On a Sunday

[This blog entry is actually posted the blog on my official website. Unfortunately, I had messed up my Wordpress site =w= I have to recovered this blog post there and post it here instead and back to fix that site later. TwT]

It has been a Loooooong looong while I have never update anything here. :P And now i feel like I want to write something here.

Back to last year, my Indonesian Roxer (Roxette Fan) friend had found out that Marie Fredriksson, Roxette vocalist, had a collaboration with a Swedish jazz musician, Magnus Lindgren, for his latest album “Souls”.

It sounded great that I could listen Marie sings in different genre besides pop or rock. XD

When his album was released on iTunes, I immediately purchased the song which is named “On a Sunday”! It sounded so relaxing. :D Marie’s voice is really fit with Magnus L.’s jazz music and his saxophone sound.

At that moment, I have never realized that “Souls” will be released in my hometown, Thailand, until January….

Once I went to CD Store website that I usually order the CDs I like, I did the funny thing by putting the keyword “Magnus Lindgren” on the search bar, and this is what I’ve found!

Photo from Boomerangshop.com

My Goodness!! I can’t believe that the album is finally released here by a small jazz recording company in Thailand. They’ve got the license of Magnus L.’s album. And look at that!! “On a Sunday” and the named “Marie Fredriksson” was featured!! AWWWW!! <3 I was floating happily when I saw the name of the singer I like was promoted! ><

From that day on, I was getting more addicted to this song!!

But…there is one thing that quite nagging me…

If you compare those 2 CD covers above, you can see that the font looks different. It’s like when I opened some .ai file on Adobe Illustrator and the font inside was not found, it’s turned into the default font instead….my willing to buy this album has decreased from 100% to almost a half…TwT This is the first time of mine about the CD packaging complaint…I have never mind about that before all my life when I bought CDs.

However, since that day, I have thought about it again. I’m not a great fan to Magnus Lindgren, he’s new to me. And it’s not a bad idea to buy that copy, because there’s some nice song here especially, “Rainy Day”. It sounded also relaxing and cool like the atmosphere of rain as well. Why am I not to give it a chance? ;)

I think I could save myself up of money for a while before grabbing this album, because…*sniff* I’m having a problem of late salary… TwT

By the way, I have to thanks that record company a lot for licensing “Souls” and featuring Marie F.! XD At least some people here will know Marie Fredriksson of Roxette more than only just “It must have been love”. Well, about the CD cover, I don’t intend to discredit them, but I hope they will improve on the design thing next time… ;)

Days later, another surprising thing comes again!

The sample video (not the official video just a song preview) of “On a Sunday” has been released by them. I wonder how did they put the stuffs of Magnus L. and Marie F. in that video. And here it is, check out the actual song and the video they made!

LOL Beside some video clip of Magnus Lindgren, there’s also some video part of Marie’s latest Swedish single “Sista Sommarens Vals” and some part of Roxette documentary “It all begins at its ends” also, especially when Marie talking about her severe sickness from many years ago…It had changed her life…a lot. ;w; It's quite painful to me when I saw how Marie was looked during the treatment…

As I talk about this on their Facebook page. They said that the video maker likes how the documentary was produced (The house and the trees…I guess) so they put them into the video…..okay, umm…the Favela team, who produces the documentary, has done the great job on that and “Emil Jonsvik”, who produced “Sista Sommarens Vals”, did the great jobs as well. At least they like those team and producer who made the doc and the video, so they put them in one. hehehe….

I won’t complain anything on that because, the documentary is totally in Swedish, so they don’t know what Marie was talking about on that scene. I understand on this point. :) And I understand that there is a limited resource to do the sample video. I think it’s the problem for some graphic designer and video maker, using stuff that have its owner on Google. That's sometime my problem when I'm working on graphic also. ;w;

Another sad thing….there’s no more hardcore fan of Roxette in Thailand. I’m so lonely!!!!! T[]T

Let’s not think about those tiny mistakes anyway. Let’s enjoy the song!! <3 <3

Maew
9/03/14

PS. I've just learnt that Magnus Lindgren used to be in the 5th Bangkok Jazz Festival, I don't know when... and he will have a little concert in some jazz music bar in Bangkok on March 11th.

 PS2. You can read an interview of Emil Jonsvik about Marie's "Sista Sommarens Vals" video by RoxetteBlog.com here.

[Old Comic] Roxette - Last Piece

There was something reminds me to went back to dig my old comic

I had posted on my Last.fm account and here it is!!
This is my old comic since 2009 titled "Last Piece". :)

It's all about Marie, Per, and left-over Pizza.

Enjoy!

Oh, "PartyCrashess" is my old nickname on deviantArt.com ;)

Making of "The Roxette Nutcracker"

About October 2011...

There was a huge flooding in my province in Thailand.

I and my family have evacuated in a day before the water flooded our house to the safe hotel nearby for almost a week. Then we moved to my paternal aunt's in the east of Thailand for a week. After that, we moved to my paternal uncle's in nearby province.

I was a 4th year university student at that time. The last semester's first day was postponed and I had to finished my final university project at my uncle's shelter.

During the break on making my final project, I went to Youtube and found Disney's "House of Mouse" version of "The Nutcracker".

From http://christmas-specials.wikia.com/wiki/The_Nutcracker_(Mickey_Mouse_Works)

The cartoon was fun in the Disney's style till I look for the ballet version of The Nutcracker! :D It was a fantastic show. The music and the performance was so really great!


Honestly, the first time I know what the Nutcracker is was in 2010. I was play the Facebook game called "Pet Society" (now the game was closed down.) The game was release new items and costumes from "The Nutcracker" here. Later, I found House of Mouse version of this one and checked it out what it was about.


....and then...my weird idea was happened.

The earliest sketch of the Roxette version of The Nutcracker

I fused the story of The Nutcracker with my favorite band, Roxette, and figured out which band members got which roles especially Marie and Per. Coincidentally, the protagonist's name of original nutcracker story by E.T.A. Hoffmann is "Marie" :D , while the ballet one named "Clara".

Hoffmann's original one story is different from the ballet's story. The original one is quite more intense than the ballet's. The ballet's story sounds happy and festive. House of Mouse's one is totally different from them. XD Since House of Mouse's "The Nutcracker" has their variation of the story. Then created my own variation of the story based from the ballet's story.

Another inspiration ;)
From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker_Prince

After I and my family went back to the province we live and cleaned up our house after the flood had gone. I did some little research of The Nutcracker during the break of university's final project. Finally, the first page of "The Roxette Nutcracker" comic was uploaded on my comic site on the middle of June 2012, a couple weeks before my graduation ceremony.

This is my variation..

There was a little Christmas party in an orphanage at the Christmas' Eve night. Marie and about 16 children celebrated Christmas together. Then the godfather stopped by the orphanage with loads of present for the children and a special one, the nutcracker, for Marie.

After Marie took the children the bed, she went to see her present again. Unfortunately, she lost into the strange place where was full of toys. The presents in that place were looted by the mice army and the army leader, the greedy mouse king. Then, Marie saw the nutcracker, lively nutcracker, lead his army to controlled the situation.

It sounds like the rest of story will goes like the original one, but it could be boring if I left it like that. ;) It's not ended up like that for sure. You have to stay tuned on that.

I planned to submit couple pages per week for giving a space of time to do the other things especially "go to work at the office" and wished to finish before Christmas 2012, but it was not I had planned. ^^; The comic was going on until today, almost a year since the comic began. By the way, the story is almost reaching the climax. I will speed up myself as soon as I can. Hope the comic is done before Christmas 2013!

Here are some of the concept sketches of the RoxNut :)

Marie F. is Marie herself!

More Marie

Per G. is The Nutcracker Prince

More Per and the mice minion design

Mikael B. is the godfather.

Clarence O. has been surprisingly chosen as the villain, the Mouse King...

So Christoffer.....Russian Christoffer...

Early design of Chinese Magnus B. and Arabian Pelle A.
(Pelle is looked quite thin here...)

More Mr.Magnus!

Shocking Marie and the early design of Sugar plum fairy princess Helena J.

And a lil' bit Winter Queen Dea N.

The rest are the extra concept sketches :)

"Gotta grab a pen and paper
Gotta write a tiny note to you..."

Marie's children at the orphanage.

The fun and the touching one

One of my favorite...

And these are the final characters artworks!!

So, that's all for this time. I've gotta go back for the rest and finish some of the pages soon.

Read my Roxette fan comic here!

Oh yes!

Marie has just turned 55 yesterday!!

Happy birthday to you, Marie!!!
You are so fantastic!! I'm so happy that you can survived the trouble.
It was incredible! You made it possible.
I always love your voice and creativity.
Moreover, you give me strength!!
I wish you'll be healthy, wealthy, and beautiful as always!

From a little fan from Thailand, Maew :')

[Fan art] Roxette - Fingertip '93

Serveral days ago, I felt like I wanted to doodling something. And here is how it was came out....

I drew Marie Fredriksson from Roxette's "Fingertips '93" video. I didn't see the original picture before did that. So her hair and her outfit looked a bit different. :P

Unfortunately....the mood of "Fingertips '93" wasn't dissappeared until the next day..

I went back to the video since the last time I watch it long long ago.

Then this bigger piece was born!! XD

This time I tried to capture every details and changed some poses on it.

Here's an animate work in progress below...

I wish I practice my digital painting skill by draw all Roxette's video. I have already done about 2 or 3 pieces, but I'm a bit busy at this moment. I wish I could done all of them. ;)

Long time best friend

^{Yume Tsukai comic inspired...}

To Logos Hope

The Logos Hope ship has visited Bangkok on late February. :) They said that it is a library ship, but in my opinion it's actually a charity ship that had already brought hope to around the world. I went there on last Saturday, 2 days before the ship sail to Hong Kong. There were so many people waited in a very loooong queue to get into the ship!

Bangkok Port [Taken after the visit]

The ship over their...

UHGGG The queue is too long....

That's how the tix look. Apologize for blurry tix, the camera didn't focus on it :P

Here we go...

Inside the ship...

In the book zone where was crowded of visitors

The CD section! But, there were the artists that I have never heard before...
Almost half of them were religious music CDs

The book and merchandises price's currency is "Units"
This is how the Units is converted in Thai Bahts. :)

"Journey of Life" Mini Exhibition

The view of Chaophaya River from Logos Hope

There was a section that many children joined...

I joined them too!! LOL XD

I had been very tired from walking through the crowd and very thirsty before entering the ship. I was so happy when I was getting near the cafe...,but....oh my goodness. 

So I had to left the ship without dining....;w;

The queue was much longer than when I have arrived!

And these were what I had got from the ship. I've got a postcard and a free bag too.

It was a tired trip I have ever been, but it was a pleasure to visit the great ship like that. :)