Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 09, 2011
Confusing Computers in the 29th Century
Confuse Computers by ~WillMcLean on deviantART
Another Star Saga illustration: Confuse Computers was an important offensive technique for the computers of the 29th century, which showed a marked resemblance to the computers of the late 1980s, when the game was produced. Confuse Enemy Computers was the technology of bamboozling the opposition hardware.
You might think that this simply showed lack of imagination on the part of the illustrator. In fact, it was a deliberately retro design choice, like Corinthian columns in the 20th century or Steampunk in the 21st. There was (or would be) a whole genre, Floppypunk, devoted to imaginative recreation of the Floppy Disk Era, just like Steampunk, only different.
Like Steampunk enthusiasts, Floppypunkers did not aim for literal recreation of the past. They tended to use floppy disks as belt buckles or epaulets, like steampunkers gluing nonfunctional gears to their hats. Realism wasn't the point, it was all about style. A Floppypunker convention would always feature an inordinate number of women dressed like Madonna, only with more cleavage. She was, after all, a well documented woman of the era.
It is remarkable how often the imaginative.recreation of an alternative past is indistinguishable from a plausible excuse to wear corsets as outerwear.
In the 29th century the hardware to hold a Turing capable A.I. could be lost in a good sneeze, and high quality displays are a few microns thick. Still, nobody wants to waste space, so the bulky retro monitor casings are mostly used to keep drinks cool.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Sheep Blimp
Sheep Blimp by ~WillMcLean on deviantART
I used this on the change of address announcement when we moved into our current home, back when I had more hair.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Star Saga
Missionary by ~WillMcLean on deviantART
Star Saga 1 and Star Saga 2 were fun, innovative computer games that came out in 1988 and 1989. I did the illustrations for the game booklets, and they were two of my most favoritest illustration assignments ever.
Unfortunately, they were not a commercial success, and there was no Star Saga 3.
I'm republishing several of the illustrations on deviantART and CafePress. I was pretty pleased with them, and I hope that some people that never saw the original game will enjoy them too.
In the game, you could take the role of one of six different space adventurers, whose back story was described in a paper booklet, and I needed to come up with a cover illustration for each of those booklets for both the first and second game. To allow you to identify more easily with your chosen role, the gender of each was carefully unstated, and the names were all chosen to preserve the ambiguity.
I had to come up with an illustration that said something meaningful about each character, without ever explicitly indicating if they were male or female. One solution is shown above.
Master Peter Falkner's Art of Knightly Defense
In the late 14th century, the German swordsman Johannes Liechtenauer developed and codified a system of armed combat with sword, spear, and dagger that spread through the Holy Roman Empire and dominated German martial arts for nearly 300 years. By the end of the 15th century, a fellowship of swordsmen in Frankfurt known as “the Brotherhood of Saint Mark,” or Marxbrüder, had been granted an imperial charter to train and test swordmasters.
Peter Falkner was a long-time member and sometime captain of this famed fencing guild, and it was during this tenure that he set about creating an illustrated fight book of his own; colorful, painted figures and short captions depict combat with a wide variety of weapons: the longsword, dagger, staff, poleaxe, halberd, dueling shield and mounted combat. Where his work excels, however, is in its extensive treatment of the falchion-like messer, and the unique variations of core techniques of the Liechtenauer canon.
Now available from Freelance Academy Press
Sunday, May 01, 2011
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