BLOKKHED loves Dan Dare

Dan Dare created by Frank Hampson is simply the best. Created in a fascinating era when the space race was beginning and the future didn't seem to be too far away. Go and see the exhibition at the Science Museum in London. It looks at the fifties and the growth of new technologies. Urban redevelopment from pre-fab housing to washing machines and jet planes its a fascinating look at a time period that Dan Dare was created in. The designs Hampson made are wonderful, with true attention to detail. They built detailed models that were then photographed to do the drawings from.
Frank Hampson was "the man who drew tomorrow" [which is an excellent book by the way]

www.blokkhed.com

Talking about Giant Robots. Sky Captain

Well I wasn't talking about them but now I am. Just watched 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow' again, I followed its promos on the net and saw it at the Empire Leicester Square-a fitting Deco Cinema to see it. Its what you might call a flawed classic. I really see where the director Kerry Conran is coming from. How many influences can you put into a film. King Kong, Hugh Ferris, Lost Horizon, Republic Serials, Pulp novels, The Most Dangerous Game, 1939 New Yorks Worlds fair, Popular Mechanix magazine, Shanghai 1930s, Retro futures, Mechanical Monsters [Fleischer Brothers Superman], the list goes on and on. How great to be able to breathe life into all the things you love then weave them together.
It isn't a great movie as such but it has the vision of someone I can relate to. Visually rich and detailed with little clues to its influences. As I said its a flawed classic, a pastiche but put together honestly and seriously. It should have been better but I'm so glad it exists even in its imperfections. See it if you like the things I've listed, it takes all and more and makes something like a Republic Serial-improbable but fun with a sense of wonder from another age, when mechanical monsters could possibly take over the world....

www.blokkhed.com

BLOKKHED. BigHed and LittleHed

Here are Bighed and LittleHed. The names are self explanatory I think, so I won't explain them...
I keep updating the website and amazingly it all works! Something of a challenge doing it all in Flash. I used various ideas from a lot of books and these gave me invaluable ideas for the action script. Actually easier than I thought it would be, so I can recommend it as a way of working. I will be adding new work as and when I develop things further.
Blokkhed

www.blokkhed.com

I've added the Bubbles to the side of the website. Bubbles are cute, ugly and evil. Blokkhed is live and developing. Don't forget www.blokkhed.com the home of all things Blokkhed.

BLOKKHED WEBSITE ONLINE. www.blokkhed.com

The Blokkhed website is now functioning. www.blokkhed.com. I'm happy with it [for now] but I may well continue to tinker with it. The link is opposite. Its a gallery for my many interests and inspirations. I intend it to be an ongoing and developing project and I may well add more galleries as I go along. The site was made in Flash 8 and I feel quite comfortable with it now. Its nice to have something fluid and I can change things very easily.
In this blog I want to start to explore and talk about things that inspire me. At present I love Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby. In the seventies I only had three of the comics, it was hard in those days to get comics so they seemed really special. It was a fascinating world Kirby created and the Mother Box seemed to something worth having ! The Fourth world seemed a world away from the Marvel stuff [which I loved equally-especially Daredevil] and looking back it was very much part of the early seventies. Slightly hippyish-which I like and not your average superhero comics. I had two Forever people and two New Gods as well so I saw their interconnectedness. He was creating a complete world and I admire that vision-even if he wasn't allowed to complete it. It was something special, very stylish and in short, very, very cool.

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.