Quit Facebook Day

In 1942, Gandhi put out his famous call to quit Facebook. Well, not really. Just change '1942' to '2010' and Gandhi to about 20,000 jaded youths who just don't give a stuff anymore.

Today is Quit Facebook Day. Sorry, all you 20,000 jaded youths, but I'm way ahead of you. I quit a month ago. I was on there from November 2007 to April 2010. I only joined it in the first place to keep in touch with someone overseas who probably kept in contact with me for about a month. I never wanted to know someone's quiz results on which Sailor Moon character they're most like, or see pictures of people chundering into a Hello Kitty biscuit tin, or know exactly who's riding the porcelain pony due to agonizing diarrhoea at this particular moment in time.

As a way of keeping tabs on people, it's great, but as a way of keeping in touch, it sucks. Once you're locked in and making up the numbers on someone's friends list, you might never hear from them again. They'll just trawl through your profile or pay passive attention to your updates in lieu of actual one-on-one communication. So if you're wondering if you should quit, then I say do it. Send email or write a letter instead, or – dare I say it – have a face-to-face conversation!

But enough about that...wanna see my deviantArt gallery?

Pete & Amy: Critics At Large I

Joining me for this post is my American friend Amy, and as 'critics' we will offer our viewpoints on different graphic artforms, such as album cover art, music videos and other stuff. In this way, we will comment on the same theme and hopefully get some different perspectives. Let's get on with our first album cover:

Lil' Kim – La Bella Mafia (2003).

Amy: I have always liked Lil' Kim's music and even now I go on Youtube to watch her videos. I love her style of rapping because she doesn't hold back the way she feels. She is the best female rapper. She looks pretty on the album cover, but she keeps changing her image and it's hard to tell it's her sometimes. I like her most with black hair, I think it brings out her eyes. Her style of dress is unique, but I don't think it was necessary for Kim to be topless and have those black things over her nipples, but hey, at least she covered some parts of her up! I'm not against it because that's the way she expresses herself, and she also tries to be known as a sex symbol so she does things like that to get attention, but she could've just had on a long tight dress and that would be sexy also.

Pete: I don't actually own this album (but I have heard all her others) so I don't know who put this cover together, but I have to wonder why there's a car and two guys standing on the water's surface. That's Photoshop cover art for you I guess. After studying graphic design I tend to pay more attention to whether something's been Photoshopped (and if I want to get really dorky about it, what filters they would have used and so on). Anyway, Lil' Kim is one of the few people who could get away with wearing something like this on an album cover. It gets the attention, but you can't have timid album covers with lyrics like hers.

A Small Boat

On Saturday, May 15, thousands of people packed into Sydney Harbour to see 16 year old Jessica Watson return after circumnavigating the world. My vantage point was close to North Head in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. When Jessica's boat finally crossed the heads, it was hard to make out amongst all the other boats (this is a massively zoomed-in shot, so it looks like crud):


A sky-writing plane had written this message earlier, but I can't read what it says. Something-'live'. I've turned the photo upside down. Any ideas?

The next day I went to Darling Harbour and Jessica's boat happened to be moored there, surrounded by news crews and hundreds of photo-takers. I was surprised the boat is only 10.5 metres long – to think she spent seven months on it. I'm sure there were plenty of naysayers, but the impression I got was that most people were proud of what Jessica did, a courageous feat at a time when people are taking fewer and fewer risks in the world.

To finish up, here's a shot of a road sign somewhere on the Hume Highway in rural Victoria. I think it's awesome that someone named a town Dookie. Did they know what it means as a slang term? If you look closely you'll see that the 'Dookie' part is on a separate piece of metal stuck on to the main one. Perhaps the town was called something else before? And what was it? Some things will have to remain unknown.

To all the fine citizens of Dookie, Victoria: Nonesuch Blog salutes you!

Opera House

Circular Quay in Sydney is a great place to enjoy the sights and the atmosphere. The sights, of course, are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, probably the two most famous landmarks in the country. Here's my standard postcard shot of the Opera House, taken last Sunday.

On any given day there are hundreds of tourists milling around on the Opera House steps to get their obligatory photo, but photographing it from front-on doesn't do it justice and it won't all fit in the frame anyway. Since it was my second visit to Sydney I tried to get something different to the first lot, and one of them was this darkened shot with a glimpse of the bridge in the background. It would be better if you could see more of the detail on the roof.

And so the Opera House will continue to attract thousands of tourists, most of whom will end up doing that ridiculous 'star jump' pose on the steps. Grow up, people. That aside, I still find it a great shame that the man who designed the building died without ever seeing it finished.

Next time: A small boat.

Bondi Beach

This is the first of three posts about my trip to Sydney last week. First up – Bondi Beach. Now we all know that this beach, in Australia's wealthiest suburb, is well known around the world. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a panoramic shot I did.

It's almost empty because last Friday was fairly cold. You've probably seen that Bondi Rescue show that they film here, but let's ignore the lifesaving. There's also skate ramps and street art along the walkway facing the Tasman Sea. Below is an emblem-style stencil showing Bondi's postcode, 2026.

There are two of these; someone drew a cigarette in the girl's mouth on the other one. The next picture is of one of the street artists at work on the wall.

They've covered a lot so far, as you can see the wall is fairly long. The new stuff has a lot of Avatar graphics in it.

Next time: the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

Where's K?

Back when I was a mere newbie at university, I saw a hand-drawn message on the notice board by a guy named "K" who wanted to start a Comics Club. I met up with him, and he was this Asian guy about 5 years older than me who drew all these cool gory comics. He wouldn't tell me his name though – he only wanted me to call him "K". I showed him some of the comics I was doing at the time, and he said "This stuff is pretty wacky."

A while later – I can't recall how much later – he put another hand-drawn message on the notice board for me, asking me where my finished comic was:

It looked pretty cool, as you can see.

I did phone him up (his brother was blasting Nirvana's In Utero album that evening so I knew he had good taste in music), but for some reason I never got to meet with K again, and there went my dream of being in an actual comics club.

Now, trying to track down a guy whose name is impossible to do an online search for, after a gazillion years have gone by, is pretty much impossible, you would think. And you'd be right. But I'm going to try it anyway.

To the Perth cartoonist known as "K" who attended Edith Cowan University in 1996 – if you read this, get in touch! Pronto!

Screen Worlds (Part Deux)

More images from my visit to Screen Worlds. Be awed. Awed, I tell you!

A Commodore 64 computer (1982), with joystick, game on cassette, and tape loader. It could also run software on ROM carts. I'll see anyone outside who doesn't think this is awesome!

A blurry screenshot of Tempest (1981), with simple circular-scroll and fire controls. I hadn't played it originally, but there was some ownage here. The concept is very simplistic but a bunch of dumb kids with skateboards who had a go couldn't figure it out.

The IBM PC version of Tetris (1984). Regularly mentioned as one of the best video games of all time and voted in some online poll as the greatest thing to come out of Russia.

Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005). Haven't they milked enough money out of this franchise? Amazing graphics and brilliant concept, though.

This is what you see when you complete Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) – goes without saying I've seen it hundreds of times. On my birthday in 2005, I drew a small crowd of kids playing it on the big screen at the ACMI. In 2008 I had the pleasure of owning some dork at it at ACMI's Game On. Back at ACMI in 2010 and the shine hasn't gone off this classic one bit.

Screen Worlds

Before I begin, I'd like to point out that it's now ten years since the events in the 'drug house scene' in Constantinople (see May 1 post) took place! Anyway, the renovations at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image are finally done and my friend Yoji and I went to see the permanent exhibition Screen Worlds, which charts the rise of moving images through history. Here are a few still images of said moving images.

A beautifully-rendered world of possibility.

Pong vs. Tennis – a floorscreen.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

Visitors are asked to predict the future of our digital world, which is difficult, but I managed it (see below). My prediction may seem fatuous and flippant to you, but then the fact that I have a blog earns me the right to be as fatuous and flippant as I like, wouldn't you say?

Nonesuch Archives: "Deep Night" (2001)

The above image is from my cancelled 2001 graphic novel project, Deep Night. It was originally intended to be a picture book with no words – no dialogue, no words in the illustrations, no title or author mentioned anywhere on it, nothing. I completed several pages of it and had plenty of grand ideas, such as themed visuals, but I never got round to finishing it and it was eventually discontinued.

Ah well. Maybe someone out there likes seemingly drug-induced drawings featuring heads on springs with arms coming out of them. And weird-looking clowns.

Constantinople

People say to me, "Hey Pete (or Jim, or Bill or whatever they tend to call me), you've led a pretty interesting life. Why don't you tell some of your real-life adventures in comic form?" And I reply, "Ah, go peddle your dumb ideas some place else."

But finally, it is time for an autobiographical graphic novel. I've begun working on it and it's looking promising. The title of it is:

Who's John Katz? Well, I've had to use a pseudonym in case any of the people in this comic (who have also had their names changed), recognize themselves and fly over from Perth to beat me up. The little pencil guy in the above image is me. In every scene I'm about half as tall as the other characters; I get to milk some great comedy out of that one idea.

How true will it be? I was bored enough to keep a journal during my years at uni, which is where most of the material comes from. I was pretty good at remembering people's quotes word for word, so the dialogue is legit. The characters and locations look as I remember them.

Here are the first two pages of the 'drug house' scene. You'll notice that all the backgrounds are grey. That's intentional, only the characters are coloured. Enjoy.