LINKS OF INTEREST (to while away the hours)

[gregthings]

I dressed up as Peter Chris anyway in our elementary school backyard Kiss performances. Frapadoodle Gene Simmons. It's all about Cat-man!

[r_sail]

Nananana... Cat-Maaaan!!

[Neil]

Check out the work from Tran Nguyen's first solo show. 

http://www.thinkspacegallery.com/2010/03/project/works.php

It's amazing to think that she hasn't even graduated from SCAD yet.  She's got a looooong career ahead of her.

[r_sail]

Her work reminds me A LOT of Joao Ruas.

[gregthings]

THis all reminds a lot of the early 1990's when everyone was doing Dave McKean... except today it's James Jean.

[r_sail]

Yeah there's a certain amount of JJ in there. Glad to see he's moved away from his own older style a bit.

Like you said, Greg, if you can come up with one good idea, you can come up with another.

[Neil]

Yeah, I think her influences are showing a little (JJ, Klimt, etc.), but give her a break.  She's only in her early 20's and still in art school where she's bombarded with other painters' work.  It'll take her a bit to sort through all of that and find her own voice.

Ton's of potential here, though.

[gregthings]

Oh I didn't mean it as a criticism...  I think it's fine- we're all slaves to our influences in college and it takes a couple of years to start to cycle that out and own up to ourselves. Not everyone does so, and I think when you don't do it in time before you start getting work, it can be hard to ever let it go- I think that's been a bit of problem with Joao Ruas and others Vertigo hires to do their ongoing Fables covers post-Jean. They're just looking for clones on that book... and that's the Al Columbia danger right there. best to leave off and take your time, find your own music. I look forward to more from here.

[Neil]

Heh heh, I sounded a little snippy with my last remark, didn't I? 

[r_sail]

I could be totally wrong here, but I believe James hand picked Joao to replace him... or was thrilled when he was chosen? I don't remember.

And while an influence is apparent, I think he's also got his own voice enough that he's not simply a clone

[gregthings]

It's all that "special time" your spending with Brick in the sweatlodge, Neil. It makes a man irritable. 

I dunno  Joao Ruas seems like an absolute duplicate from my feeble internet searches- which is perfect for the Fables covers I suppose. However, it may not work out so well in a few years when there's another hotshot in town and Jean's look has gone the way of the others before him. He's clearly extremely talented in his own right.... But whatever makes him happy is cool by me. Seriously.

[gregthings]

Holy cow is this ever a surprisingly excellent dissection dynamics of video-game construction... creepy and totally fascinating. WHich is crazy given the source. I was particularly taken aback by the still from that 80's role-playing cartoon arcade game ... Dragonslayer? Dragonpoop? I can't remember it exactly, but I always felt like I was being utterly debased and manipulated when I played that damned thing.   If you're a gamer, which I'm not so much since then, this will freak you out.

 http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

[tony g. brown]

that's pretty intense.  i do have to say that i really loved dragon slayer, not because i could play it, but that it was awesome animation at the time.

that whole bit about virtual items being seen as real, it weird too. I understand that most of our money now is virtual now, its all numbers, but like they said on NPR the other day, pretty soon, we'll be getting points for eating corn flakes or getting credits for putting on a certain brand of shoe, all because of packaging sensors that will be put in these products to tell the manufacturer if we are using them or not.

weird.

[gregthings]

Yeah that was the lure of that thing- in the world of Q-bert, this looked like pure magic. But it wasn't- you only got better at it if you spent a thousand quarters in it to learn exactly when you were supposed to jump to a particular stone, or grab a particular rope. Plus if I remember, it was the first time ever a game was 50 cents.... I just went back to my Tron lightcycle and Defender consoles.

Do you want to see hippos as seen from outerspace? Sure you do!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=101732557579048257160.00047e3b5d0e1bc9e0202&ll=-6.628786,31.136072&spn=0.000313,0.000603&z=21

Thank you Google Earth!

[tony g. brown]

hahahaha, thanks greg, that made loosing my job this year that much easier to swallow.  thanks, i can't stop giggling.