And it burns, burns, burns, this baptism of fire... this baptism of fire.

I am currently undoing a baptism of fire with Illustrator as I'm having to redraw work I'd done in Photoshop ASAP for commission purposes. Methinks I'm getting the hang of it. If not, I'll go mad. Either or.

Until I have the time to post something more interesting (read: long and rambly) here I am with Santa Claus during his college years:

Photo credit goes to the wonderful Charlesworth.

I saw the last Hallé Carol Concert of the year so I am significantly in the Christmas spirit now - my Christmas never feels quite right unless I hear the Hallé Orchestra play Sleigh Ride but I have this year and this pleases me greatly.

So, if I'm not back here beforehand then I leave you with a Bill Bailey styled Merry Christmas: Happy Primary Gifting Period and an Excellent Auxiliary Generosity Zone to all. I hope tis spiffing.

Many happy returns...

... to one of the most inspirational people I've ever come across. Happy birthday, Mike Scott. This man and his music have changed my life, most definitely.

This photo is taken from this blog post featuring a lovely interview with Mr. Scott.

Plus, the man is so damned suave I had to share said suaveness with all.

Apologies I've neglected this blog in recent months. I have been up to stuff. I'll inform you of it all soon, I swear.

I live. For now...

Long time, no speak. Many apologies.

So, I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art. Proof:

Or at least proof that I had a nice photograph taken with a fake degree.

Just before that, I did my first paid singing gig back in The Ham of Old. Proof:

This is about the only photo where I'm not pulling a silly face from singing.

I finished my scarf. It just needs the loose ends hiding and tassels adding to it. Proof:

Methinks it's about 7 and a half feet in length.

I did my final Fringe festival as an Edinburgh resident (for now, at least). I met some very ace people. Proof:

Charlesworth and I with The Axis of Awesome.

Charlesworth and I with Norman Lovett, most famously known as Holly from Red Dwarf

.

(I got very excited about this. Red Dwarf is my favourite TV programme and therefore its cast are some of my favourite people ever so to finally meet one of them and finally see his stand-up made me extremely happy indeed.)

Charlesworth and I with Jon Richardson. He wished me good luck job hunting.

Excellent times all round.

I have also just been paid for my first illustration commission. I would put proof but I'm not sure the drawings have been fully approved yet (they are instructional drawings).

Now I have entered my final month of living in Edinburgh before I move back home. I have been reading, catching up with my book of Codewords for every day of the year (I've only just got to the beginning of May) and other such stuff before my boxes and bubble wrap arrive tomorrow and the packing begins. In the meantime, here's a drawing of my dear friend Kay and myself and the possible conspiracy theory we may have uncovered:

I have no working scanner currently. Apologies.

Stuff what is going on.

This has been my life recently:

Degree Show

The front of my postcards and business cards:

The back of my postcards and business cards:

The Animation exhibit on the Business Opening:

Note my hand in the 'Making Of' projected on the screen.

My station in the exhibit:

My brother, Morgan, and I (aka Jay and Lori in my film) on the Family and Friends Opening night:

The degree show's been going really well, us animation folks have had a lot of positive feedback, which is grand. The whole degree show is pretty damned strong so I highly recommend people around and about Edinburgh having a gander before it closes on Sunday evening!

Other than that, I've been drawing and doodling again now that I don't have to draw Jay and Lori a bazillion times over.

Drawings

A couple of parent and kiddywinkle sketches. I shall be colouring them soon. I'm thinking of doing two different coloured versions for each, one digital, one traditional.

A Forest by The Cure came on the radio whilst I was drawing in Starbucks, so I was compelled to draw this as I do love that song a great deal:

Whilst I've been invigilating I've been sketching to stop myself from going a bit spare staring at the same bit of wall for 5 hours, so this is what spilled out of my brain whilst on duty yesterday:

Because I am small.

I saw a girl with knee socks watching one of our films so I suddenly felt compelled to draw socks.

Knitting
I've also been knitting. I am working on a scarf, and this is how it's looking currently:

Singing

Tis time to practice the songs for the gig next week again. I'm singing Complainte De La Butte by Rufus Wainwright, Walk On The Wild Side by Lou Reed, Port of Amsterdam originally by Jacques Brel but I shall by singing a Brel/David Bowie hybrid and El Tango De Roxanne from Moulin Rouge!. Practice is going... alright. Some of them are not too bad but some of them *cough*Port of Amsterdam*cough* are proving to be a bit of a nightmare. Plus, I seem to be developing a sore throat and that is exactly NOT what you need for singing times. Here's hoping it'll be gone for next Friday...

Anywho, now to more tidying and packing. Charlesworth is arriving tomorrow to see the degree show and then I will be traveling back to Oldham with her in order to watch my brother's last Showcase concerts with Oldham Music Centre. Then back to Edinburgh to graduate.
So... next time I'm back here I might have a funny picture of me wearing a mortar board to share.

Two Little Ducks

Well, hello again. Just a little update of what's going on before the degree show occurs.

Well, first of all, I turned 22. My mum was in Edinburgh visiting for my birthday and we had a rather good time. The night before my birthday (well, I say the night before, it had turned midnight and therefore was actually my birthday) my friends and I went to see Neil, my sound designer, play drums for one of his many bands which was much fun. I had to inform Neil that we had just been told we needed adjusted cuts of the films in four days time which wasn't fun but Neil, being the excellent chap he is, made the changes I asked for and everything was superb. Later on my birthday, my mum and I went on a charity shop raid and came away with loads of stuff. Methinks my favourite purchase was one that felt as though it was fate.
I had said to my mum and brother that a present I would rather like for my 22nd birthday would be two little ducks. This is because the bingo call for 22 is 'two little ducks' and therefore is the best bingo call, in my eyes. It was suggested that my brother should buy me the two little ducks seen as I seem to have a tradition of buying him duck and/or penguin themed presents for his birthday/Christmas.
Whilst we were on our charity shop raid, my mum and I stopped outside one of the charity shops and looked in the window. What should be there but two identical ducks and a larger duck in the same style. My mum naturally bought all of them for me (we said that the two little ducks are my brother and I whilst the larger duck is our mum). Here are the two little ones:

Two little ducks, with the two little ducks card that Christina gave me.

Twas fate, I tells thee.
Other than that, my mum and I went to two concerts in Glasgow that were the main part of my birthday present. One was to see the Groundhogs, whose lead singer and lead guitarist, the legendary Tony McPhee, had a severe stroke two years ago. I was blown away by how phenomenal his guitar playing remains. He was sensational. He only sung three of the songs as he still clearly struggles with speech; he lost the ability to speak when he first had the stroke. Considering that, he's come on leaps and bounds and although his singing was quite mumbly there were moments were you could hear his amazing gravelly voice shine through. At this point, I found everything rather bittersweet but the band then informed the crowd that they intend to release a new album soon. The material is all ready, they are just waiting on Tony's voice to be better for recording. So hazaar, he is confident he will be back to business soon! If you've never heard of the Groundhogs before (and I'm sure you probably haven't), you should check them out. The next day, we went to see Roger Hodgson, formerly of Supertramp. I didn't realise how steep the gallery seats in the Pavillion theatre are, so my crippling fear of heights and vertigo didn't take very long to kick in. Thankfully, Roger and the band were such an excellent distraction. The most wonderful thing about this gig was, just after the interval, Roger came on and informed the audience that he'd just found out he'd become a grandfather two hours previously and then played what he said was one of his favourite songs he's written, which is one of mine too. Congratulations to Roger!

Finally, on the music front, I am currently in the process of rehearsing for The Blind Tiger Burlesque: Vice Night with special guest Anna Fur Laxis. Before you ask, no, I will not be doing any burlesque dancing. I shall leave that to Charlesworth's older sister, who is the one behind the event. She needed a singer so I was asked to perform so that is what I shall be doing, singing about the cheery subject of whores! No better way to pass the time! This will be my first paid gig too, for every concert I've ever done has been with a choir or school so obviously I've never been paid. Should be pretty good!

So now that my obligatory music ramble is over, back to degree show stuff. Just under a week to go and it's getting pretty exciting. It would seem that eca have picked me to be the representative of Animation and be mentioned in the press:

• eca website
• The Trend Boutique

This stuff was also mentioned in a newspaper apparently, though I do not know which one. This is the Animation section on the official 2011 degree show website and here is We Are Animation, a website that the wonderful Sarah Keeling has put together for us, so be sure to check that out!

Finally, what we've been working towards: The Filmhouse!


Lots of links for you to enjoy there, so get to it! I'm going to get back to practicing my songs. Adieu!

Softly, As I Leave You

My degree is finished. That's an odd thing to say, but it's true so there we go. Here are a few things about the final days of said degree:

This is pretty much all the frames I drew for my film:

My attempt at being organised.

I've just tried to quickly count up all the frames I drew and methinks it comes to roughly 1149. Poor tree.

This was my desk at half 7am on the day of the hand-in:

Messy.

I'd stayed all night in the studio, dressed in my pyjamas at Sarah's suggestion (and what an excellent suggestion it was), finishing off my supporting work and such. Considering I'd been awake for over 30 hours (which was far less than some people, might I add), I was wide awake the whole time. Maybe I was running off adrenalin, who knows. I will say that when I got home after a celebratory drink I changed into my pyjamas, made myself a cup-a-soup and was about to watch Neighbours when I crashed out for 3 hours, woke up at about 11pm and crawled to bed, leaving both Neighbours and my cup-a-soup sadly neglected.

This was the book full of my supporting material:

Note how my finger is propping it closed. This is what happened without any propping:

It no shut. It wasn't even finished at this point. Somehow, after finishing 240-odd pages into the book, I managed to make it prop itself semi-closed. I'm not sure how I did this. Naturally, this book was from a charity shop and I placed all my work in it using photo corners, the idea being that all of my additions can be taken out so the book can still be read. The book was Principles of Immunology so if you're looking to read up about the subject, I may be able to help you out.
More book photos:

But that was over a week ago and I have been free since. I've been back in The Ham of Old for the past few days to celebrate my younger brother Morgan's 18th birthday, which was on the 21st. I insisted I has a picture taken with my best friend on this momentous day but he wasn't too keen on the idea, as you can tell:

He loves me really.

Morgie had a concert with the Oldham Youth Choir in the evening so he didn't have a choice in how he spent his birthday but the concert was wonderful and I enjoyed it immensely (and was super jealous that I wasn't back singing with them as they sung a couple of pieces that I've sung and adore: Locus Iste by Bruckner and the first movement of Vivaldi's Gloria - look them up!). Morgie was part of an 8 voice close harmony group dubbed The Candy Men and they were fantastic. Morgie was the lowest voice part in the group and was dubbed as the steadiest, rhythm-wise, but the conductor couldn't think of something to compare him to so I now call him "steady as a steady thing". I adore close harmony and that was definitely the most fun part of the evening, but methinks my favourite piece was the choir's performance of Softly, As I Leave You.
Now, if you've never heard the piece (you might have heard it played when Jack Duckworth died in Corrie), then you must (I can only find an arrangement for male voices. The version the choir sung was four part harmony for soprano/alto/tenor/bass):

Morgie and I think it's about an elderly couple and one of them is about to die and goes quietly before the other notices. It's such a beautifully moving piece and needless to say that the choir hadn't even finished singing the first line and I was already crying and continued to do so throughout the song. Mum was set off too. Just magical music making. Couldn't be more proud of my brother. What a wonderful eighteen year old he's turned out to be.

I'm going to go and relax now, as the three of us have just had a meal to celebrate birthday times (as my birthday is in a few days - I have often said that Morgan is my twin for all except the fact he is 3 years and 360 days younger than me) and I've eaten a lot of rice and drank a fair bit of wine. I am content.

Brain. Dead.

Whilst I take a break from drawing charity shop backgrounds (which is NOT fun), I shall ramble for a short while.

So, we're into the last 10 days of the project *cries*. I'm hoping I can pull everything together, but we shall see... I have finished my timed edit of the film so, in theory, all I need to do now is slot the remaining coloured frames and backgrounds in and voila! A film! We'll see about that...

Here's a shot I finished today, a nice pan of the charity shop:



Anywho, back to it... *slumps face down onto desk*

I can't think of a witty title today.

So we enter the final three weeks of the project.

I'm working on drawing the final shots of the film, and then to more compositing and working on backgrounds (oh joy of joys). Mother and Morgan are still doing a sterling job with the colouring. I owe them many a thank you present. Neil sent me an idea for the sound and the recurring motif for when Jay and Lori's toys are onscreen is so lovely! I'm very excited about it.

I feel I should show you some stuff, so here we go:

Here's a linetest of the dog from the second flashback. I'm surprised how well this turned out, I thought it was going to look far, far worse.

Here is Shot 28, with the old couple in the charity shop (the background for which will be added at some point). I rather like these two. I completely inadvertently ended up making them look a bit like my parents, to point where my mum now goes "Ooo, look! It's me!" if I show her stuff with this character in it.

Finally, proof I do work, taken by the lovely Charlesworth:

Now to go back to drawing and being paranoid that I have a mouse in my flat... I suppose it was naïve of me to think I could go the whole year without one appearing (that is if there is one...)

Lengthy post is lengthy.

I just realised I haven't posted anything here in a while and I thought I should rectify that. So bonsoir.

Well, what's been happening the past couple of weeks? I went home for a few days which was good fun and super useful. When I arrived back I needed to nip into my old primary school as my mum volunteers there a couple of days a week and she had my house keys. When I arrived my mum said she would just go and gather her things and we could go (twas the end of the school day when I arrived) but we could look at the bells before we left. Now, a couple of days beforehand, I had asked my mum if the school still had the old handbell they used to signify the end of breaktime as I need a bell ringing in my film when the charity shop door opens. My mum had then apparently asked one of my old teachers, Mrs. Robertshaw, if I could borrow this bell to which she said that I could borrow these:

MUST OWN. You can also see the old handbell in the top left.

How adorable are they?! An octave of rainbow bells! Being a musical person obsessed with rainbow/multi-coloured things I got very excited. I need to own my own set of these one day. They make such lovely sounds as well. The first one I tried was one of the red bells, which happened to be a low C and the tone of the note was gorgeous! I then preceded to spend fifteen minutes trying to decide which note I wanted to use (read: playing the bells because I was having so much fun), before being torn between low C and F. My mum then said she couldn't see a problem with me borrowing both and asked at reception if this was OK. There was no problem at all so I took both the low C and F bells, after having a quick chat with Mrs. Robertshaw and thanking her for being so kind.

C and F happen to be two of my favourite notes, the other being A. Yes, I have favourite notes...

So I recorded those and they sounded spiffy. Methinks I'm genuinely a bit overexcited for this one sound effect.
What else happened at home... went to the opticians (the optician who conducted my eyetest was also called Natasha... that's right, we're cool), learnt I have gotten more blind in my right eye and now have new eyeshields. Twas a BOGOF deal so I now have two pairs which I can swap and change: my brother and I said that whenever our mother's back is turned I should change the pair of glasses I'm wearing and not tell her, just to catch her out. Also, speaking of my brother, I recorded Morgan playing his clarinets for my soundtrack. He did some lovely improvisation for me whilst he practiced for his Grade 8 exam (which he got a Merit in, hazaar!).

Here is Morgan playing Bass Clarinet in a concert. He is most excellent.

My spiffing composer chap Neil and I have had a sit down and talked about how these recordings can be used and it's looking positive, so that's something. Can't wait to see what Neil comes up with!
Finishing off my time at home, I went to see a heavy metal band called Marseille at my local. One distinguishing feature this band has other than the fact that they were originally called AC/DC before some Aussies got a bit more famous than they did is that Neil Buchanan from Art Attack is their lead guitarist. You know, this fellow? This promised to be an awesome evening, even more so considering that quite a few of my friends and I partially have this chap to thank for our interest in art.
Now, first things first, the band are really good. My friends and I were by the bassist's side who was enjoying a bit of banter with us in between songs. When it came to their encore, whilst the singer and Neil were talking to the audience, the bassist turned to me and said "Do you want to come and sing with us?" I thought he was joking but it would seem that the members of the band each pick someone (i.e. a girl) to join them onstage and sing the chorus of the encore. So I ended up singing with Neil Buchanan's band. Here I am onstage with them:

My friend also videoed the whole thing. So bizarre yet completely awesome. We then met Neil:

Charlesworth and I with NEIL BUCHANAN.

So that was a lot of fun.

And then I returned to Edinburgh and the grim prospect that was my dissertation. Thankfully it is ALL OVER now. I made sure I handed in on April 1st as I enjoy the idea of my two hand-in days being April Fool's Day and Friday 13th May. If it all goes wrong, I can blame the dates. The Baftas were fun too, though neither Nuria nor Will won, but Anna who was in last year's graduating class with Nuria won Best Animation so congrats to her!
But now I am back to animating and this is good! Here are some linetests you can look at:

Methinks Mr. Runnicles has turned out quite well here, though this was NOT fun to animate. Ah well, as long as it's worth it.

Finally, to finish off this oh-so-lengthy ramble, here's the other drawing Turnerface asked me to do for her.

Before I shaded the face, Faustus looked like Paul Stanley from Kiss in Starchild mode without the star...


I'll shut up now.

Try it yourself.

It's been quite a productive week for my little self.

After a few days last week where NOTHING I drew looked right, things suddenly turned around. Very strange too, considering that my sudden burst of productivity came on the 11th, the day the Japanese earthquake and tsunami occurred. Apart from the fact that the whole thing is a horrible tragedy, I ended up beside myself with worry as Turnerface's sister has been teaching in Japan for the past few years and is still there currently (in fact, she is due to return home in only a matter of days). After a couple of hours Turnerface informed me that her sister is fine as she is a couple of hundred miles from the epicentre, but Turnerface was still trying to get in contact with all the friends she has in Japan. Then, when the tsunami warnings were extended to other countries I needed to find out if other people were okay: one of my best friends is from Taiwan so I made sure she knew about the disaster so she could check her family were alright and another of my friends is out working in the Philippines. Fortunately they were all fine, and after a tense couple of days, Turnerface finally heard back from all of her friends, all of whom are safe. A small mercy amongst the horror. I shall donate more to the relief effort soon, and it would be nice if you could too.
Needless to say, I was a bit jittery the whole of that Friday whilst waiting to hear back from people. I don't know whether it was the nervous energy that helped or what, but I produced my favourite bit of animation so far. On Monday I finished the sequence off. Here's a cleaned up linetest - the timing isn't exactly right but you get the gist:

The weekend was spent compositing and lip syncing. I also made a rather big decision considering the shading that I had intended to include. As you can see from previous shots I've uploaded, I was trying to put this kind of scruffy shading on my film to give it a bit of life and stop it from being flat. However, after working on backgrounds which I'm planning to make fairly textured and just taking in sheer time elements, I realised my film doesn't need the shading. In fact, it looks better without. So that was a nice, accomplished feeling decision. Here's the first shot I put together after this epiphany (yes, the background's being worked on):

At the moment, I need to get my dissertation out of the way and done because it's just a massive obstacle blocking the path to film completion. Plus, for someone who usually doesn't find writing too difficult, I'm really not enjoying writing this damned thing so the sooner it's gone, the better I will feel generally.
This week should be quite fun though, as I will be heading to the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards to lend my support particularly to the lovely Nuria Gonzalez-Blanco, whose nominated graduate film Christina and I coloured last year, and to my classmate Mr. Will Anderson, who is nominated in the Experimental/Art category. All this, and I'll be seeing Neil Buchanan and his hair metal band perform on Monday. That's right, Neil Buchanan of Art Attack fame. Exciting stuffs, no? As long as I don't spend my entire time laughing at a Vietnamese version of Pokémon Crystal... it's far too distracting. Keep away from that for a while and I'll be onto a winner.

Filler Material.

Today I received a letter from my dear friend Eve, written on deli paper (she tends to write her letters when there are no customers in Subway). She also sent this lovely bookmark:

I decided to stick it on my desk to provide motivation. I also thought I'd document my desk space in the studio so I can look back on it with fond memories. So here's my desk...

Here's my model set for the charity shop, sat alongside my Serious Film Schedule of Seriousness. How I wish I could say that I'd stuck to said schedule and was not behind. I'd made it all scary looking to try and keep me on track... clearly hasn't worked. You can also see my second anniversary card from Charlesworth, my Facebook wife.

Here are some pencils telling you that it's my desk. They're works by an artist called Dalton Ghetti who seems to specialise in making sculptures at the end of pencils. Crazy mad skillz he has, either way. You can also see Frollo and The Schofe, who act as the 'If you don't do work, face the consequences' part of my desk.

The other side of my desk. I decided to put up pictures of things that inspire me (more or less my favourite things). You can see the HMV inspiration poster Charlesworth made for me, ReBoot, the Old Spice Man, Bruce Forsyth, Athelston from the Never Mind The Buzzcocks lineup, my mum and brother Morgan, Red Dwarf, Mike Scott of The Waterboys, Journey and Steve Perry Approving and Led Zeppelin, specifically John Bonham because I love him. Also, my fairy lights, because they are a necessity.

Lightbox with (gasp!) frames! I've been propping my lightbox up at an angle on a nice Chinese style box I bought for £2 from a charity shop, seen as I haven't put anything in it yet. I rather love my desktop background, which is a stupidly pretty still of Ram, Tron and Flynn from Tron (another one of my favourite things).


Sorry for this filler material. I have got several more shots done and they're coloured by the wonderful Mother and Morgan but I haven't edited them together yet. Work on the sound side of things will be underway soon as I met up with Neil, the lovely chap who has agreed to help me. We both agreed it would be quite nice if my brother agreed to play some clarinet for the soundtrack but he's a little reluctant (as I expected) so we'll have to see. Either way, I'm excited. I've really been looking forward to finally get the ball rolling the on the music side of things.

Finally, to continue the random, not-particularly-related-to-my-film stuff, here's a GIF I made tother day to motivate me:

You may have to click on it to make it work...

If giggling Jeff Bridges doesn't make everyone feel better about life, I don't know what will.

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning...

My mum and brother are doing a rather good job colouring frames, don't you think?

I shall colour the eyes later. They are not composed entirely of flesh.

I tried to churn out as much animation as I could for them seen as they were on half term week and were asking for as much as possible. I got three shots done for them and the frame above is from one of the shots. All animation done thus far is coloured (but not shaded... that's my domain...). Shots 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are all animated now so I've got a fair part of the first scene done. Now I'm starting to get to the shots that require more complex backgrounds. I hate backgrounds. Hopefully I'll be able to get my head round it all quickly and painlessly... I'm working on a panoramic background for a wide pan in the charity shop, using photographs I took of my model set. This is it thus far:

Still needs work. Like I say, backgrounds hurt my head.

I'm worried my work my suffer a little at the moment as I keep going dizzy. I've long suffered from dizziness and fainting but now I'm going dizzy in circumstances I never have before, leaving me very tired, weak and completely unable to concentrate, which is worrying. I'm hoping that I just need stronger lens for my glasses. I'm due an eye test so hopefully I'll be able to get an appointment in the next couple of weeks. Methinks a trip to the doctor's won't go amiss either... sigh.

This is the end to an otherwise fun week. Charlesworth and I had a smashing time helping each other not procrastinate, watching Neighbours with our Paul Robinson 'I Like Me' mugs and obsessing over Journey, Jeff Bridges and Weebl's Stuff. We saw True Grit on Wednesday which lived up to our expectations (we had been excited about it for weeks) and continued the day by going to a pub called Lebowski's where I was served a drink with two ice cubes stuck together. I christened this The Jeff Bridges Bridge:

You should know by now that Charlesworth and I have obsessive personalities and proud. We also made many pointless lists, as we like lists.

Ninja skills need improvement.

My lovely colouring minions (aka my mother and brother, Morgan) have sent me back the first shot they've completed and it must be said they've done an excellent job! I'm hoping they can keep this up as it would be a massive help to me...

Twas a Café Crawl Saturday today, though I say 'café crawl'... we only went to one Starbucks and stayed there for around four and a half hours. I drew a couple of folks (in theory I should be excellent at drawing people eating and drinking soon) but I gave up after I started drawing this one guy and he cottoned onto the fact that I was drawing him very quickly. Even when I pretended to draw Christina (who was very close to him in my line of sight) it still wasn't enough to stop him looking round every few minutes to make sure I wasn't looking at him... that or he was just staring at me for no good reason. Either way, the drawing of him looks nothing like, naturally. Soooo I just drew some random stuff in the meantime. I've been faffing about with graphite and pencil drawings recently, as well as scanning graphite drawings and adding colour in Photoshop. Here's the results of today's doodles:

I don't know where this one appeared from within the recesses of my mind but ah well. I might faff about some more with this later but it'll do for the time being.

Here's dear ol' Jay and Lori. Methinks that Lori is a linguist; I can imagine her wanting to master many a language so she can be a true polyglot. Jay, however, is more of a biologist. He's definitely doing some kind of Biology course at university. Don't know what though, I know he's unsure as to what he wants to do for a career. He's laid back like that. He also cannot get a grip on language like Lori can.

As a pleasant distraction from drawing Jay and Lori over and over again (though I do love them really), my one of my best friends, Sarah Turner (who shall almost always be referred to as Turnerface), asked me to draw my interpretation of the two characters in her project so she can show examples of different styles. Her work is based on the Faust tale so she's asked me to draw Faustus and Mephistopheles. So far, I've drawn Mephistopheles. Faustus shall have to wait a little while longer whilst I get some more shots drawn out.

 

Mephistopheles, original pencil sketch

 

Mephistopheles, coloured

Charlesworth shall be staying with me for a few days this coming week which I am rather excited about. We shall motivate each other to work whilst having great amounts of fun in a Journey/Neighbours daze. Plus we shall be seeing True Grit and therefore seeing JEFF BRIDGES. Hells yes.

I hate my vacuum cleaner.

I have a flat inspection tomorrow, so I have tidied and cleaned. However, despite vacuuming my floor for TWENTY MINUTES, you can't tell the difference. The shit little wheely vacuum cleaner this flat has is beyond pathetic. I would buy my own vacuum cleaner and take it with me once I move out if I had the money. Plus, despite using rubber gloves, my hands still smell of bleach. Ugh.

Anywho, filmy stuffs! Methinks I have settled on a title for the film, gasp! I'm going for Donated Memories. Now, if you think this is rubbish, believe me this is the least naff sounding of all the possibilities I came up with. And there were MANY, MANY possibilities. My brother was the one who came up with Donated Memories, though he said Donated Memories: The Past Returns so it sounds like some kind of Star Wars epic. I told him that that would be the name of a sequel, to which my brother said that I must make the sequel just so the title can exist properly.

Dissertation work had been eating up most of my time this past week but I've got a couple of shots sorted. This be Shot 4 and 5:

Considering the transition between the shots was done solely in Photoshop at 2 in the morning, I'm rather pleased with it.

I'm about to eat delicious looking ice cream with the wonderful Christina. We shall do Valentines with style.

I've always had a habit of liking the villains more in Disney films

Horrible gale force winds and rain + pulled muscle in foot = not being able to walk very fast and missed train; fail, me. All trains heading to Manchester getting gradually more and more delayed; fail, train service.
Anywho, I'm back in The Ham of Old now having a natter with my mother about the 50 animated Disney features and a rather rubbish list ranking them in order. NO ONE should rank Home on the Range higher than Pocahontas. No one should rank Home on the Range higher than anything really. That film is rubbish. I'll shush now before I ramble about this for far too long. Anyone who knows me well enough will know that my favourite Disney film is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It is glorious and would be even better if it didn't have the fat, annoying gargoyle in it and if the other two gargoyles didn't sing. Just give Frollo more airtime. More Frollo airtime would mean more Tony Jay voice acting and this is GOOD.

On my way to Preston where I needed to change trains I drew this lil thing:

It's not the best quality image in the world as I took it with my camera as opposed to scanning it (our scanner at home refuses to work), but you get the idea. I particularly love drawing Young Lori. She's sweet.


Another shot is ready and waiting to be coloured. Here's the linetest for part of it:

I ended up redrawing half of this because Lori's hand grew in size from acceptable to GINORMOUS by the time she reached the right-hand side of the screen, and that just won't do. Methinks this works though.

Animation work is going to have to take a slight backseat until the 2000 word section of my dissertation is handed in on Thursday... ugh.