Shiek Process Video

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Some fan art of Sheik’s Hyrule Warriors design from about a month ago! Made a process video of it, and uploaded it to YouTube:

It always kind of amazes me how much I enjoy video editing when it’s just for fun, and not for work/a job.

I’m making some hastily put together ref sheets for an art secret santa event, and finding it really fun to type out some of the character info. I’d like to make nice ref sheets for some of my characters, but who knows when I’ll have time to do that, so the actual ref images are taken from finished or mostly finished paintings, and some random or old drawings I have lying around, many which I haven’t posted to anywhere because they’re poor quality. But in terms of being useful as a reference, they’re are probably adequate. Or the best I have right now, in any case. Desperate times call for desperate measures, haha.

But it’s cool, because I mostly keep any written character info and character sketches separate (text document vs PSD file), and this is one of the few times where I’m seeing the text info alongside some images. How I’ve painted seems to have fluctuated a lot, and it’s kind of neat to be able to see that all in one reference sheet. It’s probably just interesting to me.

A crop of Spectros from a wip before linking some music videos for a new band I started listening to!

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I was supposed to go to a Greek food festival tonight, but it’s apparently so popular that the police have sectioned off the parking lot to not allow new people in haha. The food must be pretty outstanding to do that.

I listened to the German synthpop/discopop band Modern Talking for the first time recently, and I’ve been strangely obsessed with their music for the past couple weeks. Since September 13th, according to Last.fm. Though they’re a German band, all their albums are in English. The music itself, most of it, is really simple and catchy (many them are almost the same song haha) – similar rhythm and keys, but I don’t know, they’re so addicting! And I don’t know if it’s because of that similarity, but I haven’t grown tired of many of the songs yet, which I normally would have by this point.

Also, I found it pretty hilarious, because for the first couple of days I was only listening to two of their songs (was listening to a larger synthpop playlist of general 80’s artists), and I thought the vocalist was a sultry female vocalist the entire time, so when I saw the music video and the vocalist turns around and it’s this manly guy, it was quite the fun (& sexy!) surprise!

Oh, what the heck, let’s link the video for one of the two songs I was listening to! This is probably their second or third most popular song.

This is one of those 80’s videos that I LOVE, almost guiltily so. It is filled with a lot of small things I’m fond of. Probably the most noticeable is the lead vocalist, Thomas Anders, with the dark hair. I will forever love this video because I don’t think I’ll forget my reaction when, again, near the beginning of the video, he turns his head to the viewer and I’m expecting to see a lovely woman, and instead see this handsome man with long, flowing hair, with some of the most luxurious curls I’ve ever seen. On top of that, his eyes are incredibly striking, helped in no small part because he’s clearly wearing eyeliner. To top it all off, he’s also wearing bright lip gloss, of all things. Lip gloss! Things like that are why I love the 80’s, oh gosh.

I also like this video because of Thomas’ expression throughout most of it – at times he has a vapid, blank expression on, mostly when not looking at the camera. But it’s when he’s looking directly into the camera that it’s more interesting – he’s clearly looking at the viewer with the kind of “male gaze” that’s frequently used in fashion photography, and was historically (and is still very commonly used) given to female subjects in classical paintings – that kind of blank, inviting, “come hither” look. I love seeing that in a male subject, because it is just so much rarer, it’s a little fascinating to me.

I sent this video to a couple friends when I was having my “Oh my god the vocalist is a guy how is he making his voice sound that way it’s amazing!1!!!!@!!” reaction, but to my surprise, they thought the vocalist sounded like a man’s voice! Haha, I guess it’s because I haven’t listened to many vocalists who sound that way, though I know the kind of male 80’s singing voice they’re referring to.

Other things that I enjoy in the video are how hilarious Dieter Bohlen looks – in contrast to Thomas’ vapid stare, Dieter has super masculine facial features, and looks like he’s about to burst out laughing at any second. How the heck is he able to make his face look that amused for the entire video. I couldn’t stop laughing the first few times I watched him. I also like the costume military uniform jacket Thomas is wearing, and his white pants. I love the room full of giant synthesizes. I love the theater fog everywhere, the dark creepy house, dark under lighting. And the end tops it off with both Thomas and Dieter doing that ubiquitous 80’s dancing at the end, which I always love to see because it just makes me smile, haha. It’s just a perfect video for me in so many ways, I could watch it so many times and still find things interesting about it to see. About the only imagery I didn’t love in the video was the scene with the cello bursting into flame, it seemed out of place with all the other imagery.

Let’s break up this very large wall of text with another music video. “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul” – their first hit, and probably their most famous song.

This video is pretty funny, due to how they edited Thomas to stare you down with this judgmental expression for several seconds, repeatedly throughout the chorus.

But I love how unpretentious these videos are! Starting with the 90’s, a lot of music videos tried very hard to be “cool” and hip. It’s especially apparently with Modern Talking’s music videos from the 90’s (they were active from 1984 – 1987, broke up and then reformed in 1999). They are so much less interesting than the videos they were doing in the 80’s (and try so very hard to be cool and straight/not gay, complete with awful old school 90’s rap that is not very well written).

I found out that Modern Talking is actually a massively well known band, but their audience is international – they are virtually unknown in the US and UK. With the US, it’s obvious why they never attempted that market – disco died in the 80’s here and was replaced with rock. Which I only know after the fact, I wasn’t born then (which is why I’m always a little surprised that I tend to be so fond over much of the music from the 80’s). I read that the reason they didn’t seek out UK audiences was because they were uncomfortable they were marketed as a gay band there – I wish they had been comfortable enough to embrace their fabulousness during this era! (I still miss Anders’ luxuriously long hair – his short hair isn’t nearly as fashionable!).

I went into a long tangent here about 80’s and disco in the US and music artists’ images compared to then and now, but the main reason for this post was to gush over Modern Talking, so going to abridge it here! I didn’t gush as much over them as I meant to. Oh well! Can always do so in another post! Yes, I will link more Modern Talking videos in the future. Oh yeah!

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