this artist/illustrator is perhaps best known (in the 'states) for his work on the final fantasy game series. so, at the lowest level of artistic quality you have the actual pixel-y characters on the screen, and then next the character art in the manual and generally wherever the characters are published online or in magazines, and then, at the pinacle (in my opinion)...you have yoshitaka amano's interpretations.
these are both images from ff9- airships (the prefered mode of travel) and vivi, a mysterious and somewhat troubled fella. i forget what he actually is, though i never finished the game so maybe i never even found out. anyway, his figure drawings/paintings are pretty cool, too. his style is veeeery elegant, and just as mysterious and imaginative. you can visit his website to see more (unfortunately, the section on final fantasy is currently under construction- i can show you the above images because i downloaded them long ago). so it seems that again we have an artist who does very intricate, colorful work and who has a mastery of that watery, bleed-y watercolor technique i enjoy so much :) don't worry, tomorrow will probably be different.
in other news, i have recently discovered about a dozen very decent, half-finished drawings in about five different sketchbooks. some of them i started five years ago, but i hope to finish them soon....or at least bring them up to 75% completeness, and then leave them for five more years ;)
i finished listening to (a very scratched copy of) "reading lolita in tehran" by nafisi. it was good! difficult, but good. i cannot imagine surviving, much less maintaining sanity, in a country like iran with its fickle, arbitrary laws and extreme punishments for the slightest deviance (and sometimes, for no wrongdoing whatsoever). the author was a literature prof, and talked mainly about the authors she taught, such as nabokov (lolita), fitzgerald, bronte, austen, and bellow. luckily, i've just recently read "the great gatsby" and "pride and prejudice", which she talks about at length. i don't mind not having read "lolita". maybe i'll try that one later, but for now i think it's still too intense for me.
now i've switched gears and am listening to "home", an autobiography of julie andrews' early years, read by the dear woman herself. i'm really curious about her life during her acting career- something about her just seems so clean and pure (i mean, she did play mary poppins and maria the singing nun, so maybe that's just her characters talking). so far i've learned that she was terrible at sports, sang for the queen when she was like, 10, and that andrews is her step-father's last name. she didn't exactly have an idyllic childhood (aside from dealing with wwII), but it wasn't so bad as some- such as that of jane fonda, whose biography i've also read (well, some of it). also, it seems to me that divorce and infidelity are nothing new to our society, at least, not among the circles of those who write biographies. i find this oddly comforting.
well, i've spent enough time blogging. time to get drawing!
No comments:
Post a Comment