Deep Thought, Comment, Analysis, Guardian Readings, and maybe some rants too

I’ve been neglecting poor Dragonbat, but that’s all about to change – OK I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it. I’ve just read a piece by Charlie Brooker, quite representative of his oeuvre, if a little restrained for him (read less swearing than usual) and I like what I read. I want to do something like a more relaxed version of this.

I want to be a wild beast in the woods like Charlie Brooker. I want to vent my ire, give my opinion on the important issues of the day and give striking insights into the minutiae of our daily lives. But where to start, what subject is most deserving of my scrutiny and insightful comment…

… this Guardian story relating to the litmus test of the inhumanity of out time, the deportation of people who want to settle in a new country, has caught my eye. The British government is carrying out ever more of its inhuman forced expulsions of human beings who want to live in the country. This time flying a bunch of unfortunate people to the war zone that is Baghdad – of all places.

But it seems an actual human being with feelings for the fellow inhabitants of this planet actually asked the poor deportees if the whole thing was OK with them. This human being was an Iraqi Army Officer and apparently he asked if anyone really wanted to get off the plane.

Not surprisingly the vast majority said no, and that they would want to go back to the UK. The officer then told the crew of UK security guards not to force anyone to come to Iraq ever again. That’s so cool. In my mind this guy looks like Sayid out of Lost. A hero, but also a normal bloke fighting injustice.

I might be alone in thinking that deporting people from a country is a bad thing, but to me it reminds me too much of the medieval practice of returning people - “called surfs” - to the villages where they were born. As Wikipedia says, “Serfs were labourers who were bound to the land.”

Serfdom died out, or more accurately people fought to have it ended, at least on the national basis, but internationally we are all, except for a few exceptions bound to the land. I don’t like it. I would like to be able to go live in any country I want, and I would like anyone - who felt so inclined, for whatever reason - to be able to live in the UK. The UK is where I was born, and yet, for no logical reason that I can discern, I seem to be bound to it. Crazy.

OK that’s a nice controversial start, but it’s also what I really think. I’ll be back with more deep thought, comment, analysis, illustration, cartooning, Guardian reading and maybe some rants real soon.

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Ant Eye Creature for RPG Games

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Wrinkles

It's illustration friday time again and here is the illustration I've chosen. The creaturehas interesting lines on it's face. More posts and illustrations.

I'm really enjoying illustration friday, I think it is a great impetous for artists out there.

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The Coffee Goblin

This is two images created and posted in the same day, I'm very proud of myself. Although it is two oclock in the morning, maybee there isn't that much to be proud of.


Uploading the image is giving me a bit of a problem, seven tries and still no luck. The uploader isn't very reliable with my dodgy 3modem in another country connection to the internet. The connection keeps dropping out, probably for just seconds at a time, but the uploader doesn't seem to be able to cope. I'll give up and just save this as a draft. Hey, I waited five minutes and bingo, it worked. No idea why but I should just be happy I guess.

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Primitive Frog Gods

This image immediately jumped to mind when I read that the word on illustration friday was Primitive.

The characters come from a short science fiction story that I started to write but didn't finnish at the fantastical fabulist. Now that I'm looking at this image again I have the feeling that I would like to create a coloured version, watch this space. Although I can't promise to ever get round to it, it's so difficult to do all the stuff you want.

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The monster who was scared of the woods

I have to let you have another page from the sketchbook today as I have been working on a new blog called Moonbugs (Hopefully, if the name is available (It was and the link is http://moonbugs.blogspot.com)) and I was tied up chilling on Bondi Beach during the hours of daylight and working on the new idea after dusk. The page from the sketchbook is one that I particularly like however. The monster pictured is imagined as afraid of the dark and I think this fear, which we all know, comes across on the misshapen creatures face. I quite like him and I am sure that I will be working him up into a cute coloured finished version, pretty soon.

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Giant Space Crocodile

Space Crocodino is enormous, stupendously huge, so impossibly big that it is hard to imagine, take the biggest thing you can think of....etc. Of course I'm paraphrasing Douglas Adams here but Space Crocodino really is big. It is thought that he was a lap dog to some impossibly gigantic and powerful forgotten elder race of monsters. He, or she, or it (nobody is quite sure) is as enthusiastic and playful as a lapdog, which kind of bears out this theory. Of course enthusiasm and playfulness is not always a good thing if you are so large that an accidental twitch of the tail can level an entire city block.
Despite it's huge size, Space Crocodino does play chess rather well. It is thought that the strange creature did not learn to play in the conventional way, but had the rules of the game imprinted on to it's tiny walnut like brains as an amusement for it's long dead masters. This of course brings up certain paradoxes in relation to the true origins of the game of chess. It might strike some as strange to label such an enormous hideous brute as a cute character, but you have to kind of look beyond the asteroid-scarred, radioactive meters thick armoured hide to the playful puppy soul beneath.
Although, barring unfortunate accidents of the aforementioned city block-levelling kind, Space Crocodino is a good soul and gets on well with almost everyone. It does regularly argue with and get into altercations with Giroid. This is quite unfortunate in itself as Giroid is a giant robot and the little disagreements between the two can result in an entire City being reduced to rubble. As usual you can get the t-shirt by clicking the image below.

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Vampire Girl

Vampire girl is a natural friend for all the monsters that I will be introducing you to in this blog, Dragonbat, Jello Boy, Super Goth, Space Crocodino, Giroid, Wrinkles, Shroom, Ghost Penguin and of course you already met Space Mummy. Vampire Girl is a very magical young lady, and she can travel to many areas of space and time that would seem very remote to us, especially to play a good chess opponent.
All these strange monstrous figments of my imagination seem to enjoy a game of chess, even though I myself am a little at a loss during a game. I have limited her pallet in this image to just three colours and tried to create her exclusively with vector shapes so I can create a t-shirt with spread shirt that is printed their preferred way, something impossible with a normal jpeg.
Poor Vampire Girl must avoid sunlight, even with shades and her umbrella she just can't abide it. Her name, although it is not common knowledge is Violeta, and her castle exists on a nexus point in space and time.
Vampire Girl is a creation of me and my girlfriend (see our blog http://spiralcattalks.blogspot.com ) and she was inspired by a visit to Mirimar castle in Trieste. The real castle has a spooky twilight aura about it and it is overrun with cats. Vampire Girl's castle is also overrun with cats.
I guess Vampire Girl is a little like Emily the Strange but then again wouldn't we all like to be a little like Emily the Strange. Morticia in the Adams family is also an influence, and that shape changing woman from Space 1999, many, many others of course, Sapphire from Sapphire and Steel is another. I think these female characters who act a little differently to the way society expects are some of the most interesting characters.

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This is a science fiction monster

This image was produced very laboriously with photoshop before I worked
out how the pen tool works. I think it has a certain quality that I like with the limited pallet and 
differentiated areas of colour. This post is acting odly so I'm going to stop 
now

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