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Mikey's Interests
General
Primarily, I'm an artist... Professionally, a computer games artist. You can find a random pile of my drawings, paintings, models, and so on at deviantart.com. It's occasionally updated, though as it's a fairly new place for me to stockpile, I'm still backtracking a bit and digging through past work. Expect lots more stuff...
Here's a bit of a rundown of a few of my interests and project bits I'm currently into...
"LOVEMONKEY"
Lovemonkey are the Liverpool band I've been writing, singing and playing guitar in since I was 16. We met in college, got quite good quite quickly, played a lot of gigs, recorded a lot of demos. This is the new myspace page. It currently contains a song from our 2002-3 EP "The Screaming blue Kicking Show", and a couple of new efforts from the new "Long Way From Home" EP.
The band have their tastes, which means I have a lot of songs left over from that. I started up a little myspace page to stick em up on. There's some there right now, waiting for your ever eager ear.
The Rodeo Terrorists are a little colaborative effort I'm part of. We've been making bits of music using some crazy whacked-out mac software and samples. Jolly good fun all round. A few of our tunes are gradually being uploaded to this page. We've just finished our first 4 track EP as part of our first album "Lucky Number 13". You can hear the first of our tracks here. There'll be more as we go.....
A few of us are working on a set of lovely little animations on you tube. They're called "101 WAYS TO DIE"
We're using all kinds of different software to do it. It's very experimental. I include mine amongst my video stuff on the right hand side of this page...
This is a little t-shirt shop I set up. I really wanted a Ninja For Hire T shirt and nobody would print me one, so I went and made my own... and then some...
I work as a games artist for Astraware. We're one of the biggest developers and publishers of computer games for the PDA casual gaming market, but our work covers a number of handheld devices. You can have a nose at the site, here. ('scuse the gif. I'll get a better image here eventually)...
At the moment I'm listenin to a spot of Motley Crue, Tracy Chapman, Echobelly, The Jane Bradfords, The Novelloes, Faithless, Pull Tiger Tail, Thunder, Daddy And The Husband, oh, and loads...
I don't usually like individual musicians or bands, just songs, so my ipod is always changing and never full. but some seem to be exceptions to the rule. Here's my artist of the moment...
28 Weeks Later. Worthy sequel to the original and very scary on the cinema... especially if you go alone to the late night showing! That's not out on DVD yet, so if you haven's seen the original, shame on you, get it now!
Well, communal viewing, being as fun as it is has led me down the dark path of "The Apprentice". That's currently the telly thing keeping my attention at the mo. Compulsive stuff, and regardless of what you think of Alan Sugar, his roastings make good telly. (Apparently, my mate Ali knows the guy who did the music. Small world).
I've just been for a second time through The Mighty Boosh, series 1 and 2, and have just discovered 15 Storeys High. Great comedy all round!
I bought this based on good reviews, and on the promise of the synopsis. It's about a document left by a priest who vanished a year previous. In it, he claims that his life was saved by the devil, an encounter which has led him to question his fading beliefs and cast doubt over his integrity as a preacher. So far it's a little slow to start. I'm kinda early in the story though, laying down his childhood and adolescence, and it feels like it's still setting up for Mack's actual account of his encounter.
After lapping up the "Zombie Survival Guide" by Max brooks, I went on to his 2006 psuedo documentary "World War Z". A riveting history of the zombie war, complete with personal accounts of survivors, front line soldiers, TV producers and political leaders. Brooks writes fiction straight! This can be genuinely chilling when the subject matter consists of what happened to society when zombies took over the world! Highly recomended.
Artists. Lots of em. Especially the ones I was lucky enough to meet and learn from. Ally Noble (who gave me my first go in the games industry), Paul Scott (who taught me the eternal philosophy; "Calm down... it's only a computer game"), Dave Taylor (who I haven't seen for ages but does some seriously nice art for 2000AD. I nearly blagged one of his mega city backgrounds..... I wonder if he knows I've got a birthday coming up...) and Bob Wakelin (who did me a signed print of the Target Renegade cover... actually, I'm still waiting on that).
The standard rolecall of comic artists also applies... Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, Todd Macfarlane, Jim Lee, etc. I also like Jamie Hewlett's art for the Gorillaz!
Bob Dylan and Ginger are pretty long term inspirational songwriters, but there's loads of good bands about now. I haven't done the playing in a band thing in a while though, so I wouldn't call either of them current influences. But definitely heroes.
I am partial to a bit of Russel Brand on my ipod. When he's in his element he's quick witted and damn funny to boot. I think his natural presence in his weekly podcast is much better than the more contrived stuff he's done on telly. (...Or you can catch his Radio 2 show live at 10 - midnight on Saturdays).
About me:
Well hello scores of screaming fanatics! It's time for another edition of "What the f*ck do I do with a myspace page anyway?"
..
Who I'd like to meet: Anyone who's interesting, and maybe a bit arty too, while not being too much of a screaming egotist!! ...Tho a bit of self respect never went amiss. Any old mates I've lost along the way are always welcome too.
VIDEO PROJECTS
Here's a few of my projects that move! lots of these little movies have been lost trampled on or eaten by the dog. (Metaphorically speaking. I don't have a dog). A few have hung around like bad smells...
Horse on the Motorway: It was a long way to Glasgow and Rich wanted a video to document the journey, so I got him to behave like an idiot in the car and made this little song and movie when I got home, to say cheers for the road trip this week end to pick up my new bike. Hope you enjoy, Rich...
This was shot abscent-mindedly with a mobile phone during a summer Sunday afternoon. The next day I made the song, in about an hour, and quickly edited the shots together. I then spent about 2 hours with 3DS max and a load of horse bits which I animated and composited onto the footage with some tweaks to the colour balance. This wonderful mess was the result...
101 Ways To Die: No 006: "Slayride"
I storyboarded this first as the idea was snowballing (scuse the pun) out of control in my little noggin. Thought I'd better get it to paper as quicksharp as possible before it got too big to handle. Then I decided to draw the scenes as plates (details on pieces of paper, which I scanned into photoshop, where I threw on some colour). Then I put it all in a 3D package and put the plates on flat, transparent surfaces. THEN I moved them around, rendered em, and put the shots in an editing package, which I used to piece the whole thing together with the music. I made some cute noises and stuck them on too. (Now, did everyone get that?) ...the whole thing took about 2 weeks. Quite happy with this for a first go at a complete animation in this style. The next one is on the way.
101 Ways To Die: Number 002: False start. Here's my first attempt at an animation for the set. When we were about 12-13, my mate Dan and I started playing around with animation in Deluxe Paint. We got into a trend of creating little 1 minute animations in which a character dies in a funny way. Sounds simple eh. I used Pro Motion to make these ones. It's generally a package used in my industry for 2D games (the sort of thing you'd find on a DS, mobile phone or PDA device). Anyway, about two hours with that and an hour or so of editing produced this little ditty. Enjoy...
101 ways To Die: No. 2: False Start .. Add to My Profile | More Videos
Lovemonkey: "Fever" video. This was a little bit of playing around with Max. I was hoping to get video footage to work on models, as textures... and guess what... I DID!! Ideally, there'd be another story running in conjunction to what's here. Maybe something about the bouncers by the stage being foxed by someone in the crowd who eventually manages to climb the giant monkey... something like that. The song was pretty cool too tho... if I do say so myself... This is the new version of the song, not the dodgy 4 track version that used to be here. There's a few more songs available on the lovemonkey myspace. See the section over on the left, or my friends,
for a link...
"ISYS": The trailer for a bad, but pretty film I made on my degree. The film was a sci-fi. Its script was dodgy, its plot, overcomplicated, dull and mostly cut from the film to get it to the end, and it generally appears to take itself a lot more seriously than it actually does. I did find that it made a half decent trailer, though I could do with putting a bit more work into it.
How's it going Mikey? Just finished the Ian curtis and thought of you-Do you like it? Would appreciate your verdict if you get five minutes. Hope all is good with you mate, take it easy... Dom
alright mate? Looking forward to seeing some of your pics-if you've got any good street scenes how would you feel about some dodgy artist nicking bits to use in his work? (crediting the photographer of course!) As for Ian Curtis...had an order for some other work so thats on the back burner-cant rush someone like him now can I? Be good...
you're not in again so can't message you, what's that about?! lol. well send me a message with your address and I'll make sure I send you a CD, dunno if martyns sent you his stuff yet? but i will remind him : )
alright Mike? Hope you're good-Decided to give the craft show a miss-would mean doing a load of pictures to sell rather than what I want to do pictures of and I havent got time for that! Any pictures in the pipeline? Am (very)slowly working on an Ian Curtis one at the moment could be a long time coming though!! Take it easy- Dom
you've got to remember mikey that what you hear on my page is about the last 1% of all the tunes I have ever written.... Meaning I have been through many many stages to get there... you should hear the stuff that I don't want you to hear!! lol. I like your tunes anyway : )
not 3 bad thank you!! so what arsing about are you doing? was gonna send you a message but got your "answer machine"!! lol. just watched Jools Holland... intense : )
yup...I'm still reading Discworld! Though it's been a while since Rincewind has been in them...This Summer's to die for is going to be the Transformers movie but convincing friends to go has been a chore...must have been more of an English cult, or I just didn't meet the right people. Good luck with the artwork!
Artist Pablo Picasso surprised a burglar at work in his new chateau. The intruder got away, but Picasso told the police he could do a rough sketch of what he looked like. On the basis of his drawing, the police arrested a mother superior, the minister of finance, a washing machine, and the Eiffel tower.
www.astraware.com
