Gareth – Page 150 – The Designer Monologues

June 21, 2010

iPad Geek Nostalgia

Today, the Los Angeles Times had a story featuring the original poster art for STAR WARS, by the Brothers Hidebrandt (including a clickable large-scale image).

If you’re near to my age, this image was a big part of what made you fall in love with STAR WARS.

Thanks to the Times providing such a good digital copy, I decided that I wanted to have that beloved image as wallpaper on my iPad (to go along with the ones that I did based on Adamant products earlier this month).

So I figured I’d put this out here — done non-commercially, as a fan, for other fans. Click the image below to download a fully-rotatable 1024×1024 PNG image, suitable for your iPad:

June 18, 2010

Friday Music

Buncha good stuff this week, so let’s not waste any time….

First up, thanks to an i09 post I started looking into the candy-coated confection that is “K-Pop” (Korean girl groups). This track became an absolute earworm for me (helped considerably by this smoking-hot video, and was quickly added to my weekly playlist: 4minute – “HuH (Hit Your Heart).”

Moving on to girl-pop on this side of the planet, Kate Nash has released her new album, and she’s definitely going for a 60s-girl-group vibe with it, as can be evidenced in these two tracks: Kate Nash – “Kiss That Grrl.”, and Kate Nash – “Paris”. The new album is called “My Best Friend is You.” It’s a different sound that her debut, to be sure — but I like it.

UK group The Noisettes take the 1978 Buzzcocks classic, and mix in a bit of Bollywood rhythms and a synth riff that reminds me of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” — I’m a huge fan of the original track, but this cover is a pretty good re-interpretation: The Noisettes – “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve).”

One of those tracks that crystallizes a time and place for me — this is always going to be Summer 1983, riding my bike downtown in Babylon NY, to pick up comics at the first specialty comic book store I ever went to. StevieNicks – “Stand Back.”

A short two to three years later, I was listening to things like this: Einstürzende Neubauten – “Yü-Gung (Fütter Mein Ego)”. The comic books were still there, though.

Lastly, the source of the inspirational quote I have on my desk, from Jay-Z’s contribution to this song. Jay-Z and the Shirley Bassey Bond-theme sample are the best things about this track, enough to tolerate sub-standard work from Kanye: Kanye West- “Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix feat. Jay-Z).”

Enjoy.

June 15, 2010

Work Load

So, yeah. 41.

My birthday was over the weekend, and now I’m back into the work, up to my eyeballs as usual.

Birthday swag included Red Dead Redemption, Tales of the Gold Monkey, and a 1-1 draw between the US and England in the World Cup, in a game that drew more viewers than any game of the 2010 Stanley Cup or any of the first 4 games of the NBA finals.

The World Cup continues, but I’m not getting to watch nearly as much as I’d like (beyond the evening’s highlight show on ESPN), as I’ve got a mountain of work piled up — and more being added to the To-Do list every day. The work load is preventing me from diving into RED DEAD REDEMPTION as well — which I’m chomping at the bit to explore.

Just the stuff that I can talk about: Final layout and release of the EPUB and MOBI versions of ICONS (for the Gulf charities– details here), release of the next installments of Thrilling Tales Theatre (fallen horribly behind on what was supposed to be weekly releases), finish layout and release “Warriors of MARS” and “Face of MARS”, layout and release the first ICONS PDF adventure (Steve Kenson’s “The Skeletron Key”), layout and release “The Valley of Mystery” (the next THRILLING TALES adventure), finish layout and release PDF and Print editions of Pathfinder version of CORSAIR….

…and that’s not even talking about various contracts, proposals and prospectus that I need to be working on, this week alone.

I seriously need to be hiring some production freelancers, but the problem is that by the time I assemble templates and artwork, I’ve already done most of the work and it just seems simpler to do the rest myself. But that way lies logjams (as is evidenced by the above list, which I remind you is partial).

Those of you with comparable work loads — how do you avoid drowning? I’d welcome suggestions at this point.