Above: … with Alex and Palombella en-route in the canals of Venice
Below: … Gertrude drew the pictures on the walls behind Alex in Mexico in 1958
Friday, December 19, 2008
Saturday, November 08, 2008
NELLIE AND SAMMY: LOST FOR 54 YEARS – AND STILL SO YOUNG!
The "new book by Alex" is a present. A legacy. A bliss. Most people who know Alex Randolph as game designer, might not be aware of the fact that he actually was a poet and author.
At least until a mad, politically motivated fire-raiser threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of his studio in Venice in the 60ies and almost all his poems, scripts, documents and collected ideas were burned and destroyed irrecoverably. The fire didn’t harm him as he was on a trip abroad at that time.
The tragedy of it is that the mad firebug did not want to go for him at all. He only took the wrong window, the assault was intended on his neighbour next door.
Fortunately, the original script of “A portrait of Nellie” was not kept in the studio at that time and therefore survived the fire. We received it for publishing from his widow in 2007. Thanks, Gertrude!
After the awful fire disaster Alex concentrated almost exclusively on designing games. Every now and then, however, also on creating special creatures and characters, like OHNIS or PHOMPHEN…
IN THE PAST WE WERE DREI MAGIER …
… Now we have transformed into Drei Hasen in der Abendsonne GbR (Yes, you haven’t misread, rabbits have civic rights from now on)...And here are the Drei Hasen:
Kathi Kappler, author, designer and editor
Rolf Vogt, illustrator, graphic designer and author
Johann Rüttinger, graphic designer, illustrator and product developer
All three of them come from the artwork, book, and games world.
Kathi Kappler and Johann Rüttinger sold their publishing company DMS – which was founded in 1994 – to Schmidt Spiele in Berlin on 1 July 2008. It was no „hostile take-over“ but a „friendly handover“ caused by impairment to health that made KK and JR take this step.
„It was a tough decision as the company was our „common baby“. We wanted to prove from the very beginning that it is possible – even for a small company – to successfully launch good games for children and adults on the hard-fought market. From day one we have not only considered the German speaking market but the whole wide world. These were 15 thrilling, exciting years – never-ending ups and downs – but the success proved us right. But if one of the two partners is absent for long periods again and again it just gets too difficult for the other one.” This is what both of them say – the two are also marriage partners in real life and live in a mill by the river Aisch between Nurenberg and Wuerzburg. “It really was not easy to let go our “child” but it was good and the right to do. Now we can establish something new – without ruffle or excitement!”
The third rabbit Rolf Vogt, “ARVI”, is a very old friend of DM. Most of the titles and artworks of the games come from his hand respectively from his mind. He will continue to do the artwork for DMS under Schmidt Spiele but at the same time publish, illustrate and design books as partner of K.K. and J.R.
As there are already so many books we want everything we do in the future to be a little bit different and special. There always has to be a story behind the story. We don’t have a “round table” where marketing specialists identify and fill market niches. We know this world just too well having earned our money as so-called commercial graphics designers in the advertising industry. So we could see how things work, what is so awfully important and what matters apparently.
WE ARE BACK!
Our little booth at the Bookfair in Frankfurt was exactly 4 square meters in size. One for each rabbit and the fourth one for prospects from all over the world. And things went better than expected: out of one hundred visitors who passed our rabbit hutch, 5 discovered us. 2 % more than we hoped for.They recognized us, stopped by, looked into the evening sun, sniffed at our two books, smiled and some even engaged in a conversation.
Claudia Gabriel from 85296 Rohrbach was the very first one who looked at “Nellie” and immediately ordered 5 pieces for her first-class bookstore. (http://www.boersenverein-bayern.de/de/bayern/Guetesiegel/157661)
A young female illustrator with a Japanese last name was enthusiastic about ARs “modern” artwork – and she wasn’t the only one. We had to explain to many people, who were astonished that we had only two books for our first fair presentation, that we just transformed from DM to DH and that we plan to do beautiful and good books from now on. And the three of us, we were astonished about the great number of young talented people who showed us their scripts, diploma theses and illustrations. Who knows how things will develop... it was really nice in Frankfurt.
NELLIE
Alex Randolph is known as game designer and author worldwide. “Snail’s Pace Race”, “Twixt”, “Enchanted forest” e. g. are only three out of over 160 of his games. That he also wrote many poems and some books may not be so well known. He conceived “Nellie” - a so far unreleased mouse story from 1954 – for his then 8-year-old niece Deena Katz from New York, neatly wrote it with drawing ink and drew all the illustrations himself. The story – written in simple but poetic English - is about a quite complicated mouse love between strong principles and a certain nonconformism.
What will prevail in the end?
Age: 8 years and up
*Suitable for reading in elementary school
Text and drawings: Alexander Randolph
Size / pages / binding / printing ink interior 21,7 x 15,2 x cm / 104 pages / hardcover / monochrome
ISBN 978-3-941345-00-3
As you can see here properly Alex has included a “Carom” game board as a “MOUSE-MAP” in the Nellie mouse story – already in 1954, 6 years before his first game release.
Games were his passion. In the year 1962 Alex Randolphs first game “PAN-KAI” was released at Phillips/USA. It was a 2-person laying-game with Pentomino elements. He worked in an advertising agency and developed campaigns there. Later he made the breakthrough with “Twixt”.
The royalties allowed him to go freelance and to concentrate on designing boardgames besides writing poems and books. From 1968 to 1970 Alex Randolph lived and worked in Japan.
In this picture you can see him with a three-dimensional sculpture puzzle that he invented there “as there are such fantastic and enormously talented, absolutely perfect carpenters in this country”.
THE ELEPHANT AND THE FLEA
A children’s’ book about a not only philosophical encounter of two quite different animals, which ends happily after all. Age: 8 years and up
Drawing: ARVI
Text: edited by E. Oehler
Size / pages / binding 16,3 x 16,8 x cm / 24 pages / hardcover
ISBN 978-3-941345-01-0
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