Not too long ago Youtube added widescreen and HD suport to their video player. About darn time! The whole reason I even put Lucy Lolly on Vimeo is because they had those options, as I didn't want it on Youtube if it had to be both letterboxed and highly compressed. So now I've uploaded Lucy Lolly at Youtube, where it will hopefully get more exposore than it has done on Vimeo, as well as Rabrab and The Howdooyoodoo. At the moment you need to add a &fmt=22 code to the videos so they show up in HD, so I've provided links below with these added.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
A Fine day in London
Last Friday was rather neat. A newspaper had a deal to see the show called 'Monkey: Journey to the West' (that is another colab by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn. You know, the Gorillaz blokes) at the O2 in London for a tenner, so I grabbed at the chance and ordered a ticket as soon as I could, which got me a seat in the third from front row. The show wasn't going to be on that Friday till the evening at 8pm, so I decided to make a day of it.I have a route I tend to use every time I pop up to London: start at Tottenham Court road and walk from there around all the shops that interest me. I wondered into GAME only to find a bloke in a huge Raving Rabbid costume standing there. I'm talking HUGE, this costume probably couldn't get through the door without taking the head of. A new Rayman Raving Rabbids game had just come out for the Wii and this costumed guy and some other bloke were promoting it, with a Wii set up to play it.
I had a quick go at two games on it that both use that Wii Fit board: a surfing in space type deal and one where you ski using your arse (by sitting on the board and tilting) which hurt like hell. I wanted to get a photo with the rabbid, but a GAME staff man came along and asked me not to take photos. Darn it. Either way I did get something out of it: the Ubisoft guy gave me these two pink Rabbid Wii remote cover things, though I would have rather of had one of the t-shirts he had a pile of. Oh well.
While I was trying to remember where Forbidden Planet is (I have a shit sense of direction: sometimes I'll find a place by accident and other times I just miss it by one turn and have to backtrack for ages), I stumbled across some mall I hadn't been in before. It was full of some trendy clothes shops I wasn't interested in buy I found the LittleBigPlanet showroom/workshop type place I read about on the net somewhere. I didn't sit and play any o the PS3's set up, but I did sit down in their bar and draw a Sackboy for them so i could get a free t-shirt, which is rather awesome I must say. Some guy with a proper camera set up kept filming me and others while I was there. They also had the badges and junk everywhere to take. More freebies, yay! They also had a huge Sackboy in the window, which I took a crap photo of..
I gave up looking for Forbidden planet for a bit and went to the Trocadero to have a walk about the arcade, seeing as elsewhere arcades are pretty much dead, though this one was pretty much empty too, excluding the odd group of girls playing DDR and Japanese hardcores' playing King of Fighters and Initial D. In the end I admired the new games like Rambo but didn't play anything: no wonder these places are dead when many of the games cost £2 a go! I did try to play one game (a new Dynamite Cop) by the crappy old machine they put it in wouldn't accept my money!By this time it was about 3 so I decided to grab something to eat from the Pizza Hut right across from where Spamalot is played, or as they are now calling it: Pasta Hut. Yeah, I doubt that will catch on. Still, the place looked posher than before but they still had the buffet so I had a good ol' pig out. Lovely.
After that I finally found Forbidden Planet, then had a browse in Folyes for animation books, which they have a nice section for despite no one in the shop knowing where it is (mind you, the book shop is about 4 floors big). When I finally found it some other guy came other to look to, who I ended up having a nice long convo with as he wanted to have a crack at an animation course after putting it off for so long and becoming a taxi driver. The shop had a promo DVD for the upcoming Animator's Survival Kit Animated box set (which is going to be amazing) which was also free! I haven't bought anything the whole but have still filled my bag with stuff!
By this point it was 6 so I made my way to the O2, which i have never been to before, not even when it was called the Millennium Dome. It's actually a lot bigger than I expected, and it's quite surreal inside: it's like a little city (consisting almost entirely of restaurants) inside a tent. The Monkey: Journey to the West show wasn't actually in the O2, but in a smaller tent thing out the back somewhere.
Not sure why they have 'Priority' in big letters at the front.
Ooh, shiny things!
So how was the show? Well it was great, and something totally unique to what I'm used to as i rarely go to London to see any shows. It's been advertised as a Opera (or even a 'Popera'. Sic.) but it's more of a Chinese stunt Circus, only with a story and singing, f you had to describe it as something that already exists. The whole thing was in Mandarin too, so there was a screen at both sides of the stages that displayed subtitles. The only problem with sitting near the front was to read these subtitles you had to glance your eyes away from the stage to read them, so fast reading is a must as you want to see what's going on on stage: it was stunning stuff.Martial arts, fantastic costumes, crazy aerobatics, insane plate spinning: the show had the works, and even had bits of Hewlett animation in between scenes, which i was not expecting. These were mostly used as to fill the gaps when everyone behind the curtains were getting the next set ready. The show was 2 hours long (with a 20 minute interval in the middle) but didn't feel dragged out at all: if anything it felt like it could of had more scenes. Certainly a joy to watch.
So other than the travel back, which left me scattered (because for some reason took 3 hours from the O2 back to Liverpool street and back to Southend so I didn't get back till about 2am), it was a fun day. Now why has it taking me till today to post about it? Because the net day my computer decided to not turn on anymore and now it needs a new power fuse. I leave it for one day and it conks out on me! Will post photos in this post later.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Old artwork of badly spelt doom
Inspired by Stacey's blog post showing some old artwork of hers she found in the loft, I feel like doing the same for a good laugh. Unfortunately about 90% of my childhood artwork seems be based on Sonic, and almost anything I did that was original got lost somehow. If you thought my spelling was bad now, just look at these! I'm not even sure what most of the words were supposed to be on some of these, but I do know that every time I wrote "pant" it was supposed to say "part".
This is as far as I can tell the earliest drawing of mine I have, though that may only because it's cover of the first issue of the Sonic comic I was drawing for around seven years of my life, with "issues" going into the 800-something. Why are the rings replaced with er...whatever those things are? This early stuff is from about 1994, and is almost entirely Sonic CD fan art, and made up level layouts (though there's some Bubble Bobble, Lemmings and the odd original character too).
Third issue and look he's all in 3D like! Just one one problem..erm...something appears to be missing.
First issue in colour! hang on, something isn't right about it again..
Ever wondered where the idea for Dashinuke came from? Well here you go.
That stupid "Zap!" animation I did a few years back was directly based on something I drew as a kid as well, because it was so bloody weird. I think it was actually named after this crap CITV show, for some reason.
This is possibly the most bizarre drawing of anything I have ever done. I couldn't draw something this insane again if I tried.
Oh man, remember Fun House? Kids driving about in go karts collecting giant foam coins while getting water chucked at them? This is it in comic from, featuring a super lemming from lemmings 2! And look, Dynamite Headdy is going to be in the next issue! I think that last bit is supposed to say "The Winners are the Speed (team)".
There's a Gladiators issue as well! Highlights of this have to be the rather literal t-shirt designs of the characters (Knuckles has arrows pointing at the knuckles of someones hand, and for Tails you just have a picture of his er...tails.), and while you can't really see it in the scan, the sticker in there has Sonic's face scribbled on top of Wolf's and the Grounder robot's face on the contestant. wait...."The Ronp"? Romp? Lol.
A V.E day issue, which is a bit ironic as Sonic is a Japanese creation. How does the comic celebrate VE day? With a Sonic quiz and history of Sonic games (many made up games included like Sonic 4, Sonic CD2 and Sonic Zero on the Atari?). The quiz features this gem of a question:
Which Sonic game was released in 1991?
a) Sonic 1
b) Sonic 300
c) Sonic 40
These ones are a bit later (1997), including what must be one of my first computer based drawings. Around this time i had this biggest obsession with the fact that I only just discovered that Sonic came from japan thanks to the artwork and videos on Sonic Jam, so i have a whole ton of artwork with this made up moon language all over it which I presume was supposed to look like Japanese. These "art cards" even have "made in japan" written on the back! Some of these pieces are seriously odd. Sonic characters fried with rope and pancakes, anyone?
I still remember the story behind this one. Sega magzine had a compertition once (which was obviously an April fools joke) in which they'd give £1 million to whoever could find Rackles, a photoshopped Green Knuckles with spikey feet. This drawing is supposed to be him found in some hidden artwork on Sonic CD, and the reason he's beheaded is I had a Knuckles toy that's head fell off. Yeah..this could have almost classed as a Sega memories post now.
Around this time me and some friends were making these thing called "Bro's" (no relation to the band) in workshop class, where we'd saw these long lumps of wood into little rectangles and draw faces on them, a bit like Gogo's/Crazy Bones, only er...wooden. I only have these "catalogs" for them now. Speaking of these school friends, I still seem to have a bunch of drawings of theirs amongst my stuff. O_o
Ok, I'll stop posting this nonsense now. This blog needed a desperate update! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
This is as far as I can tell the earliest drawing of mine I have, though that may only because it's cover of the first issue of the Sonic comic I was drawing for around seven years of my life, with "issues" going into the 800-something. Why are the rings replaced with er...whatever those things are? This early stuff is from about 1994, and is almost entirely Sonic CD fan art, and made up level layouts (though there's some Bubble Bobble, Lemmings and the odd original character too).
Third issue and look he's all in 3D like! Just one one problem..erm...something appears to be missing.
First issue in colour! hang on, something isn't right about it again..
Ever wondered where the idea for Dashinuke came from? Well here you go.
That stupid "Zap!" animation I did a few years back was directly based on something I drew as a kid as well, because it was so bloody weird. I think it was actually named after this crap CITV show, for some reason.
This is possibly the most bizarre drawing of anything I have ever done. I couldn't draw something this insane again if I tried.
Oh man, remember Fun House? Kids driving about in go karts collecting giant foam coins while getting water chucked at them? This is it in comic from, featuring a super lemming from lemmings 2! And look, Dynamite Headdy is going to be in the next issue! I think that last bit is supposed to say "The Winners are the Speed (team)".
There's a Gladiators issue as well! Highlights of this have to be the rather literal t-shirt designs of the characters (Knuckles has arrows pointing at the knuckles of someones hand, and for Tails you just have a picture of his er...tails.), and while you can't really see it in the scan, the sticker in there has Sonic's face scribbled on top of Wolf's and the Grounder robot's face on the contestant. wait...."The Ronp"? Romp? Lol.
A V.E day issue, which is a bit ironic as Sonic is a Japanese creation. How does the comic celebrate VE day? With a Sonic quiz and history of Sonic games (many made up games included like Sonic 4, Sonic CD2 and Sonic Zero on the Atari?). The quiz features this gem of a question:Which Sonic game was released in 1991?
a) Sonic 1
b) Sonic 300
c) Sonic 40
These ones are a bit later (1997), including what must be one of my first computer based drawings. Around this time i had this biggest obsession with the fact that I only just discovered that Sonic came from japan thanks to the artwork and videos on Sonic Jam, so i have a whole ton of artwork with this made up moon language all over it which I presume was supposed to look like Japanese. These "art cards" even have "made in japan" written on the back! Some of these pieces are seriously odd. Sonic characters fried with rope and pancakes, anyone?
I still remember the story behind this one. Sega magzine had a compertition once (which was obviously an April fools joke) in which they'd give £1 million to whoever could find Rackles, a photoshopped Green Knuckles with spikey feet. This drawing is supposed to be him found in some hidden artwork on Sonic CD, and the reason he's beheaded is I had a Knuckles toy that's head fell off. Yeah..this could have almost classed as a Sega memories post now.
Around this time me and some friends were making these thing called "Bro's" (no relation to the band) in workshop class, where we'd saw these long lumps of wood into little rectangles and draw faces on them, a bit like Gogo's/Crazy Bones, only er...wooden. I only have these "catalogs" for them now. Speaking of these school friends, I still seem to have a bunch of drawings of theirs amongst my stuff. O_oOk, I'll stop posting this nonsense now. This blog needed a desperate update! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
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