looking into the future? GeoCities is surprisingly

still thriving in Japan. Are Yahoo! going to ditch their websites too? I can't read Japanese, but Yahoo! GeoCities Japan doesn't currently mention anything about closure on it's index page. Perhaps Yahoo! still see it's worth as a webhost there. Which would be good to know because we all know that GeoCities Japan is like, Interesting Videogame Fanart Central.

Strange how Yahoo!, something so powerful in it's prime, can be brought down as low as Altavista or Lycos (I take that back, Lycos still has Tripod!).

On the other hand, Yahoo! still has Flickr, which remains an immensely popular website for photographers, amateur and professional alike. We can't say Yahoo is down just yet.

One can only wonder how long modern giants such as, for example, Google will last.
*gasp!* Blogger was bought by Google in 2003!

(For anyone wanting to save their GeoCities website, uCoz.com are offering a free GeoCities Migration service to reel in new customers.)

S(t)onehenge?

2009-03-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of photos from November.

Warwick Castle. A nice building itself. A bit too fake inside. Got to meet a young Winston Churchill though!

Stonehenge. Saw it for the first time in November. I was a little disappointed that this is the closest you can get to it. Understandable though, human interaction, damage to stonework and all that.

BONUS: Self portrait in long exposure at 5 in the morning.

Market Drawin'

2008-11-15T19:51:00.001-08:00

Long time no sea, blog!
Anyway, I'm doing uni and things now, and work is kind of heavy. Not heavy enough for me to avoid that I have a blog, however! Here's some work I've been uploading to my deviantART account:
I bought Shirley Hughes' The Nursery Collection from a charity shop in Derby and observation-drew all over it. They have all the Visual Communication students do that apparently.
The baby in this book looks like Alfred Hitchcock. I couldn't stand covering him up, so most of the time he stayed.

I covered up words with ripped up brown envelope which once contained junk mail.
Most of these are from the Guild Hall market, but one week the continental market was on so I drew that and later bought bigos. Those polish sure know how to make cabbage taste OK!
I did some terrible drawings initially, such as the one at the bottom of the above page.
Photos were also taken. I think this page speaks for itself.
It's likely that more scans will appear over time as I'm actually meant to continue using the book.
My next project involves typography. I'm going down the roadsigns route.
We watched Helvetica a few days ago. It was my second viewing and I loved it. Most of the class really found it boring though. I guess it's just me then.

Sega Sonic 2

2008-09-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here's some old Sonic The Hedgehog drawings I did in 1991. I think this is my own vision of what a Sonic sequel would look like, before of course, the release of the smash hit Sonic The Hedgehog 2. The whole collection was taped together in the form of an A4 booklet.This is the "title screen" cover of the book. A weird abstract mess of colour. I liked how I drew the Sonics back then. They kind of remind me of the illustrations in the game's Japanese manual.

I'm The Sonic Hedgehog. I am a terrific athlete.

I think this is meant to say "Sonic is going 90mph".

Sonic got a fish (Chopper)!

Dr. Robotnik is trying to crush Sonic with some kind of giant blue thing. "NO YOUU"

Robotnik is defeated. His Space Ship (Eggmobile) is broke(n).

Andy Warhol's 80th

2008-08-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

It was Andy Warhol's 80th birthday this month!
Or at least it would have been his 80th birthday had he enjoyed going to see a doctor when he was ill.
I like to think that he would have loved what the world has become in the last twenty one years, sitting in his makeshift "Factory" watching Big Brother Live and cursing Simon Cowell while watching American Idol on his LCD television, taking polaroids of every contestant.
Later he would probably continue working on his single huge monochrome screenprint of Paris Hilton as he has done for the last three years then spend the rest of the night sitting at his telephone wondering why Lou Reed hasn't called since 1993.

Oh Andy, how could you?

Assassination of a Mop Head: A Short Film by Sy Magyar

2008-07-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Sy made a three and a half minute short film with my camera last night, and guess what? "A Change in View" lives on! More specifically, the mop heads. What's more, it features my rather lacklustre acting abilities as a dreaded cleaner.

Here's a Youtube.

Teenager Meme

2008-07-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

Everybody's doing it! Or at least, everybody did it. I came in pretty late, you see.
I still did this like, a month ago though.

We were going to the moon later, wanna come?

2008-07-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

minus ended yesterday, which is a shame because it's one of my favourite webcomics.
I mean sure, there's only so many stories you could write about the girl, but I'll still miss it. Ryan Armand is one of my favourite comic artists out there right now, I do hope he has more projects planned.

I do hope the future will see minus released in book format, I've been considering a print over and over again, but I just can't choose a favourite.

Aw hell, time to read through the archive again.

Jamie Livingston

2008-07-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

Jamie Livingston, born on the 25th of October 1956 was a photographer, film maker and apparent circus performer from New York. On the 31st of March 1979, at the age of twenty-two, he began an ambitious project: to snap every day of his life from then on using his Polaroid SX-70 camera. The photographs were usually random snaps of what he was up to that day.
Unlike more recent attempts of similar ideas, such as Noah Kalina, Livingston wasn't always the focal point of the photographs, where Kalina was merely documenting nothing more than his face for six years, Livingston was documenting something different. More often than not, Livingston's photos would capture a friend, family member or sometimes, just what was on the TV screen at the time.

Livingston's whole adult life was pretty much summed up in these photographs. Not only personal experiences, but also everything that was going on around him, including many major events such as the death of Frank Zappa and the inauguration of President Clinton (both snapped from the television).

The most interesting thing I find about these photographs is the sheer mass of them, and the mystery that would surely shroud some of the scenes. I think that may have been part of the intention, only Livingston could explain some . The set was supposed to be collected and released at some point. Probably as a book, or perhaps exhibition. The idea of the public delving into his life through imagery reminds me of Jennifer Ringley, another contemporary who, between 1996 and 2003, had several webcams placed in her home streaming her life to thousands 24/7 through the web, an original idea at the time that seemed to be a prototype to today's "reality TV trends. However, Livingston's work feels a lot less voyeuristic than Jennicam was. While Jennicam made you a fly on the wall, a peeping tom looking into a stranger's house, Livingston put you into his shoes, looking from his perspective. As if you were living his life. You felt a lot closer to the people in his work and you really could feel the emotion portrayed in the image.

But every story has an ending, and unfortunately, it wasn't to be a good one. In May 1997, Livingston is seen in a hospital bed...

On the 4th he has stitches in his head. An operation had taken place. It becomes obvious that the 40 year old has cancer. The chemotherapy begins, and his hair gets thinner and thinner until there is nothing left. By the 5th of October, he decides to get m arried. But then on the 25th of October 1997, his 41st birthday, Livingston dies in his hospital bed.

The collection captured his whole adult life. From a sunny spring day on the 31st of March 1979, right to the very end. It's like looking through a photo album that tells a story. The project only lasted little over eighteen and a half years, not very long considering how long people live. The story was cut short, by a very unfortunate illness, but maybe it wouldn't have been as powerful if it wasn't. Chris Higgins from Mental Floss said:

"What started for me as an amusing collection of photos — who takes photos every day for eighteen years? — ended with a shock."

Had he reached old age, we would have seen a much slower deterioration, we'd start to realise that story is ending a long time before it does. Hell, we'd all have the "at least he lived a long life" cliché in our heads. But he didn't. It wasn't meant to be.

So where are we now?

Ten years later in 2007, the entire collection (bar a few deemed "missing") were put on show under the name "JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997" at Bard College, New York. The very same art college the project began. The exhibit was set up by his old friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid. Hugh Crawford eventually put up a digital version of the project on his website, where all of the sudden, in May 2008, the collection gained the attention of Chris Higgins of Mental Floss who apparently discovered the site before it was even meant to be found. The collection finally gained worldwide exposure, almost eleven years after Livingston's death. Quite rightly so too! It's an amazing and emotional document of what is nothing more than the normal life of a man and his polaroid camera.

LINKS:

Photo of the Day - the whole project.

He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day he Died - article on Mental Floss

Jamie Livingston - Wikipedia

Podcast on Livingston - on CBC Radio

-EDIT-

Profile on Gigapan - the whole collection as it was presented at Bard College in 2007

A Change in View (College Exhibition)

2008-07-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

That's right! The exhibition of my FMP work came and went!
I guess my first real post should be about how that went, eh?

By the time we got our walls, all I had were three small canvas paintings and a kind of big A2 acrylic dealy. The exhibit was beginning to look pretty crap, so I went home and decided to make use of my huge 32"x26" canvas. The final product was the USB plug. Even then however, I still had one more wall to fill, then Sy came up with the idea of putting all of the photos I took and referenced during the project and blu-tack them to the wall. It certainly filled much needed space, but also gave the photos the exposure they deserved (many of them could not convert to painting too well and ended up not being used).
Then after adding a few prints and some photocopies from my sketchb ook, the wall was filled and affectionately dubbed "the sketchbook wall".

The point of the work was to show people that "faces" or even "human form" can appear in the oddest of places. Most of the time it's probably just coincidence, although I often like to think product designers just like to have a sense of humor. Perhaps sometimes they want people to notice the faces. Perhaps people would me more willing to buy a product if they subconsciously recognised the "cuteness" potential.
Anyhow, the third-party feedback I got from it was pretty positive, with at least one person going out of his way to find more faces in things. I'm glad it all worked out, and I hope people found it entertaining.
The only downside to all this is I always feel bad every time I come to change the mop heads at work. I keep seeing the fear in it's eyes as I lodge a metal pole into it's mouth and use it's hair to clean the floor.
The one that appeared in the exhibition though, has a safe haven in my home, sitting on top of the USB painting.

Exhibition night was of course, pretty full. I dare not stay in too long for the most part. And certainly not stand by my work for more than ten seconds. A good portion of the night was spent by me and my friend Miller eating pizza on the bonnet of his car. When I did see my work during the night, I found two of my paintings fell down. This is due to the awful velcro pads used to hold them to the wall. I used them last when Epilogue Soup was fixed to a wall. It was found later on rolled up on the floor and moved to an undisclosed location that I couldn't find for ages!
Of course, considering the size of the canvases, I assumed they wouldn't need more than three on each side, but of course, I was wrong. At least the USB painting was held up with hooks.
When it came to taking them down the next week (with some of the work cut out for me), it occurred to me that I had quite a lot to carry. I only brought one carrier bag, too! It's times like that I wished I could drive. How on earth was I going to fix this dilemma?

Genius!

Back to blogging.

2008-06-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Xanga bores me. Time to move to new things!