January 11th, 2012
I just discovered Alchemy, a very straight forward and intuitive sketching and painting application, which is also free and open source! It brings some fun back into drawing on a computer, since it reduces it to the bare minimum. No over-complicated tools and palettes, no undo, no trying to fake analogue painting techniques, just drawing!
January 6th, 2012
December 31st, 2011
Usually I don’t like too happy music, but there is something in Omodaka’s music that just works for me. Maybe it’s the unusual mix between happy-go-lucky gameboy tunes and traditional Japanese vocals, maybe it’s the style of some of their videoclips.
Anyway, check them out, and start 2012 with a positive mood!
Their latest album Sanosa can be bought in the usual places like iTunes, Amazon and 7digital (just search Omodaka)
December 19th, 2011
I’ve been using 8tracks for quite some time now. It’s my daily companion at work, or actually I should say that it’s our daily companion since we’re all listening to it where I work. It’s a great way to find good music, discover some new stuff or just quickly play something fitting for a certain moment in the day.
Since I like it so much I’ve decided to create some mixes myself as well, here’s the first two one. They’re both chiptune oriented, soon I’ll post some more, including also other styles and genres.
September 15th, 2010
Killer Aloe – die Rache der Heilpflanzen (which means something like “the vengeance of the medical plants”) is a short super-8 movie by Daniel “Analoge Widerstandsfront” Mahlknecht and Silvana Zancolò. I was asked to create a soundtrack for it a long time ago (probably more than 2 years) but only now I find some time to work on it. I’m still sketching out the intro, which I’ve been using to define the overall style of the soundtrack, and I think I’m starting to get somewhere here, at least that’s my feeling with it.
Killer Aloe OST – Intro v 0.5 by rumpelfilter
And now some info for the technically inclined: The theremin style sound, comes from the Novation Bass Station, and there is a bit of C64, which I’ve added to the low end of the composition. A Gakken SX-150 was used to add some FX and weirdness here and there. I had added some Atari Punk Console sounds, but have removed them here, they will appear further on in the score.
(the picture above is an actual frame from the movie of course)
September 1st, 2010
I’ve recently been invited to take part in a very special project, organized by Iranian-German Musician Amos and his lable Sounds of Subterrania. The project consisted in about 400 whitelable LPs handed out to artists, illustrators and designers from all over the world. Each of us could customize the cover to our likes. These objects now are beingn exibited in different galleries in Germany and Switzerland and online (on the Showtime website)
I really enjoyed to participate, especially because having to create a unique, orginal piece of art, I had to work completely by hand, without resorting to computer aided stuff. The more time passes, the less I like using a computer. Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it’s just that I miss the direct contact with the paper, the colours, the real world…
Anyway, back to the cover design, here’s the official description I provided for it:
A surreal parade of creatures, memories and objects entwined in an energetic flow. It’s showtime, and everybody acts in sync, their minds linked together by invisible bonds, as if they were one giant organism. The idea was more to represent the (retro) mood and the drive of the album, than to be an illustration to it’s verbal content.
The album (which you can stream for free on the Amos Soundcloud page) is a fun mix of rock ‘n roll, 80′s vibes, Brian May guitars and the good ol’Amos style. Which made me think about when I was young and how I experienced the 80s. So basically the cover is a collage of my memories and images that popped up in my mind while listening to the tracks.
Should you want to buy it (and thus look very smart and hip with your friends, who will secretly plan on stealing it from you), you can find it on the online store here:
http://www.amos-showtime.com/… hannes-pasqualini/
January 21st, 2010
In the beginnig it was just a medium sized black hole in the ground, some kind of well, they thought. Farmer Rossert and his younger son Eldebun had been looking at it for most of the afternoon trying to get a clue on its origins. At one point it started to become more two-dimensional, like a flat black disk sitting on the grass and spinning nervously on itself. Farmer Rossert picked up a small stone and threw it into the hole. He never should have done that.
It’s been some time since I last posted one of my own stories, actually I only did it once inepisode #1. Well, today I wasn’t in the mood to work on anybody else’s stories, so you’ll get this one.
December 3rd, 2009
Rodney spent had many months in a funk. His wife had left him, his daughter barely spoke to him, and he’d impregnated his 20 year old secretary. He woke up to thoughts of suicide and went to sleep drunk. It was on a drizzly Tuesday morning, however, that a sudden wake-up call finally shook him out of the fog he’d been living in. Unfortunately, his change in perspective came at the hands of renowned psychic Rowan Darkmoon. The two met on the freeway. Rowan was driving her Prius at 90MPH, throwing flaming tarot cards and live grenades out her window.
Daniel, aka slug-life, is a great writer. His stories have great sense of humour and an interesting style. I found him, thanks to somebody’s tip, on deviantart.com, where he sometimes posts new stories following the 100 themes challenge (each story revolves around a theme, picked out in sequence from a predefined list). If you liked this story, go and read some more by him on these links:
Indifferent Mechanics
Slug-life on deviantart.com
For those who don’t know about Tarot cards, the grim reaper usually stands for change and not for death.
November 29th, 2009
With all that Jazz and history in my mind I sometimes forget about the things that really keep going and doing art. Thanks god I have sketchbooks ( and have to scan them in for this blog) to remind me that my path goes in a completely different direction.
Actually there’s a lot I could say about this topic, but the time hasn’t come yet.
This shadow lady just keept haunting my mind for weeks until I decided to get rid of her by drawing her on this piece of paper.
The frequent reader of this blog might recognize that this is a sketch for one of the first illustrations I made for the A Hundred Words Stories project.
A retired general.
November 8th, 2009
I’m sorry as usual for not posting them yesterday as I should have. But you’re good hearted readers, aren’t you?
