Classic Lego Spacemen (by Centuri)
1970s playtime. Make your own sculptures with Galt Octons (via Potshots: 1970s playtime. Make your own sculptures with Galt Octons)
It’s no secret to my friends that as a child I was massively influenced by the Railway Series, a title that had been running since 1945. Based entirely in realism, it revolved around a series of sentient steam engines on the fictional Island of Sodor. Everything that happened there, however, was based in fact - the engines were real prototypes, the stories were based on historic railway anecdotes and Sodor was fully mapped by the creator - The Reverend Awdry, a ‘rivet counter’ whom created the stories to tell his Son, who was ill with measles.
Before the series was turned Thomas the tank engine by television executives, the engines were dealing with their counterparts on the mainland (British Railways’ steam locomotives) being cut up and broken apart as part of modernisation, dealing with the loss of their brothers and workmates and the idea they were obsolete, no longer with a place in the modern world. They were lavishly illustrated with detailed impressionistic styles, they had histories and personalities and they gave us the language we can find in a steam locomotive.
Thomas the tank engine was a very mature series before it became the pathetic sugarcoated mess we have today.
My tribute to Thomas, as it was, as my childhood, remains as pixel art. I’ve drawn most of the characters I knew and loved, referring to technical diagrams, illustrations and models in a feverish attempt to get things ‘right’. It seems the least I can do in return for the knowledge and enthusiasm those little books have brought me.
Unusual? Perhaps. Childish? Probably. But I’m proud to say I know this series’ heritage like the back of my hand, and once, just once upon a time, it was a very, very elegant series.
These are quite beautiful!
