ITC 20. Physicality
Games, sketches, Two-Face & more
Welcome to a new Summer edition of In The Cave, this one more focused on recent commercial and personal work. I hope you enjoy it!
→ Reflection
Whenever I read articles by ObsoleteSony and the likes, I realise how much has been lost with the disappearing analog technology. There was something strangely seductive about all those hollow devices in plastic casings: Walkmans, Discmans, VHS tapes, Mini Discs… even my first Amstrad CPC computer with no hard drive.
Taking a 3.5 inches floppy in your hand, contemplating the tiny mechanisms in it, with moving parts, various materials and textures, with all its weight and dimension, and inserting it into another device that was capable of extracting information from it… it all felt almost ritualistic, but today that probably seems rough, clumsy, ineffective, compared to delicately caressing a flat glass surface with your fingertips.
I think the fact that they were bulky was part of the thing. Walkmans (& co) were impossible-to-hide gadgets, so they doubled down on being extra-flashy, with cool designs and bright colours. And what about the sounds associated to them, engraved in our tactile memory!
I also think that the multiple buttons, small windows, digital panels, moving parts, and tiny lights they featured here and there made you more aware that you were dealing with technology, something complex. The brutal simplicity of today's phones doesn't even allow you to reflect too much on their inherent sophistication.
I'm increasingly seeing more examples of invented analog technology in fiction, something that already existed in the pre-digital era, but I'm eager to see more examples of analog technology created or conceptualised by people who never used it. I sense that more physicality in this sense will have a greater influence on the world, perhaps through unexpected new devices that go beyond the screen concept.
(More) tiny sketches
As has become customary lately, I'm starting with some (digital)pencil sketches I've done over the past few weeks/days. Here they are! As usual, let me know which is your favourite little sketch. I’m always curious.
→ News!
A small book is coming
I can say now that all the pencil sketches that I’ve been sharing on the newsletter, plus the ones that will come, will be compiled on a humble, short book that I’ll self-publish in 2026!
It will be hardcover, A5, and around 48-60 pages long.
Small print run of about fifty copies.
At the same time, I will be publishing a digital PDF version on Gumroad and Itch.io.
The pencil sketches will be accompanied by a few coloured high resolution illustrations.
Most pages will contain some sketches marked with notes that can be read at the end of the book, as anecdotes and clarifications about them.
Of course, there is no commercial purpose to a project of this type, beyond perhaps covering the cost of printing, and pay for future coffees I'll have while I continue to draw. A labour of love, mainly.
I will send you more information when the time comes, which is still many months away. Thanks for being there!
Harvey Dent (Two-face)
Yes, this project keeps progressing, little by little. As I have said on other occasions, it’s a field of recreation and experimentation for me. A happily self-imposed one that will evolve at its own pace. It will likely take fifteen years but hey, Batman has been around since 1939.
Small advances
When I started working on some villains, I realised that Two-Face is one of the least reinterpreted characters of the Batman universe. Other characters have had considerably different versions, but Two-Face seems to remain mostly untouched (even in the newest Caped Crusader animated show).
While I was sketching Harvey Dent’s twisted self, I decided to use a horizontal scar, instead of a vertical one. This is somewhat inadequate, since it does not generate two profiles, or two symmetrical faces:
But I liked the idea that while his eyes show his suffering, his mouth and his words represent the evil that surfaces unfiltered. Through his eyes, Harvey Dent is an unwilling spectator of his own actions. A double personality that expresses itself simultaneously.
Not that this represents a massive change for Two-Face, but it brings something new to its conception. Fun fact: the original inspiration for this reinterpretation was Chester Gould’s Wormy, one of Dick Tracy’s villains. I loved the whole gruesome face with a lovely, seductive voice concept.
More advances soon(ish)!
→ From the past (and to the future?)
Unlocked!
In 2013, I helped design a video game called Unlocked! with my friends from Periferia, a design studio that closed its doors a few years ago, although part of the team was reconverted into a new company: Baku.
The writer of the story, Jose Lomo, writes a very interesting newsletter around interactive fiction that you can read here (Spanish).
It was a great opportunity to combine our knowledge of UI/UX, writing, identity, illustration, animation, and more. The project's lead programmer, Dani Devesa, carried out a herculean and incredibly generous task, and we've had a great relationship ever since, even though the distance between Barcelona and London separates us.
The game
Your role as a player was that of a security expert thief who was hired to recover (steal) a series of valuable artifacts scattered throughout Europe. This was part of the original concept/prototype, which still summarises quite well what it was all about:
Every level was composed of multiple layers you had to solve by unlocking all the different micro-devices that they contained. So the complexity was not solving them like a puzzle, but getting to the final layer in a given time, generally pretty short. More about reaction and speed than cleverness.
The game is no longer available, but for years, we've been talking about the possibility of compiling all the feedback the game received at the time, improving the app, and creating a spiritual heir, with a different setting, this time leaving aside the role of a thief and taking it to a sci-fi setting, with hackers and artificial intelligence involved. (This was before AI was aaaaall around) 😬
There have been some preliminary mockups I've been working on for quite some time, and who knows if they'll ever become a full-fledged product again. Time will tell, but I think it's still a good project for tactile devices, to which all the experience gained over the last twelve years would be added:
More news in the future? :-)
→ Outro
Some Reedsy bits!
As I’ve said before, I enjoy working on spot illustrations for Reedsy’s websites and products, because the challenge is not just making something beautiful. It's more about achieving the right balance in terms of visual complexity, colour palette, overall tone, communication and so on, so that they don't clash with the layout they're in. In other words, they should add, not subtract.
It's tempting to overproduce this type of illustration because, viewed individually, they can look too simple and incomplete. That's actually the case. Because it's the environment in which they are found what ultimately shapes them. I like to think about them more as design components than artistic images.
Thank you for reading In the Cave. Currently, I’m using social media just to promote this newsletter, share other people’s work or send memes to friends. Nothing else. So if you like this newsletter, please share it and recommend it. You can also find me on my website.
See you soon in a recommendations-only edition!
Read a previous story:
Cool reimagining and creative twist Two-Face!
Mi boceto favorito es el niño/elfo/duende que acoge entre sus manos al rey de los pajaritos :-D
La tecnología analógica, más cerca de la mecánica que de la electrónica, debería resurgir de alguna manera. Depender menos de las baterías ya sería un avance (humano, energético y ecológico). A ver si es verdad eso de que todo lo bueno vuelve ;-)