Overdue Update #3: And the rest

And so to the rest of my life. Whilst I am spending a large amount of my time working to save myself some money, I've been preoccupying myself with various little endeavours so I'll share with you some of the main ones.

I have spent a lot of my time making jewellery (including the bracelets for Always Present.) Soon, I hope I'll feel comfortable enough to open an Etsy shop; I just want a tiny bit more practice! Most of the items I have been making have been earrings:

Lego Darth Vader and Yoda earrings.

Lego Gandalf and Gimli earrings, modelled by yours truly.

A selection of items. Owls often feature.

I've been indulging in nail art too, mainly Pacman and moustaches.

As a present to her, I painted Charlesworth with her cat, Salem.

And here are two little sloths, because I very much like sloths.

I have also been knitting. I am gradually getting better at knitting. Hopefully I won't become too preoccupied with knitting that I will neglect this space for too long again.

Wondrous facial hair for all!

I need to bring all my Art Attack inclinations to the forefront again. I'm currently leading arts and crafts sessions for people with learning difficulties and fun little projects similar to those that Mr. Neil Buchanan spent so much of my childhood making seem to be ideal. It should be exciting!

I've had good fun recently drawing a mock Lord Kitchener "Your Country Needs You" poster for my boyfriend's birthday. My main aim was to give him a small taste of his delusions of world domination so his dream wouldn't be completely crushed in the end. However, I don't think that plan worked very well, because the A1 print of the drawing that I gave him has made him even more determined to devise takeover plans and grow a glorious moustache (neither or which will ever occur.)

 

Bless him. I too would be gutted if I couldn't grow such magical facial hair. Then again, one of my life ambitions is to become Hercule Poirot, which I think is quite unlikely. Maybe we can both aspire to a moustache such as this:

Steve Perry wonders if we could ever match his moustache...

"No! No one can match my wonderfully 80s moustache!"

(I blatantly wanted an excuse to use some of my Journey GIFs.)

We could be cartographers.

Morgan and I drew up a comprehensive map of the centre of Manchester this afternoon.

It's very accurate.

I then ended up spending nearly £75 for a one way train ticket to London due to a mistake in the booking. I was more than unamused.

Resolving to be awesome.

I don't often have New Year resolutions. I often think that if I want to make a change to my life like "eat more healthily" or "budget my money better" then I can start them at any point in the year. I don't have to sit about waiting for New Year to give me the kick-start for any resolution I wish to make. It just so happens that a resolution I have undertaken coincided around the start of this, the year of our Lord, 2012.

My resolution isn't original by any stretch of the imagination. It's been done countless times before (and no doubt better than I will manage) but I thought I'd give it a whirl and see how much it helps me. I have decided to make sure I complete one drawing every day for a year.

Now, I know that as an art graduate I shouldn't really have to set myself a drawing task. However, having said that, I've been rather disillusioned with drawing recently. I don't know why but I thought that if I set myself this task then I will have at least one drawing for each day. Some days might be like a visual diary, some days might just be random rubbish that falls out of my brain, some days might be experimenting with techniques. Some days might be an unintelligible mess, some days might be something of a masterpiece (I should be so lucky). This is also not to say that I'm limiting myself to one drawing per day, that would be silly. I'm just trying to ease myself out of this drawing lull.

I have bought myself two little books that have enough pages between the two of them to cover the 366 days of 2012 (and the few days of 2013 I'll have to do; I started on January 9th). This will also ensure that every drawing is on the same size of paper. Here are the first three days, though I will apologise now as I do not have a working scanner:

Monday 9th January 2012

I discovered I need a new super fine fineliner whilst drawing this. Mine has gotten too flat so I can't quite get the definition I would like.

Tuesday 10th January 2012

I couldn't take a picture of this with the flash on as the pencil would just reflect the light.

Wednesday 11th January 2012

This is why I love Shadow.

So we'll see how well this resolution goes. Poirot continues to entertain me no end, and I cannot wait until the complete collection with David Suchet will be released on DVD sometime near the end of the year. Here's a gif that I made tother day because this moment amused me so much:

The chap leaning against the wall is Michael Fassbender.

One of my life ambitions is to come up with as many Poirot/David Suchet related tongue twisters as possible. So far, I have come up with two completely by accident, which are the basis of aforementioned life ambition.


Oh, and Happy Mavis Day.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

Café Crawl Saturday

Today has been spent drawing and colouring. These are no doubt useful practices for an animator.

First of all, my classmates and close friends, Christina and Richard, and myself had a Café Crawl Drawing Day. To make up for the distinct lack of animation-specific life drawing classes on our course, drawing people sneakily out and about is usually the subsititute, so I suggested a café crawl. We only managed to go to two cafés today (slightly longer drawings than anticipated. On my part anyway) but next time I'm sure we'll manage more. There is a silly number of cafés bunched together around Middle Meadow Walk in Edinburgh so venues are easy enough (there are two Starbucks literally within a minute's walk of each other there). One of my drawings isn't finished yet as the some of the pens I was using ran out halfway through so I shall have to purchase new ones in order to complete it, but there is one that I'm rather pleased with.

Christina, drawn with 6-colour pencil, 22/01/11

I can't decide whether it's sort of cheating to use a pencil with a lead that's split into six different colours, but at the same time it sort of leaves the final result of the drawing up to chance, which I like. Sometimes there's a budding Dadaist within me trying to get out. Either way, methinks Café Crawl Saturday shall have to become a regular thing. It's nice to take a break from film work whilst still doing something productive that will help the production in some way, shape or form.

Now it's back to colouring for my film. I've got two shots cleaned up and scanned which I'm rather excited about, so now it comes to colouring them to see how my desired look will appear onscreen. Here's a frame from Shot 9, a lovely close up of Jay looking a little unconvinced:

In the end, I want the shading to be sort of scruffy looking and a little jittery, whilst the backgrounds will be textured to avoid everything from becoming flat. Unless that's the look you're going for, a flat appearance is a real danger with 2D hand-drawn coloured frames. I'm debating whether the shading needs to be more obvious or not. There's a very fine line, I'm finding, where the shading can be a little subtle one minute and then overpowering the next. This is a problem on the skin in particular.  A few more hours messing around is needed, methinks. It is exciting/a relief to start to see some of the drawings looking complete; it makes me feel like my film will come together like it's formed in my head.

I have also just received a present which made me smile. We all need inspiration, don't we? Well, HMV have been capitalising on this for a few years now with their 'My Inspiration' posters. You know the ones: famous musician/actor/filmmaker is pictured with a quote from something which inspires them. They're dotted all over any HMV store you care to look in. Well, one of my best friends, Creative Writing and Film Studies graduate Hayley Charlesworth (who shall almost always be referred to as Charlesworth) has made one for me and it has made me very inspired:

I'm very tempted to print it out and stick it on my wall/studio space but a part of me wonders whether this would be seen as cheeky seen as I'm not famous yet. Having said that, I can be purchased on the HMV website. When I was in the Hallé Youth Choir, I took part in a recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius (which has since won a Classic FM award for Best Choral Performance - oh yes, I'm very proud of us) and the CD can be bought here. Buy it if you care to. It's very good, but I am rather biased.

And finally, speaking of Journey inspiring me, it is the former lead singer of Journey's birthday today: Steve Perry, aka 'The Voice' (no, not you Russell Watson). I have a book of codeword puzzles that has one for everyday this year and today's contained the word 'journeys'. It's almost like it knows. Anywho, to celebrate I've been listening to Journey and Steve Perry's solo stuff all day (like I need a reason anyway) and to finish, here's a GIF of the man himself from the infamous Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) video:

The best checkered shirt dance you'll ever see.