I was inspired to create a couple of Bowie portraits.
The first is him as an alien from UFO.
The second is Bowie as Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus from Sandman.
Category: Creativity
Even Faster
I’m into the last two weeks of my fifties and it’s more than a little scary. In a week and a half’s time I will turn 60.
I’ve been dreading this for months, but now it’s almost upon me I just want to get it over with in a way that involves the minimum of fuss.
It’s funny, I look in the mirror and see the grey hairs. I feel the aches and twinges that never used to be there. I know that, factually, this is my age. But my mind feels more creative than it ever has before. Admittedly, my forgetfulness is pretty bad at times, but that aside I still feel excited about new projects and ideas.
I hope the creative side of me never falters.
A little bit Ziggy
David Bowie is dead.
Both my heart and mind are struggling with this fact. How can he be dead when I have a new album to listen to? How can he be dead when all I see online this week are posts that link to his many powerful performances? How can he be dead when he’s been an important part of my life for nearly forty three years?
I never met him and only saw him perform live once, but, like many other people throughout the world, as this week has proved, David Bowie is a dear friend who had no knowledge of my personal existence. A friend who spoke to me intimately with every song he wrote.
In 1973, my parents bought a record player for the first time ever. I was fifteen and had hardly given music any thought. I was aware of the stuff they played on the radio, but just as background, and knew that friends talked about music without connecting to anything they said. Until this point I’d been more interested in the Apollo Moon landings and reading science fiction.
With a record player in the house, here was a new toy to play with. But what should I buy?
Initially, I think I only chose Life on Mars? because of the title’s science fiction implications, only realising later it was about something very different, yet the music and lyrics drew me in and my love of Bowie began.
At first it was a slow burning relationship. The next two singles I bought were Stuck in the Middle by Stealers Wheel and Frankenstein by The Edgar Winter Group, which was the start of my eclectic taste in music.
Then a few weeks later, while on a family holiday, I spotted the Space Oddity album and bought it immediately, even though I couldn’t play it until we all returned home. Again, the implication of science fiction teased me, along with an interest in hearing more by this man. This was a time, of course, before the internet and the only way to hear music you wanted was by luck on the radio, by owning the records or by having friends who owned them.
However, being shy back then, I didn’t have many friends and none of them had any Bowie records. But curiously, I found myself making more friends in the coming months through a mutual interest in Bowie’s music. I think it’s fair to say that in this respect alone, he had a life-changing impact on my life.
More albums were added to my collection – The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane; all brilliant, all so different from each other. His almost eclectic approach to music seemed completely fitting.
My love of his music was both fulfilling and left me yearning for more (even now, this is true) to the point where, when Diamond Dogs was released, I got to the record shop just as they were opening the delivery and my copy was the first out of the box. I was the first of my friends to buy it. I think I played it virtually non-stop for months and it still remains one of my favourite albums.
Plenty of people claimed to hate Bowie at that time and I was laughed at for wearing T-shirts with his image on or for having my hair cut in the Ziggy/Aladdin style (though sadly not dyed orange), yet I enjoyed the fact that these people didn’t like the same music as me. And in spite of my shyness I had a way to be a tiny bit extrovert – I could be a little bit Ziggy.
My musical tastes developed and broadened – Pink Floyd, Queen, Alex Harvey, for example – but Bowie kept delivering the goods with more variety. Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger and Scary Monsters were all excellent in their own ways. New lyrical styles and a number of instrumental pieces saw him develop as a songwriter and a musician.
In spite of this, and although he wrote a number of great songs, Bowie didn’t put together an album that felt like an album (as opposed to a collection of songs) until Outside came along in 1995 and suddenly the old magic was revived again. An album to compare with the likes of Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs in its conceptual themes.
It felt like my friend had come home to me and the cooling of my love for his music and lyrics had never really left at all. It still burned like a beacon.
It’s now over twenty years since Outside was released and we’ve had a number of other excellent albums since then. I’ve been dabbling with musical compositions during this time and I’ve become a professional writer, neither of which would likely have been possible without the ongoing influence of a man who came from humble beginnings yet had such powerful visions that he shone like the star that he is and always will be.
I’ve only listened to the new album a few times since it was released, but already I find that the title track, Blackstar, is lodged in my mind. And I love that a Bowie track still has the power to do this. It is a very fine last album.
David Bowie is dead.
I am sad but still so in love with his music. When I see the wonderful outpourings of love on the internet this week, I realise I have millions of friends who I will likely never get to know or even meet, but our mutual interest in the music of Bowie will always bind a little part of us.
In some ways I’m still the shy teenager who bought Life on Mars? but I’m also much more than that. And today I’m also feeling a little bit Ziggy.
Thank you, David.
Gamewriter Bites!
I have created a new blog called Gamewriter Bites! in which I’m posting short videos on various gamewriting topics and answering questions people pose to me.
Kaptain Brawe 2 on Kickstarter
I’ve been a bit remiss. Because I’ve been trying to post a lot on Twitter, Facebook and other places, I neglected to post anything here.
If you don’t already know, I’m involved in a Kickstarter for Kaptain Brawe 2: A Space Travesty. Please check it out if you haven’t already. Please consider pledging or at least help spreading the word if it’s not a game for you.
This has the potential to be a truly fantastic project. Not only does it fit with my sense of humour perfectly (as illustrated by my FREE short story), Cateia Games is a solid group of developers with lots of experience.
And if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also brought on board Bill Tiller, a superb artist whose work graced the excellent game, The Curse of Monkey Island.
Now is that fantastic or what?
While I’ve heard it said that some people think the goal is steep, I am firmly of the opinion that you get what you pay for.
It is our intention to make this game the best we possibly can and under that proviso I think the goal is not unreasonable. In fact, I think it’s a bargain of development. When you look back eight years to when I started work on So Blonde, the budget for that game was roughly three times what the Cateia Games guys are asking. Even without inflation I think you must agree that this represents incredibly good value for the project we intend to deliver, especially as English voices will be integral to the game.
I hope some of you will be able to see your way clear to supporting the game.
Thanks.
New Year Update
I should really update this blog more often. So here are a few recent paintings I did.
Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso – A Top Ten Game
The Independent, a UK national newspaper, has just published a top ten list of free games and they included my game, Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso, which can be downloaded here.
I’m very honoured to be in the list, so huge thanks to Will Coldwell for putting the game in there.
(If you don’t know, the game is downloadable to play on PC only.)
Character painting update
Another Character Painting
Here is another character from one of my projects.
Further work on my character painting
It Happened So Fast 