BLOKKHED WEBSITE NOW LIVE

Well finally the website is up and running. There may be teething problems so please be patient. The link is here [www.blokkhed.com] so please take a look. It's the first website I have ever put together and I set myself to construct it in Flash which has been a good learning curve you might say! There are three galleries [at present] and some of those are now available on Alamy. I will be putting more onto Alamy so take a look there as well.
This is turning into a busy month for this Blokkhed. It felt like the time to get things moving and why not do them all at once? I have a full time job [in art education] so this work is an opportunity to remain sane whilst making me learn new things, this benefits myself and my job where I can of course pass on new skills to others.
To me this isn't work, its even more important than that !
Blokkhed

BLOKKHEDS' INTERESTS PART 2

And these are interesting too:
Sky Blue, King Kong, Willis O'Brien, The Metropolis of Tomorrow [Hugh Ferris], Manhattan Transfer, In Cold Blood, The Spirit, The Most Dangerous Game, Quatermass, Jaromir Funke, Mariscal, Daniel Torres, O Winston Link, Josef Sudek, Akira, Edgar Allan Poe...The list goes on and on and on.
There are simply so many things to enjoy and so little time to do it. But it is important to try!
I can't say that everything I like is a direct influence on what I do but they have all at some time or another fascinated me. King Kong was an early one. I got the making of book in 1977 [!] which is a fascinating account of the people who made it, not just a meticulous account of the special effects. The director/producers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack were amazing characters in themselves and Willis O'Brien was simply a driven genius. The book is a look into the 1930s movie making process and everything seemed so new and daring. The mystery of the far east [rather like the Indiana Jones films shows-in fact you can see where Spielberg and Lucas were coming from], long sea voyages to uninhabited islands, fog, and strange monsters, what more could you want?

BLOKKHEDS' INTERESTS

I like/love/inspired by/dream about/read/look at......
Robots, Dystopias, Design, Visual Culture, Illustration, Photography, Noir, Mister X, Forever People, Mister Miracle, Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, Osamu Goods Style, Wired, Monocle, Maxfield Parrish, 2001, Carnivale, The Prisoner, Deco, Gundam Kits, Asus eeepc, Apple, Pulp fiction, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth, Planet of the Apes, Bladerunner, Appleseed, Life on Mars.

BLOKKHED HAS MANY FACES

The world of Blokkhed is many sided. I am working on many images at the moment. I don't want to put too many on here as I'm going to put them onto the website. I like these simple designs as well as more complex imagery. In short I like everything? probably too many but if you can't please yourself who can you please?
I am a very big fan of retro-future designs. I would have loved to be at the New York Worlds Fair 1939, especially Futurama, not the excellent cartoon but the original exhibit showing the 'future'. Films such as Conquest of Space, Things to Come and Metropolis are of the future but so very much a part of the era they were made in. Beautiful design and visionary about what seemed to be mostly a 'positive' future. Well Metropolis wasn't too positive, but these sort of films were made just before we became cynical about the future. When did it stop being a brave new world that we were heading towards?
Taschen produced a wonderful book called 'Future Perfect' with a great collection of adverts and covers from magazines with flying cars, monorails, domestic robots, videophones and gigantic aircraft. delicious stuff bursting with 30s-50s style. It was that time when dreams could still possibly become a reality.

THE BLOKKHED IS COMING..

Slowly but surely the Blokkhed website is coming together. This particular designer has previously taken his time, but feels it is now time to get things rolling along. I have loads of influences and inspirations, more than the links show. I recently got into Gundam robots. I'm a late convert to this sort of thing. But I have always loved bots of some sort. From Robbie the Robot to Gort and Robot in Lost in Space, Robots of some sort have always been interesting. My own Robot-from now on the Blokkbot, came about as an adaption of earlier work-this is all going to be on the website so take a look when its live. The new head design looked like it should be a robot so I designed the rest of him. Theres a lot more work to be done so I'll keep at it.
I'm looking forward to more posting and linking you to the website. Anyway, take a look at Fornasetti, Orbital Manga [great for Gundam kits and all sorts of lovely stuff], check out Coolhunter-it really is !
Logging off for now, BLOKKHED.

HEY BLOKKHED !

Hey Blokkhed indeed. Blokkhed comes in all shapes and sizes, just like the rest of us. The website is coming along fine and now I'm looking for a good webhost. Unitedhosting sound good so if anyone has good things to say about them let me know. This blog [and blogging] is new for this Blokkhed, so I'll try to update as and when possible. The website itself has taken up a lot of time and what with other commitments its a struggle sometimes to fit it all in but I'm trying !

WHO IS BLOKKHED?

Blokkhed is many different styles of imagemaking. From Illustration to phography to 3D design. I have lots of influences and this work is an opportunity to explore them. Above is the Blokkhed logo [or one of them at least] and an illustration as part of the work in progress. Who, or what is Blokkhed? He's a sort of Robot and there is more of him to come.

WIREMEN by Blokkhed

As well as illustration Blokkhed is photography and photo-imaging. I originally started in photography but was always interested in other work. Heroes for me ranged from Ray Harryhausen and Douglas Trumbull to Ansel Adams. Now it is possible to realise ideas that weren't possible years ago and it is great fun for me to explore those ideas now. What a great time it is for creativity. As I said in the first post, Blokkhed will be a full website where I can showcase my work. Blokkhed is a sort of brand and a way of combining my quite disparate work. I like variety and I never seem to get around to finishing things and as I am something of a Blokkhed myself it seemed to fit as a name.

BLOKKHED

This is where Blokkhed starts. It should soon be a full flash website with galleries. It is a number of styles of illustration, design, characters and photo-imaging. This blog will be the diary and a space for extra work. Blokkhed is a work in progress and a personal project that allows me to explore a number of ideas and as such is an ongoing project. The website should appear this month. Blokkhed is the work of matthew chattle.