Ratsy Malone returns

When I was young the first full comic I drew was called 'The Ratsy Files', a 1920's gangster story, strongly influenced by the discovery of Will Eisners' 'The Spirit'. 

Starring a character called Ratsy Malone, who, along with his gang, R.S, B.S and C.S, scratched a 3 page trail of havoc, machine guns blazing and Bakelite radios blaring, before being double crossed and steering his 1925 Cunningham V8 into a telegraph pole, intending to kill his traitorous friends.

Throughout the years my mum regularly lamented not seeing this little fellow back in print, even though I thought I could 'never go back', for some reason, to old ideas, used characters or dated concepts. 
Why?, I do not know. Some silly purist attitude that included the idea that copying another drawing, even for reference, was cheating. Redrawing anything was also, well, cheating. In fact there were so many things in my isolated little world (this is the 1970s' remember, no internet tutorials, only a local library with two 'How to draw' books)  I considered 'cheating', planning out a page, tracing your own work, using another persons ideas.... it is a wonder I allowed myself to even use a pencil or paper. This INSANE and bizarre behaviour still  rears its ugly head today, but I recognise more and more the silly limitations and incredible handicap these 'rules' caused, and probably set back what little drawing skills I had by many years.

Anyway, long story told, this Christmas I thought  I would give mum her wish and resurrect dear old Ratsy and the gang, as a Christmas card, for one more peak out into the now fantastic world of 2013. Hope you enjoy.

Couldn't resist making an age appropriate photo. Ha ha 

Go Go Bunny Mural

Go Go Bunny poster ready for its two story reproduction. 

On the side of its building, now complete with graffiti and weathering from about two years of standing.

Website animation

 A quick run down of the, almost, finished animation for my websites front page. Robot and Dinosaur face each other atop a building, the robots arm holding a ray gun slowly raises up and down,

 When it is pointing at the Dinosaur it fires and the blue  neon rings light one at a time towards him,

The Dinosaurs' arm and jaw move up and down, as the last neon ring lights his red flame comes on, flickers a little, then turns off, each blue ring also turns off in the reverse order they were lit, the robots' ray gun lowers and the sequence starts again. 

S'no Bunny like Snow Bunny

Slowly been working on this for a few months now, turned from a bush bunny into a snow bunny. My partner thinks composition could be better, and as usual she is right. She was probably too kind to point out all the other flaws I can now see having posted it up. ha ha.

Bat Mask - full face

Adding to the top section previously posted, here is the full face mask.

Currently we have a rather large bat, circling nightly around our house and paddocks nearby, singing its beautiful song of sight. A mix between insect and bird, directionless and everywhere.
Does it hunt for food or mate? Is it the first or last? In ten years I have not heard or seen another. 
Beautiful creature, this mask is for you, songster of the dark. I hope you will not sing alone too long.

Carrot Vending Machine

With a shiny new pennyrabbit  piece little bunny is about to indulge in one of his favorite  nibbles.
Combining two of my favorite loves, bunnies and vending machines, this weekend was taken up with this piece. Just a bit of fun, having a break from working on the Popular Mechanoids Card Set.

Pencil roughs

Lambcicle Licks

Found this old tin sign behind my bubble gum card collection. How well I remember enjoying a refreshing Ice Cold Lambcicle Lick, on the way home. These were tough competition for Sherbet Sheep, which used to have a little packet of sherbet you would pour over the icy pole to make the sheeps' 'wool'. Many a day would I keep extra packs of sherbet to give my Sheep an extra thick winter coat, though most of it always ended up on the ground, anyway, as the poster said, Mmmmmmmmmm!
(Any memories of The Lambcie Lamb Show, Lambcicle Licks , and Sherbert Sheep are entirely fictional, and the latter bear little resemblance to any Iced Lollies consumed in my REAL childhood, with the exception perhaps of Lime Splits)

Transistance

Transistance:  Number 26 from Popular Mechanoids Premium Trading Cards

Transistance Card back

Tri-Tech Robot factories

Dug this picture out from a pile over ten years old.
A shot of Tri Techs robot production line. 

I always imagined, eventually, factory robots will become realised as classic reproductions from Japanese Tin Toys of the past. 

Antenant 5

Since the first photon particle wandered out into the universe, to that prime spark of lightning that caressed earths early atmosphere, to mankind observing photoconductivity of the element selenium,  Antenant 5 has been waiting...., waiting to be brought into existence, to conduct the electromagnetic waves like a maestro at the podium, and,  as Antenant 5 so fondly radiates, 

'Transmit that which is transmittable.' 
For this is Antenant 5s' 'reason for being', before even his creators knew so. Indeed, what other purpose drives us all? To share, express, to join, in hope of a deeper connection. To scrape past that hesitant skin of fear, and touch the common spirit, where we all dance in joy with each others song.  

Card back, No 22, from Popular Mechanoids Premium Card Set.

Cavitate Cut-Away

 From the whacky world of independent nucleic hybridisation, mechanosynthesis, creation engines and tiny rubber bands Cavitate stands tall. Although so small light has difficulty reflecting off its' various surfaces Tri-Techs'  Quantum Power Tools department  reportedly offer Cavitate in Tropical Blue, Pea-Pod Green and Thoughtful Lilac. 

Cavitate - non-cytoplasmic dynein propulsion

Card Number 27, Cavitate

Card back 

Radon 12

Card back of previously published Radon 12.

 Also known as Red Crystal, due to the  colourisation of the Tidite filter from grey to deep crimson. Clean-up crews at work during the 'Dark Pine' epidemic gave the nickname 'Bloody Mary' to the overworked mechanoid. Often filters would not get changed for several months, and Radon 12s could be found dripping the thick, crystalline material, sometimes trailing for several miles in their programmed journey to eradicate the vicious scion Radon 11. 

Capacitone Card back

Card Number 33, Capacitone, from Red Series Popular Mechanoids Premium Trading Cards. 

Valveron Box Art

The Dome series 'Robot Range' Vinyl Toy, design posted earlier on this blog, Box Art finally completed.

Urban Vinyl Figure - Flibber Der Jibbet

Designer toy in series, part of the Pasture Range. Others added earlier in this blog. 

Space Monkey

From the depth of space comes...wait for it..

Spaaacce Monkeys!

Masque of the inner temple

Deep within, where the silent bell tones, when comes the twins joy and excitement..the brothers pain and darkness. Lofty peaks and deep empty caverns both roam and share. From that place random images, infinite...scratch, splatter, like ice and air. Sometimes, once in the long whilst, an impression remains, long enough for tissue and sinew to trace, scrawl and place outside.  In pencil and on paper.   

 Here is one.

buke

It is said the masks of the Japanese buke, or samurai, were meant to be imbued with certain powers and attributes during their creation. Serving to both protect and disguise the warrior, as well as add a certain theatre to the noble art of gutting your fellow human being at the behest of a nobleman's whim.
This particular mask, although not strictly adhering to traditional design, has nevertheless taken on definite character during its creation. Changing in many guises, taking several days, and finally, after working from 11 am yesterday until now (2.30 am) I realise this particular 'mask' has the power to absorb energy steadily, hypnotising with its colours and movement, keeping the opponent dazed until exhaustion creeps up, then striking the death blow once all creativity and devotion are depleted. Leaving behind an empty husk, whilst itself grows stronger and healthier with every confrontation. I advise a cursory glance, then move on to other images in this blog, lest it sap your ardor for exploring random pictures and various ramblings on the vast and endless net.

Zulu adorned

In the 21st Century last nights storm still had me lying awake, wide eyed and uneasy. TV screens may be large and affordable, but the jungle is only inches away, and even now as a new night approaches I can hear distant thunder. Will we never leave the blowpipes and bone knives, damp floors and centipedes for that shining white future? More masks to come!

mask tattoo

One of a series of tattoo designs, all revolving around masks. Designed to be placed on the face, covering most of it.  I always personally wonder why no one ever (or rarely) gets a design to do with the body it is being created on. For example the bone or nerves, muscle, etc that lay under the area of skin worked on, Or cells, pores, glands...so many more fascinating, and relevant, images other than just dragons, tigers or skulls.

Buffalo Dreamtop colour sheet

Earlier on this blog are posts of some Designer Toys, including this, Buffalo Dreamtop, from my Tomahawk Toys range. This is that toys colour sheet.
My feelings about the cereal toys that influenced its design are best summed up on that post, and so I repeat them below also.

From a very early age a steady diet of Kellogg's Frosties allowed me access to some of the most evocative memories from my childhood, Cereal Toys! 
 In between what seemed like so many breakfasts...a new box finally! Pulling out the pillow of cellophane, trying to spot the prize through  that mist.
Wiggle rings!, lassoing cowboys ,their horses kicking up dust at the twist of a wrist. Camel trains, stretch pets... they actually WORK!! Crater Critters, actual aliens... before school even! Noodle Nodders,that snake in a log, and the hippo, the mechanism was so smooth, his mouth just kept going and going,  this stuff was better than television! and one of the best series, the Totem Tribe. So smooth, almost chewable, and they fitted onto each other so perfectly, soft plastic, sensual form and wondrous colours.
Zoom ahead 40 or so years, and  and it is season for a tribute.
 Buffalo Dreamtop is my memory of those wonderful totem figures, blended together and twisted by time. With the smell of Play Doh in my nostrils, and the feel of silly putty under my hands  So thank you, to whoever thought some kid would scream the supermarket isle down to get his hands on anything that looked like a toy, even a tiny piece of plastic stuffed in a cereal box. But what giants they seemed to me then.

Mc Tuff

What if Mickey wasn't born in Sunny California? What if he did not turn out to be the poster boy for Disney and settle into a multi billion dollar empire?
Meet Mick Mc Tuff. 
Born on the wrong side of Detroits rusty tracks, mutated at an early age from sniffing diesel and smelting computer memory. This desperate wretch finally found employment in a tin button factory, where he hit upon the idea of smuggling out factory rejects and selling them in alleys with his mug plastered on them. Sales were, at best, abysmal, and he now resides in a doss house awaiting trial for theft of his employers property.
Oh but for a few miles difference, and the right light on a sunny afternoon in a downtown pet shop.

Popular Mechanoids Card 10 - Silentic Schematic

Presented in glorious Mech-O-Vision, Silentic Schematic 

The subtle crackling polystyrene,
Parting slowly as I tear it,
Inside each soft round hard edged robot
Like arrows shot from whisker biscuit
Slowly I immerse its body
Into my unsweetened coffee
I realise
That heaven lies
In a Tin Pin Patented Silentic.

Silentic- Silence is Golem.

Card 9 0f 600. Silentic.

Late night ozone crepitates over yellow tube eyes, unmoving unless moved, like Adam, created from dust, the unshaped form of Silentic sits.

Where do we place our inherited innocence?  Certainly not in our ego, where sin is treasured, love is conditional and we wait for death whilst wishing death on all others. For to see a body is to see death, built with a phenomenalistic mind, encased in unconscious guilt.
Surely the only place must be in the young, where the title innocent goes hand in hand. And when the young grow old we look to animals, our or others pets, we pat and love with no hesitation. And when their short lives are laid aside Silentic is there, non judging, a relic lit from within. Whose time with us will outlast, outlive, outside. Until the day we reclaim what is rightfully ours.

Let there be light!

Schematic of the amazing Torchey! 

Card Number 4 in Popular Mechanoids Premium Trading Cards, Red Series.

Cycloptoid Schematic Card Number 6

Some details about Cycloptoids classic power plant.

A good old fashioned 2800 cylinder radial engine, (1400 cylinders placed back to back), each row of pistons slightly offset from the previous, forming a semi-helical arrangement to facilitate efficient mercury flow cooling.A mechanical gear-driven triple stage variable speed centrifugal type supercharger provide forced induction, whilst some models have been fitted with 200 Gyro brand Turbo chargers.

  

12 to the power of 12 = 8,916,100,448,256 litres.

Essentially a 9 Tera Litre engine.
5600 deep-mount, Ceramalloy, spark plugs.
Power Output: 222,200 hp at 862,894 rpm
Specific power: 72000.661 hp/in³
Compression ratio: 6.85:1
Power to weight to intelligence ratio: 00.82hp/lb/neuron
Bore and Stroke: 15500.600 mm (600.125 inch) x 17400 mm (600.875 in)
Weight (Dry/Mercury induced) : 34595kg
Cycloptoids entering retirement are often required to provide

 hearing protection for all life forms within a 17 hemisphere radius.

My optic friend

Card Number 5 in the Popular Mechanoid Premium Swap Card Series
Cycloptoid!

One of Cycloptoids most talked about mysteries is the overwhelming memory capacity provided.  Upon initial inspection  one might assume it is to complement the extremely robust, long life Rev/Rip Hull. But realisation how maintenance-intensive such a heavy duty suit is reawakens the debate immediately. The second justification may arise in the exceptional environments such a machine would find itself. Unmapped, unique, data intensive milieu needing minute clarification, then  classification. A quantum of options to sift and decide, every moment...but.....this observation could all be done on a dinner plate, served up to as many hungry satellite drives as needed. To be digested at leisure by such smaller devices still, and just as accurately as an apparatus so large in quantity, and hungry in power ,that 75% of motivation available is used to simply move this memory around.
And so we arrive back, a little late, slightly thirsty and certainly slighted, to this original quandary... why? Why so much, so long, and at such cost. Certainly a life form with these criteria would not last one generation, before buckling under its own weight, suffocated by its own corpulence. For it is this final, strange blade that cuts past every casual enquiry, and sits quivering inches from Cycloptoids very heart,.. entropy. That strange inevitability that ensures the very state of its organised, regimented memory will secure the eventual flight into chaos, as sure as a stars giant gravity will be the strength behind its collapse.
Surely this was known to the engineers, building essentially into their own creation unnecessary, almost cruel, redundancy. How many Cycloptoids roam now, witness to the wonders of the Universe and time itself, unable to articulate even their own name.

Carbo Cut-Away Card number 2

Number 2 from the Popular Mechanoids Red series: Carbo Cut-Away!

Carbo Cut-Away card back

Portrait of a robot

The Popular Mechanoids Trading Card Series allowed some robots exposure they would otherwise never have experienced. This manifested in various manner, the most renowned being  Ocular 7 (Red Series Card  Number 742)
 Becoming  Automaton magazine's  Gear of the Year in 1952. Starring lead in the classic film, Attack of Contraptica. Finally, becoming the subject of  avant garde artist Anti-Warp Hol-o-graph's acclaimed 'Fragmentions' series  (sample seen above).
  Ocular 7 went on to blaze a trail of independence for Mechanoids everywhere. The first to patent his own chemical formula, (Silica Eye Lubricant) , the first to own his own electrical sovereignty, and perhaps most significantly, the first licensed mechanoid to register as a free citizen of the Earth. 

Torchey, true sight is knowledge

Third of 600 in Popular Mechanoids Red Series of Trading Cards. This robot is built with vision including a negative lens, positive cornea, and mono focusing (allowing each 'eye' precise focus and high magnification). To recreate stereoscopic vision, Torchey uses a geometrical system, tracing paraxial rays of light through his optical axis to conclude relative distance, much like a chameleon. This ability does away with the need to turn, and considering the dereliction of any functioning neck mechanism, suits Torchey just fine. 

An experiment several years ago using interferometry saw eight Torcheys combining their amazing capacity to focus, cumulating in a picture of the known universe so beautiful that several scientists observing had to leave the room.  

Lamprey 33s Cigarette Cards

Early one-sheet printing of Lampreys 33's Trading Card inserts.  Many discrepancies are shown between these and the updated Popular Mechanoids  Premium Swap Cards, including backgrounds, the robot's details on the card backs, and even some names of particular mechanoids.  

Lampreys common parent company, with Popular Mechanoids Publishing, Tin Pin Toys, licensed this set of cards essentially to promote their range of newly released domestic and industrial robots. Ambitious executives, eager for share growth, jumped the gun on many of the companies yet to be registered Mechs.
Card 18, for example, Helidron, was still a military secret when the first nicotate stained fingers pulled from their highly addictive packet of Lampreys a card containing fully detailed specifications of what, at the time, was a Government sponsored, covert and arcane  killing machine.       

Tin Pins Trading Card strategy to segment, then target through promotion, was both a success and disaster for the company in the 1930s.  Although much was known about the public's buying habits, their perception of consumerism in an age where up to 80% of sales were made face to face, 60% of household items were often hand made, or included hand made parts, and a disastrous 70% were a once in a lifetime purchase, little was understood about the unconscious guilt driven and pleasure seeking motives for non essential and luxury goods. For a company based on a six month  'concept to sales floor' time frame, and an even more radical two year product life span, this was an age that, to the Tin Pin Board of Directors, seemed mired in the languid quicksand of sensible, quality based trade. A nightmare for the intended 'buy now, buy later' philosophy they expected to drop surreptitiously  into civilisation's Martini 

On reflection, whilst Tin Pins greed based, military funded, technological thrust in the early half of the Twentieth Century can be seen as an amoral assault on all that is good and decent, it also provided many with the means for a quality of life hitherto undreamt of. Buying power increased, tools capable of phenomenal work were placed into the hands of the righteous, wrong doers and indifferent alike.  Ecological disasters, now spawned by few, where once many would have had to have laboured, communities saved in the palm of a hand, or from the size of a suitcase. And armies laid low with the flick of a wrist, and the age of a child. All these events must be weighed by history, and judged in tomorrow,  before we will truly know what to write on the headstone that is Tin Pin Toys Incorporated.