Secret Store: Death Compass T-Shirt

Here's a thing. The very new and very awesome Secret Store have a super limited-edition t-shirt out with my Death Compass drawing on it. Finally, something to cover your nakedness! Available in sizes for small, medium and large people, the t-shirts are hand printed on organic cotton in a run of 100. Imagine how excited you'd be were you to bump into someone wearing the same shirt. You'd point and be like 'hey!' and the other person would point and be like 'hey!' right back at you.

Alongside my design, there are shirts by Mesh137, Gareth Roberts, Keaton Henson and Isobel Kho. There is also a nifty Secret Store design to show your love / look cool / cover aforementioned naked body. Head on over to their website, take a gander and perhaps pick something up. Secret Store are also looking for up-and-coming talent to design their next range, so get in touch with them if you've got an idea.

I will send a little set of badges free of charge to anyone pictured wearing my shirt because I'd be st-st-stoked to see it out there in the world. Aaaannd if I bump into you on the street wearing one (looking at you Glasgow), I'll give you a print or a wee drawing or something.

Big thanks to Chris for his help. Get well soon dude.

Explorin'

With spring a-sproinging all over the place, I took off on my bike on Thursday for the first time in about 4 or 5 months. My intention was to have a little explore of Glasgow's Southside - something I've not really done (outside of Shawlands anyway) since moving here last September. The winter has a knack for keeping a man inside with the telly.

A little bit of searching before I left led me to discover that two (two! can you imagine my delight?) skateparks seemed to live within a 20 minute cycle of my wee hoose and my intention was to discover, if not exactly conquer, both of them along my way.

First up, Queens Park skatepark, pictured above. I was somewhat familiar with this place from magazines and videos, but had never visited and had long forgotten it's name. Dark, rough and sketchy, Queens Park is a real Council mismanagement of obstacles too big, too small or too weird for your regular average-to-crap skateboarder like myself. Actually, even for Dudes Who Are Good, I imagine most of this park is all but unskatable (5' run-up to stairs, anyone?).

The vert ramp is Queens Park's only draw and, well, it looks ready to eat your soul. Show it no weakness. The thing is big - bigger than my photos make out - and scary - scarier than my photos make out. Some people can skate this monster (and skate it well), but not me. I take a look, wave a little white flag and scoot away on my poncey wee bike. I suspect the next time I visit will be to identify a body.
My hopes turned to Rouken Glen (above) - somewhere I'd seen on YouTube, but only recently realised was on the Southside. A 2.5 mile cycle from my house in Shawlands makes this park just about viable as a 'bit cloudy but I'll risk it' option and, I dunno, it could be worse (it could be Queens Park). It was empty when I arrived but as far as I know, there's a wee local scene, which is all good. No sign of any discarded syringes - also good.

Rouken Glen is a small prefab metal park in a nice area. Not exactly inspiring but potentially pretty fun. A mini ramp would've been a nice touch here, or even some lower ledges (the main one is just the wrong side of comfortable, for short-arses like myself). The box looks not bad (bank to ledge!) and there's a bigger hip than you'd expect in a place like this. A decent dick-about spot, I reckon. Good for getting rid of the rusty knees before summer.

If, by a long shot, anyone knows other good places to skate on the Southside of Glasgow, particularly near Shawlands, let me know. I got so used to living 5 mins from a park in Stirling that I find it weird not being able just to nip out for half an hour anymore. Oh and sorry about the cheesy Hipstamatic photos - I got a new phone recently and I can't stop playing with it.

Oh, and along similar lines, my friend Ben has started a blog called Terminal Moraine about skateboarding in Australia, his new home. Give him a wee follow. He's a smart cookie and, if he properly gets into the blogging habit, it'll be a good 'un. His exploring partly inspired this post.

Kid Canaveral: You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's a thing that may, or may not, be appropriate. A while ago, I was asked by the fantastic Kid Canaveral if I would like to make a music video for their song 'You Only Went Out To Get Drunk Last Night'. Of course I did! After a few delays, setbacks and general slowness (on my part), I finally asked for a deadline and got to work. The above video is the result. For a better viewing experience, click here to watch it on YouTube properly (clicking up the resolution / video size goes a long way).

For me, video and animation is a funny thing - I don't really know what I'm doing. The ins-and-outs of cameras, shutter speeds, lighting, exposure etc. are all still kinda outside my understanding. I'm learning though. The KC video may not exactly be beautiful, but I think it has a certain charm to it. I hope? Maybe? I read a very encouraging interview (here) with Michel Gondry before I began filming where he said:

"I care less and less about the aesthetic quality. It finds its way into it anyway. I can't bother with that and the less attention I pay to it the better it becomes."

That was exactly what I needed to hear. The perfectionist part of my brain got booted well and truly out the window and I concentrated more on just having fun and throwing as many ideas into the silly thing as tI could. All the mistakes - the wonky shadows, visible wires, shakes and wee glimpses of hands were suddenly Good Things, not Bad Things. I tried to keep in mind stuff like Adam & Joe, Oliver Postgate and the Teeny Little Super Guy from Sesame Street rather than, I dunno, Chris Cunningham or Shynola.

Speaking of fun, I can honestly say that this was one of the funnest projects I've ever worked on. It was a blast. Along with my wonderful fiancée Alex and my best friend Fergi, we hunkered in over four long nights and pretty much mucked around. Alex in particular was incredible throughout - she worked her socks off, took damn near every photo (8000 odd) and came up with loads of the best ideas. I couldn't have done it without her, no way. She's amazing. Fergi did some brilliant stuff in the crazy-kitchen scenes too. Check the cups in the cupboard at 2:43 - I didn't even spot him doing it. Haha!

Photo: two blurry men work on a blurry thing.

As for Kid Canaveral, I was super chuffed to work with them again (I did a poster before). Kate has been completely lovely at putting up with my rubbish and giving me freedom to go nuts with their song. So if you like 'Only Went Out..', I'd really recommend you pick up their album 'Shouting At Wildlife', it's a cracking wee record that's full of energy and life. I'll try to get round to a proper post about the band soon because this one is going on a bit and I'm worried people will just tune out. One thing I will say is that they're off to SXSW next month and they've been organising a few gigs to support their jaunt - check out their website for more details (they're playing Glasgow, Edinburgh and... New York!). If you can, pick up some tickets or pick up an album - you wont regret it.

Anyway, enough from me. Please have a look at the video - if you enjoy it, clicking on the 'like' button on YouTube goes a long way in helping it reach more people. If you really like it, any tweets, posts, blogs or links pointing people towards it would make me a very happy man. I'm quite proud of it. Hopefully soon I'll be able to do some more video stuff (Jonnie Common & Johnny Lynch, I'm looking at you). Stay tuned here or on my Twitter for further stuffage.

The List: Sex Issue

I've put together a few drawings for the latest issue of The List. It's the sex issue so, y'know, there's entendres doubling-up all over the place. The deadline was quite a short one and there was quite a few drawings needed so I'm still undecided whether I got away with it or not - I hope I did. A learning experience through-and-through. The weirdest part is that Alex & I are now officially cover stars thanks to our modelling for the image above. Brilliant!

I was super happy to be asked to work on the project. Getting to draw balls for a living is a dream, of sorts. The rest of the illustrations will make their way to my website eventually - in the meantime, pick up the magazine from all good newsagents and have a gander. Inside you'll find all sorts of secrets from behind the closed curtains of good, honest Scottish people.

Right, I've got to get back to work. I'm putting together something I'm very excited about. Fingers-crossed I don't arse it up. It should be up on this old blog by the end of the week for your eyes (...and ears!) to form an opinion on.

Buchanan Street at Christmas

While looking through my camera I found this crazy little clip of Buchanan Street in Glasgow a couple of days before Christmas. Sorry it's a bit shoogly. (looks best in HD)

Penfall'd

Since moving to a flat with wooden floors, I've broken countless nibs by accidentally knocking my pen off the desk. Today I ruined one with a flourish.

Actually, it might be fine. Tough little beggar.

Homegame Logo

Every year for the past, I dunno, 5, we've attended Fence's fantastic Homegame up in Anstruther. So how chuffed do you think I was when Johnny asked me to put together a logo for this year's festival? Exactly, Chuffington World of Adventures.

Now, logo design isn't something I've ever particularly had a knack for, but I gave it a go nonetheless. After a false-start or two I finally settled on the above. My Homegame logo was constructed entirely from collaging together letters and shapes from an old, old stamp collecting book of my Dad's (not the stamps, just using the book itself). All the little scraggles and wonks are genuine been-in-the-loft-for-50-years scraggles and wonks.

Also, I unconsciously managed to hark back to Kirsty Thomas' lovely cut-out design from last year, with the bunting-esque elements. A good thing!

As for the festival - get yourself there if at all possible, it's always brilliant fun. I've posted about it many times on this here blog. Head to fencerecords.com for details of acts, tickets, times, dates etc. etc. Perhaps I will see you there, dogg.

The Follow Friday Rule

On Twitter, on Friday, it's a wee tradition to recommend your favourite people out to those who follow you. A nice way to help funny/interesting/entertaining folk gain a larger audience. These tweets usually comprise of a little #ff hashtag and a list of names. Simple and effective.

Well, kinda. I've noticed a little problem that can sometimes occur because of the way Twitter handles @ mentions. It is not a fault with Twitter at all, just something that can catch people out when they're trying to be nice. Here we go:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE FOLLOW-FRIDAY RULE:

When composing a Follow-Friday tweet, do not start it with an @ symbol. Doing so will restrict who can see the post to those mentioned in the tweet and to people already following those mentioned, defeating the purpose of the tweet.

or,

TO MAKE SURE YOUR #FF TWEET REACHES EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWS YOU, START IT WITH ANYTHING BUT AN @

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now, I'm not the most eloquent of writers so that might not be the clearest thing to follow (ho ho). The formatting of this blog probably doesn't help either. I'll give some examples that might help explain a little better, starting with the wrong way. Imaginary tweets in bold with imaginary usernames:

@personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out #ff

Bad! Twitter presumes this tweet is for @personA and hides it from the timeline of anyone who isn't either mentioned in the tweet or already follows at least one of those mentioned. This means that your recommendation is mostly being seen by people who already know about the people you're trying to promote. Silly Billy. A much better way to go about it would be either:

#ff @personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out

or

check these guys out #ff - @personA, @personB, @personC

Good! Make sense? Oh, probably not. Anyway, the idea is that if you start with anything but an @ symbol, Twitter rightly presumes the tweet is public and it goes out to every single person who follows you. People find out about new people and everyone wins.

Jeez, if someone wants to write that out more clearly, go for it. If you found this useful in any way, please point people here (use the tweet this button below). If you don't use Twitter and this was just an impenetrable wall of rubbish, I'm sorry. Also, follow me.

SLAP: One In A Million

This is another little thing I've been meaning to post for a while, mainly because it's currently running and if I leave it too late, I'll have missed the boat.

Every year, Slap magazine run a contest called One In A Million with the intent of finding up-and-coming skateboarders and giving them a little career leg-up. A handful of dudes are taken to some spots around San Francisco for a week or two to film tricks. Everyone gets a nice little bit of exposure and the fellow deemed most worthy gets hooked up with some sponsors.

This year's contest is a particularly good watch, however, thanks to it being put together in a slightly more reality-show manner than previous editions. There's no major 'drama' or clever twists, just a fair smattering of off-board footage and interviews mixed in with the skating.

As you know, every reality show needs a baddie and one dude in particular, Forrest Edwards, ain't there to make friends. Possessing both an incredible talent for skateboarding (360 flip 50-50 clipper!) and an incredible talent for not keeping his big mouth shut, Forrest is causing ripples by many a water-cooler (well, messageboard) by talking trash and generally isolating himself from the other, more light-hearted, contestants.

Of those other chaps, I'm a big fan of Matty Hunt - we short dudes gotta stick together. He's easily winning on style-points at least, his switch tre about a minute in to episode 12 is tasty. I also love his ridiculous full part on Youtube. John has been consistently killing-it (as they say), his dicing-with-death hillbomb (top of page) is terrifying. Mango seems incapable of having a bad time and Reuben seems an all-round nice chap.

Anyone with even the hint of a curiosity, check out episode 1 and go from there. They're only a few minutes a pop so it's not gonna take much of your time. Sorry to all non skate fans who would rather scratch out their eyes than watch any of this rubbish. New episodes on Slap every Mon, Wed, Fri.

Oh Comely Magazine

Really should've posted this up a little sooner but, well, the whole Christmas thing happened. No harm done.

I have contributed a few small drawings to the latest (Jan/Feb) issue of the absolutely-bloomin-fantastic magazine Oh Comely. They accompany a lovely article that asked people to go out and meet their neighbours. Rachel Clare Price, Angela Chick and myself were asked to venture onto the Google Street View locations of said neighbours and interpret their houses.

The magazine is available all over the place - either via these stockists or in your local WH Smith. To see all five of my drawings, they're up on my site here. To see them at their best, buy the magazine! (it's a good read, honest)

Goodbye 2010

Hello! Happy new year! After a small festive break away from bloggington, I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things and to take my humble wee website 2-tha-nxt-lvl (see, already started). If all goes according to plan I'll be posting more interesting things, more often, starting NOW. I also hope to get a little better at actually writing stuff too - as you might (may?) have noticed, I'm a bit clunky.

The photo montage above is the third instalment of the chronological 12 photos / 12 months thing I do every year (2008 is here / 2009 is here). A trilogy! Not bad going. As always, it's not strictly 12 pictures to a month, mainly because of a few camera issues that meant I had to shuffle stuff around. The photos aren't great either but they're not really supposed to be - just silly wee snapshots from my silly wee year.

2010 was great. Quite a quiet one, but that's ok. It wasn't bad work-wise, pretty good home-wise. No complaints. How about you? I hope you had a good one. I'm really excited about 2011 now though. It's all creaking into motion and, fingers crossed, it'll be THE BEST YEAR THERE'S EVER BEEN.

Hello 2010, you're looking well x

Winter Tips

It's damn cold in Glasgow. Damn cold. So cold I've had to improvise a Magic Mouse compatible glove. The whole city is covered in a frozen layer of ice and snow and people are terrified.

Some winter top tips:

1. Woolly Hats
Marks & Spencer are selling pretty decent turn-up beanies for a fiver. They are a good size and comfortable. I only mention this because I'm quite particular about my woolly hats - these are nice and plain with no adornments. Available in black and navy.

2. Transport
Both Scotrail and First Buses in Glasgow have a pretty good Twitter service. Transport is messed up right now and if you're in doubt about what's going where, send them a question and they'll get back to you surprisingly quickly. While they often get bad press, particularly in times of bad weather, I think they're both doing a good job with this (even if your train is cancelled).

Check them out here: @ScotRail / @FirstinGlasgow

3. Not Falling On Your Arse
When walking on slippery ground, LEAN FORWARD! Forward for Christ's sake. If you're gonna fall, it's better to take a little tumble that-a-way rather than cracking your bum/back/neck/head/wrists by near backflipping straight onto the ground.

4. Computer Games
You can connect an iPod to an Xbox! I know this isn't exactly a winter tip but I guess you might be cooped inside for a while playing games. Plug it in the USB at the front and you can either play music through the dashboard or via the Xbox button ingame pop-up menu thing. The Xbox totally recognises your iPod with all your playlists, genres and everything. Good eh? Turn off game music (sfx still work) and you're all set. Particularly nice if you've got decent speakers - slap on the visualiser and you've got a wee remote controlled mp3 soundsystem on the go.

For more exciting tips like these, follow me on Twitter: @davidgalletly. Stay warm friends!

Christmas Shopping

Here's a gentle reminder that, hint hint, I've got a little online shop with all sorts of prints and things and, hint hint, it happens to be December. Catch my drift? *winks like a loon*

Urgh, I feel dirty. A bad salesman through & through. Anyway, yes, there's some stuff in my shop that might be up your street this festive season. Maybe your aunt likes decapitated dogs? Maybe your granny is after for a great big screenprint for her wall? Maybe that guy you fancy likes coco-pops and a nice wee Gocco would finally get him under the mistletoe? Have a look and see if there's anything you like.

As a special winter incentive to the present buyers out there, I've decided to throw in a wee set of 4 badges with every order throughout December (while stocks last). How about that? Buy a gift for a friend, keep the badges for yourself! Or, do it the other way about! Or, keep it all for yourself! I don't mind! Here they are in a video:

I guess I should mention delivery dates... hmm. I'm not too sure on how the postal times work but glancing around at other online shops, I'll try my damnedest to get stuff to you before Christmas if you order within these dates:

UK: Monday 20 December

Western Europe: Monday 13 december

Eastern Europe, Usa & Canada: Thursday 9 December

South/Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle east, Asia, Far East (inc. Japan), Australia & New Zealand: Monday 6 December.

(dates nicked outright from the fantastic hellojenuine - check out her wares too)

If that doesn't get you reaching for your wallet, nothing will. You can find my shop right here. Nah, honestly, have a good time this Christmas. Try not to stress - it's meant to be fun. Big thanks for having a look. I love you x

Materialising Hills

This morning I woke up to on-and-off heavy snow showers and spent a good while running around with my camera taking little videos. I noticed that the hills in the distance (the Campsie Fells) would vanish and reappear really quickly whenever the clouds rolled by. The next time I spotted a hint of blue sky, I pointed the camera in their direction and hoped they'd materialise from the gloom.

I got lucky! If I'd started maybe 30 seconds earlier then the hills would have been completely invisible at the beginning of this clip. Ah well, nevermind. I took my first foray into the mysterious world of After-Effects to speed this clip up to double time - the original just took a little too long to expect anyone to sit through it. I like clicking back and forward to see how much the view changes in such a short space of time.

Music is 'King Creosote's Wineglass Symphony' from the album 'Concubine Rice' by Lone Pigeon.

Here comes December..

Carolyn Alexander

Carolyn Alexander is one of my very favourite contemporaries*. A Scottish illustrator living up a big mountain in France who draws brilliantly sweary figures and self-portraits. Carolyn's work always makes me laugh - there's an effortless wit to her style and use of language that really stands out amongst the other stuff out there in illustratorland. Her drawings are funny without resorting to cutesyness or geeky pop-culture nods & winks, personal without getting sentimental or twee and proudly Scottish without ramming 'hilarious' slang down your neck. Makes me sick.

Amongst many things worth mentioning, there's: Carolyn Alexander Is Giving Up Smoking (a blog full of drawings made as cigarette substitutes), Haughty Bitches (a book of girls telling you to piss off), frequent attempts to learn French and Carolyn's amazing contributions to the what-I-wore-today 'thing' (best face captions going).

If that's not enough, she's recently set up a Facebook page, her website has just been overhauled and her blog is very good. If you're on twitter, follow @ocarolina too. Jesus, this is why I don't write about people more often - posting all these links makes you feel like a right creeper. It's a bit like discovering someone you occasionally nod 'hello' to has a tattoo of your face on their back.

Carolyn is also currently hosting a giveaway - if you enter before December the 1st you can win an original drawing - check out the details here.

The plan is to do a few more posts about other people this week. So, if you've not subscribed already, please do and I'll try my very best to point you towards some stuff I think is good. As always, any links, retweets, mentions or comments are very much appreciated.

* bit wary of that word. Apart from sounding wank - it, dunno, implies a lot doesn't it?