resolute oligarchs, heraldry + hazleton

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 6 of 10 

“I’m con­vinced that every­thing you ex­pe­ri­ence or learn in life will even­tu­al­ly come into play if you be­come a Graph­ic De­sign­er. It’s why I ask my stu­dents wat they’re al­ready into at the be­gin­ning of every course I teach. A trend I was into back in the 1980s made a ma­jor come­back in the FLOMM game. Dig­ging thru box­es to find the old books, news­pa­pers and clip­pings – es­pe­cial­ly be­fore the bank took my house – was a trea­sure hunt.”
—Me, quot­ing my­self again
 

De­sign­ing the Vil­lains for FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­ERN 1923 was dif­fi­cult. But fun. Be­cause Tra­di­tion is steeped in, well, Tradition.
 

 

Lots of rules to play with and make fun of and break. 

So even MOR book learnin (and an­oth­er sec­tion to add to the Bib­li­og­ra­phy): Back­ground on the Game of Chess, Play­ing Cards, Mil­i­tary, Crime, Po­lice and Jus­tice, Horol­o­gy, Dec­o­ra­tive Arts and Ar­chi­tec­ture, Cap­i­tal­ist Em­pires, Dag­gers as Footnotes.

Like, fuck­ing EVERY­thing.
 

go­ing bonehead
And so the FLOMM Vil­lains end­ed up rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al Tra­di­tion­al things – and for their de­sign, they be­came a bunch of DADAist col­lage pieces made from a mix of il­lus­tra­tion and pieces of vin­tage ‘bone­head’ Clip Art.

In the 1980s there was a trend called ‘bone­head de­sign,’ a Retro Clip Art (née ‘Print­er Cuts’) Thing tied to Min­neapo­lis-based Graph­ic De­sign­er Charles S. An­der­son, cov­ered in de­tail in Meg­gs’ Chap­ter 22.
 

 

From Ralph Lau­ren CHAPS to Turn­er Clas­sic Movies to the first batch of FOS­SIL watch­es (they copied him, then he called them and said, ‘hey let’s work to­geth­er here’ and he end­ed up de­sign­ing a line of ‘ap­pli­ances’ watch­es for them) (above), Anderson’s up­date of wat be­came la­belled his­tor­i­cal­ly as The Fun­ny Lit­tle Man ap­peared on prod­ucts and pub­li­ca­tions everywhere.
 

 

I used to read all about CSA’s work in mul­ti­ple Graph­ic De­sign mag­a­zines and I was ho­n­oured to have some of his work in the 2006 de­sign show I men­tioned in our first post.
 

 

And this was long be­fore Hip­sters seized on the whole thing.

An­der­son brought back Ma­son Jars for Clas­si­co Toma­to Sauce in 1985, to­day they’re back again – as ref­er­enced on RADíO FLoMM in 2018, of course.
 

 

dig­ging and making
A ma­jor tra­di­tion I could not ig­nore is Her­aldry. And turns out, some­one wrote a book: 

Heraldic De­sign: Its Ori­gins, An­cient Forms and Mod­ern Us­age (1962) shows how to make your own Per­son­al or Com­mer­cial Coat of Arms, which was very pop­u­lar amongst car man­u­fac­tur­ers at one point – such as Ford, Buick, Porsche or Cadil­lac (be­low).
 

 

I de­vel­oped our Vil­lains’ Coat as best I could and had a Gen­uine British Per­son ac­tu­al­ly ap­prove it. 

Suzanne Leib­rick stepped in as one of the first FLOM­MISTS and gave me her okay. 

She lat­er be­came the ed­i­tor of all the weird copy I wrote for our ex­per­i­men­tal web­site and to­day is one of the lead­ing VR de­vel­op­ers in Sil­i­con Valley.
 

Who doesn’t want to blow up Park­ing Meters?* 

*In­vent­ed af­ter 1923. Oops. This faux pas led to me cre­at­ing this.

 

All this be­came part of a world where
AN­GRY MOD­ERN ARTISTS fight against a RES­OLUTE OLIGARCH –
a despot­ic Boss called The ThWINGh, with fun­ny hair – who SCREAMS at all around him, and wish­es to CON­TROL every­thing every­one says and does – stop­ping any­thing NÜ, abol­ish­ing change, us­ing his min­ions to en­force Ab­solute Tradition –
The Way Things Ought to Be …

The ThWHINGh reigns over a con­ven­tion­al world con­trolled by THE SU­PER RICH – and every­one else must fall into place in their so­cial class, give up their own dreams, work the fac­to­ries and in­dus­tries sup­port­ing the whims and de­sires of The ThWINGH and The Pow­er­ful Ones – while They (in the game they are called ‘They’) have all the wealth and all the power.
 

 

In my own for­ay into Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, I’d dis­cov­ered that some of THE SU­PER RICH had two view­points re­gard­ing their work­ers: If you’re not Su­per Rich, you de­serve wat you get for be­ing too dumb to ac­tu­al­ly be­come Su­per Rich; and You should be proud to toil away to sup­port your pow­er­ful rulers. 

Like, They wouldn’t shut up about it. Re­al­ly.

Upon read­ing mor, I found all this went back to The Age of Em­pire and it wasn’t un­til 1924 (right af­ter ’23, of course) that a se­ries of stud­ies were done that showed work­ers ac­tu­al­ly aren’t mo­ti­vat­ed by mak­ing their boss­es rich.

Who knew?
 

 

Over 30 dif­fer­ent Vil­lains included: 

The No 2, a ‘Pen­cil, no Eras­er,’ and Mars, the ‘An­gry Plan­et’ (above),

The Clas­si­cals ‘Shad­ows of An­tiq­ui­ty’ (old architecture), 

TARS, ‘Cig­a­ret­tic Airships,’ 

the rot­ting ex­trav­a­gant Ro­coc­cos (dec­o­ra­tive forms that get in the way), 

The hEAR, a ‘Sur­veil­lance-Ob­sessed Drone,’ 

The ‘Seats of Pow­er,’ Pawns, Time­keep­ers, Daggers, 

a ‘Roy­al Fig­ure­head,’ and Jacque “One-Eyed Player,’ 

Grande Gen­er­al Huffe on a re­cruit­ing poster and E. Sev­erenus, ‘Man­age­r­i­al Syco­phant’ (be­low and below) 

among oth­ers.
 

 

How close all this would hit home – mak­ing FLOMM mor rel­e­vant, es­pe­cial­ly by the end of 2016 – wasn’t some­thing I had predicted. 

We were on a path that damn near mim­ics his­to­ry, it wasn’t as ob­vi­ous yet to me that the need for AN­GRY MOD­ERN ARTISTS would come back into vogue. 

I was sim­ply con­cen­trat­ing on mak­ing a video game in­cor­po­rat­ing his­to­ry: The orig­i­nal ages of Monar­chy and Em­pire, plus the post-World War I world and the rise of Mod­ern Art – es­pe­cial­ly in Berlin – who knew our real world was about to fall into its own BAT­TLE for pret­ty much the same god­damn things?
 

 

mod­ern heroes
The FLOMM he­roes were straight­for­ward – old school frame an­i­ma­tion (some­time in col­lege, I was re­dub­bing 1920s Fe­lix the Cat car­toons with Led Zep­pelin tracks – for fun – so I knew how the old an­i­ma­tion looked) with sub­tle nods to art his­to­ry move­ments and players:
 

 

Pow­er ups were most­ly food-based, with Gar­lic be­ing the most lethal:
 

 

Once a play­er won the game – fight­ing their way thru mul­ti­ple lev­els with the ThWINGh at the end – they’d be able to ‘un­lock’ D’Evocatur.
 

 

Which is to­tal­ly a Bauhaus swipe – the same way Pe­ter Murphy’s band swiped Os­kar Schlem­mer’s icon for the school.

I orig­i­nal­ly named D’Evocatur ‘The New Man’ based on Malevich’s Fu­tur­ist Opera, Vic­to­ry Over the Sun (1913).

Or New­man from Se­in­feld, not sure.
 

oth­er content
Most of the art for FLOMM start­ed as sketch­es and hand­made art­work, just like the source ma­te­ri­als I was referencing.

The sprites for the ex­plo­sions were paint­ed on canvas. 

And I had not fig­ured out how to ex­port sprites from Pho­to­shop just yet, so it would be al­most a year be­fore I saw how my paint­ed sprites would animate.
 

 

And while build­ing all the parts and read­ing EVEN MOR books on Mod­ern Art his­to­ry, I kept mak­ing back­grounds, which I start­ed num­ber­ing, call­ing them FLom­mist Com­po­si­tions, like Vass­i­ly Kandin­sky pi­o­neered.
 

 

Us­ing the au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal ap­proach of Syn­thet­ic Cu­bism, col­lage ma­te­ri­als would be from my dad’s own his­to­ry, pho­tos from high school, WWII, his time in the Bay Area, his busi­ness­es and his home­town of Ha­zle­ton, Pennsylvania.
 

 

I even threw in a ref­er­ence to the awe­some snack PITZA one could only get there.
 

 

And at one point I found film neg­a­tives for pho­tographs of New York Har­bor he took dur­ing the war.
 

 

“A great many peo­ple come to me hop­ing they can change them­selves … they want to know how to han­dle life bet­ter. When an artist comes to me, he wants to know how to change the world.”
—Frank Gehry’s Ther­a­pist, from Sketch­es of Frank Gehry (2006)
 

manifesto’d
Then Bwargh von Mod­nar show’d up and we talked art movements. 

So I added her name in a collage.
 

 

And then I start­ed writ­ing THE FIRST FLOM­MUS MAN­I­FESTO – cause every art move­ment needs a Manifesto. 

Even a fake one.

And then Bwargh had a Man­i­festo she wrote on her own while tak­ing my his­to­ry class years be­fore. Her ver­sion was awe­some, and it re­mind­ed me wat a Man­i­festo re­al­ly should be. 

 

 

I opened the whole thing with a line from my wife:
 

“Some peo­ple are sim­ply con­tent to live in this world – the rest of us want to change it.”
—Jeanne Mehal­lo
 

I added a lot of my own be­liefs amongst FLOMM game silliness. 

 

A vi­su­al form of the Man­i­festo would ap­pear in the game amongst the info screens, and some of it fore­shad­owed wat was go­ing to hap­pen AF­TER the game.
 

 

And in talk­ing to Bwargh, I be­came very in­trigued by collaboration. 

Also, I found de­sign­ing an en­tire video game by your­self is kind of insane.
 

“I now know why game de­vel­op­ers work in project teams, with an em­pha­sis on the word ‘teams.’ I naive­ly took on all the de­sign tasks my­self. As a re­sult, FLOMM end­ed up in de­vel­op­ment for over five years.”
—Me, some time in 2015
 

Back in 2012, my team was me, Chelsea Davis do­ing mu­sic and Moki programming.
 

“Hey, let’s do this again some­time. I’ll write a tune and you make every­thing else! Ha ha!”
—Chelsea, af­ter the game release
 

With OVER 70 dif­fer­ent ran­dom­ly load­ing vari­a­tions, I fin­ished back­grounds some­time in 2013 – which in­clud­ed a Paint Like Cézanne as­sign­ment I made dur­ing my fresh­man year of High School. 

While mov­ing, I opened a box and there it bloody was.
 

 

mak­ing noises
FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 end­ed up with hun­dreds of parts. User in­ter­face, char­ac­ters, vi­su­al ef­fects, sound clips, sprites, art­work, ty­pog­ra­phy (I de­signed a font for the game it­self, based on the Palak­stil let­ter­ing of Lu­cian Bern­hard), and sound effects. 

I was en­cour­aged by a bunch of peo­ple to make my own sounds, not just use stock. 

A con­ver­sa­tion with the amaz­ing com­pos­er and sound artist Leon Milo con­vinced me to jump in with both feet. It also re­mind­ed me that as I got old­er, try­ing nü things should not be some­thing I ig­nore – which set me up for the risks I take to­day as an artist and human. 

Leon passed away in 2014, I re­mem­ber say­ing ‘why not’ to him as one of many why nots I’d be say­ing in years to come.
 

 

Sound De­sign was some­thing I nev­er pur­sued but had a love for. I’d ex­per­i­ment with record­ings when I was in high school and 10 years lat­er, pulled out a slew of ana­log equip­ment to cre­ate a Pink Floyd-like Big Band Mix­tape as favours at my wedding.
 

The Mix­tape took over two months to cre­ate. The Dig­i­tal world to­day HAS to be a hel­lu­va lot eas­i­er, no?
 

 

Far­ther back, I fell in love with the work of Ben Burtt when I first heard The Sto­ry of Star Wars LP (1977), which was one of the few me­dia things re­lat­ed to Star Wars that was avail­able to kids.

Lat­er, NPR’s Star Wars Ra­dio Dra­ma (1981) cre­at­ed an en­tire uni­verse only the movies hint­ed at at the time – be­fore VHS play­ers be­came fix­tures in liv­ing rooms.
 

 

I start­ed us­ing Garage­Band for FLOMM be­cause I had a feel­ing Apple’s UI would be easy to learn. 

And I’m still us­ing it to­day, some­thing about the wood­grain in­ter­face that I love. 

And al­most ALL of the game’s sound de­sign came from ana­log sources – with nods to Flash Gor­don (1936) and Old Time Ra­dio.

 

the pub­lic preview
WIth Moki pro­gram­ming – us deal­ing with fore­clo­sure and fi­nal­ly get­ting a di­ag­no­sis on my wife’s ill­ness (pseudo­tu­mor cere­bri), plus me teach­ing (at 4 dif­fer­ent schools – I had be­gun a 3 year guest lec­tur­er po­si­tion re­plac­ing a pro­fes­sor on sab­bat­i­cal at Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pa­cif­ic and stuck my nose in again at UC Davis) – I found my­self dri­ving all over the Sacra­men­to val­ley and the FLOMM project sort of lum­bered on in the background.

In 2013, I was in­vit­ed to give a talk at Amer­i­can Riv­er Col­lege about, well, anything.

I de­cid­ed to give a His­to­ry of the Bauhaus – to help pro­mote my Graph­ic De­sign His­to­ry course – and I threw in a quick pre­view of FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923.
 

 

The big ques­tion that came up – which I’d got­ten used to hear­ing over the next few years was:
 

“When do I get to play the game?”
 

And it was some­thing I nev­er could give a di­rect an­swer to. 

About a month af­ter my talk, Moki was called up for ac­tive duty and shipped off to Japan. And me teas­ing a FLOMM game start­ed to blow up in my face.
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 7   • • •

· · ·  back to  PART 5

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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