As the world continues to gasp in astonishment at the glory of the Akira The Don Christmas album’s beautiful artwork, Akira The Don does the opposite of what magicians are supposed to, and reveals the creation process in a beautiful speed-drawing video, that also features part of one of his Christmas songs. THANK YOU AKIRA THE DON! YOU ARE A GREAT MAN, AND AN INSPIRATION!

You’re welcome Akira The Don Talking In The Third Person. I had fun. And right now I am uploading files and filling in metadata, ready to unleash the festive music on your asses. Ho! and Indeed, Ho twice mo’!

Lots of people have been asking me a stupid question related to the album’s art, and luckily, Wonchop posted the following brilliant comic on his Tumblr which saves me the bother of having to answer:

See?

I AM AKIRA THE DON.

And that is why.

RIP Christopher Hitchens. He was a brilliant and enviably eloquent human, with whom I shared many opinions, and with whom I disagreed violently, on equal measure. Letters to a Young Contrarian is one of the best, and funnest books I’ve read. Here he is talking about death and the afterlife, with some a very fetching beard on his head.

I play this record now, in his honour:

And as we fare feeling somewhat reflective, let us cast our gaze upon some mighty art works from the Blob Blog, in case you didn’t look in the Blob Blog today. You should, always, but anyway. There is the following, by Virgil Finlay:



I saw it on Comics Alliance. The second my eyes took it in, they welled with tears, and a knot formed in my belly. I really don’t know why. I mean, there is some mighty stippling in there. I always loved stippling, and you don’t see it much these days. Ir reminds me of the pulpy sxi fi books I used to read when I was little, and my longing for the future they promised. I guess it’s a kind of hiraeth.

This also inspired nostalgic feelings in me, the masterful Boulet‘s response to Frank Miller’s crazy rant the other week:

You can watch a speed drawing video of him creating the thing over here. It’s pretty amazing. No pencils. Straight on the paper with a single pen, then painting with watercolours. I think they’re water colours. They look watery. Anyway. It’s a beautiful peice, and says so much more than the average article on the subject.

Me and Mighty Tom Coles visited the Occupy spot at St Paul’s in London on Friday. It’s not a huge thing. Some tents. Some banners. A little soundsystem played ketmine trance, around which a little group of people danced and chattered, whilst sucking on cans of beer and damp joints. Hell on earth if certain parties are to be believed, right on the steps of God’s house… yet within the same proximity to the cathedral we happened up on a glass walled bar, hosting a private party for what appeared to be a hundred or so banking types, chucking back cocktails and wiping their noses frenziedly, who glared at me through the glass while the DJ played nineties R n B loud enough to drown out the Occupy soundsytem with little effort.

I was reminded, as I so often am these days, of the quote from the head of Police in London, who said that shutting down the myriad bars around St Paul’s that openly sell cocaine to bankers was not a priority because “they aren’t affecting society… they can afford their drugs.”

Oh, how I laughed when I first read that, in an Evening Standard interview on the tube last month. The architects of our distraction, the thieves of our wellbeing, blowing their loot on coke and hookers in the shadow of St. Pauls are “not affecting society…” whilst those that protest them are “naive hippies… an eyesore…” and a “public menace.”

We filmed me dancing merrily in front of the glass windows a bit, then got on a train. We stayed up till 3 or so going through the footage. It looked brilliant.

When I got up I named the songs, finalised the order, wrote the metatdata, and sent the album off to my manufacturer and my distributor.

SATURNALIA SUPERMAN, AKIRA THE DON SALUTES THE MAJESTY OF CHRISTMAS comes out Monday. Mere hours away from now.

PREORDER THAT FESTIVE SHIT BUBBA!

— Sunday, December 18th, 2011

As evidenced by the multiple questions on the subject in the last Donnish Inquisition, people still want another Akira The Don/Wonchop animation. Unfortunately, as long as the dude continues to duck my emails there won’t be one, but we DID link earlier this year for a lil’ project that had, until last week, been forgotten, by me at least.

I was working on an advert for a friend of mine, who amongst other ventures has a website that finds international accommodation for students. The brief was originally a motion comic based on the old Charles Atlas ads. I got as far as drafting the strip before it was decided that something less apparently sexist was required.

After some to-ing and fro-ing and picking of the work experience’s brain, a new route was decided upon – an animated ad in which  we would compare the historical difficulty of finding somewhere to live with the contemporary easy of using my mate’s website. I set about designing characters, which was fun, and ended up with, amongst a few others, these fellows:

I then set about storyboarding the thing, and drafted Wonchop, with whom I was plotting the ill-fated Living In The Future 2 video, to animate my drawings. I drew each scene, with the characters in their positions in Manga Studio, then imported them to Photoshop to color them, and stack the limbs and mouths and othersuch movement variations in separate layers. I then sent each scene to Wonchop to animate, and add amazing backgrounds. He’d send back the animated scenes and amazing backgrounds, and I cut them all together in Vegas and spent a day doing sound effects and silly voices. Ideally have spent at least two days doing sound effects and silly voices, but there wasn’t time, so I had to settle with the final thing not being the surround sound movie I’d have liked. It came out pretty dope though. Check it out:

— Friday, August 12th, 2011

Ladies and gentlemen! Drum roll please! That, up there, all shiny and glad, is the T-Shirt you’re gonna get with the Living In The Future compilation!

OMFG!

It is so beautiful. Screen printed by hand in glamorous Hommerton on charcoal coloured superior quality Gildan Super Soft cotton. It is the first offical item of Living In The Future clothing. It’s gonna have it’s own label in it and everything. Look at the label!

OMFG, I would marry that label were I not already betrothed to a LADY. And look at the logo in the context of all those other logos? How superior is that logo? OH MY GOD I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THAT LOGO! It is perfect! It succinctly and beautifully sums up my vision for the whole thing. Thats what Living In The Future is all about, having a big fucking ring around the world and it being normal.

GO GET THAT GREAT STUFF!

All praises due to my genius brother  Zef, naturally.

And me, obviously, for I am the king of this thing.

BWA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

So, more good news: I found Wonchop! Those of you that observe The Channels might have noticed me sreaching them for him lately, with increasing desperation, as he is, as you might recal, supposed to be working on the slavishly anticipated Living In The Future 2 video. Well, I tracked him down, via ancient technology, and he is BACK ON IT and I couldn’t be happier. So to celebrate, I shall share with you some of his awesome concept sketches, so you can bask in their sketchy glory and get excited about the final creation.

Whoo! Hype, non? Hype yes. So you go and preorder your music and your amazing Living In The Future clothing (be speedy, for you will notice the price has increased slightly, and it may again, labels and super silky cotton ain’t cheap), and I shall get on with The Work.

PAX!

— Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Now just look at that up there. Those are four dope-ass pieces of fanart I got sent within 12 hours on Sunday. No fanart for 6 months, then four (4) pieces in 12 (twelve) hours. And they’re all AWESOME. How in the name of Jesus H Corbett does that work?

Maybe it was a glitch in the matrixxx. Maybe there was a memo going round. Maybe it was because I posted those concept  drawings, and people got inspired. Either way, I think it is ace, and I urge you to go here and have a look at the full versions in the gallery. Click the fanart tab and be awed. I also fixed the email address (cheers KT for pointing out its former fail-status), so if you’ve got something you wanna send, then be my welcome guest. And include a website address if you have one, so I can send people to your place to look at your other stuff.

Anyway, speaking of drawings, I got some of Wonchop’s concept art for the Living In The Future 2 video in last night. Oh, did I just let that one slip? As if it weren’t obvious?

WE ARE MAKING AN ANIMATED VIDEO FOR LIVING IN THE FUTURE 2

Woah, huh?!

Yes, me and Wonchop, Wonchop and I, AKA WONDON, AKA DONCHOP, the award winning team that bought you Hypocrite, are making you an Amazing Cartoon Video. I am flipping HYPED. I am GASSED. I am HYPEGASSED. It’s gonna be AMAZING. I was just working on the treatment for the third verse and I was making myself Laugh Out Loud, so imagine how its gonna be all cartoony animated.

Holy crap!

Now, its entirely possible that some of you have never seen the FIRST Living In The Future video. Its not on Youtube, after all. However, half a million (500,000) people HAVE seen it on Newgrounds, where it was born, back in 2005, when there wasn’t any Youtube. Yeah, that’s right babies. Five years ago there wasn’t a Youtube. And the little video me and Zef made in Flash was going viral.

Yes, they were exciting times: I was making records with Fruity Loops and a Technics DZ 1200, and freaking out over my first Wacom tablet. Zef, who was still at school, had taught himself Flash, and was sat down the other end of my desk doing clever stuff with vectors.

Well, now its THE FUTURE, and things are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I’m making records with Acid and an Akai MPD16, and Zef is doing work experience at brand union, and at the end of his working day he comes back to my place and sits down the other end of my desk doing clever stuff with vectors. (Actually, he managed about 120 minutes of vectoring last night, the rest of the night he spent getting seriously gassed over my old G1 which I’ve gifted him, taking photos of things with Google Goggles and screaming ”IT KNOWS WHAT THEY AAAAAAAAARGH!” We both installed light sabers on our phones and had a fight with them. I won, because I threw the phone at him.)

THINGS DONE CHANGED!

So it is important - nay, necessary, that we make LITF2, yes?

Yes. So raise a glass to the promsie of tomorrow, and sing along with me:

I

LOVE

LIVING

IN

THE FUTURE

BABY!

— Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Drill Song by Wonchop

Drills! (drills!) Drills! (drills!)
Known from America to Japan
Drills! (drills!) Drills! (drills!)
Use it on it’s own
Or instead of your hand

It’s a spinny tool that’s rather cool
It’s a pointy piece of ace
You can drill a big hole through a rock or a wall
Or some giant robot’s face!

(engrish time!)

Doriru! (doriru!?) x2
You can pretty much find them anywhere
Doriru! (doriru!?) x2
They can even be found in some chick’s hair

You can tunnel down through miles of ground
And anything that moves
From goggled geeks to mecha freaks
Even Bruce Willis approves!

(loop time)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saFCxmZH_zw

— By Akira The Don on Sunday, August 1st, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-lSD0RaEhw

Nowt to do with the Radio 4 Beatboxer. Just straight DOPE animation from the Boy Wonder, WONCHOP (and friends). Props all day, oh my LORD!

— By Akira The Don on Friday, May 28th, 2010