2012-05-18 I 0 Comments
So here’s a scan of a recent sketch for my project, development of one character’s head shape and facial features. Original size is B3.
2012-05-17 I 0 Comments
After the exhibition in Tokyo I headed north for a few days of volunteer labor in Ishinomaki. Once again it’s been a delightful experience, but even more than usual the social aspect has been getting stronger. You don’t just go up to work and help people in need, you also get to meet old friends, who have been digging in the mud with you, before. I was really happy to meet some of those old faces, but also a few really interesting new ones! Here are a very few images I have taken while in Tohoku, this week.
I even got to see Mt. Fuji on my way home (last picture), since it was a very clear and very early morning. At first it peaked out surprisingly high above the Tokyo skyline, then I caught a bigger glimpse of it in Yokohama, and finally in all its might from the Shinkansen near Fuji-shi. I gazed at it for a while, until I realized I really should try and take a picture of him before the train would be vanishing in the next tunnel… sadly the picture frame isn’t that spectacular, but I have been passing Mt. Fuji a lot of times and never seen him almost without clouds!
2012-05-17 I 0 Comments
Here’s a bit of what it is like to take part in a DAAD sponsored “Butterbrot und Bier” (buttered bread and beer) event. The food is plentiful, the beer has been from Sapporo not a German company, though. The events happen every couple of months in the DAAD office Tokyo (Goethe Institute Tokyo Building), but it isn’t often you get to show some artwork while doing so.
I showed some recent stuff I have been doing for my project, which isn’t scanned yet, and hence not published online, yet. The other exhibitors have been Benjamin Fitzenreiter, Lana Bergmann and Christoph Mille, everyone a current German MEXT/Monbukagakusho scholar in Tokyo, Japan. Here’s a teaser:
2012-05-17 I 0 Comments
I was looking for a Kalavinka Carbon frame when I stumbled upon this pretty tri-tone Kalavinka, hence today two instead of one image.
In all its goodness on Mong Out’s photo stream.
2012-05-11 I 0 Comments
I am on my way to Tokyo, taking part in a very small, very short exhibition (1 day) at the DAAD’s (German Exchange Students Organiztion) Tokyo office. I am going to show some recent designs and sketches of my current project.
I will continue towards Tohoku for a couple of days of volunteer work with INJM at midnight.
2012-05-11 I 0 Comments
A flash from the past, GDR’s FES Carbon Track Frames at the Olympic Games 1988 in Seoul.
Seen at nztony’s Flickr.
2012-05-10 I 0 Comments
Listening to music over headphones, when the bass starts shaking the whole house… you know something doesn’t quite add up. While earthquakes are an expected occurrence in the Kantō and Tōhoku regions, I still get freaked out a good bit when they happen in the rather stable area of Kyoto. There’s always the possibility, it is this long-overdue “Next Big One” in the Kansai region.
2012-05-9 I 0 Comments
Tiny and Big’s release has been pushed back about a month, towards the end of June! However, alongside they’ve also upped a store on STEAM, i.e. you will be able to purchase and download our game super conveniently online a week in advance to the official boxed release date on the 28th of June! Here’s the link to Grandpa’s steamy Leftovers!
2012-04-27 I 0 Comments
Last weekend my A1211 MacBook Pro has gone from a misbehaving GPU to a dead logic board. Reflowing the ATi chipset, even baking the logic board didn’t solve matters. So I am downgraded to blogging from my phone for now!
My Panasonic during Japanese rainy season, 2011.
2012-04-24 I 0 Comments
One does not simply make an online money transfer in Japan.
I may have gotten used to opening hours of a japanese ATM, but the fact that even online money transactions require opening hours, additional to an obnoxious prior registration of the recipient via _paper-mail_ just leave me flabbergasted.
2012-04-20 I 0 Comments
I have uploaded a good portion of pre-visualized artwork, concept design and textures for Tiny and Big to my portfolio. You can see the whole lot here.
2012-04-20 I 0 Comments
straightchain is written and edited by Alex (and hence from here on out this posting is going to be a blatant little self-advertisement). I am an illustrator from Germany, who is currently living in Japan, with a obvious amount of enthusiasm for bikes, games, Japan, drawing and ever increasingly photography.
In Germany I had been working as freelance illustrator for computer games, children’s books, comics and magazines until I returned to Japan as a student in the spring of 2011. I am currently enrolled in the local Kyoto Seika University as a research-student in the Manga Department, where I am researching japanese culture & mythology, as well as working on a comic project. Up to spring of 2012 I had been freelancing in textures and concepts for indie game-developer Black Pants Studios’ title Tiny and Big. The game will be released by publisher Crimson Cow in the second quarter of this year!
You can find my illustration portfolio here, and even though I am posting most of my photography on this blog, there’s a bit more at flickr.
Thank you.
2012-04-20 I 0 Comments
Good morning, with a slight delay and a coffee in hand…
2012-04-16 I 0 Comments
by R.T. Greene published in Kansai Time Out, June 1985
Knowing what your modes will be during your future in Japan does not make it any easier to handle them. It does, however, make it easier for other people to handle you. When you extrapolate a fuming rage for the 400th time from some ordinary detail of life here, your spouse, friend, lover, or co-worker can say “Stanley, that’s stage two behavior and here we are nine months into stage four.” It’s not much, but it’s something. Anyway, here goes:
FAIRYLAND: (“Even the traffic lights play little tunes.”) Fairylanders can be recognized by their widened eyelids and their complete stupefaction. Extremely non-defensive about home culture, home imports, home anthony, they enjoy wondering around any place at all seeing anything at all and trying to figure out how they could ever have been so self-satisfied with their old image of the world.
Fairylanderhood can last as long as 18 months. Transition signs are: spots of home culture defensiveness in normal conversation; sudden ravings about unfair treatment; daydreams about Beatles’ hits as better traffic signal tunes.
HORRORLAND: (“They have the intellectual curiosity of a fan club and the emotional depth of a comic book.”) Horrorlanders can be recognized by their millisecond irascibility. Mere words can launch towering infernos of speech, sinking titanics of despair, yamamotos of suicidal decisiveness. Horrorlanders pick fights with the local culture just to rehearse their favorite tirades. Head bumping is at its height in this stage. Horrorlanders begin to keep mental lists of bads and goods about Japan in a mysterious ritual that removes them from actual attempts to make themselves comfortable here.
A normal dose of Horrorlanderhood lasts at least six months. Transition signs are: surprising patches of sudden admiration for aspects of Japan appearing awkwardly right in the middle of a climaxing tirade; seeing others’ tirades as a sign of weakness.
IMPRESSEDLAND: (“Everybody is doing and building things, life seems so constructive, calling cards are damned efficient.”) Impressedlanders can be recognized by their thoughtful demeanors and older brother/sister attitudes to other foreigners. They are the principal absorbers of horrorlander diatribes. Impressedlanders change dress, spruce up, cut their hair. A spirituality of living life absolutely literally is sensed in Japan – honor this, serve that, enjoy that. Its maddeningly effective. In this stage Impressedlanders begin to list things about their own culture and country, good an bad.
Impressedlanderhood can last as long as eight months. transition signs are: thinking about allying oneself with this future land of power; fighting the “foreign businessman” or “English teacher” traps.
ASSIMILATIONLAND: (“I can make a fortune here simply by doing four more of these and two more of those.”) Assimilationlanders can be recognized by their kinben (diligence, zeal). They hustle and bustle. They flee contact with other foreigners like the plague. They sashay up to the nearest Japanese family and get themselves involved in Japanese family life. They plan new futures for themselves here in Japan. They print up their lives: meishi, Japanese language advertisements of their hobbies and side businesses, posters. They meet important Japanese in bars and learn whole routines of songs and Japanese arcane and jokes for getting swiftly connected to parties of power and repute. They get a real dream of their future in Japan. They get on top of money handling and money making, enough to tour the rest of Asia and feel the power that comes from originating in Japan; the historical shifts of attention from Europe to America to the East both freeze their blood and thrill it, because they are there – your man in Osaka!
A normal dose of Assimilationlanderhood lasts 10 to 12 months. Transition signs are: making fundamental mistakes thought to have been overcome; finding one’s reputation among Japanese acquaintances is something less than had been imagined; contact with oldtimers here who seem to have accepted belittling occupations and life identities, who seem more defeated by their decades here than uplifted by them.
NATIONALIDENTITYLAND: (“I wonder what I could do back home with the experience I have gained here?”) Nationalidentitylanders can be recognized by their reengagement with the foreign community. They find conversation with other foreigners better than 100 TV programs or the best food money can buy. They discover it is the other nationalities here that they should have learned to contact and deal with, not just the Japanese. They become easy going, really learn how to live comfortably, while realizing their sudden interest in comfort is coming along with a serious disinterest in Japan as an issue, a culture, an experience. Their interests have simply and naturally permanently outgrown Japan. They find they have learned almost nothing about Japan in their time here but have really been learning about their own nationality instead. Most of their current wisdom about Japan is unfortunately false. They find books about Japan in the bookstore could easily have been written by themselves.
A normal dose of Nationalidentitylanderhood lasts 18 months. Transition signs are: serious mailings to home country; resume writing in languages other than Japanese; change from general magazine reading to specialized magazine reading; daydreams of the long legs and developed chest of the other sex at home.
BYEBYELAND: (“How am I going to pay for shipping all this crap home?”) Byebyelanders can be recognized by their insistence on new identities for themselves. They refuse absolutely the ‘them’ that came to Japan a few years ago and they quite seriously insist on the new them they are in the midst of constructing for reinsertion in their home culture. They also may be recognized by the weaseling they do to get Japanese firms to give them business back home. They pay farewell visits to ridiculous places and acquaintances that emotionally meant much to them their first days here: a soba shop with a 90-year-old one-tooth owner who is somehow quite lovely in their slowness, tea, slippers, plants, and age. They feel the pangs of lost love; losing any part of life’s experience is losing a lover; their body feels the pangs.
Byebyelanderhood lasts no longer than 14 months. Transition signs are: tickets, shipping expenses, dread of relatives back home.
These six stages are found in marriages, love affairs and parent-child relations, as well as in you-Japan relations. The fantasy and freedom of departure from the old, the awkwardness and pain of learning the new, the inherent superiority of new experience as it expands our minds and abilities, the yearning for testing ourselves in the new, discovery of what the new lacks that the old had, decision to embody both old and new – these are spiritual stages in all life encounters. St. John of the Cross called one step of his 10-step spiritual ladder ‘disguise’. That was the artificial you that allowed the old you to approach divine mystery closer.
Here’s hoping you great disguises from you journey into/out of Japan! R.T. Greene
2012-04-15 I 0 Comments
The release of our game “Tiny and Big” is coming closer! Meanwhile…
2012-04-14 I 0 Comments
I have been happy with my old A1211 Macbook Pro (LATE2006, 2.16Ghz, ATI X1600), which has been running without any major issues for the past 5 years. However, I might be running out of luck, as it has turned into new-age computer-art generator.
My Macbook Pro’s GPU has been failing at an increasing rate, which – apart from an undeniable visual impressiveness – has rendered my laptop useless as a painting utensil. At the moment, I am still able to read, write or even edit photography (as long as the GPU temperature stays below 50° celsius), but painting in Photoshop will cause a terrible freeze within 20 minutes. For certain, the GPU will meet its untimely end sooner or later and without valid warranty or good will to pay for Apple’s horrendous pricing to replace an A1211′s logic board: it’s time for some home-made experimentation! I am attempting a reflow of GPU and VRAM soldering in order to fix this.
In short, I want my digital sketchbook back!
2012-04-13 I 0 Comments
Hanami is the annual excitement of Japanese people over the blossoming of the Japanese cherry tree. Hanami「花見」can be translated into “looking at flowers”, specifically looking at the cherry blossom, Sakura 「桜」. The tradition dates as far back as the Nara Period (710 – 794), and over the course of the centuries turned into an annual people’s custom. This customary event involves sitting under the Sakura in admiration of its beauty and power as well as indulging in sake-rich feasts.
Hanami in Japan is synonymous with beginning and renewal, e.g. it marks the beginning of the rice-planting season. However, Hanami is also a synonymous with death, or rather the ending of life. The swift and explosive blossoming of the Japanese cherry tree, which finds an untimely end after a short period (approx. 1 week) is an analogy to a human life’s finite duration.
Nowadays Hanami is a socializing and partying event, which may be bewildering in its contrasts. This contrast ranges from the previously mentioned admiration of nature’s beauty over to exporting the inside of a families private space, e.g. living-room into a local park setting. Usually blue tarps on the ground sharply outline these personal parcels, which usually also abdie to the no-shoes-rule in order to “entered”. In that regard they are visually upholding a core-aspect of Japanese society, the Uchi-Soto. Impressive.