Thursday 19 January 2012

Corporate Beasts

Although they are very gorgeous, at the moment, I don't sell all that many toy soldiers. Walkerloo has never made a profit. I beg, borrow and manual labour for money to pay the monthly re-payments for the loan I took out to construct my toy soldier army. This makes Walkerloo a bad business and/or me a bad businessman.

mythself-c.walkerloo composite

But Walkerloo isn't really a business*, I declared it a real pretend war, that's the kind of war toy soldiers are best suited to fight and thats the kind of thing that makes sense to me.  The Battle of Walkerloo feeds my existential hunger.  As far as I know my enemy is still unaware of this real pretend war. I could conclude from this that my efforts are ineffectual. But I take heart from the fact that after more than two years of intermittent pretend aggressive action against the infinite beast that is my enemy, that is all the TV and Movie related mega corp toys, I am still able to stage operations and even develop new forces in the Good Fight!

'Military Regiments', 'Trade Unions'  or 'Business Corporations' are compound things - I imagine them as beasts with motivations, appetites and abilities. I imagine myTHself a beast doing battle with beasts.

'Google-Panto-Horses - Mythic Corporate Beasts no001' and 'Christopher-Walker-alias-myTHself-Christopher-Walkerloo-Pretending-To-Be-A-Soldier-In-The-Production-Of-His-Real-Toy-Soldier-Army no001' are part of the Walkerloo new wave introduced with the Chinese Miners last month. They join the ranks of the Walkerloo MiY Print-fantry available for pdf download at Wargames Vault.  Get them now, make them up and join the war!

google-panto-horses-pdfs-landscape Mythic Corporate Beasts 001 'GOOGLE-PANTO-HORSES' (link to buy pdf)
I've painted 4 different versions of the Google-Panto-Horse mythic corporate beast. But I imagine there are googols of them grazing 'freely' on internet content. A real panto horse usually has two people inside the costume -  Sergey Brin & Larry Page, the Google founders, could be inside a Google-Panto-Horse.   I think Larry Page would be at the front - a google-panto-horse would then be a 'portrait' of the two google founders.  Under harness googols of Google-Panto-Horses would deliver googols of Google-Panto-HorsePower, but this horse power would be dependent on their ability to graze on vast quantities of 'freely' accessible internet content.  I recently came across this short film on Youtube about Google...  since Blogger was bought up by google I am of course writing from with in right now...


Mythic man-beast myTHself 001. CHRISTOPHER-WALKER-alias-MYthSELF-CHRISTOPHER-WALKERLOO-PRETENDING-TO-BE-A-SOLDIER-IN-THE-PRODUCTION-OF-HIS-REAL-TOY-SOLDIER-ARMY. (available as .pdf next week)
In the creation of my real toy soldier army I pretended to be a soldier commanding, advancing, charging shooting and being shot.  As a boy I would spend hours doing this both with friends or alone in my back garden.  In making my toy soldier army I asked Laura Camera Wife to photograph me pretending to be a soldier and each Walkerloo toy soldier comes from one of these photos.  I returned to these photos to make these MiY printfantry sheets.  I am a realist romantic and in the good fight that is the Battle of Walkerloo I must deploy ridiculous tactics because a frontal assault would be suicidal.

Battling-the-beast-just-like-George.Christopher Walkerloos do battle with Google-Panto-Horses over my keyboard in a grotto.   '... England and St.George, a bin for a horse!!' 

I had thought there was a quote about being aware not to become a beast when fighting a beast, or that to fight a beast you have to become a beast.  That's probably from a movie, but after searching on line I did find 'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster...' which is translated from Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil'...  but I prefer 'beast' to 'monster'.

*due to the nature of the loan covenant and the leverage afforded to Walkerloo as a business the Walkerloo business must be maintained until the loan is repaid. Do not allow this identity to restrict your interpretation of the Battle of Walkerloo. I never have, in fact the moment I signed the forms for the loan and the bank manager handed me the first cheque I told him how when I was a boy as soon as I saved sufficient funds I would go out and spend it on toy soldiers and that that was exactly what I was going to do with the money he had just made available to me, he said nervously 'mais ce n'est pas le meme chois!'... but it was just the same.

WALKERLOO MOVIE UPDATE.  Various Walkerloo film projects have entered a suspension this kind of cultural object is particularly prone too.  They are stuck in a thick editorial and production mud just behind the front lines but it is hoped that they shall one day soon be made to come to bear!




2 comments:

  1. I think your move of putting the PDFs out on WargameVault was a good business move. Granted, there was theoretically more money in selling the printed product, but the price point was too high to entice me. Also, I was not fond of the size, and wanted the image so I could scale it down. Finally, there is the generally horrendous postal charges from UK/Europe to the US.

    All that said, the figures look great and I hope selling the PDFs get you to where you need to be, financially.

    Dale

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