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2023-02-26
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*************************************
Interview With Marshall Alexander
Paper engineer
*************************************
http://www.marshallalexander.net/
http://members.chello.nl/m.egtberts2/
pdf/fs9.pdf
Hello Nigel,
Here's my answers to your questions,
make sure you send me a PDF of the
magazine once it is finished. Enjoy!
Growing up in the seventies and
eighties, my childhood memories
basically consist of videogames,
bright plastic toys and TV cartoons.
Any time that was left I spent
drawing and programming games for my
Commodore 64. At a later age a few of
my childhood dreams became a reality
when I temporarily moved to
Melbourne, where I worked as a
videogame programmer, I did
oil-painting in a studio and had my
work displayed in one of the local
galleries. After a course in Graphic
Design I made a career-switch and
became a graphic
designer/illustrator. Currently back
in The Netherlands I work at a small
design company and spend my spare
time illustrating my childhood
memories and designing paper toys. I
specialize in one-piece paper toys
that consist of a single flat piece
of paper, which by intricate folding
is transformed into a 3-dimensional
model. All models are available for
free download, so collect them all,
start building and enjoy the world of
paper toys
CF. Can you give our readers a
little history about yourself?
MA. I'm a 38 year old graphic
designer / illustrator who started
out as a (game) programmer. Computers
and games have been an important part
of my life and growing up in the
golden age of computer games has
helped a lot with that. I still play
games very actively and the fact that
I have two kids provides me with a
nice excuse.
CF. You worked briefly as a
programmer was this with 8 bit
machines, and what software were you
writing?
MA. I taught myself programming on a
ZX81 and later on a C64 when I was
still very young and wrote my first
(amateur) games. Later on I studied
Information Technology and ended up
as a game programmer in Melbourne
where I worked on games for the
Playstation 2, PC and also the
Gameboy Advance. Ultimately
programming was not the thing for me
so I did a career-move and started
doing graphic design.
CF. Please tell our readers about
your website
http://www.marshallalexander.net/
MA. The site is an outlet for my
personal projects for which there is
no room at my day-time job. I enjoy
having complete freedom with these
projects and not being restricted by
client demands, corporate culture and
other creativity killers. Plus it's
an attempt to get my fifteen minutes
of fame of course :)
CF. So on the site there are paper
models to download and make for FREE
MA. Isn't it great! The paper toy
community is all about sharing,
collaborating and interacting with
your fans and part of this philosophy
is offering your models for free
download. It's pretty similar to
street art, where the art is there
for everyone to enjoy, freely
accessible and occasionally ends up
in galleries.
CF. Did you ever think about
selling the models or the ideas to
someone?
MA. When clients approach me to
design a model that they will use to
sell their products or want to sell
as a product itself, I will charge
for it as if it is a normal
illustration job. I'm talking to a
few clients at the moment for which I
might have to design some models, but
generally designing paper models does
not seem to be a very lucrative
business.
CF. 3 of the models are easily
recognised a Commodore 64, an Atari
and an old pong game, do you
reminisce about your childhood
MA. My childhood memories are an
important inspiration for my personal
work. It provides me an opportunity
to relive some great moments from my
youth. Also the seventies and
eighties somehow seem to have
produced some great toys and
computers that are still very popular
and still have very active fan
communities nowadays.
CF. The Models are in a stylised
way and look like little men were
there any reasons for this rather
than just models of the machines as
they were
MA. The models are part of the
Foldskool Heroes series, a bunch of
models that pay tribute to heroes of
my youth. All models are based on the
same template, so I generally have to
fit all my ideas into this template.
In the case of the game consoles I
therefore had to take some liberties
regarding their layout and just try
to convey the general look of the
console. And it makes them look a bit
more like characters as well, which I
thought was nice as well.
CF. Do you still or did you own
any Commodore Computers
MA, Of course :) At one time I even
had two C64's and had them connected
in a simple network, which was pretty
cool. I wrote a simple chat program
and placed the second C64 in little
brother's room so we could talk to
each other. The funny thing was that
the chat program that I installed on
his C64 had some hidden features in
it that I could trigger from the C64
in my room. I would drive my brother
crazy with sudden flashing screens
and stuff like that. Nowadays I don't
own a real C64 anymore, but I
occasionally play some old games on a
C64 emulator.
CF. Do you have any plans to Model
other retro machines?
MA. There are a few ideas that are in
concept stage right now, so I'm
hoping to do another series of retro
machines. I had some excellent
suggestions from fans around the net
as well. But I've got so many other
ideas and projects I'm working on as
well that it might take a while
before they see the light of day.
CF. The drawings on the website
are very nice and bright,
MA. Colours are good! And most of
the toys I illustrated where bright
toys to begin with. It's one of the
things that sells toys too, so I'm
hoping it will attract people to my
work as well.
CF. What's the CD I notice at the
Foot of the website "love bytes" have
you released some music and if so can
our reader download a sample of this
work?
MA. Love Bits is the first released
CD of musician Unicorn Dream Attack
for which I designed all the artwork.
The guy creates some fantastic music
using old Gameboys and 'bended' toys.
Check out his MySpace page at
www.myspace.com/unicorndreamattack to
learn more and listen to his music.
CF. Have you any comments you
would like to add
MA. Sure. It's great to see there's
still such an active community online
dedicated to these old computers.
It's a great way to share your
childhood memories and for me an
endless source of inspiration. Keep
up the good work.
=====================================