By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
Aside from the technological significance of the DEC PDP11 computers, I'm also so thoroughly in love with their design, colours, fonts and advertising material.
Quintessentially 70s. I want that chair! The carpet! The red walls! A bank of dead PDP11s for hanging my clothes in, with a Mac Mini running an emulator inside it!
Scan by PanelswitchMan on Flickr.
Observe the above image by D宅 on Pixiv if you will. The stunning landscape. The ridiculously gorgeous and vivid colours. Hatsune Miku!
Full size, the image is 2500x1154. My primary monitor is 1920x1200. To be pixel perfect (as I insist with my desktop backgrounds) it's too short by 46 pixels.
1920x1080 images are perverse enough, but this is just out and out cruel!
I arrived a little too late for much of the Chinese New Year Markets in Sydney this weekend, but that didn't stop me gorging on dumplings and taking a few photos! Enjoy, and Gong Xi Fa Cai! :)
After wandering around enjoying the atmosphere for an hour, I head off to the nearby Starbucks on Elizabeth Street. In Singapore they had Chinese New Year themed drinks with mandarin and other such flavours, but no such luck here. Oh well!
I did some more wandering around Chinatown, then came back after the sun set to take a few more. Without a tripod and with the D60 that looks super grainy even at 1600 ISO it was tough, but still fun :).
My latest entry to the Anime@UTS blog, and the first about art! If you want to comment, do so over there :D.
It may be regarded as odd that I'm beginning a post discussing what it won't be about, rather than what it will be. It feel it is necessary however, lest anyone get the mistaken impression I know what I'm talking about when it comes to art. As such, this post will not be as insightful as what you may have come to expect from our resident artist, nor it will it be as eloquent as what you would expect from our resident Peruvian. Lima is five in Malay, isn't that funny? Don't answer that.
I'll cut to the chase. We all get off on different things, as it were. Some people need mountains of fan service, mandatory beach episodes and shower scenes showcasing their favourite characters in various stages of duress. Wait, undress. Both work. Personally, I'm a meganekko fan, for some reason. Well, I know the reason, its because I find glasses showcase people eyes better. The other thing is citypr0n, or "cityscapes" to use politically correct terminology.
I could perform an exhaustive history of the representation of cityscapes in anime starting with the earliest known examples, moving through to the 1990s, then to the present, but instead I'll focus on three specific series' which I thought best showcased cityscapes at the time.
Some in the club may groan at the sight of Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, but I had an unnatural obsession with the series growing up, and one of the reasons was for the art. Remove the boilerplate transformation scenes and Usagi being a klutz, and you get some beautiful visual interpretations of 1990s Tokyo. And some lesbians.
What the scenes lacked in detail they made up for in colour; they almost looked as though they were painted in watercolour. For all I know, they could have been. Like all the other series' from the time, Sailor Moon was hand drawn and painted. Pretty amazing to think about now.
One of my dreams as a kid was to have curtains for my bedroom with a blue Sailor Moon cityscape on it. No doubt my father was disappointed my dream didn't involve having short-skirted sailor scouts on my curtains instead. I think he was worried that my orientation was unusual. But that's for the psychiatrists office, not the world's greatest anime club and their blog. Haiyo!
Fly forward to 2008, and we get the series that arguably contained more citypr0n that any other. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun wasn't just a rare example of a spinoff that was better than the original (in the [correct] opinion of your humble [dashing, attractive] author), but it's artists at JC Staff seemed to spare no expense in creating breathtakingly detailed, immersive cityscapes for the characters to carry out their various deeds.
The style was realistic and fitting with contemporary architecture, but an entirely new Academy City afforded the artists a little creative licence to build up a new modern world from scratch. Wind turbines and expansive, tree lined streets contrasted with tall pale blue buildings that made the adventures of Misaka Mikoto and her compatriots that much more fun to watch.
Your author humbly admits he watched Railgun prior to Index, and he did so because he saw screenshots of the world in which their adventures took place. And Mikoto in a polka dot swimsuit thingy. Pity she didn't wear glasses. You didn't read any of that. Any of what? Exactly.
From the artistic to the realistic, we get to the downright surreal. With the broadcast of Nisemonogatari I'm reminded of Bakemonogatari, and how I painstakingly took screenshots from it while watching in 2009 to use as desktop backgrounds (or wallpapers, as you Windows and OS/2 folk seem intent on calling them). A warning in advance, my lack of artistic prowess will show through here!
The cityscapes in Bakemonogatari were some of the most detailed I'd ever seen, almost to a fault. As the quality of the animation of the characters themselves seemed to wane a little over the course of the series, the scenery continued to get the royal treatment. The shockingly bold colours and sharp lines even from a distance were used to great effect; the mood for a scene was often carried more by the colours than the music. At least, that was my impression. Visually, the effect was striking.
What I revelled in while watching though was the downright weirdness. You thought Penguindrum was weird with having pedestrian crossing figures as extras, Bakemonogatari eschewed (gesunteit) them entirely. The gigantic urban parks, imposing apartment buildings (that bore a curious resemblance to HDBs, as more than one Singaporean otaku observed at the time), expressways and tall buildings. We associate all these areas with swarms of people. Hives of activity. Buzzing with energy. These puns sweet or what? Get it, honey bees? I'll stop now.
Combine the abandoned state of these scenes with otherwise modern, pristine cityscapes, and you get an artistic style Dali would have scoffed at if I referred to it as surreal. Then again, he melted clocks and waxed pointed moustaches for a living. Waxed lyrical, as it were.
We've only just scratched the surface here. Pick any season, and chances are at least one or two of the showcased series' will have amazing urban landscapes, or citypr0n as I unabashedly refer to it as. It's a predictable as the one unashamed ecchi release each season, and I'd argue possibly for the same reason ^^;
An advertisement for Park Inn Hotels on a cute Germanwings A319. I reckon when the promotion is over, they should paint over the white letters but keep the livery as is!
Photo by Nikiforov Konstantin on Airliners.net.
In keeping with the level of discourse from tonight's Q&A, included here for your consideration is the music video for a song I first overheard playing loudly from a mad man's laptop at UTS, and later at a friend's house.
It has to be seen to be believed. Absolute psychedelic earworm madness.
Anyone else notice Wikimedia Common's Picture of the day today?
File:On the edge - free world version.jpg
English: Drawing of a fictional landscape with a figure in manga/anime style. The title of this image is: On the Edge. Programs used: GIMP, Inkscape, Blender. ~ Niabot
Aside from being a really colourful and creative image in its own right (love the light coming in through the trees onto the Shinto gate), I applaud the editors at Wikimedia for not only allowing material like this, but gracing their homepage with it for a day and tagging it as "a featured picture on Wikimedia Commons" and "This image has been assessed using the Quality image guidelines and is considered a Quality image". Seriously!
I think it speaks volumes about our culture that images like this warrent a NSFW warning, but gory violence where people are graphically maimed or killed is perfectly acceptable, or at the very least is more leniently censored. I have my suspicions as to why that is, but at the risk of getting into further trouble, I won't discuss it here!
This was the first -- and will be the last -- NSFW image on Rubénerd.com. I hope I didn't offend, or at the very least scar you for life!
UPDATE: It seems the image isn't the picture of the day anymore, in the time I wrote this it changed to something completely different. There's a Monty Python reference in there somewhere. Anyway, dang timezones, I keep forgetting their servers are in the US! There's probably an archive of previous pictures of the day somewhere on their site.
As a formerly obsessed aviation nut and a logo nerd, I felt compelled to comment on Virgin Australia's new brand design. Yes, I lifted that entire first sentence from my JAL blog post back in February, its called recycling.
Virgin Australia is the rebrand of Virgin Blue, the budget airline started by a consortium of Richard Branson and Australian investors shortly after the demise of Ansett in the early 2000s. Ansett was originally supposed to be sold to Singapore Airlines (imagine how awesome THAT would have been!) but instead was taken over by Air New Zealand and subsequently run into the ground. Well, I am aware planes land on ground and from the perspective of those watching in the airport it could be seen as running, though I believe that's a bit of a stretch. Now the DC-8-30, that was a stretch. But I digress.
Virgin Blue's rebranding entailed (hah, that's a bit of a pun) the adoption of the same slender typeface of their American and British operations, and a stark white livery in place of the awfully ugly yet colourful ironic red livery from Virgin Blue. Unfortunately owing to the parent company's part ownership by Singapore Airlines (those guys again!) for some reason this means Pacific Blue and the like can't also be called Virgin Pacific or something cool like that. Which makes no sense, oh well.
As with Japan Airline's new livery in February, I have mixed feelings about this one. Like JAL, Virgin Australia has adopted a clean, minimalistic new livery which appeals to someone like me who likes clean minimalism. Well that sentence was redundant. So was this one. And this one. Brown sugar... how come you taste so good?
Where was I? Oh yeah, firetrucks. Did you know in airports they're often coloured yellow for visibility? So "Fire Engine Red" in this case would be... yellow. Funny story.
Anyway, yes, so while I do like the new livery from a minimalism perspective, and while I think the stretched lettering over the vertical stabiliser and down the rear of the fuselage looks rather fetching and unconventional, the lettering towards the front is in the same boring spot almost every airline puts it.
Virgin Blue, sorry Virgin Australia, prides itself on being unconventional in a non-threatening, conventional way, but this new lettering at the front is a missed opportunity. Which is a shame, because repainting planes costs a lot of money that could be spent on more of those little crackers and cheese they sometimes give you. Oh yeah, and A320s instead of 737s, they have far more room per seat.
Despite those No Agenda folks who agree with more often than not, I do prefer trains to planes, and would rather travel on a high speed train between urban centres in Australia, though I know that will never happen because we live in a democracy where the people we elect are only interested in projects that generate short term political capital. The political capital of Australia in Canberra. I mean, what's the point of having long term plans if someone (or some party) other than you can take the credit for it later? Not that I'm cynical or anything. Planes are cylindrical, kinda.
Because really, Virgin Australia implies Australia had never had planes before. And she has. By comparison, she's never had true, regular, electric high speed rail before, so Virgin Australia would make far more sense for such a mode of transportation instead, right? I think I may have pushed that metaphor too far.
For those of you lucky enough to not have to ever see my horrible blog design give read the RSS feed (or RDF... really?), you may not have noticed the sudden change to purple a few days ago! Purpleness!
I'll admit it, purple has secretly been my favourite colour since I got my hands on some Sun hardware when I was a kid, though in primary school I was informed by a well meaning teacher that perhaps I shouldn't make that fact well known for its... shall we say, social implications. Now I'm older and simply don't care what people think about my appearance or tastes, so I figure if Andrew Cox can admit to it being his favourite colour, I can too!
I'm still working on getting the schade (sorry, bad pun) right, but for the time being let me know what you think :). Merry Nightmare, Senjoughara Hitagi and Hotaru/Sailor Saturn would approve!
As a formerly obsessed aviation nut and a logo nerd, I felt compelled to comment on JALs new livery, albeit a month late. Hey, I don't exactly keep up to date with press releases, except if its from a company with a bitten apple for a logo.
You can read the whole thing in English, and I'm assuming Japanese, somewhere on that page.
The JAL Group (JAL) today will adopt a new corporate policy and announced its decision to change its logo from April 1, 2011; symbolizing a fresh start for the airline group with its strengthened commitment to society and reinvigorated determination of the management and all employees.
The symbol of the crane has come to be associated with the nation’s distinct hallmarks of pristine quality and reliability. For customers, JAL is determined to safeguard these values of the Japanese culture and to continue reflecting its quintessential hospitality from the heart in the airline’s authentic services - a promise that is now embodied in the Group’s new corporate policy unveiled today.
First, it must be said, few airlines have changed their liveries as much as JAL has over the last twenty years. Being a product of the 1980s myself, I can count no less than three changes in the time I've been alive. When one considers all the work and cost involved in doing this, that is not an insignificant number!
By comparison, QANTAS have changed theirs once from the orange cheatlines and the kangaroo with wings (there's a Red Bull joke in there somewhere) to the plain white and red scheme we see now. There was a minor tweak recently when they introduced an awful new font that looked like a preschooler was given permission to scrawl on the forward fuselage and the kangaroo was turned from a sleek, fast moving creature into one with an extremely serious weight problem, but overall the scheme has remained basically the same.
Singapore Airlines, the world's greatest IMHO, has barely changed at all save for a minor tweak of the cheatlines and slightly larger logos and lettering recently.
I'm getting to that, geez! Some people have absolutely no patience, tact or either of the above. Tact would make a great name for wall adhesive, I'm just saying. 3M probably already has it trademarked. Sneaky Minnesotans.
I'm genuinly conflicted by JAL's latest design.
For one thing I've been a huge fan of the retrojets; the aircraft that have been painted out by their operators in recent years with paintjobs from the 1950s. They look absolutely amazing. JAL's new livery is actually based on their previous, previous, previous design, right down to the reintroduction of the crane logo and even the original font! Right there, they've earned some design cred with me.
It was also desperately needed. Their latest design with the plain red rising sun tail was duller than the design of Rubenerd.com. It lacked any of the character of the crane, and its great to see it back in this latest iteration.
Two things. First, I didn't think it was possible to top the previous design in dullness, but they did it. As a fan of Apple, Braun and IKEA, I'm all for minimalism, but I also don't think you have to sacrifice all detail to achieve it. Minimalism != nothing.
Secondly, to me the font for the forward fuselage just doesn't look right. In the previous design upon which this livery was based, thick black and red cheatlines along the windows balanced the letters out, but by themselves on a plain white background they look really out of place. Its stark. Its cold.
First, I'd fly ANA instead because they're solvent and I've been told the flight attendants are super cute. Not that you just read that.
Secondly, JAL have a strategic asset that I think is being completely wasted. From Wikipedia, emphasis added by me:
Japan Air System Co., Ltd. (JAS) (日本エアシステム, Nihon Ea Shisutemu) (IATA: JD, ICAO: JAS, Call sign: Air System) was the smallest of the big three Japanese airlines [...] It has since merged with Japan Airlines.
JAS was famous for its variety of aircraft liveries; Amy Chavez of The Japan Times described the rainbow liveries as "abstract." Many of its color schemes in the 1990s were designed by film director Akira Kurosawa.
The airline's slogan was "Good Speed Always."
JAS, aside from sounding very much like JAL and nothing like ANA, had in my opinion one of the most awesome liveries in the world. They were super colourful, but still looked classy! And they didn't just have one, some were rainbow colours, some were predominantly teal... I could go on.
So here's what I propose. Bring them back! Put the epic JAL crane on the vertical stabiliser, but keep the colourful schemes! That would represent optimism to your customers. For saving your company, all I'd ask for are some regular business class tickets between Narita and Singapore, and Singapore to Sydney.
Credits to Japan Airlines for the press release graphic, AusLexJapan on Photobucket for the Kouhei14915 on Wikimedia Commons for the JAS photo.
