European comic craziness

Here are some scans from a comic I picked up at the awe-inspiring La comète de Carthage (link to their blog, in French) while I was last in Paris. It's an incredible piece of work, as I can find nothing about it on the internets. The title is 'Picto Drame' and the work is screen printed on cream-coloured stock and put together in a partially glued concertina fashion. It's a four-colour screen print (yellow, red, quasi-metallic grey and black) and the colourways are put together in a masterful fashion with overprinting used to excellent effect. The only reference to the artist is the name 'Rocco'.

From what I can tell, the story is about a guy who dies and the shenanigans that his relatives get up to in his absence.

Please enjoy and - as always - click for larger.

[UPDATE] Here's the ebay France website for La comète de Carthage.

Mario Jumps

CRT close-up of the worlds favourite maintenance worker mid-jump. From the video game 'Heroic Plumbers in Outer Space'.

(Detail)

Classy Fantagraphics wallpapers

There's some classy desktop pictures over at Fantagraphics - enabling you to decorate your humble computer screen with art by some of the cream of the indie comic world. With luck they'll add more over time. Go! Go!!

Close: a postscript

I also wanted to post this - I found it while looking through my library for Chuck Close pics. Taken in a nightclub in Japan.

Chipping away with Chuck

I recently read this article about working incrementally, referencing some knowledge from painter Chuck Close. It's worth a read.

Here are some images I took of increasing detail of one of Close's works - a portrait of Lucas Samaras. I used the zoom function to get in there, so the third image is a little blurry at full size, but you can see the detail of the grid and component shapes well enough. Flash photography was not used.

The room. It's filled with... Love!?

A post dedicated to my wife. In honour of her beauty, intellect and style* I present the song I didn't sing to her at our wedding.

David Byrne - My Love is You [2.4MB mp3 file]

Thanks for putting up with and tolerating me.

*editorial joke, yet still applicable.

Landscape with toaster

Various levels of detail of a Macro photograph I took of a square barcode off the packaging of our new toaster. In fact, it's a variety of barcode I haven't seen before. It's not a QR code, as it's missing the position and alignment points and isn't a regimented grid like the Semacode also is.
Either way, it's a beautiful thing. Data for computers to read that - when zoomed in - look like a map or an old engraving, each ink dot like a tiny brush-stroke penned by a machine that only a machine can fully appreciate.
Also the pattern on the left looks like a representation of the spirals of a spiral-bound notebook.

Expect to see the aforementioned QR codes all over Australia in the very near future for data-dumps onto your mobile.

Moleskine sketches 2007

These are so last year...

Cold | Paranoia | Siege | Entrails

In order to cool myself off the other day I watched my copy of John Carpenter's 'The Thing' which, if you haven't seen it, is set in Antarctica.

I was watching the menu which has a loop of a riff off one of my favourite tracks from the soundtrack, composed by the legendary Ennio Morricone, and I thought I'd post the track up here. Carpenter's soundtracks are among some of the best in my opinion, and even though he doesn't score this one himself, it suits the movie to the ground.

Bestiality - Ennio Morricone [4.2MB mp3 file]
You can purchase the soundtrack here.

Mein Gott, it's hot

I am weak.

Good luck to friends in hazardous areas.

I thought, like, we were going straight away...

...But today, this was not the case.

Here's some Zappa to listen to, containing some of my favourite lyrics, such as

The glory of our sciences, and militant alliances
Reveal their basic worth along the mounds of dead appliances!

Observe:
Planet of My Dreams - Frank Zappa [2.3MB mp3 file]
From Them or Us (1984).

What's... That... Thrumminnnng...?

Metatautology

I noticed an ad for the quasi-CG-quasi-real film version of the classic cartoon 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' today and it got me thinking.

I mean, 'Alvin and the Chipmunks', eh? Isn't Alvin a chipmunk? It's kinda like having a band called 'John Smith and the Humans'. Tautological as this is, it also suggests that 'John Smith' is something other than a human. And Alvin is something other - or perhaps something more - than a simple chipmunk.

I guess Alvin is the front-man, or star (see below) of 'The Chipmunks', but on consideration of the theme song from the eighties cartoon, it seems that Alvin is also a member of 'The Chipmunks' themselves ("We're The Chipmunks! Alvin, Simon, (pause) Theodore!") as well as being the name character in the band's title. We're 'The Chipmunks'. We ARE chipmunks and Alvin is our leader. Alvin is also a chipmunk.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

Alvin and the Chipmunks is a five-time Grammy Award-winning animated music group, created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. The group consists of three singing animated chipmunks: Alvin, the mischievous troublemaker, who quickly became the star of the group; Simon, the tall, bespectacled intellectual; and Theodore, the chubby, impressionable sweetheart.

And:

Chipmunks construct expansive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m in length with several well-concealed entrances. The sleeping quarters are kept extremely clean as shells and feces are stored in refuse tunnels

.

Wikipedia also lists the 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' musical genres as 'New Wave, music concrete, Country, Pop, Rock and Rap'.

Shhh... Secret project

To quote a pirate captain: "Happy New Y'arrr"!

Anyway. Here's hoping it's a good, interesting and creative one full of shenanigans (the good kind).

Here's a little detail of a secret project my wife and I are working on at the moment. Please bask in the exclusivity.