Overdue Update #1: Arts and Crafts

Well, hello there. I realise I've neglected this little corner of the internet for a while and for that I apologise. I've been meaning to inform you of these things but then other things have got in the way, so here they are now. First up, arts and crafts.

For three months earlier this year, I was the Arts and Crafts tutor at Stockdales in Sale. I took two weekly classes where I set projects for people with varying disabilities. It was rather hectic but so rewarding and a lot of fun when the projects went well. I often made some of the projects too in order to help direct the sessions so here are some of the things we got up to:

We decorated little plant pots and made paper flowers to put in them.

We decorated birdhouses to encourage birds to visit our gardens.

We made tissue paper collages of various animals and shapes. This is Frank the Frog (his full name is Francis.)

We painted using animal stencils and I made a rather vibrant wallpaper pattern with the tiger painting I did.

We made masks and this is how I greeted my mum when she came home that day.

We also made Jubilee crowns, Jubilee and Olympic decorations and one of my personal favourite projects: The Little Book of Me. I asked everyone to draw different things on pieces of paper of equal size, including a self-portrait, something that is their favourite colour, their favourite weather/season, their favourite belonging, etc. We then tied the eight drawings together and that became their Little Book of Me; they could hand the book to anyone and we would learn lots of things about them. I also ended up in the summer play as Simon Cowell, as you do.

Stockdales was a great experience but unfortunately quite a trek for me to get to (a good 90 minutes on public transport) so I had to leave. However, for the past six and a half months I've been volunteering at Mahdlo, the new youth centre in Oldham. My colleage, Debbie, and I have been named as a creative force to be reckoned with and keep blitzing out some pretty awesome arts and crafts with the young people at the centre. These projects have included this Eid Mubarak banner which yours truly designed:

In the past couple of months, Debbie and myself have been supporting a few Arts and Crafts regulars in setting up their own little gift shop enterprise, Always Present. We had our first sale at the Halloween parties where we made profit straightaway which not many businesses can say! We were so proud! I spent a lot of time making bracelets to sell for those parties:

For Christmas, we designed some Christmas cards and had them printed professionally. They turned out a treat and the office snapped up nearly half our stock before they went on sale! I am responsible for the snowmen card (which was based on my lead worker's idea.)

The cards have been bundled up in packs of six tied up with ribbon. We are super pleased with them. Now we're working on more Christmassy things, like these golden reindeer I made yesterday:

I have made all nine reindeer, I just couldn't fit them all in one photo.

So that's the arts and crafts side of things for the moment. Always Present have got some exciting projects coming up soon and we're so proud of the way the young people are working hard for the best possible end results :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

People make me angry.

Okay, so this isn't so much about my work as it is about politics.

I'm sure that most people in Britain have been aware of the by-election that just took place in the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency. This is my home constituency so the whole thing has been of interest to me (despite the fact that I forgot to register my vote in time...). The previous Labour candidate, Phil Woolas, is an idiot of the highest order and I'm glad to see the back of him. I remember a meeting that was held about the flooding that was occurring down the back of my row of houses and Mr. Woolas droned on, quoting all the usual empty promises to shut us residents up. However, when it came to questions being asked about solutions to the flooding, I distinctly remember my thirteen-year-old self coming up with better and perfectly logical answers compared to Mr. Woolas. The man knew nothing.

This man is an idiot.

Despite all this, Oldham East and Saddleworth has long been a Labour seat, along with Oldham West and Royton and the majority of seats in the Greater Manchester area. I'd have thought that a Labour win for Debbie Abrahams was a foregone conclusion (despite the fact that Labour won by only 103 votes in the General Election this year), but from some of the comments I've read on articles, apparently not. The residents of Oldham East and Saddleworth are 'thick' for voting Labour back in and the fact that the BNP came fifth means we all must be racist.

Now hold on a moment. First of all, what exactly makes the voters thick? If I had managed to register my vote in time for this by-election, I know I would've struggled knowing what to do with it. Because the result was Labour this means we're fools because 'Labour were the ones who got the country into the mess it's in now'. However, if the outcome had been a Conservative victory we would've been called stupid because of all the 'horrible cuts the Tories have brought in'. Vote for the Lib Dems and we would've been told we're moronic because they've 'turned back on everything they promised; have you not seen the tution fees fiasco?'
Can we win? No. Whichever candidate we'd have picked we'd have been told we'd picked wrong. It's simply a game of trying to find the lesser of three evils. I personally feel the parties are all as bad as one another. I don't abstain from voting but I have the hardest time deciding who my vote should go to. British politics is becoming corrupt beyond recognition so trusting anyone with power is a daunting task. I can't help but think that if I had remembered to register in time, I probably would've voted for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the Pirate Party or the Bus Pass Elvis Party. Let's face it, they probably couldn't do a worse job than any of the main parties. They'd probably make more sense than the main parties too.

And to the people who seem to think that the whole constituency is racist because of the votes for the BNP? I will admit, 1560 votes for the BNP is 1560 more than I'd like to see but that's a small fraction of the people of Oldham. Yes, there are underlying racial tensions in Oldham but I know that many people feel sick to the stomach even thinking about the BNP, let alone voting for them. Do not tar the entire borough with the same brush. I'd like to think that my family, friends and I are enlightened enough not to harbour fascist ideals.

Methinks the thing that irritates me the most is that these comments have most likely been made by people who've never set foot in Oldham or anywhere remotely near. We're all backward and live in the dark ages up here, clearly.

Anyway, back to making my film.