Showing posts with label typography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label typography. Show all posts

02 November, 2007

So who likes Saul Bass, eh? :D

State of mind: pondering
Current soundtrack: white noise

Today I partitioned my harddrive, downloaded some fonts, stuck some random doohickies back in and went searching for the grail of all grails, unbooked Ultraman Gekiden chapters...because I have no PS or AI yet on my yet-unnamed girl. (Laaaamster, I'm looking at you. ;))

So. Saul Bass. Is he not full of squee...why you all looking at me like I'm speaking Swahili? He's the supposed father of motion graphics, not to mention a fairly bitchin' graphic designer. If you've seen The Man with The Golden Arm, Psycho, The Shining's movie poster or even the AT&T globe logo, you're familiar with his work. Bell did quite a bit of handlettering, and a tribute site decided to duplicate his kinda-crooked-kinda-jiggly letterforms. The result was Hitchcock, in homage to one of the directors he used to work with, and was recently put back online. This means squeeing and font pimpage from yours truly.

You can get Hitchcock (and should get it nowhere else!) at http://typographica.org/001110.php. There's a sample there, too.

P.S. - Ken Taya's Super Ultra. SWEET LORDY LORDY. *collapses in laughter as the red-and-silver lean, mean dicing machines stare blankly*

01 August, 2007

My typedorkery is official.

State of mind: bemused
Current soundtrack: MMLab 2 denizens going off in various Chinese dialects

...Other sane women squee over Brad Pitt, Rain, Johnny Depp—stuff like that.

I happen to squee over UM Dyna, Igarashi Shunji and...fabulous typography videos. This happens to be Eine kurze Geschichte der Typografie.



(Not that I don't like Johnny Depp, because anyone who can alternate between gritty, kooky pirate and desaturated snarky confectioner has my deeeeeep respect.)

29 May, 2007

In which there is reminiscence.

State of mind: drowsy
Current soundtrack: Ultra Kaijuu Ondo (Ishikawa Susumu)

My prayers, they have been answered! For the moment, I am in charge of the character design for the P.S. The Children internship program. What is is, well, I won't say just yet - but I think you'll find out soon. :) Also, I AM doing something visual with Helvetica for MMP - motion graphics or a short film, most likely, but it does afford me the opportunity to personify the fonts and all. Just imagine Miriam d'Cruz! Helvetica Foong! Arial Wong! Muhammad Zapfino! (While all of these are people I know at college, I doubt that they'd be too chuffed sticking their heads in boxes to act for a short film. Kekekeke.)

I love character design, having a few of my own personal favourites. Pen, for instance, that plucky little turtle which appeared in my first Flash animation project—one I'll be redoing for Graduation Campaign. Ninja Teabags appear quite often nowadays too, in times of randomness. One Arion has a special place in my heart, because he was one of the first really 'different' Ultras I tried my hands at, all green eyes and long limbs. Dark Eye (formerly called Scudwan, do not ask) is one of those I love to hate, along with the stubbly Huang Long general, Ran Seiryuu. There is always Hakugin and Shinku, the bondkeepers watching their charges from a distance. I hope a part of them resides in me somewhere, really. And then there's the more out of the way stuff like Black Colossus, with his evil prosthetics; Tobiron, who now has three origin stories to pick and choose from, depending on who you really wish him to be; Baiyouji, prince of the Western Ocean; Hoshi the Soulmistress/Tamasenshi/Kishu Megami, who was really an extension of what I wanted to become when I was much younger.*

The one that sneaks into my drawings most often, however, is Kamiza Maki, the androgynous white wolf shapeshifter from Kumamoto Higo. She started off as 18, which was hoary maturity to me then; she's 21 now, which I don't think is hoary maturity, just blind youth's final years. There's a scar on her neck I drew once and somehow stayed. Her hairstyle changed about five times and will probably change again. She likes Japanese dumplings and pears. She strikes out blindly. She's not tall, but graceful anyway, and deadly with a swastika sai in her hands. She's got a short fuse. She has a fatalistic inferiority complex thing going on. Her fangs and claws are sharp, when bared. There's probably a lot more of me in Maki than I'd care to admit.

...My point? What point? I love character design, drawing them out, giving them personalities and backgrounds, planting a scar here and a dead eye there, making them speak, giving them pronoun-patterns** and motivations and hearts and minds. I love telling their stories and intertwining bits of my own with them.

So thanks for passing down the job, chief! I'll do my best! * ^_^ *

In other news, I bought some makeup the other day, because Body Shop was having a sale. I'm quite pleased, and actually just waiting for an occasion to try some of it out...although I've already started wearing the Spirit of the Moonflower perfume oil, and it's not lasting as long as I thought it would. It DOES smell nice, though. Also, I took more pictures of the greenery outside Sunway Pyramid. While the flowers I last captured are all beginning to wilt, I caught some butterflies makling their rounds. I haven't seen these for a while, the ones with wings speckled and orange-dotted outside and iridescent blue inside.


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*A self-insert Mary Sue, to use the technical term. XD Only one thing remains sure: Hoshi gives up her life in one final battle, far, far in the future when her host has lost the will to live. Her other exploits shall go unrecorded.

** Best explained with Rurouni Kenshin - normally uses sessha to refer to himself, resulting in the author's love for ALL sesshas in her fandoms, but as Battousai, refers to himself as ore.