David Galletly: Blog

Batman Illustration for Wired Magazine

David Galletly — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:39:43 +0000

For the past 6 months or so, I've been regularly contributing to the US edition of WIRED Magazine, specifically illustrations for Mary H.K. Choi's TV / entertainment / pop culture column in the Play section.

It's been great. Having a regular magazine gig is an exciting, scary and rewarding thing. It's the kind of job I'd imagine having when I used to think, "man, maybe I could work as an illustrator" back when I was studying graphic design and feeling fairly unenthused about a future in a studio discussing typefaces with tastefully-shirted men. And, when I accidentally fell arse-backwards into actually being an illustrator, it's these editorial briefs with their sketches, drafts and deadlines that most make me feel like I maybe, possibly, just might have some kind of future being my own boss.

As with everything I do, I see only the mistakes. I beat myself up for procrastinating and live in constant fear of 'blowing it'. Every other artist out there is more talented, wittier and more proffessional than me. I'm often uncomfortable with the style I can easily fall into and I meticulously budget 6 months in advance for when the money, inevitably, dries up. But, for now at least, I'm happier than I've ever been. I feel more like a grown up than I did a couple of years ago when I was working part-time in the same stockroom I'd worked in since college and I feel less depressed, ashamed and washed-up than I did a year ago when I took a job as a web designer for a company that I did not fit.

The above drawing, part of a larger piece (featuring Bert from Sesame Street on drums) in the May edition of WIRED is maybe my favourite thing I've done for them. It made me laugh while working, which is rare, and I got to retrofit some little animations (something I'm still learning) in there too for the iPad version. Compared to how I often feel about my work, it makes me extremely proud to say that I'm 'mostly happy' with how this guy turned out.

Thanks to everyone who has helped and encouraged me over at Wired - Mary, Bradley, Alex, Tim, Christopher and Meighan have all been awesome. Go buy it, read it, and keep your eye out for my daft drawings. Well, unless I blow it.

Oh, and the best thing about having your work in a magazine? It impresses your mum.

I've Been Remixed

David Galletly — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:32:23 +0000

My friend Steve McEwan is an odd fellow. He likes to amuse himself in baffling ways - weird drawings, weird videos and now, weird music.

Recently, and completely out of the blue, he posted the above track on my Facebook page. It's pretty incomprehensible and features my voice 'remixed' to a bouncy wee beat alongside footage of a man with a lawnmower.

I was at once amused, confused and embarrassed. Was he having a laugh? Taking the piss? Bored? I don't know. There's another one called How To Fix A Car That Idles Poorly too.

Alien Workshop: Transworld Cinematographer Project

David Galletly — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:38:38 +0000

Transworld have put out a new skate video out called The Cinematographer Project. 13 of the best filmmakers in skateboarding were invited to produce 3-5 minute sections and the end result is pretty frikkin' impressive.

One particular part stands out above all others - Alien Workshop's. AWS have forever put out amazing stuff. I must've watched Photosynthesis a million times growing up (when we visited Philly, Alex had the pleasure of having specific ledges and stairsets pointed out to her every 5 minutes) and I've always loved Alien's distinctive art direction and cinematography (lots of found footage / collages / animation / photos edited in with the skating). Their work is immediately identifiable. Many hate on the arty stuff, wanting only skating, but I think it creates a rhythm and helps a part feel like it's been crafted rather than, like many videos these days, Final Cut to within an inch of its life.

The Transworld section contains some of the best skating I've ever seen. Alien Workshop's team is arguably the strongest in skateboarding right now (so happy that Dill is going for it again) and seeing those guys together in such an intense little clip is edge-of-your-seat exciting. Understandably, the part currently exists in that uploaded / taken down / re-uploaded / re-taken down limbo that all modern videos go through so I can't, and won't share it up here, at least until the unwritten 'grace period' that new videos receive is over. If you really can't wait you can, y'know, buy the damn video ya cheapskate.

Oh, and Jesus Christ at Bledsoe's tailslide (above), Dylan's front board, Gilbert's switch flip, Omar's hippie jump and Grant's nose blunt (above).

The Cosmonaut Stylus

David Galletly — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:32:41 +0000

On the recommendation of Marco Arment (he's usually spot-on when it comes to product reviews), I've decided to give Studio Neat's Cosmonaut Stylus a try. It arrived this morning in a beautiful little box.

I've played around with it on my phone and, yeah, it's pretty good. It's well made, it's heavy (in a good way) and it works. I was on the lookout for a stylus for drawing with when I re-enter the world of tablets and I can already tell that this one'll work great on an iPad. On a phone, it's maybe a little chunky (if you're going for detail it definitely obscures exactly where you're drawing, but nowhere near how badly your finger does). Also, slightly more pressure than I'd expect is needed to register a tap - possibly because I'm being fairly ginger with it on the smaller screen. These are nitpicks though, on the whole the Cosmonaut is really nice to use and I'm looking forward to trying out some 'proper' drawings soon.

Draw Something

I'm not a massive fan of app-of-the-moment Draw Something. It's has loads of problems and if, like me, you've played a whole lotta iSketch over the years, it's kinda boring in comparison. Playing Draw Something using the Cosmonaut does improve things, however, and I'm gonna stick it out in the hope that the forthcoming update, at the very least, adds a frickin' undo button.

If you'd like a game, my username is davidgalletly.

I'm Selling an iPad 2

David Galletly — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:37:38 +0000

First off, let me apologise about the un-classy self-serving sales post. I will keep this short.

Like most of the world, I'm selling an iPad 2. It's a black, 32gb, wi-fi model in really good condition. It's the first ever thing I've sold on Ebay - hence this post. There you can see more photos and information. I even made a horrendous video of myself to accompany the auction to prove, as someone with no feedback, that I'm a real person.

If this is of interest, you can find it here. As a wee incentive / apology for clogging up your RSS with what is essentially a big advert - should someone buy this gizmo who reads my site, let me know and I'll chuck in a free print or something.

The auction ends tonight (Monday) at around 10pm and it can be picked up in Glasgow tomorrow if that's helpful.

Sorry x

Withered Hand: Heart Heart EP

David Galletly — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:22:35 +0000

Of all the things I work on, I think the stuff I get to do for the Scottish music label Fence Records is my favourite. I've been a fan forever and this latest project has allowed me to be involved in something that I remember wishing I could do back in college.

Back then, Fence would release really cool little EPs on CD-R as a kind of record-club called Picket Fence. I had tons of these things. The artists had complete freedom and, because it was quite a small-scale set up, you'd get loads of odd music and weirdness that you couldn't find on 'proper' albums. Each PF release came in a neat wee cardboard sleeve with artwork by the act themselves and, if I remember correctly, a spray painted issue number. *

I loved that stuff. I remember showing them to my classmates saying how cool it would be to work on something like that.

Well, recently Johnny and Kenny asked me if I'd be interested in working on the artwork to a kind of spiritual-successor to the Picket Fences. Of course I bloomin' would! Didn't they know I'd said to my classmates how cool it would be to work on something like that 10 years ago?

So, as of last month, I'm happy to announce the launch of Chart-Ruse. The initial set in the F3NC3 R⅓CORDS’ 33s subscription-based EP series. **

Kicking things off, is Heart Heart EP by Edinburgh's mighty Withered Hand. The 7'' vinyl features 3 tracks plus a King Creosote remix which is exclusive to the record itself (as in, you can't even download it like you can the others). The title track is particularly fantastic and can be enjoyed here:

For the artwork, I gathered together dozens of ancient maps, charts and diagrams and set to work with my (digital) scissors and glue to collage together a bright green (chartreuse - get it?) fantasy-world of mountains and sea monsters. The reverse (which can be seen properly here) features a broken-heart design that I adapted from Withered Hand himself.

The end result is something I'm really happy with. I tried to keep it loose and fun and, well, Fencey, while at the same time giving the series its own particular look and feel.

Moving on from here, the artwork for the next two Chart-Ruse EPs (by Delifinger and a still-secret third artist) will feature different islands and additions to part 1. Following that, we'll change the colour, change the title and change the artwork for the next 3. And so on, and so on. Confusing? Yeah, kinda, but that's the fun of it. As time goes on, it'll start to make sense.

The Chart-Ruse subscriptions have sold out but you can buy Withered Hand's Heart Heart EP and pre-order Delifinger's Escapes EP individually. Keep an eye out for news on the third release, and subsequent sets in the series, by following Fence or myself on Twitter. The full artwork is on my site and there are more photos on my Flickr.

* The spraypaint would make the CD stick inside the sleeve in the most maddening way. It somehow added to the charm, however.

** Fence, as you may have noticed, LOVE a convoluted title and a bad pun. KC's doing, I think.

What I Wore Today: Skateboarding

David Galletly — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:11:11 +0000

If you don't know, What I Wore Today (drawings only) is a Flickr group started by Gemma Correll that encourages people to regularly draw self-portraits wearing, well, whatever you're wearing. It results in a nice mixture of both drawing and fashion styles.

My outfit choices are worryingly repetitive so I usually try to add a wee activity in there too. This drawing is from a few days ago on a visit to my parent's house - it was the first time it had been dry enough to go to the skatepark in 6 months. I grabbed my board and nipped round for a wheech about. I was a wobbly old man. My legs are still sore.

Also, I've recently started a What I Wore Today section on my site where I'll try to archive all of these daft things.

Squarespace: The Final Frontier

David Galletly — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:21:23 +0000

This post began life as a short conversation about blogging platforms had back in December on Twitter between Carolyn Alexander, HelloJenuine and myself. I abandoned it due to time issues and, funnily enough, dissatisfaction with my as-it-stood blog. What follows may be of no interest to anyone beyond the three of us. Actually, it may be of no interest to Carolyn and Jen. I'm not even sure that I'm interested.

Carolyn, like myself (and Jen a little before us) had made the switch from Blogger to Tumblr and had found frustrations in the transition. It's clear that there is no perfect solution for what we, and many others, are trying to do with these different platforms. What do you do if you're too picky about certain things to be happy with a mass-market service, but not picky enough about everything to build it yourself?

No idea, but this is how I got to where I am today:

BLOGGER

When I first started a blog, Blogger seemed like the obvious choice. Easy to set-up, easy to customise, easy to post. It was owned by Google and, back in 2006, Google were pretty great. For a couple of years I went so far as to use my Blogger blog as my main site through a hacky system of treating posts like they were pages. I even filled one up with thumbnails and used it as a portfolio.

But after 5 years and a few hundred posts, Blogger felt done. It seemed unloved and out-of-date and I was uncomfortable having my work there. I wanted out. I became reluctant to post. Google, with their increasing tendency to mess with or axe their products, finally pushed me away. (1.)

WORDPRESS

Where to go, though? Wordpress.org? Too much choice! Too heavy. Too many moving parts. I knew I didn't want to fanny about with setting up hosting and installing a CMS and learning how everything works, so it'd need to be the Wordpress.com web-based thing then? I guess, but I couldn't even tell how expensive what I needed would be. Everything's a premium bolt-on. Want to use your own domain? Sure… so $12.00/yr. Want to customise how it looks? Yeah… so $30.00/yr. Wan't to go ad-free? Um, probably… $29.97/yr. Extra space? Know what? forget it.

Ach, maybe I didn't investigate properly. I'd have figured it out. I didn't (and don't) have the energy.

TUMBLR

Tumblr, then. Tumblr seemed ok. Lots of people I knew were using Tumblr. It was popular, which probably meant it was being taken care of. I like Marco. He makes good stuff. He made Tumblr. He probably made it pretty good. Tumblr was a place for cool kids. I'm a cool kid. Lord knows I love animated gifs. Maybe I'd post a photo from the 90s of a model smoking a cigarette.

I signed up, bashed together a layout real quick, pointed a subdomain at it and was done. I had a new blog! It was free, it looked pretty and I could update it from my phone. I could finally stop procrastinating and start post(crastinat)ing!

Then… nothing really. I wrote a few bits & pieces, posted a few pictures and, y'know, just didn't feel it.

It's an odd one, Tumblr. It quickly became obvious that it was designed to do certain things and it worked best when doing those things and not-so-well when doing anything else. Funny that. Tumblr's built for microblogging. It's for sharing things you find. It's for dipping in-and-out of. Even though you can make a real bloggy-blog there, when you do it feels like you're not doing it right.

The little things killed it for me. The way Tumblr handles pictures, for example, is infuriating. Uploading an image to your own blog requires making it a 'photo post', which wouldn't be a problem if 'photo posts' didn't allow you to add a title. I like titles! Ok, fine, make it a 'text post' then. Now you can add a title, but you'll need to host your image somewhere else. 'sake. I ended up making a blog images set on Flickr, which worked alright for posting my own work, but heaven forbid I wanted to post someone else's. Do I link it directly? What if they take it down? Put it on my Flickr? Doesn't seem right. Tinypic? Yuck.

The community side of Tumblr is weird too. As a producer-of-things, it's nice to see your work shared & liked & shared & liked. What do they call it, reblogged? Tumbl'd? It's positive feedback, but it feels kinda temporary. Everything goes through that damn blue dashboard and gets lost in the stream. Posting artwork there feels akin to putting a joke on Twitter and enjoying how it can whizz around if someone retweets it. Nice, but temporary. The lack of comments too, while not a deal breaker for me (I mostly agree with the 'no comments' side of the debate), just add to the feeling that you're trying to play snooker on a pool table. (2.)

I still use Tumblr. I really like it for other stuff.

This, I think, is where Jen & Carolyn were / are and what got us tweeting in frustration. It's a problem for a certain kind of blogger. Artists, illustrators, photographers and graphic designers all know how they'd like their own stuff to look and to work more than your average person. Ideally they'd design and maintain it themselves. Most importantly they want to enjoy using the stupid thing once it's up and running. What many, myself included, don't particularly want to do is to learn a ton of web development or focus too much energy dealing with daft hacky nonsense that gets in the way. We're neither casual-users, nor power-users. Smart-casual-users, maybe.

SQUARESPACE

Merlin Mann, via his amazing Back to Work podcast, turned me on to Squarespace and that's where I am now. Admittedly he was selling a product, but damn, he sold it well: Easy to use! Simple when you need it! Powerful when you need it! Reliable! Flexible! Sustainable! Well maintained! Fun!

Those things, on the whole, have rung true. I used the free trial, put a blog together and noodled around. After a few days, I decided it was worth the money and moved my Tumblr content over. A few weeks later I moved my full davidgalletly.com site over there and, as of today, I'm not in bad shape. For the first time since my early days on Blogspot I have everything in one place and can add new stuff without a headache.

Without sounding like an advertising pitch - if you're not happy with your current set-up, maybe give Squarespace a look. They're not for everyone and they're not perfect - the UI takes getting used to and some stuff doesn't work quite how I'd expect - but regardless, they provide a good service and they fit my needs better than most.

Stay tuned for a TON of new work and a TON of new posts. I had to get this big, boring one outta my system to kick it off.

(1.) The same wariness of Google has resulted in my recent move away from Feedburner too. I've tried to make sure as many subscribers as possible have survived the shift but if you want to be sure, the definitive location of my RSS feed is: davidgalletly.com/blog/rss.xml. (back to position)

(2.) This is a bad analogy, but I like bad analogies. (back to position)

Petition to Rebuild Stirling Skatepark

David Galletly — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:37:56 +0000

Me at Stirling Skatepark circa 95/96 during a misguided rollerblading phase.

SHORT VERSION: to secure important funding, a short-timescale (before Fri 10th February!) petition has been set for the rebuild of Stirling Skatepark. If anyone who thinks this would be a good idea could show their support, I'd really appreciate it. You can sign the petition here.

Despite moving to Glasgow over a year ago, I still get through to Stirling as often as I can. When I'm back, I'm catching up with my parents, Alex's parents or friends (or all of the above). While that doesn't usually leave too much spare time, I do try to head along to the wee skatepark if I can.

Stirling Skatepark aka 'The Bowls', situated in King's Park, is a small, rough concrete affair that has seen better days. It's badly designed and not much fun to use. I love it, though. It was my park growing up and, as far as I'm concerned, it's still my park. From 1994 through 2009, I'd say that I visited that little grey island almost every (dry) day. Some summers 12hr+ sessions were the norm. And, even though my usage has shrunk to a handful of visits a year, I reckon there's a good chance that I've spent more time in that skatepark than anyone else in the whole wide world.

My mum and dad live nearby, you see. I could get there in 5-10 mins and nip home on a whim if I needed to. If the skatepark was a pub, I was a local. Whenever I go back, I half expect to be greeted by bunch of friends but instead it's a new bunch of young folk who make me feel like the old, crap skateboarder that I am. And that's fine. That's the way it should be.

Proposed design by Wheelscape.

Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is that there are plans afoot to renovate the park. For the past few years, BMXer, park regular and all-around good dude Ali Hair has lead a campaign to secure funding, planning and permission to, y'know, make the place less crappy. He's close too. Really close. There are plans, there is permission and there is almost funding. A last-minute hitch, however, has required a petition to allay any doubt that the park might not be popular enough to justify the expense. That's totally understandable. To a lot of people a skatepark is nothing more than an intimidating eyesore. It's a place where youngsters 'hang out' and do things. Recently, the park has been in such disrepair that it's actually kinda dangerous to use and if there has been any lessening in attendance, I'd blame the design and upkeep of the facilities before worrying that kids don't enjoy having fun anymore. That or the weather.

Regardless, here's something I've noticed in nearly 20 years of using Stirling Skatepark: If it's dry, if it's daylight and if it's not ridiculously early in the morning, there will always be someone using that park. And it's not even a very good park!

When the weather's good, you're all but guaranteed that it'll be busy too. That's all the justification needed. How many other free-to-use public facilities can you say that about? That wee park has kept hundreds, if not thousands of young (and not so young) people entertained, out of trouble and well-exercised for a long, long time. Skateparks are great little social melting-pots. They let kids meet people from other schools, from other towns, from other backgrounds, cultures and occupations. Without Stirling Skatepark, I'd have left school a sheltered, anti-social, uncultured little geek (or at least more of a sheltered, anti-social, uncultured little geek). The park has always been safe, quiet and friendly. Yeah, teenagers hang about there and pull up their hoods but guess what? That's what teenagers do. They do that everywhere. They can't get enough of doing that. Skateparks don't encourage troublemakers and if you think they do, I'm sorry, you're wrong. Kids go to these places because they love riding skateboards, bikes and rollerblades.

So, although I'd be sad to see the old place go, a better skatepark is desperately needed in Stirling. It's a small place; there's not much to do. People get bored. If the city wants to keep up with the rest of the country, we need to be on top of stuff like this. Falkirk has a great park, for God's sake. Falkirk! Skateboarding and BMX have been popular for long enough that there's no excuse for any town not to support them properly.

If you agree, please sign the rebuild Stirling Skatepark petition before Friday the 10th of January 2012. Thanks.

For more information, the best place to go is the Stirling Skatepark Users Facebook page where Ali keeps everyone up to date by announcing the latest developments. Being Facebook, you can also catch up / discover / skate-date with loads of the people who actually use the park. In addition, there is a Stirling Skateboard Users blog that covers key points in the process. The proposed design is by the nice guys at Wheelscape Skatepark Construction.

Thoughts on iBooks, iAuthor & The Illustration Racket

David Galletly — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:06:30 +0000

After watching the iBooks Textbooks launch and having a little (like, 2 seconds) noodle around with Apple's new iBooks Author app, my thoughts turned immediately, inevitably, to my own gig - the illustration racket. I think this might be a Big Deal.

To talk from the top of my (admittedly uninformed) head for a minute - if there is now a way, however restricted it may be, to self-publish to the iBookstore, that's gotta be a Big Deal, doesn't it? As a starting point it has to be. Writers, obviously, should be freaking out, but what about illustrators? What about designers or DIY zine makers, knitting enthusiasts or poets? Can we now in theory distribute our books, our portfolios, our zines, our patterns and comics to millions of people? Jesus, if that's the case then yeah, it's definitely a Big Deal.

Depending on how flexible the tools turn out to be (looks like an ISBN may be required) and how expensive (I think you're charged to be listed on the iBook / App store), this could be really interesting. Imagine a digital, animated zine available to anyone with an iPhone or iPad for a couple of quid. Imagine an english student and an illustration student collaborating on a book and making a fortune. Imagine someone like Swatpaz making an interactive adventure story for kids and charging nothing for it because he's a nice guy. Best of all, imagine every illustrator (or agent) given an elegant way to distribute portfolios to anyone who might be interested. That'd be bananas.

Aye, there's a dark side too. The image of a classroom with kids all in rows, pecking away at their iPads (their expensive, fragile, wouldn't-take-it-to-school iPads) is, y'know, creepy. Things'd surely descend into fart apps and cyber-bullying madness by second period. And exactly how much sway should a big technology company have in education anyway? I'm not smart enough to know.

Every step we take away from pens & paper is a step we won't take back. We all love print. We all love glue and photocopies and posting our little envelopes. I don't think anyone wants to see that stuff go away. But, even if books do decline, even if it's better to do most things digitally, there'll still be a place for paper, just like there's still a place for vinyl. Don't worry about that, concentrate on the new stuff!

So what to do? I dunno. I should probably do a little more research and play with the apps properly. That'd be a start. This post is a thinking-as-I-go kinda deal and I'm likely way off with a lot of this - do Apple really want every Tom, Dick or Harry hucking rubbish all over the place? Seems kinda messy. Maybe by launching these products Apple will motivate someone else to do something similar. Regardless, I can't wait to hear what the guys on 5by5 have to say about the whole thing. John Gruber's take is already interesting. Will I make a book? Hmm, I'd certainly like to. Does that mean I will? Um…

Right now all eyes are on education, but it'll just take one clever sod with one clever idea to open the door for everyone. And y'know what? Whoever does that'll probably get a Big (book) Deal out of it.

EDIT: I have just noticed that I refer to the iBooks Author app as 'iAuthor' in the title of this post. Despite this being incorrect I will let it fly because I kinda like it.