Saturday 17 April 2010

Long time no see!

Hello there,

I imagine some of you may have wondered 'Where has that annoying young scallywag disappeared to, what has he been doing'. The alternative may have been 'Oh Rob, I forgot he existed' or 'Thank god he shut up for a bit'.
Regardless of any of these, I have decided to talk a bit!

I am nearing the end of my foundation course. Joy! It has been great fun, I have experimented with a variety of materials and ways of working. I have become more conceptual and I have become more interested in trying to understand things I would have never tried to before. I find myself becoming an inquisitive person, interested in gathering knowledge in fields I wouldn't have thought of looking at before. I delve deeper into history, into music and current affairs.
I have my interview for Fine Art and Illustration on the 20th, I hope it all goes well, but I am confident it will.

Other than that, wargaming wise, my main focus has been Victorian Science Fiction (known from here-on as 'VSF'). I read War of the Worlds last summer and I have become somewhat enthralled by it. It is wonderful, the real sense of the end of the world in it is truly thrilling. Even the images it allows your mind to create through being ambiguous is wonderful. So, as I am sure you can understand, since then, I have been interested in this VSF lark, which has led to mad spending of money on various miniatures for a wargaming project. I have also been buying books for more research. These include Jeckyll and Hyde, a mixture of Jules Verne novels, some graphic novels (Aetheric Mechanics, a short Graphic novel that seems incomplete and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and the sequel to War of the Worlds 'Edison's conquest of Mars', the book I just started to read this morning.
It is different from War of the Worlds in that it is more based on the Science of the conquest rather than the Social aspect of the Martian Invasion of War of the Worlds. As a wargamer, this is interesting. I am at chapter 3 and we have already seen the creation of a space travelling 'car', which is illustrated as a cylinder which is propulsed by electricity (I don't understand the science bit really), this 'car' being ridden to the moon and back and the creation of a 'disintigrator weapon', which literally disintergrates a target by making it's atoms or molecules vibrate until they seperate.
As you can see, plenty of inspiration.

I will post up more regarding my current VSF project very soon. Unfortunately, probably not today as I have work, but perhaps this evening or tomorrow.

Thanks for the quick read.
Rob