Its been over a year since I was in an art show. The last show I had was a bit shit from a management point of view, so I took an extended break.

I was still drawing, but just now looking to show it anywhere more then in my Instagram feed.

Finally an opportunity has presented where I get to show an illustration in TOKYO!!

With thanks to Super Meteor, an awesome gallery and shop in the Nakano area of Tokyo, I am now part of their 2019 Famicase Exhibition, where artists make a custom game label for a Famicom Cartridge. I can’t show the finished artwork yet, but its an extension of a drawing I did while living in Osaka in 2017.

I can’t show my artwork until the show launches at the end of April, but here is a bit of a teaser for you…

I have been planning a show like this for a few years, having collected a bunch of fun coloured carts to use myself, but when I was living in Japan I came across the Famicase show. It was awesome. I believe there was over 150 artists contributing to the show I saw, with a wall filled with Famicom cartridges.

I will still do a famicart (thats what I’m calling it) show at some stage, so keen an eye out for the info sometime this year…

For now though, if you are in Tokyo at the end of April, head along to Super Meteor and have a look at this amazing exhibition.

There is also a comprehensive archive of previous exhibitions on their website – www.famicase.com

with my website.

its been a long journey, but I am finally happy with what my website has become.

As an illustrator and photographer, I feel the need to have an up to date and good looking website. but I didnt want yet another WordPress portfolio.

For a while now I have been interested in making websites, and making them easily updatable without having to have databases, cms, logins or other things.

My solution isn’t perfect, and the menu still needs work, but its at a place I am happy to use and share, and I can update it as often as I want.

The goals of my website were pretty simple:

• display images in a nice way
• be easy to update
• be responsive
• work on pretty much everything

Check it out – www.baka.osaka

I like how it works. A PHP script pulls in images from a folder, showing the most recent image first (based on my naming structure that starts with the date), then it displays them in a flex box gallery. On a portrait device, it will show them as 1 column, landscape device has 2 columns, everything else will show 4 columns.

The Menu is a PHP include on every page, so as I add content, I just copy the file/folder structure into a new folder, and add a link to the universal menu, which will update across every page. It also shows the current page based on CSS only, using a body tag class and some css. very happy with this.

Currently there is no javascript, but I might add a simple Lightbox in the future like my old side.

All that is left to do is add content, but I need to go through all my old hard drives and organise over a decades worth of illo, photo and design work into something that resembles an archive.

If you are looking for a portfolio site, and don’t know much about coding, get in contact and I would be happy to share the source for my portfolio.

currently, my site looks like this

I’m pretty happy with it, it looks good on mobile, but there is no real menu and the grid is pretty messy when there isn’t a full line.

I have spent a good number of hours to get it to where it is, but I’m starting again.

See, flex, grid, css variables, all these new properties that can be used are super new to me, which turns out means that I was using some of them wrong, and adding things like media queries (which I didn’t really understand 5 years ago) just adds up to a messy experience. I want my code lean. I want people to be able too borrow snippets from my site if they want (I’m talking about illustrators and photographers that know zero code and want something similar to my site).

I will get there, but I’m going to start again, fresh…

you can see my current website at www.baka.osaka – and it will stay until I get a new, cleaner version up, I just need to learn more.

It has been a while since I have built a website.

the last one I had made was hacked together from bits and pieces over the years, and it worked well on a computer but was far too javascript heavy to work well on a mobile phone.

you can see my old website here – www.baka.osaka/2017.

I want to keep some of the things from that website, but make it more streamlined and nicer, still with the main focus being on my illustration and photography, but I also want to make sure all the code I use is clean and fast. I will be trying to use only HTML and CSS if I can, no idea if everything I want to do like that is possible, but we will see as I go.

I will be keeping an archive of the site as it gets updated, with live working versions of everything along the way being archived so I can look through, see the progress and make sure I don’t make the same mistakes I have made on loads of other portfolio sites.

my portfolio will be hand coded, learning and using bits and pieces from all over the place. I plan on having lots of comments in the code so if anyone wants to read into that, it will be there.

This website will serve as my blog, as I move away from social media. I will be updating this quite regularly with my thoughts, website progress, illustration and photography, as well as a few regular topics I plan on posting about.

And I managed to find one I made back in 2010, which I will be taking some ideas from as well. – www.baka.osaka/2010

I hope you enjoy it.

peace

BAKAkid