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FARQUEST: OMINOSTRO'S PORTENT
MAP OF FICTIONAL WORLD BELONGING TO NONEXISTENT VIDEO GAME
I've always loved the illustrated maps one collects from amusement parks, delineated according to theme: "Wild West Land," "Pirate Reef," etc. Even more interesting were the maps created for adventure video games, because although they showed a similar diversity of archetypical environments, there was a journey embedded in those places. There was a starting point (unfailingly the most hospitable territory, something green); there was a town; (probably the site of the hero's first encounter with the bustling adult world); there was a marsh (the low point of the journey, the moment of greatest psychological entanglement); and there was a mountain (the dizzy pinnacle where the hero would ascend to confront his ultimate foe).
Despite the cynically redundant title, it's too sincere for satire. I really love these exhuberant maps, as much candy store window display as cartography. This one sounds a note of self-awareness, but not irony; ultimately it's just indulgence. |
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TYCHO BRAHE
WITH GRAVITY PENNY ARCADE CO-CREATOR CHEWS A SANDWICH
At A Lesson Is Learned, I draw portraits for the kind souls who express appreciation as money. When Tycho, writer of Penny Arcade, sent some funds our way, I relished the chance to portray him with appropriate gravitas. The long sandwich was Tycho's idea.
Of course, the character design belongs to Gabe of Penny Arcade.
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STORYBOARDS
WITH NOTES ELABORATING UPON
CHARACTERIZATION AND STORYTELLING
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The monitor resembles the head of a companion - the writer spends many hours with his writing, the reflection of himself. This face-to-face arrangement will be echoed in the dinner scene. |
The writer meets the restaurant manager outside the café where the girl waits. Our perspective sympathizes with the writer. We'll be receptive to his physical cues about where to look and how to react, e.g. when he notices the girl.
Too shy and nervous to watch through the window for the writer's arrival, the girl faces the room and keeps her arms and legs close to her center. She's brought one of the writer's books with her, and has set it carefully before her. |
Compositionally, the girl is cornered. The writer has cleaned, but his clutter still lurks on the outskirts. Though the girl is caught in a bright light which suggests an interrogation, it also lends her an idealized glow. The writer is the one whose identity is in question; his back is turned and his bulky form appears uncomfortable; also, the books and clutter which surround him, stretching into the unlit regions of his apartment, suggest a lifetime of accumulation which amounts to nothing apparent. Do his surroundings bolster him in his pursuit of the girl, or threaten him? |
The girl in the moment she hears her lover's voice. Her scale is exaggerated to bring us closer to the reaction, and let the scene fade as she fixates on her discovery. The dark band beneath the ads draws us back to some mystery, and, compositionally passing through the girl's head, suggests her concentration and aloneness. The writer, struggling to be pleasant, is out of touch.
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THE GAMER'S QUARTER
COVER FOR ISSUE 5
The feature article for this issue was about Contra: Hard Corps, a Sega Genesis game about people with guns in the future, fighting robots. Although mainly the game adheres to the genre's flat, side-view convention, one sequence rotated the path so that the action progressed towards the screen. The three-dimensional effect of this set-piece, with a massive robot in pursuit advancing and receeding along the twisting highway, was striking enough that I chose it as the focus of my illustration.
I chose a restricted palette for a very bold, graphic, even iconic look. The article discussed Contra: Hard Corps as a game with personal significance to the author, linked to a period of his childhood. I wanted to portray it with an appropriate weight. The intense reds and purples reference the fiery graphics of the game.
The Gamer's Quarter belongs to the new crop of video game publications which eschew the "consumer guide" approach of most of the enthusiast media. Instead, writers start from their unique play experiences, in accordance with the video game medium's interactive and player-activated nature. Some have dubbed this movement "New Games Journalism." |
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LOST AND FOUND
ALBUM COVER
I consciously avoided the explicit themes of the song (being "found" through a friendship), playing instead more loosely. Dinosaurs, the Titanic, and pyramid space ships are all lost or never existed, and I depicted them in a "land of the lost" where people without friends presumably live. This is the world to which the singer resigns himself by fleeing the relationship. Notice how the word "found" tries to escape into the distant mountain range.
LISTEN TO A CLIP
FROM "LOST AND FOUND"
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everything © David Hellman 2004 - 2008
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