We don't need no thought control

Since I first started seriously collecting Pink Floyd merchandise something that I always wanted most was The Wall figures. They were released in 2003 in two series, and fetch large amounts on the secondhand market so for a long time they were just a pipe dream. But this year all of my luck seems to have fallen into place and in the space of two months I've gotten the two figures out of the entire collection that I really wanted!



I'm in the habit of making vague searches on eBay quite frequently for Pink Floyd merchandise, and that's how I came across both of these items. The first was the School Master, he's always the first character people think of from The Wall and I really love his design. He was quite cheap on a Buy It Now, so I didn't hesitate and it arrived early February. It was cheap on account of the box being slightly grubby, which I do care about but I'd rather save the money to be honest as the figure itself is just fine and that's what really matters.

Once the School Master arrived I started thinking which one I hoped for next, not really expecting to get it. The Marching Hammers was top of the list as it's the logo for the whole album and movie, and last week I happened to see it on an eBay auction and I won!



It arrived yesterday and I couldn't be happier. Sometimes plastic figures can look really tacky, but these are so well made that even people who aren't Floyd fans have admired their quality. The Marching Hammers in particular look like actual polished metal, and despite being so gangly the School Master is really sturdy. I had originally planned to keep the Marching Hammers in the box, but I could see it had already been removed at some point and you don't get the full effect of it behind the plastic packaging. I'm not at home at the moment so can't see what they look like alongside each other with the backings interlocked, I'll update with a photo as soon as I'm back!

Gerald Scarfe

Last month I took a little trip to London to visit the House of Illustration as they’re holding an exhibition of Gerald Scarfe’s work. I’m currently writing my dissertation on Gerald Scarfe, as I’m very interested in how illustration and music are used together and obviously never have the two mediums come together so seamlessly as with Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Scarfe’s style has become synonymous with the band despite only being used for just one album out of fifteen, and I find it so interesting how his artwork has given such a concrete visual narrative to the very non-visual medium of music. He’s illustrated Roger Waters’ ideas and autobiography to an extent, and yet added his own narrative and perspective into the mix. I could geek out about it for hours! So you can see why the exhibition was a must for me.



I hadn’t been to the House of Illustration before, and photos aren’t allowed so unfortunately I have nothing to show you, but it’s well worth a visit. It’s very small, and the Scarfe exhibition filled most of the gallery. It covered a fairly wide selection of his art, with sections on The Magic Flute, his costumes and design for The Nutcracker, The Wall, his short animation The Long Drawn-Out Trip, and his concept work for Disney’s Hercules which I found the most interesting. Being a huge fan of Disney, I loved seeing the notes back and forth between Scarfe and the animators of how the characters should be designed and move without losing Scarfe’s distinctive style, and how the animators translated that style to be Disney appropriate. I’m currently trying to change my own art style up from a less Disney inspired style as it’s what I grew up trying to draw like, so I made sure to take some of their notes to heart and took joy in seeing how they had to unlearn some of the same habits I’ve gotten myself into. I also loved seeing so many of Scarfe’s original artworks, nothing can compare to seeing an artists work you admire in the flesh. To see that things aren’t as perfectly cropped and bordered like they appear in a book or a screen, to see the lines he rubbed out and how his designs changed. I’m sure all of this sounds terribly geeky, but for an illustrator like me I was in my element!




These photos of his works are from Their Mortal Remains, but you can see some those details here too. Not many of his pieces from The Wall were featured in this exhibition, but they were different from the ones I’d already seen which I appreciated. I know Scarfe had a lot of his original artworks stolen by Floyd fans in the ‘80s, so I believe what’s left is quite limited.