About The Journal
Photo by: Sebastian Mayer
Hawken King is a designer and illustrator living and working Tokyo. He has been keeping and online journal since 1999 – this is it.
white christmas
Published 24th of Dec, 2004. Stored under diary
A thoroughly enjoyable Christmas mainly for the fact that it snowed on Christmas day!! Taking a 6 hour journey and changing trains 4 times, I finally ended up in Exeter St.Davids station laiden with luggage, although the fun didn’t stop there, an hours drive to dartmoor and the middle of nowhere (where my mum lives).
On Christmas Day, we were all leaping for joy as a thick carpet of snow had fallen overnight. Two tescoes shopping bags later and my boots were made for walking.
Merry Christmas dudes!
Sony Playstation x-mas games picker
Published 18th of Dec, 2004. Stored under Journal
Users answer questions to find which games they would like to buy this christmas, aimed at people who don’t really know what they want. Sony ended up choosing a design from an agency other than Babel, who decided on a “Whos Who” game approach, so we were told. Actually it was a picture of all their games, and very boring.
Nes Classics 2
Published . Stored under Journal
A fun project for us, design wallpapers and screensavers for the release of “NES classics”, more old games from the 8-bit days (which were overpriced and somewhat of a let down, rose tinted glasses only last so long! All of these games can be played on emulation for free, and can be readily found on the internet).
I took my standard approach of dumping the roms, stealing the tiled graphics and making new levels for the wallpapers.
EndFile pixel disk
Published 29th of Nov, 2004. Stored under diary
Received my “pixel disk” today from EndFile
I must say, this is very cool. She has other colours of disk on her site. EndFile also has lots of other digitally inspired art, some for sale, on the site.
HP Pavilion zd7000
Published 19th of Nov, 2004. Stored under diary
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Here’s the vitals:
- Intel Pentium 4, 3.2mhz with Hyper Threading (HT technology)
- 512 base ram, I might upgrade this later
- level 1mb cache, for fast data processing
- 60gb HDD
- 17″ ヂスプレー。「ウィドã€widescreen!!
- 1400px x 900px 32bit native rez
- bilt in WLAN (wireless lan)
- DVD-RW / multi drive
- 128mb GeForce 5700 directX9 card, although no new drivers yet
- Harmon Kardon Audio
- S-Video out, VGA out, 4xUSB 2.0, multi Media Card reader
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ï¿¡1200 from ebay. 230,000円 This laptop runs like a dream, HalfLife2 looks stunning on the pure blacks / whites “onyx” style screen in native rez. The only gripes I have at the moment are the placement of some of the keys… the “home” & “end” keys could have been above the arrow keys but instead they are above the numeric keypad, which is annoying for when I’m coding. Another groan is the placement of the trackpad, I only use an external Wacom interface so occasionally I forget to turn the trackpad off and end up clicking all over the shop.
Maybe I should try to convince HP to change this laptop to have a Wacom built in to the area where this trackpad lives? (yeah like they give a shit)
Paper Mario 2 & Mario month
Published 18th of Nov, 2004. Stored under Journal
Wicked little project, I printed out some of it on paper and then photographed it in various stages of being screwed up, to be used in the screensaver. The desktop application has a clock and calendar, runs as a windows desktop.
Wario Ware Wallpapers
Published 30th of Aug, 2004. Stored under Journal
We made a Girls version and Boys version, all of it lost on Nintendo Europe as usual.
The Last Samurai
Published 26th of Aug, 2004. Stored under diary
good film this one
I actually didn’t know it wasn’t a true story and believed the lot
Transformers T-Shirts
Published 18th of Aug, 2004. Stored under Illustration, print
Printed about 1000 of these for an Atari Viral Marketing campaign, during the launch of the PS2 Transformers computer game.
FLINN
Published 16th of Aug, 2004. Stored under diary
Flinn, Flinn where you been?
Down the park and barking at fishermen,
that’s where I’ve been.
Swimming in the river,
Chasing sticks,
And running around in circles,
To find those rabbits,
Thats where I’ve been.
Bouncing,
Bounding,
Skidding,
And always keen to relay messages of alien abduction.
And children stuck down wells.
In my later years,
I’ve been the king,
Drinking tea made for Ron and me,
Eatting chicken , lamb and even ham.
So I’m off to join my old friends,
Gemmini, Polly, Paddy,
And Chloe too.
I wonder what I will be next time?
Down the park and barking at fishermen,
that’s where I’ve been.
Swimming in the river,
Chasing sticks,
And running around in circles,
To find those rabbits,
Thats where I’ve been.
Bouncing,
Bounding,
Skidding,
And always keen to relay messages of alien abduction.
And children stuck down wells.
In my later years,
I’ve been the king,
Drinking tea made for Ron and me,
Eatting chicken , lamb and even ham.
So I’m off to join my old friends,
Gemmini, Polly, Paddy,
And Chloe too.
I wonder what I will be next time?
press interactive NOW!
Published 18th of Jul, 2004. Stored under diary
Well, suprise suprise! – some more of the games I’ve been working on have gone live on interactive TV.
If you have SKY TV (in the UK), press interactive and choose Yoo Play. I art directed a few of them and did the graphics for ballbreaker, and no, it’s not a porky’s tie-in.
SCI demo disc
Published 11th of Jul, 2004. Stored under Journal
This was a hugely important project for SCi. We built an internal facing presentation for 5 new 2005 titles entirely in Flash. Each title had animated interstitials, sound effects, music and housed exclusive content such as trailers, screenshots and editorial.”
– can’t say fairer than that. This was a good project for us, bringing in an 70~80% profit margin.
Nes Classics 2
Published 9th of Jul, 2004. Stored under Journal
A fun project for us, design wallpapers and screensavers for the release of “NES classics” – a new Game Boy Advance SP case and releases of old games from the 8-bit days (which were overpriced and somewhat of a let down, rose tinted glasses only last so long! All of these games can be played on emulation for free, and can be readily found on the internet).
I took my standard approach of dumping the roms, stealing the tiled graphics and making new levels for the wallpapers.
Japanese lessons
Published 6th of Jul, 2004. Stored under diary
I’ve been brushing up my japanese skills recently, in a drive become both fluent and to read and write properly. There’s a long way to go, however today I went to see a very very good teacher who could evaluate my skills and my weaknesses for me.
I’m not learning to pass any form of test, but so I have the skills to live and work in Japan once again, and chat to my friends, who have always had to put up with my english so far…
get out of brighton free card
Published 1st of Jul, 2004. Stored under diary
Today I went up to London for a meeting, it was the same old sort of thing I’m used to, however it was nice to get out of Brighton for a few hours.
I really like Brighton, its just about the only place in the whole of England (!) that I can live in. Seeing how I loathe driving, and can’t stand living in the smoke (london), the choice is spot on.
It's my Birthday!
Published 23rd of Jun, 2004. Stored under diary
Yay!
I got some books from Japan – thank you!
I got a new wallet – thank you!
I bought myself a boxed famicom – thank you to me!! I’ve now completed my console wall.
Party at my house, usual suspects, we all played duck hunt while drinking heavily.
end of a collection
Published 15th of Jun, 2004. Stored under diary
I’ve started saving money. It’s not very easy.
But I have a plan, and this plan is not really possible without savings!
It dawned on me that I’ve never saved money, ever. I’m always finding things to spend my money on, recently its been Super Famicom and Famicom stuff on Ebay. Before that it was Dreamcast, before that drink and clothing.
My savings will contribute towards my plan for next year, which is to study traditional Japanese art in Tokyo. I’ve never Studied either! I pretty much went straight from fucking around in college to working with the internet back in 1997.
Thats 7 years of getting up and going to work for someone else then going home and feeling like my brain has been ripped through every pore in my body.
After my Art study I’ll probably reside in Japan and do a combination of (wall) Art and freelance design.
It’s good to know I have a plan, even better to see it written down! All this won’t come into effect for a while however.
Tribal GBA
Published 20th of May, 2004. Stored under Journal
Many thanks to Stuart Knox for lending his arm to one of these wallpapers. Nintendo of Europe don’t usually require us to create material from scratch but for this project I thought it necessary, so the wallpapers resemble print adverts because of the limited materials supplied. These are the more gritty versions, Nintendo of Europe are quite conservative (unlike thier Japanese counterparts) so some of the grit was removed.
F-Zero Legends
Published . Stored under Journal
Another classic pixel wallpaper, this time showing a section of track from the game. Of course in the actual game you never get to see the track like this…
Art Directorship
Published 12th of May, 2004. Stored under diary
I have been made acting Art Director where I work: Babel Media.
This is because the previous person, Tom Jackson, to undertake this role has quit the company to pursue a freelance carrer and lifestyle. The job was put out to tender for 2 months however my skill and experience is much greater than most of those applying (time to pat myself on the back good boy).
It’s a massive undertaking and if I like the position after two months, its mine for good. Already I’ve directed one game under my new title. My other duties include hiring and firing! 
Sorting out the website we have and controlling all graphics we put out as a team.
The team has gotten rather large since I first joined Babel. Once we were just four or five core in the department now we are twelve at the core, with over 140 people at Babel in whole.
Hopefully we’ll take on some Japanese work in the future which will keep me in the loop for my studies.