Friday, March 11, 2011

In Memoriam

A los hombres y mujeres caídos en sus trabajos aquel jueves, siete años atrás.
(To the men and women lost at their jobs on that fateful Thursday, seven years ago).

Frank the mouse stands directly in front of the camera, his head bent solemnly and his hat off. He is wearing a short, beige coat, khaki pants, and a beige conductor's cap. Under the coat, a white shirt and tie are visible. On the chest of the coat is a red letter 'c', rotated 270°. His tail lies limply on the ground.

La red de cercanías de Madrid (The Madrid commuter trains railroads) no obliga a sus maquinistas a usar uniforme (does not enforce the use of a uniform on its engineers). El uniforme mostrado en este dibujo (The uniform shown in this drawing) es como yo imagino que serían, si existiesen (is how I imagine they would be, if they existed). La "c" roja, rotada (The rotated, red "c") es el emblema de la Compañía Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles, Renfe (is the logo of the National Spanish Railway Network, Renfe); y era el utilizado (and was what was used) para identificar a la red de cercanías (to represent the commuter trains railroads) en aquel entonces (at the time).

Imágenes de perfil asociadas (Associated avatars)

Frank looks calmly ahead, his hat off in respect.  Frank does a double-take, and looks directly at the camera in dismay; the arm holding his hat hanging limp at his side.  Frank smiles nervously, clutching his hat, fearing his glee may be misinterpreted.  Frank tries to contain his laugher, horrified that it will be taken as disrespect. Frank turns sideways and does a facepalm. The sideways view of the cap reveals it to also have a red 'c'.

Notas del artista (Artist's notes)

Luego de jurarme que no volvería a pasar por ello (After vowing never to go through it again), una vez más, elaboré el dibujo inicial a mano alzada (once again, I developed the original drawing by hand) y luego lo coloreé en la computadora (and then colorized it in the computer) fijando el color del papel como transparente (by setting the color of the paper as transparent) y coloreando en una capa por debajo de ésta (and coloring in a layer below that). A diferencia de la última vez (Unlike the last time) no usé gráficos vectoriales (I did not use vector graphics). En su lugar, redescubrí Macromedia Fireworks (Instead, I rediscovered Macromedia Fireworks), el cual me ha maravillado por lo intuitivo de su interfaz (which has fascinated me due to the intuitivity of its interface). La ventaja de usar gráficos vectoriales (the advantage of using vector graphics) es que, con unos ajustes, pueden reutilizarse posteriormente (is that, with a few tweaks, they can be reused later) mientras que las imágenes comparativamente planas generadas por Fireworks, no (while the relatively flat images that Fireworks generates, cannot). ¿Porqué, Dios mío porqué, hacer las cosas mal se siente tan bien? (Why, God, why does doing things wrong feel so right?)

2 comments:

  1. "Colored" and "colorized" are the same word in Spanish, which you can only tell here because the English version is right beside it. If anyone finds all of the words here where that happens, I'll give him/her a prize!
    Hint: Not all the translation was Spanish to English, there was also English to Spanish

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  2. I liked those drawings, the first one especially.

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