Moving to substack

 My God,

this place has been dormant for such a long time but I feel like there is a lot I want to talk about these days.  The thing is I don't really want to support google and I also feel like my handle on blogger is kinda childish.

Because of this I decided to open up a substack to write what I want.  I also heard I am more free to say random shit on there and so I don't have to feel like I am walking on eggshells.  Welp if you want to see me on there for the 5 people reading this blog heres where I will be posting things that are walls of text:

https://substack.com/@hancocktom41

See you guys later.

"tired" of scary movies?-The Art Project

This Project was an interesting one...I honestly gotta say it was a project I really was anxious to start. I found the wheel in a trash and found it to a fantastic base for a great art project.  I recommend unless you really know what you are going to do with a piece of trash to think over your choices.  BE WISE!  Anyways Through this I want to show you through the process of the creation.  

Step 1:

Find the wheel (found it!)

Step 2:

Begin the spray-paint

Step 3:

Finished covering the wheel (with red spray-paint)

Step 4:

Finished the base coloring now for the illustrations.  I am preferring in this situation to go in the inspiration of Basquiat.
Finished product:

Something important I really have to get out there-for the heck of music

okay, as you know this blog has consistantly, i mean constantly boasted of my artwork or ideas.  But today I need to explain something that makes me feel like barfing again, and again, and again......Its the new streaming services of today.  People know now of spotify and the new, upcoming apple music and think "oh! Im totally supporting music this way", well no, you are not.  Long term this could, in my opinion mean the end of everyday fm radio, cds , etc.  even that new trend wiping the country of vinyls (which I love, but am sort of sad since its intended to blow off in 5 years)....Yes, you get all the music you want with the "glorious" but you know what it feeds into?
1.bad music habits-skipping, skipping, skipping-  People now days skip from song to song trying to find the best of the best, but never have time to look over what they have found and appreciate it.  When seperating yourself from a 4g phone-only world you are stuck with 3 (or 4 if you count minidiscs) different options to listen to music on the go:
-ipods/mp3 players
-cd players
-cassettes
The ipod was infamous till it was dropped from the market, as it was known for the first decline in the music industry (besides cassette recordings from the radio), as it intended to allow people to skip, add, or delete songs as any sort of file (or converted, your pick).  Now it is seen as a symbol of "good" music listening as it is seen as distraction free. NOPE.....I betcha one day they'll call streaming services distraction free, but I highly doubt that as you cannot go offline with streaming.  Although I do sort of find it a charm, but only for it minimal design.  And to be 100% real, I mean it sort of is distraction free if you compare it to an iphone or any sort of tablet/smartphone with wifi or 4/3g capability, but not as much as the cd/cassette

The cd player can skip songs,but can only play a limited amount of songs, depending on how much you got, so you get actually a better experience with only one artist or whatevers on that cd mixtape.  Theres two problems with this in comparison...you can 1, burn it from a computer, just like a mp3 player but only once unless you have a rewritable cd but those don't always work in every player and 2, its digital quality so the fidelity is limited.  Also pre recorded ones are still sold all around (but may go "woosh" as the apple music and spotify take over) so you can buy an artists cd in dedication to their music, and be able to listen to it wherever knowing its officially your copy, your copy you bought with your own money.  So I really reccommend cds, because the players are EVERYWHERE, even for a buck you can get a decent one.  But they still skip

then you have the underrated and popularily ignored cassette.  This little guy is even less distracting then the vinyl record as you can move the needle on a record player to skip to a new track, you cannot with a cassette.  So either you fastforward and find the right song or you just deal with it and listen to it.  Trust me, when listening to these, I can learn about an entire album within a week and already sing all the lyrics...I swear its great!  I would say, though, their players are a little more pricey now days, but are easy to find and can record almost anything in an analog quality (that is unless you move a cd to a cassette, which I did only for 3 albums; the shins wincing the night away, mgmt congratulations, and sex pistols, never mind the bollocks).  But no matter the source, you can dedicate the artist as you have no actual option to automatically skip to the next track.  Plus the players can be way less bulky and some are even as small and slim that they hold the cassette like a case, so they can even be as small as some ipods.  This can be compared to the minidisc, but I dont know what the heck to think of one of those, because they're physical and at the same time movable like an ipod.

2.Quality-Quality is a big thing when it comes to streaming, or heck any sort of digital music.  Heres a simple way to see it:
both will/can constantly get better and better in quality, but digital will stop at some point as it is composed of digital code,like ones and zeroes (in other words, FAKE).  And as the quality is higher and higher, the more space it takes up on your hard drive.  Then analog is more of a physical disc/tape that plays based off the vibration of sound that is picked up and transmitted to the record or cassette...dont ask me about tapes, because thats based off wierd chemicals and stuff that has to be professionally done.  But vinyl can even be made with a hand cranked turntable and a sharp rock, although you wont hear anything, the rock may pick up very, very very small sound waves when cutting the lathe.....I dont really care about quality, but when i pick up stre- wait, no I cannot do that!  Bottom line is, sounds from a vinyl/cassette or whatever analog format can be zoomed into and analyzed deeper to see which sounds are coming from who or where, but with digital theres a limit and from a certain point of zooming in all youll hear is mumbled up digital sounds that sound like a landline dial-up or whatever.  Digital has an end when it comes to exploration
3.Royalties.  Yeah I know mrs.self righteous taylor swift, was like give me money and ill join this stupid streaming cult.  MY GOD....If you want to make a change, just only release music on physical, and wait for people to look into your music the only they know they legally can.  Anyways, that means end term, indipendent artists make zilch, while pop artists stay, well pop and on top.  This gives them less of a shot out there in the real world and makes spotify/apple music the death star to the music industry.  If I were to be making music, Id stay away from any other deals from anyone else and just keep on as its going...I mean its not about the money in the end, its about having people listen and enjoy your music.  which brings me to the last and final bullet:
4.The feel-Think about it this way, when someone has the ability to listen to anything they want whenever they want, it would make it boring for one of knowing that its the only option.  Now think about this too, the constant skipping and fastforwarding is that helping either?  No, think about it this way too, when a person is to hear about a new artist, there are two different scenarios, take 2005 and 2015 as of today.  In 2005 if someone were to mention an artist, the other person would ask questions like, "what radio station" or "where did you hear about them?" or "where can I buy it?" or "is it on itunes?", but in todays world its more of like "okay let me listen to it for a second" -pulls up spotify/apple music- final response "i consider this person better", or "lets not listen to this right now"...yeah the person may put it in their tags for later, but the chance of them getting them is 2/100s....But thats only if you accept these destroying music like a giant laser hitting person by person.  But if you feel otherwise, grab your ipod, mp3 player, minidisc player, cassette player, cd player, heck even 8 track player and share music that way....trust me, it really may be hard to be pulled from those services, but in the end it pays off a lot,
anyways thanks for reading this rant, and if you agree or feel this needs more publicity please share with a friend...anyways thanks,
Thomas Hancock

Fooly Cooly: in VHS!!!

Fooly Cooly (FLCL) is a Japanese animation centering around a boy by the name of Naota who befriends a older woman named Haruko. That's basically the gist of the story that most people know but its also prone to including a bunch of hidden meanings and symbolism.  Not only that but unlike other animes which are prone to having cheezy story lines followed by a direct meaning to the audience, this hides most of its meanings behind a wall of cheezy dialect followed by funny scenes, so people laugh rather then find out the meaning.  As I may have been directly drawn away from other Japanese animations over the years, due to their rising popularity and incredible power to decrease the amount of people who copy the american animation style, this one stuck with me.  No its not from its soundtrack, (although I do constantly listen to the first cd, yes no vinyl or cassette made of this, it almost every day) but its idea to compact so much meaning, emphasis, unity and more into 6 small, compact episodes.  Might I also add, it has a great way of adding a feel of abstraction, surrealism, various mediums of style (wait'll you see the one where they try to copy south parks style,  its only a few seconds, but a few seconds really mean a lot.  I seriously am amused the creators of South Park didn't try to make fun of them for that by now.)  Not to mention NO ROTOSCOPING! even though I would say that doesn't matter that much as I still am a fan of Ralph Bakshi's films (PETES THE MAN AND WE DELIVER!).  

Anyways this project involved me taking an old tape, I chose titanic as it's the most common, and making 3 episodes fit on each VHS, (yeah, a 2 set titanic).  After that I would create custom covers for the VHS tapes along with some custom labels for the inside VHS tape....Sadly what happened was my good old blogging camera got lost one time as I was longboarding, which included all of the steps, and the original titanic VHS tape I used as a medium.  Yeah, I did get pics of recent photos, but that wasn't till I found one of my old crappier cameras in my dvd cabinet and an old sd card I used to stock my graphic novel on (luckily I didn't have to format it)...so yeah, the steps are lost. so you may have to go through the pain of reading and trying to visualize the steps I took, along with a stock photo of the Titanic VHS (no real problem with that I hope).  But hey, at least I have pics of the end result :)

Anyways here is how it went about:

1: The medium.

So, what the medium consisted of was, again, a 2 set titanic VHS set, the most common VHS you can find (and when I mean common, you will find this wherever you buy vhs tapes now days)...Mine, I was in a little better condition.  When I went to goodwill to find the medium, I found it unopened, still in its shrink wrap (not to mention it came with and expired contest raffle from Sprint.  Darn, should have entered, I think I was off by 16 years :( ).  So yeah, I was lucky because if it were to be used and opened, the recording quality would be horrifying

Sorry decaprio :(  Im gonna have to run you over with a vespa

2: The recording:

What I did for the recording was I took an old cord I used for my ps1 to hook into a coaxial-only tv and used it as the input for the vcr, channel 4 to be exact.  So the ps1 cord was able to actually be hooked into my ps3, using a legacy cord connection, I think its called like av multi out or something (instead of a hdmi to rf converter).  This was good that it connected because if I had to use a brand new hdmi to rf converter, it would have to be hooked into a wall to supply extra power as well it would cost me some extra money.  Besides I had it with me and whats the point  of buying an extra cord, if another already works :) (yeah extra quality, but not as convenient).  Anyways it was also beneficial because of the ps3's ability to playback Blu ray, so I was able to directly play and record the blu ray disc to the VHS.  It did require some tape to cover up the copy protection seal, but hey, its as easy as doing it to a cassette (hehe, so devious right?).

3:The Splicing (whoo, scary!)

Now this may have been one of the hardest steps in the process.  So I did know it wouldn't perfectly record onto the tape, heck I was sorta afraid that 3 episodes would not fit onto each tape.  So what really made it hard was I had to hand wind the leftover tape onto an empty reel, and splice the end back together with the ending leader.  No air bubbles and almost perfectly straight...took me almost 20 minutes for each tape!  How it worked was I cut the tape after blanking 10 seconds after the 3rd and 6th episode on each tape, then I opened each tape, cut the tape after rewinding a bit to make sure there was no titanic to be seen, (only freezing cold water, lol) and placed the leftover tape onto one side of a reel, and a blank reel on the other. Then as I didn't have an electric winder, or motor, I placed some duct tape on the top of the blank reel so I could grip and wind the leftover onto the blank side.  I had to rewind it onto another reel because most reels are different, and by playing back the tape onto two different reels, the tape would not play...no Idea how that works, but that's what I found.  It did require me to disassemble and open up both tapes, as well as look up the anatomy of a VHS so I could place the tape back the right way (trust me, its a lot harder then it looks.)

4:The Blanking of the covers:

This was sort of an easy step.  To summarize it up, I painted over the tapes covers with light brown acrylic paint and sanded as well as unpeeled the labels on the plastic tapes.  

5:The illustrations:

This varied, some were personal illustrations, created by me (Text, roman numerals, FLCL front labels, front and back of tape B, Back of Tape A, VHS shell of tape A), then some were traced, (VHS shell of tape B although I personally created the stencil, the cover of tape A, the FLCL label on both tapes tops, and the side label of the tape spelling FLCL again)....Anyways the color scheme was original at least for the traced images.  But I do want to give a shutout to the animators, as I did sort of trace the covers for some of them, anyways thanks everyone in the GIANAX department for creating such an influential animation :)

6:The end result:

After all of the hard work I put into the design, cover, etc. I resulted in creating this:

 

Front:

Side:

Back:

Inside of tape A&B:

Top:

Anyways, that's my latest project I have worked on and I am open to any criticism, Either comment down below or email me at hancocktom41@gmail.com, Anyways yeah, thats FLCL on a VHS tape, almost a months worth of work, but it paid off in the end :)

Cloud Pie-The latest piece

So, you ever get really bored in school, and you draw something so awesome that it should be a print or a full blown sketch with coloring and everything?  Well that is exactly what my new piece cloud pie is....I took a sketch from school, professionally traced, copied, and colored it in....but something that makes it more different then most pieces I draw, is that I colored it in with CRAYONS!!!CRAYONS!!!!  So let me explain the process....
1.Take drawing, place on sketch table-  Pretty self explanatory....I took and positioned the piece on my sketch table, and placed tracing paper over it.  Also, heres what it looked like originally...

2.Trace, and perfect-  well not really perfect....when tracing the paper so I can put it on a copy machine, I can use scrap paper to blank out mistakes, even if it doesn't look perfect at that moment...The process, or the tracing looks like this:

(Yeah, I know...it looks just slapped on....pieces of paper simply taped over bleeding marks and stuff...but once put on the black and white scanner, it goes unnoticed...even the orange cheese puff stains...)
3.Scanned-  The paper after scanning is placed back on the drawing board before coloring, in order to get all the perfect parts of the drawing...You will notice that all the tape marks, cheese puff stains, and tape shadows are also unnoticeable.

4.Colored- YES, WITH CRAYONS!!!!  I kind of wanted it to sort of like the album cover of green day, with the explosion and the poorly highlighted crayon marks.  As much as it may seem easy to most people, making something look poorly drawn but poppy is hard.  This is because when someone finishes a drawing they end up over enhancing it, giving it too deep of shadow marks, or too fat of legs....in the end giving it sort of a overanalyzed 3d sort of look, or a view that gives the person so much details that when people see it they wonder how the person can move.....this is different, and you can see why...perfection of the piece is not the key to art, the main idea is....

My first cassette release (meh...)

So yeah, yesterday at school a guy was trying to make a label of 10 cds from his mac, and I went up to him and asked if he needed help.  I told him I could make him 10 cassettes for 15$, (at first I was kidding, not saying I hate cassettes, but most people dislike them so I didn't really know if he wanted it or not)  and he gave me his master release in order to make copies onto cassettes.  Honestly, I expected more of an acoustic album or a electric guitar solo, but no, It was a amateur version of rap, (like words that don't go together+the chocolate rain video+someone who has asthma and does not have their portable oxygen).  But I'm pretty proud of my label release, because I was the one who was able to make the cover and the design of the cassette itself.  So without further to do, heres what the cassette release looks like:

Well I might as well promote it as well, so heres his soundcloud:
thejloexperience

Happy 2 days after 8 track day

HAPPY 2 DAYS AFTER 8 TRACK DAY EVERYONE WHO CARES!!!

Yeah, for those who dont know, 8 track day was 2 days ago (april 11th) sadly I missed it....So for commemoration of that faithful day, heres a list of my favorite 8 tracks:
Yvonne Elliman - Yvonne Elliman
Arlo guthrie-outlasting blues(screwed up the position that the tape spins so it doesnt work :( )
Some untitled mixes
The kendalls- just like real people

Wantlist-
Ralph bakshi's American Pop soundtrack-If this is available, I have been searching for Ralph Bakshi's american pop soundtrack in 8 track form, I know it came out in 1980 something so I guess there may be a version of this in 8 track.  I already have the cassette, and know the popular release of the album in vinyl, but still am trying to find the 8 track
Boston-Boston-The album was released in 8 track, and is pretty easy to find...its just something I may buy If I have some leftover money or I find it  at a thrift store.
And any p.floyd/sex pistols 8 track

Anyways yeah thats the list.
and to finish off heres so wrong, they're right: