This was a completely random piece of borderline-abstract digital art that I made (using GIMP) when I was feeling really uninspired.
As usual, this picture is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Wasteland World” by C. A. Brown
Well, it’s the end of the month and this means that it’s time for me to do my usual thing of collecting a list of links to the ten best articles (plus a couple of honourable mentions) that I’ve posted here this month.
All in all, despite no less than four “work in progress art preview” replacement posts (three were due to quality reasons and one due to a scheduling error), I still quite like how at least some of this month’s articles turned out 🙂 As for next month, expect at least a few intriguingly quirky articles, such as no less than two articles studying/comparing old hardback notebooks from 2000s Britain (exciting stuff!).
As for reviews, I reviewed the usual “Doom II” WAD, as well as the brilliant BBC radio comedy “Prepper” (2019-21) and an amazingly good short steampunk/dark fantasy “point and click” game by Octavi Navarro called “The Librarian: Special Edition” (2020) as well. Alas, my planned review of “Doom 3” (2004) never got written though – although I’ll be reviewing the classic early-mid 2000s 3D platform game that distracted me from it during next month’s articles 🙂
Anyway, here are the lists 🙂 Enjoy 🙂
Top Ten Articles – August 2023:
Honourable Mentions:
Ha! I had the sudden inspiration to make a “1970s dark psychedelia” horror genre digitally-edited painting and I really love how this one turned out 🙂
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Mansion 1976” by C. A. Brown
Well, due to my ultra-confusing – yet weirdly intuitive – filing system, I appear to have missed one of this month’s articles whilst scheduling them. Annoyingly, I can’t seem to find it either. So, as a quick replacement, please enjoy this preview of some “work in progress” versions of next year’s art 🙂
“Pet Robot (Work In Progress Version)” by C. A. Brown
“Art Block (Still Life – May 2023) (Work In Progress Version)” by C. A. Brown
“Guitar Lobby (Work In Progress Version)” by C. A. Brown
“Street 2007 (Work In Progress Version)” by C. A. Brown
“Game Expo 1998 (Part Twelve) (Work In Progress Version)” by C. A. Brown
Sorry again about this. There will be the usual monthly round-up post tomorrow and then normal daily articles should resume after that 🙂
This was another digitally-edited painting where I had a good idea and felt inspired, but couldn’t get it to look as cool or as atmospheric as the original idea.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Glamour Club” by C. A. Brown
Well, I thought that I’d talk very briefly about successors and masterpieces today. Often when you find an amazing older masterpiece – something where there wasn’t a sequel or the people who created it have moved on to making other stuff or have either retired or died – it can be easy to want to look for just one modern successor to it. A modern equivalent.
But masterpieces rarely have just one direct successor.
If a masterpiece is good enough, then a lot of people will take inspiration from it in different ways. You might not be able to find a single person who has directly carried on from where the original left off, but you will be able to find lots of people who have done different things with it. Especially in this modern age, when information is easier to find than every before and we have more creative tools available to us than during any part of history, a masterpiece is rarely going to have just one successor.
For example, whilst Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece “Blade Runner” did actually get a direct sequel in 2017 and an anime in 2021, there were at least a couple of decades where the only other official “Blade Runner” media was the 1968 Philip K. Dick novel it was based on, a few spin-off novels by K.W.Jeter, a couple of computer games etc… Yet, this one film had a surprisingly large influence on things that other people made.
Whether this is was how William Gibson re-wrote parts of his legendary 1984 cyberpunk novel “Neuromancer” out of the fear that people might think that he was just copying “Blade Runner”. Whether it was the influence that the film had on Derek Riggs’ cover artwork for Iron Maiden’s 1986 album “Somewhere In Time”.
Whether it was the possible visual influence it might have had on Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 sci-fi film “Akira”. Whether it was the visual and/or thematic influence it may have had on Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 sci-fi film “Ghost In The Shell”. Whether it was the influence it had on Min Byeong-cheon’s 2003 sci-fi film “Natural City“, a film which has enough plot/character differences from “Blade Runner” for it not to be plagiarism… but which will still instantly feel familiar to “Blade Runner” fans nonetheless.
Whether it is the 2020 computer game “Cloudpunk“, a sci-fi driving/narrative game which tells a different story to “Blade Runner” (1982), but whose world and atmosphere clearly take a lot of influence from the film. Put another way, alongside another game from 2000 called “Crime Cities”, it’s the closest thing I’ve ever found to a playable version of the cool “flying car” segments of the film.
These are just a few notable examples. A lot of directors, writers, artists (including myself) etc… have taken inspiration or influence from “Blade Runner” (1982). Even in an alternate timeline where it didn’t get a direct sequel in 2017, there would still have been successors to it. A lot of people, working in different mediums, who thought “Blade Runner is really cool! I want to make something that is as cool as it!“.
Great masterpieces rarely just have one direct successor. Often, if something is good enough, then its effects are distributed a bit more widely. So, even if you might not be able to find anything exactly like your favourite film, game, movie etc… and it is something that was widely recognised as a masterpiece, then you can find parts of it in lots of other things. Because lots of other people thought that it was cool and wanted to make things that were like it.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
This digitally-edited painting was an “early-mid 2000s” style one that I made after a moment of inspiration. However, I couldn’t quite get the mood/atmosphere of the painting right and it was sort of a failure.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Apartment 2002” by C. A. Brown
Well, I thought that I’d talk very briefly about something cool that I just noticed about art. I was adding another small ballpoint pen drawing to the fan art sketchbook that I’ve been keeping for a couple of months, when I looked back through the older drawings that I’ve made in there and realised something wonderful.
There were drawings based on all sorts of different things – from old movies to music videos to computer games – and yet they were all in the same cartoon “style” as each other. They all used the same art medium – ballpoint pen – and they were all roughly the same size (10cm x 11.5cm) too.
It suddenly seemed like an absolutely excellent metaphor for subjectivity, uniqueness and perspective. All of these drawings of media that I consider to be cool and/or visually-interesting were all “filtered” through my art style and, despite being completely different from each other, they all still look vaguely similar in the sketchbook drawings because the one thing in common was the person drawing them. Like, if I draw literally anything, part of my own “style” is going to show through in it.
And this is an interesting metaphor for life itself too. Whatever you see or think or experience, it will be “filtered” through your own perspective. You will experience your own “version” of everything. Two people can hear the same piece of music but, due to different sensibilities/tastes or levels of musical knowledge, they will have totally different experiences.
Even your memories can influence how you see something. I mean, if you look at retro videogame footage on the internet, a more modern person might just think “Oh, it’s an old game. Modern games have better graphics” and not really feel much – but someone who played that game in their youth might be filled with warm feelings of nostalgia and personal meaning. No two people see the world in exactly the same way. And both variety and uniqueness are, after all, defining traits of humanity itself.
And making fan art can be a good way to remind yourself of this. Even if you try to be “accurate” or “realistic”. If you draw or paint lots of other things, then your own personal style is going to show through to some degree or other. It might be the way that you simplify complex realistic photographs into line drawings. It might be the type of lighting or palette you choose to use. On a more subtle level, it might even just be what you choose to draw or paint (eg: what you personally think is cool and/or visually-interesting).
On a side-note: This is also why using A.I. image generators – instead of making art by hand – feels so unsatisfying. Yes, you can tell these programs what to make, but it isn’t really filtered through your own personal perspective. It is filtered through the perspective of a computer program. Seriously, ten different people can all generate “art” using one program… but all ten pictures will all be in the “style” of the program. There’s literally no personality or personal expression involved in the finished “artwork”. There’s an unnatural “standardisation” to it.
But, most of all, making lots of drawings or paintings based on other stuff and then comparing all of the pictures will show you that the one thing that they have in common is your own personal “style”. Like, the pictures are completely different but they still look like they were seen by the same eyes and drawn by the same hand. And this is an amazing metaphor for things like perspective, subjectivity and how we are all unique.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
This is a digitally-edited still life painting that I made after the light hit my computer desk in the perfect way and made all of the random stuff on it look like ART. You can read a longer description of the creative processes behind this painting in this article.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Creative Chaos (Still Life)” by C. A. Brown
Originally, today’s article was going to be a completely different one. I was originally going to study a cool genre of Youtube videos I that rediscovered during a very tired and miserable evening. I am, of course, talking about hilarious animated dark comedy parodies of beloved videogames from my childhood (eg: “Mario”, “Zelda”, “Pokemon” etc...).
These cynical parody animations – from modern Youtube channels like “Mashed”, “Dorkly” and “Lowbrow Studios” – were brilliantly funny on so many levels and I was going to spend a whole article studying and explaining why they are so funny and how they are basically a genre in their own right. But then I realised that one of the reasons why they were able to lift my spirits on such a miserable evening was because these modern videos were a world apart from “the modern internet”.
In a lot of ways, they felt more like an extension of the classic internet of the late 1990s and early-mid 2000s. They felt like the modern evolution of edgy old Newgrounds animations – they were much less “politically incorrect” than those old Flash cartoons, but with the same focus on relentless cynicism, over-the-top cartoon violence and an ironic “How can we make this edgy?” mindset. It was just amazingly refreshing to see modern comedy on the internet that was actually aimed at cynical millennials, rather than a generic “PG” audience. Stuff that played into our nostalgia, without revering it too much.
And this made me think about how the “classic internet” is thankfully still very much here 🙂 Yes, you might be rolling your eyes and saying “Thank you, captain obvious! You’re writing a blog and I’m reading a blog! Of course the classic internet still exists!“, but it can be easy to forget sometimes. Especially in this age when modern social media sites are heavily promoted, where there’s a 1950s-like trend for making the internet as bland and “safe” and “PG” as possible. Where almost every major website is designed for trendy smartphones rather than old-school desktop computers.
Yet, the “classic internet” is still very much here. You might have to go looking for it a bit more than you used to, but it still exists in 2023 🙂 There are live-action comedy channels on Youtube like “B Mo The Prince” which seem like “lost” sitcoms from the 1990s/early 2000s but with jokes about the present day. There are still classic sites like DeviantART – and I should know, I’ve been posting art on there pretty much daily for more than a decade.
You can still find all of the classic music on the internet, as well as modern bands – such as the Metalcore band The Anchor and the punk band Victory Kid – who make music in genres that were more popular during the 1990s/2000s. There are literally mountains of modern indie games in the style of older games from the 1990s and early-mid 2000s.
A lot of older websites are still archived, there are still sites which sell DVDs and MP3s, at least some actual older games from the time have received modern digital re-releases, there are still people writing old-school blogs (again, you’re literally reading one right now), there is still animated dark comedy etc….
I could go on, but I’m still amazed that the “classic internet” still exists. And it makes sense in a lot of ways, the internet was designed to be a decentralised communications network – not under the control of any one corporation or entity. It was originally meant to be a military communications network, with the popular – but disputed – claim that it was designed to still function even in the event of WW3 breaking out. In that context, the idea of modern corporations and modern censorship (whether formal or informal) somehow being able to damage it is absolutely laughable.
Still, more importantly than all of this, the continued survival of the “classic internet” is also a testament to WHY the web has remained steadfastly popular for more than two decades. Unlike virtually anything that appeared before it – except maybe very large reference libraries – there is quite literally something for everyone on the internet. Two people with drastically different interests and sensibilities can both find parts of the internet that they seriously love and which actually feel relevant to them.
Every strand of opinion, every creed, every fandom, every musical genre, every sense of humour, every emotion etc… It’s all there on the internet.
Again, the internet is literally the only thing which genuinely has something for everyone. It is perhaps the only thing which accurately reflects and represents the variety which is a defining feature of what makes humanity humanity. So, in this context, I guess that the truly ridiculous thing is the idea that the “classic internet” ever actually went away in the first place.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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