We've Moved...

It is with tear-filled eyes I type this final fairwell to all things Blogger. Things weren't working out between us that great and when I found out Blogger was posting stuff on the internet with my best-friend, well, enough was enough.
Please find my new and improved blog here. 
Thanks for the goodtimes Blogger.

Rose-a-Petits-Pois

Hidden away in a forgotten isle of the internet, not too far from the popular Mary Blair section, lies the cute, adorable and innocent Rose-a-Petis-Pois; The creative twinklings of the ever talented Genevieve Godbout.

Although she doesn't update her blog as often as people would like, I'm sure if she updated it every 10 minutes it still wouldn't be enough for most of us. If that isn't enough, she also draws a mean Winnie the Pooh during her day job at Disney.

So, grab something sugary, have a glance through her most current work and practice your French while you're at it.

Above image © Genevieve Godbout

Anorak Magazine

Anorak Magazine is completely, totally, 100% awesome and you should check it out as soon as you can. It is for kids, but with contributions from some of the worlds leading illustrators and artists, I'd rather read this than half the magazines out there for adults. 

Sadly, a little hard to come by in Australia with only the odd place here and there stocking it. However, it is fairly easy to hunt down a copy in the UK for a teeny £3.50. This is an older issue, but there's a new one out now, the Daredevil Issue (now shown above too) featuring the talents of Jon Boam, Jack Teagle, Owen Gildersleeve, Simon Peplow, Tad Carpenter and JeremyVille. 

* News just in. Just been made aware that legendary online Australian craftshop The Lark is now stocking this lovely number in Australia should you desire a copy.

Matt Cruickshank

The things Matt Cruikshank can do with a pencil are downright amazing, although, one instance in Soho was a little bit perverted. That aside, Matt is among one of the best artists I've run into in my travels. Not just because he has the ability to convey thousands of emotions across a multiple of varied animation styles, or that he has a portfolio to make most animators very jealous, but because he would often take us to the pub after work. 

Nowdays, Matt has escaped the good offices of Disney London to establish himself in a more varied and creative way. One of his most impressive projects to date is Phillip & the Stove, which follows the travels of a character called Phillip Pearce. Well worth checking out. If you still want to see more of Matt Cruikshanks pencil skills, investigate his blog Ye Crooked Leg or visit Soho very late on a Thursday night.

Smoking & Advertising

For a huge chunk of the 20th Century, in fact pretty much all of it, cigarettes were advertised. Manly things, such as motorsports, football, boxing and...um...archery, attracted the attention of tobacco companies like cats to an allergic person in order to promote their addictive product.

The first people to say 'no' to cigarette companies advertising was, funnily enough, Nazi Germany. Apparently eager to keep their population alive well into old age. From here there was a huge gap and it wasn't until the late 1960's that the USA started taking the link between cigarettes seriously an advertising began being restricted from 1970, followed quickly by the UK. Other countries very slowly followed suit over the next 30 years and restrictions very, very slowly got tighter. It's not really until the last 15 years that things have drastically changed worldwide, especially in many Asian and surprisingly European countries. Latin America in general seems to have ignored most of this.

Evreux

I found this little postcard in a junk shop at the Spittlefield Markets in London. I seem to fall in love with old stuff like this. I think it captures elements of things now long gone and for a few pounds I felt like I bought a tiny slice of history. Many of these postcards had things written on them to and from people who are most likely long gone and places long since changed.

You might think this is just some old photo that isn't even in colour. What's the big deal? The truth is, this little area here got the heck blown out of it a decade or so later during World War 2. This scene doesn't exist anymore and, despite postwar building efforts, never will. For some reason, stuff like this intrigues me more than watching repeats of Friends or the next version of Halo.

Anyway, should you want to glimpse the village nowdays, here's a link to the area now on GoogleMaps, Evreux.

Button Man

Morbid, moody, adult and English. All things people don't associate with comics are all the things you'll find represent this acclaimed graphic novel set in the underworld of London and originally run in 2000AD Magazine.

Written by John Wagner (of Judge Dredd, Batman, Aliens and Boba Fett fame) and illustrated by my favourite Arhur Ranson. Always a more serious type of illustrator, Ranson's style perfectly matched Wagner's non-American writing and 2000AD most successful non-science-fiction story. If you want to know more, I'm not wikipedia, so go there instead...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_Man

This is Some More Milne...

...And So is This.

More E H Shepard

Another E H Shepard Drawing

E H Shepard

Long before he was completely remade into the puffy, shiny, balloonish, merchandise selling icon that we know today, Pooh was a bumbling little bear owned and written about by children's author Alan Alexander Milne. I was lucky enough to find one such publication in one of my many trips to musty London book shop. Flicking through the pages of the weather worn pages of the second edition classic I was constantly blown away by the inky illustrations of E H Shepard. To me, it's these drawings I really love and attribute to the early success of the character. So I'm glad to see that Disney have recently begun to bring back this style for Winnie the Pooh. 

Not many people also know this but E H Shepard also illustrated the original Wind in the Willows and. To be honest, I only just found out about this in researching this. Interesting to know he also won the Military Cross during the First World War. Sadly though, both Shepard and Milne greatly regretted the creation and success of  Winnie the Pooh, as it greatly overshadowed any work they did in later life. I for one, am glad they did for the originals  still remain some of my favourite children' s novels.

Perry Rhodan

Perry Rhodan is something I discovered in musty, dusty secondhand bookshops around London. I found a huge stack of these for about 40p each, bought a few and haven't been able to find them again. These were printed in the 70's and I absolutely love the cover artwork even if they have nothing to do with the books plot. The artist behind this particular one is Peter Andrew Jones and the others you see below are done by Angus McKie. Between the two Britsh born artist, they've produced more paintings than you have had hot meals. Except for you Matt Ash, you've had a lot of hot meals.

As for  Perry Rhodan, well, the never ending series of books, comics and spin-offs follow the adventures of (you guessed it) Perry Rhodan. A Buck Rogers styled, space-adventure type guy who's adventures are very, very,very numerous (2450 episodes to be exact). Apparently its the best selling science fiction book series ever. For starters, in your face Star Trek, but  secondly, why haven't I heard of it? I think it might have something to do with the age of it, teetering toward the 50 year mark now and probably well past it's hey day. Also, Perry Rhodan seems to be a very international  series, translated into everything from Russian, to Korean to  Klingon.  But I think, it's mainly because it's a little bit weird.

I'd like to thank the below blog for help in researching all this stuff...

BearAlleyBlogspot

You could also check out the hilarious official site...

PerryRhodan

Space Travel

Honestly, who wouldn't want to travel in space. The excitement, the sights and not so much the smells, the unknowns, it's all too amazing to turn down. Not that I get offered to come to space much. I'm not David Bowie or anything, but it's all so great. No amount of epic accidents, space dangers or aliens seem to put people off wanting to be up there. I do find it strange how horror movies make people really scared of normal things; hockey masks, swimming, four foot high gremlins, etc. But, all these nasty things happening to people in space, such as aliens eating astronauts, demon ships from other dimensions or entire crews of spaceships forced to wear grey slacks and bright polo neck shirts never seem to put people off going there. Maybe it's because we don't actually ever realistically see ourselves ever going there and therefore don't ever stop to appreciate the real danger that such a scenario would bring. Or maybe we just don't care.

The Future

The future is going to be amazing. Just reading a copy of Space Discovery: Fact & Fiction from 1979 right now and apparently the next 25 years of space travel is going to be amazing. We're gonna have space bases not only on the Moon, but maybe also the planet Mars. Incredible huh? The international governments will be trying to terraform the Mars to make it habitable. This is where they build up the levels of Carbon Dioxide in Mars' atmosphere to increase the temperature of the entire planet, thus melting the ice caps of Mars. Apparently it's a very hard thing to do, but then again, we seem to being a good job of it here.