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Berserker

Thursday, May 20th, 2021

Kentaro Miura, artist and writer, has died. He is world famous for Berserk, one of the greatest manga series of all time. He was only 54.

Miura was a master of both storytelling and art and through the 40 volumes of Berserk created an original and compelling fantasy saga that hooked millions of readers worldwide. It has spawned novels and films and anime series, and inspired countless other properties from manga to movies to video games. Berserk is currently still being serialized, and the story is unfinished.

As a lifelong fan of fantasy worlds Berserk grabbed me from the first moment I watched the first anime (which was released in the USA before the manga was translated). In time I would eventually own all the manga and various anime/movie series and I loved all of it. Much manga is disposable, forgotten about almost as soon as you close the book. Berserk is the very opposite – a work of importance that transcends it’s medium.

I don’t know much about Miura himself since he hid from the public eye and rarely gave interviews, and when he did he didn’t talk much about himself. But I’ve read him refer to himself as a massive otaku, and a manga fan from a very early age. He was apparently somewhat of a hikikomori as well (a shut-in) and enjoyed video games and reading other manga. The creation of Berserk was his life: he started in 1989 and rarely worked on anything else. Despite its length it’s clear the story was very considered and planned in advance, and I don’t doubt he had an ending in mind. In 2019 he said in an interview that the Guts and Casca arc ‘was over’ and that ‘the story is nearing it’s final chapter’, which would presumably have been the decades-long-awaited final confrontation between Guts and Griffith.

And now we may never see that happen, and I’m ok with that. Miura crafted a world so intricate and real that maybe it’s left to us – his readers – to imagine our own endings. Or perhaps we can imagine that it never ends, and the story continues forever, as Muira’s magnum opus will.

Rest in peace Kentaro Miura.

Posted in Art, Books, Otaku | 1 Comment »

I Painted a Landscape!

Sunday, April 25th, 2021

KLS’s work sent us a canvas and paints. It was to be used in conjunction with an online relaxation event but we were unable to attend due to another obligation. Regardless, I wasn’t going to let that canvas go to waste.

I decided to paint an Australian landscape! Lots of orange and yellow and red then, with a bright blue sky? Let’s see…

I’m not sure what kinds of paints these were, but they had strong fumes so weren’t watercolour. I’m an impatient artist so I applied them alla prima; if they mixed I fixed it as I went along.

I worked quickly, layering on colour after colour trying to reproduce the hues of my homeland. The brushes were flimsy and fell apart as I used them, and I became slightly high on the paint fumes.

I had trouble with the setting sun due to how I was applying the paints. But there’s no mistakes in art, so I forged on. I would revisit this part of the painting many times before it was complete…

The shrubbery was compromised by my brushes. Even the most talented artist in the world would have struggled here. I did my best.

And then, after about an hour of intense work, I was complete. Here’s the finished work compared to the reference image I had used:

You can’t see in the photo but the gray is slightly metallic and reflective. It lends the darker sky in the top right an ethereal quality. Also I’m particularly proud of my detail on Uluru:

This masterpiece is not for sale, and is indeed already proudly displayed alongside another of my pieces. It lets guests know they are walking into a talented home:

Posted in Art, Australia, Miscellaneous | 3 Comments »

Let’s Go Sith!

Monday, April 5th, 2021

I made this:

It’s one of many new mosaic kits that LEGO has released. You can assemble one of three images, and I chose Darth Maul.

The instructions say to assemble the mosaic separately as nine tiled pieces with 256 studs apiece, but since this would require having all 12 colours going simultaneously I instead chose to do it by colour.

This way I saw it slowly come together as I worked, and I think I felt this method is much quicker than what the instructions suggest.

To be honest it wasn’t exactly fun, especially when I got to black. I had to place 877 of these identical black studs one at a time! My fingertips were aching when I was done!

All told it took a few hours over two days. Given the tedium of assembly and the (presumed) greater tedium of dismantling it I very much doubt I’ll ever make the other two designs!

It’s bigger and heavier than I expected (but does come with brackets for wall mounting) but looks good from a distance. It would have looked better using the smaller flat pieces rather than studs, but I can see why they avoided that since it would have made disassembly extremely difficult.

Overall it’s more of a curiosity that a success. I don’t think I’ll be buying any more of these, but it does make me more interested in designing a mosaic of my own…

Posted in Art, Crafts, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

Ronald

Saturday, February 13th, 2021

If you don’t think too much about it, Ronald McDonald may seem like little more than the happy-faced mascot of the worlds most delicious restaurant. He’s been bettering our lives since 1963, and after so long we’ve probably started taking him for granted.

But could there be more to his story? In those sixty-odd years this benevolent ‘clown’ has often demonstrated powers beyond the normal, and his fame has grown to truly extraordinary levels. He has transcended burgers and fries, and become a near-integral part of the tapestry of our daily lives.

He goes by multiple names (the Japanese call him Donald), and at times switches his gender. He can speak every language on earth and can play every instrument. He used to live in a fantasy world with sentient food, owns a spaceship and has a variety of magical powers that include the ability to produce delicious hamburgers from his trousers.

I know what you’re saying: ‘But he’s not real!’

This is of course the assumption we all make, because how could he be? And yet those who perhaps know him best – the McDonald’s corporation – have never said this. Quite the contrary in fact: in both 1995 and 2011 the company wouldn’t answer questions about how many Ronald ‘actors’ there were (“There’s only one Ronald McDonald.”) and in 2016 when he was ‘retired’ (due to the ‘creepy clown phenomenon’) they simply said he was now focusing on other things. He’s still ‘out there’ was the implication.

He’s become much bigger than his McDonald’s origins. Completely aside from the comics and books and toys and games and tv shows and even movies, he’s one of the most famous ‘people’ we all know, and his smiling appearance always bring with it happiness, hope, and a good meal. He’s become an idol around the world, and it was famously reported in 1995 that he was more recognizable in a worldwide poll than Jesus.

More recognizable than Jesus.

For various reasons we don’t see much of him these days but his memory lives on. I suspect he does as well, and is simply biding his time awaiting a triumphant return. Maybe next time his form will be different and perhaps at first we won’t recognize him. But his powers are vast and his message – eat my burgers – too seductive to ignore. I suspect in time we will once again accept – and indeed love – him as we once did.

The stakes are too high not to. A world without Ronald is a world without McDonalds. And is that any sort of world at all?

Posted in Art, Celebrity, Food, Miscellaneous, The Unknown | 1 Comment »

The Hidden!

Saturday, February 6th, 2021

At the risk of making this a stamp blog, here’s another brief post about something I just discovered. I was reading an article in the latest issue of Gibbons Stamp Monthly about phosphor inks used on stamps. Usually this is so the automatic machines can read the stamps, but it’s sometimes for artistic reasons as well. Apparently it used to be more common, but is still occasionally done today.

So I got the 300+ postcards I’ve received from postcrossing and looked at them under a UV light. Here’s what I found:

Many Russian stamps contain these phosphorescent ‘threads’ embedded in the stamp. They don’t seem to have any sort of pattern and I can’t discern their use for identification or artistic reasons. Even stranger I saw many cases of the same stamps either having or not having them. Weird.

Most Finnish stamps bear a silhouette of the country which, under UV light, is overprinted with the euro sign!

Here’s a Chinese stamp with a hidden UV element connecting various parts of the art. You can also see a number printed in phosphorescent ink on the stamp. This is very common in Chinese stamps, and I don’t know if it is done when the stamp is printed or as some sort of cancellation after mailed.

Cleverly, the UK Sherlock stamp series from a few years ago overprinted a series of words much like how the show used a similar method to show Sherlocks thoughts. As you can see the words are not very vibrant in the above pic, and this may be because the stamp is older. I found for instance that in the case of Russian stamps the ‘threads’ were more distinct on newer stamps so perhaps the inks fade over time?

The best example – by far – that I found on the postcards I checked were on these Chinese stamps, on which you can see the skeletons overprinted in red phosphorescent ink under UV light. It’s extremely clear and crisp, and looks amazingly good. This was actually the very first postcard I shone the light on, and I was both astonished by what I saw and very excited to see what I’d find on others. Alas I soon discovered the UV overprints were rare indeed and never as flashy as this one.

So if you have a UV light and a bunch of older postcards why not shine it on them and see what you can see? There may be a few hidden secrets you missed the first time around 🙂

Posted in Art, Stamps, The Unknown | Comments Closed

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