Chuck Ragan Facts

In August a mystery tweeter set up Chuck Ragan Facts and I, like many others, absolutely loved it. A month or so ago, I tweeted Mr Facts to say I might design a book to compile the facts. Needless to say he was very keen for me to do so. Of course I've been incredibly busy with all my uni projects but one evening, upon discovering Snapbird – a complete timeline of all tweets – I sat and read through all of the 1300+ tweets and noted down my favourite facts.

It gave me a bit of a headache after two hours, but it was worth it. I already had a vision in my head of how the actual book would look. Taking inspiration from Chuck's latest album, Covering Ground. It's designed to be about the size of a CD as well, which is pretty neat.

So anyway, here we have the final book in digital form. With a little back story to how Chuck Ragan Facts was actually created, from its inventor. None of the facts are mine but I did write a bit of the "Who is Chuck Ragan?" introduction and the page at the back. I can only take credit for the design.

Open publication

After a few final  checks to make sure everything is perfect, I'm going to get myself a copy of the book printed on Ubyu. Which seems like a pretty decent, high quality yet well priced website for printing your own books. Exciting!

Earlybirthdayday

Ellinor gave me my birthday card and gifts early, as she won't be around on the actual day. And I must say, she has won the award for the best birthday card I've ever received.

Triforce Tribute

I was pointed to this by a friend on Twitter, a whole array of graphicy and illustrationy Zelda goodness.

"The Triforce Tribute is an epic multi-medium show celebrating all things Zelda. Curated by Jolby & Always With Honor. Opening Friday March 9th at 6pm and runs through April 21st 2012 at Land Gallery." – Triforce Tribute

Kokiri Forest, Trevor Basset

Link, Jolby

More Link, Meg Hunt

Gem in the grass, Jolby/Always With Honor

A little bit of Zelda (cropped), Frank Chimero

According to a post on the blog yesterday, there will be an online gallery with more of the images in soon. For now, there's some bits on this Flickr.

This is all relevant to me at the moment as tomorrow I am having a [two week early] birthday party, and the theme is "forest". That might not immediately shout Zelda at you although there are plenty of forests in the games, so I'm being a big indirect by saying "I'm going as Link!" But hey, it's my party. He wears green and is basically a forest elf.

I've made a sword and shield, and a pretty awesome (if I say so myself) Link-style hat so should look the part. I'm sure there will be photographs to share at a later date.

So Lucky/Stay Lucky

On 11th June The Gaslight Anthem, my favourite band, will be playing what I consider to be a tiny gig at the Koko in Camden, London. It's something like 1400 capacity which compared to the last time I saw Gaslight, at Brixton Academy, with 5000 people is pretty special.

I failed at getting tickets on the pre-sale and very nearly failed on the general sale day, despite trying both days consistently from 9am on-the-dot. I was honestly devastated to think I'd miss out on this, music means a lot to me and Gaslight especially.

BUT, not to worry. The Live Nation website went down and because I'd enquired as to what was going through Twitter, I got a reply at about 10.30am to say "We've put tickets on TicketWeb - be quick!" Twitter is amazing. I was quick, and I am going to the gig! Also, the gig is conveniently place in our assessment week so all work will be handed in - it will be a nice reward for working hard.

I hope this video sums up how awesome the band is. This is quite possibly my favourite song in the world. Ever. Oh and the title to this blog, at least the second part, is a reference to a Gaslight song from their last album. The luck was with me. ♥

Caturday: Cat cam

I guess I was just too busy with uni work and such, but these photographs have been in my possession for a week now and I haven't blogged them. You can read about my costume here, but basically my housemate had a cat themed party for her birthday a few weeks ago and I got out the old cat cam.

 

It was certainly a great Caturday.

Bloglovin

Hey, why don't you Follow my blog with Bloglovin?

I mean, if you want to. Bloglovin is generally pretty useful for following and reading all your favourite blogs in one place anyway. I'm not sure how I functioned before I started using it. Probably didn't waste so many hours of my day looking through design blogs but hey, it's useful.

Myth: in illustration

So, as I've mentioned a few times in various blog posts, my major project is on the subject of "Myth". I have had the idea to do some sort of project about British myths and legends since the summer when my dad brought a big hardback book down from the loft: Reader's Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. It's a great book, although I have by no means looked in detail at all of it - it's over 500 pages!

About six different illustrators feature in the book, and from Googling their names I have sadly discovered that all but one of them are dead. The book was published in 1973, y'see. Although the book lists the illustrators it does not say which is which, so I had some investigating to do in order to find a particular one I was interested in.

I think the illustrator I am after is Eric Fraser. I've managed to find a couple of blog posts on him featuring illustrations, although not the ones in the book. So firstly, here are some of my favourites from the book (scanned in):

The following are simply quick phone photographs. There is also a possibility that these illustrations could be that of George Tute who actually has illustrations that feature in the book on his website. (But not the ones I am looking for!) His illustrations are also wood engravings, which is what I assume these are, but his style is a little more realistic that the two illustrations above which are quite graphic. So I don't really know!

This one is certainly questionable. Most likely not Eric Fraser?

But these have the large eyes and bold lines.

And here are some definite works of Eric Fraser, featured in this great blog post on Sci-Fi-O-Rama (a blog I have never heard of/come across but looks right up my street!).

That last one is the dragon Smaug from The Hobbit! I may have to find out if Fraser did any other illustrations for Tolkien as I'd love to see those. I posted a blog about Hobbit illustrations just before Christmas.

If anyone happens to come across this blog post and knows for certain is Eric Fraser did or didn't do the illustrations I have selected from the book, then please don't hesitate to let me know!

Three Little Pigs advert for the Guardian

Creative Review have just posted this Guardian tv advertisement, their first for 25 years, and I think it's absolutely brilliant. Not only is it interesting to see how the Three Little Pigs could be interpreted in real life but also shows how news isn't just about the news reporter anymore. I wrote an essay last year on the impact Twitter has on the broadcasting and sharing of news and this shows things similarly.

"The spot launches a campaign to promote the paper's 'open journalism' approach – its name for the way in which it is attempting to involve its readership in not just commenting on stories, but contributing to and even determining its news agenda.

The launch ad examines the way in which the tale of the Three Little Pigs might be covered by The Guardian today, with all the different forms of content and different channels that implies. It also seeks to get over the way in which stories develop over time as new facts come to light and the effect of social media on switching the focus of coverage and debate.

An epic two-minute version (shown above) debuted on Channel 4 last night." - CR


EDIT: Probably should have pointed out that BBH created this.