Information
The Site
I'll admit that I once had grand plans for this site. At one time, I hoped for Neogrotesque to become one of those giant graphics sites with hundreds upon hundreds of graphics. It's not that I've given up, but that I've learned to value quality in my designs. I feel that I've grown tremendously as a designer over the years that I've maintained this site. As such, I won't hesitate to delete any graphics that are no longer up to par. I have no lofty ideals about my selflessness in providing these graphics; I make them because I enjoy it. As such, even though I appreciate credit for my work, you're welcome to do with it what you'd like. You can ignore the "rules" that I've put on my premade layouts; they're outdated and I was too lazy to change them. I hope you like my work; I certainly do.
The Domain
Neogrotesque is the title of a song by Pierrot from their ID Attack album. While I've never really been a big fan of the band and only like a few of their songs, this title made a particularly strong impression on me. "A new grotesque," I think, very much reflects not only the artistic style I try to convey in most of my graphics, but also the look, sound, and feel of much of the jrock world in general, and the visual kei subculture in particular. One line from the song struck me as especially fitting: "君は誰よりも美しくｸﾞﾛﾃｽｸよ"--"you are more beautiful and grotesque than anyone."
A Little History
Under its original title, Firefly Studios, Neogrotesque opened on June 27, 2004 as a sort of jack-of-all-trades graphics site. It featured jrock, anime/manga, game, and neutral graphics somewhat equally. As time passed, however, I found myself increasingly making jrock graphics and neglecting the other areas of the site. As a result, in June 2006, I learned PHP/MySQL, recoded the site, and shifted the focus to primarily jrock graphics. On June 15, 2006, I renamed the site Neogrotesque and moved it to its own domain, where it now resides.
