I've been knee deep in two projects that have largely kept me away from N80 (and everything else FPU for that matter) since January.
The first is retooling the repurposing the entirely of the N80 project into a new, more directed and better-thought-through website. Hoping to have a new launch by July 1st.
Second is re-decorated my home-office with the years of shinobi swag and memorabilia I've amassed during the research process - namely a pretty kick-ass collection of vintage movie posters and press kit images.
Here's some pics:
Six 20x28" Japanese movie posters are the flagships of my vintage ninja paper collection. The two at center are actually a 2-sheet for
Shinobi no Mono 9: Mission Iron Castle. I kept them separately framed because I wanted a six panel look to the wall. To the left are
Zoku Shinobi no Mono (Band of Assassins 2) and my most recent score
Kagemaru of Iga. To the right, up top is one of the many incarnations of the "Kurozukin" character - the pistol packing black mask (cousin to Karuma Tengu and the Purple Hood, samurai equivalents of The Lone Ranger I guess) who's been played by everyone from Ryutaro Otomo to in this case Raizo Ichikawa. Below that is the newest of the posters, one of dozens of nudie kunoichi flicks whose title I have in a notebook I just cannot find right now, dammit.
This is the creme of the crop of a huge lot of press kit photos from the 60's I scored from a guy in Thailand last year. Most of them have all sorts of grease pencil marks and mechanical score-lines on them from being used in newspapers and magazines, which the seller saw as a major devaluing. I just adore these for that very reason - they were rescued from some publishing house somewhere, having been used and reused by layout artists like me of decades past and continents away.
These shelves are right above the Mac workstation, so in a major quake I'll be pelted right in the eyes by 1"6 scale plastic weapons and flying porcelain. Good plan...
And the run ends with more press kit pics from the
Shinobi no mono flicks, and a run of die-cut menko cards from the late 1950's. I mounted these in baseball card lucites with colored origami paper as a background, but the longer they're up the less I like the multi-colors. Thinking of replacing with a single color Japanese calligraphy rice paper instead, so the art pops more.
ALL of this stuff is going to end up on the new site, patience grasshoppers.
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