Gwilco

12:18

The quest for artwork that compresses well at high resolution yet has enough appeal continues. Today: biro.

22:44

When it was decided that the Disney production of ‘Basil of Baker Street’ would be renamed to The Great Mouse Detective because the original title sounded “too British”, Peter Schneider sent out this wonderful thing.

Beautiful document too.

14:15

Leader.

Another thing about Paper: a colour picker would be great. A limited palette is great, but not when it’s the same colours over and over.

And portrait support! And! And!

10:46

Just chillin’ in the woods.

All this artwork is from the same universe, if you may permit me to drop a little world-building terminology… these are some discreet people living in their little valley homes. What do they look like? What do they do in their spare time? Are they happy?

Hard to tell with silhouettes, I know.

22:49

17:13

Here’s one of the sketches I made trying to get this guy’s body right. Unfortunately, the head and the body just don’t match, and he ends up looking like someone wearing a scary helmet. Obviously I need to relax… loosen up…

09:36

Particularly sensitive.

Was drawing this while watching films last night. Paper is nice, but I wish you could zoom in on your drawings as getting into anything in detail is hard when you’re drawing with a Wacom Sausage.

18:21

Working out how to make the drawings I need to make for this project. They need to compress well, so there can’t be too many colours, but they also need to have enough detail to tell a story. They also need to be appealing illustrations with enough weight in their own style.

Beats me.

18:21

18:20

I love woodblock prints of myths, so I decided to make my own

17:59

12:42

12:23

Shigesato Itoi Asks In Place of Iwata

Speaking of weird PR efforts from Nintendo, this is one of my favourites from their ‘Iwata Asks’ series.

Miyamoto: If you think for yourself about what’s wrong with your idea, and you understand the reasons why it’s no good and get a handle on the problem, then you’re sure to be able to use that idea sometime.

Itoi: That’s right. It’s a waste if you just say, “Oh, that idea’s no good,” and forget about it.

Miyamoto: That doesn’t lead to anything. That’s why, while I used to tell people to store up ideas in a drawer, I recently suggest putting ideas that were no good into a drawer with the reason why they were no good affixed to them. Like writing the reason on a label.

Itoi: A drawer of poisons.

19:59

Nintendo Direct

This is the third Nintendo Direct broadcast in about six months, which suggests that despite continued difficulty with English pronunciation they intend to make this a regular feature.

What’s interesting is that Nintendo no longer waits until the big trade events like E3 to make traditionally ‘big’ announcements like a new Mario game, and instead circumvents the press entirely by broadcasting directly to their customers. And it’s not like a keynote at all, it’s more like a weird Japanese TV show.

They’re also going to introduce iOS-like Folder management and patching for boxed software on the 3DS. Although folders and patching are not new ideas in any sense, it’s new behaviour for Nintendo which usually doesn’t bother with such frivolities.

I’d bet that as Apple eats their lunch, they’re beginning to realise that their software has to be as much of a platform as their hardware is.

18:17