Inspiration: like I said it comes in big random blobs

I cant believe it. I think i might actually know exactly what im going to do for dynamic communications... However it could all crumble depending on 2 things:

1. Barbels reaction - i think its crazy enough that she just might love it, and if i word it in such a way as to include all those "inter-personal", "trans-cultural" things she likes then im sure my chances will skyrocket!
2. That christianity has nothing against lego.

Ok ok ill tell you, im thinking about doing a stop motion animation... of a lego man wandering around a cathedral. Since my seed is medieval architecture this fits right in, but i plan to make it an epic journey for the lego man, with religious and philosophical undertones. So its gonna be a serious animation, but a hell of a lot of fun to make! just imagine all the weird looks ill get from taking hundreds of pictures of a lego man in a public place. I hope she likes the idea, iv got nothing else!

Moving onto a different subject area, iv been working on my essay as of late, and currently im on a word count of 1020 out of 2000, so not bad, once im done thinking about dynamic communications ill get back on it, im hoping to finish tonight as i might have said a few times... (sorry for repetition, i genuinely forget) so no more pictures to upload tonight.

Note to self: learn to wake up when your alarm goes off

Well todays been totally unproductive in comparison to last night. I had planned to force myself up at 12 after a 6 hour sleep (supposedly a healthy amount) but I found myself unable to tear myself out of bed until nearer 4... so most of the day has been wasted. I plan to get as much of my essay done as I can once I get round to it, so hopefully ill be finished sometime tomorrow. However going back to last night, my productivity continued well into the early hours of the morning, I went a bit crazy scanning everything interesting I could find, and played around with lights and such on the scanner. I came up with quite a lot of images to I hope they dont take up too much space.

I keep feeling this one has a sortof retro feel to it which i quite like.

With these ones i like the depth and the ghostly effect that the scanner created

I quite like the sense of depth at the edges this one has, like cliffs falling into the abyss.

With this one i was playing around with a flashlight on the scanner itself, when i moved it rapidly over the scanning bottle it created this interesting effect (this, after the hat, was the image that sparked my scanning frenzy last night)

A big thanks to procrastination!

I'll admit it, im a very big fan of procrastination, it doesnt always do me good, in fact i would in the past have gone as far as to say it never does anyone any good! but not tonight, tonight procrastination was my friend, because it led me away from staring at the empty space inbetween the intro and conclusion of my essay, and as my eye wandered down i saw my hat. If youve been reading these then youll have seen The Hat a few posts back when i was wearing it along with many a warm attire and sleepingbag. Some of you may have even been lucky enough to see The Hat in person, its awesome. But anyway i digress. I seen the hat and then thought about what Inga was telling me about scanning stuff and such, and i thought, what the hey, ill try scanning my hat...

A few attempts at turning my scanner upside down, and a few colour/brightness/contrast adjustments later left me with these:

The last 3 I'm particularly happy with and i plan to use these as my other 3 2D images (Inga didnt like the bottles).

So this has been a very productive night, 2D images finished ahead of schedule, iv got about 400 words of my essay done, one reference in the bag, hopefully a few more as i go. My animation is stuck in a bit of a rut currently, but once im over my annoyance at flash (again) ill get starting on a solution and finishing my animation (if i do my essay by sunday night then ill have all week to do my animation, but im not gonna let that slow down any momentum i build up! the quicker im finished the better!

Oh and thanks to folk (Hi Neil!) for helping me a bit with searching for references, hopefully your advice will not be in vain.

Its seems iv been neglecting this as of late. (9 days to be exact as a friend pointed out - Hi if your reading Lee) So updates... well mainly iv been concentrating on my flash animation, mostly sorting ideas in my head and planning how to create the animation as smoothly as possible, not so much actually getting round to doing it. I did however find a very simple solution to creating a tornado, and i think once iv done this post im going to force myself to actually finish doing that, maybe it'll kickstart me to get some more of it done.

I really wanted to get some work done this week (and when i say some i mean quite a bit) so i could be finished by the 11th of December. Thats still a possibility however im going to have to properly get myself in gear, no more procrastinating! My main reason for not having done as much as i wanted was the all-nighter i did on sunday/monday to get me some sketches done for visual literacy and fill my sketchbook a bit - so here they are

Theres some research into medieval architecture, a bit on metallic textures and the shine they give (those 2 for dynamic communication) and a bit of life drawing with some poses for visual literacy when i get round to the character/scene sketches.

So my plan of action in order to finish everything by the 11th:

• Finish my animation by monday
• Essay by Wednesday
• 4 2D images and re-reading "The Gift" by Friday
• Character/Scene sketches by Monday
• Concept for Dynamic Communications "futuristic cathedral" by Wednesday
• Audio Advert Started by Wednesday - One of the things i can actually do back in Edinburh without my computer dieing on me

Results at last!

*cracks open champagne* A toast to a very productive day of work! i actually managed a fair little bit of my animation, Iv got the first 3 Seconds pretty much perfected (theres not much there, just a background with leaves flying around - but thats still an achievement!) and iv planned out the rest and how im going to do it. Unfortunately the Tornado is posing a very big problem to me. Lacking teh skillz to animate it using scripts leaves me only one choice as far as i can see... *dramatic build up music* Doing it frame by frame *dramatic music climax*. Its only gonna be visible for a couple of seconds so it doesnt sound too hard, except at 20 fps, and with a tornado made of 100+ swirls, thats a hell of a lot of work per frame, im gonna need to start putting the late hours in for sure. Other than that i just seem to be wanting to make the rest of the animation harder for myself. I had a thought that instead of the alphabet city being made of concrete alphabet blocks, the buildings could be made of words, the letters acting like bricks.

Why do i torture myself so? Ach well, gonna plan out my work schedule for the next few weeks (hoping to get as much done before Christmas holidays start on the 11th) and then im going to get some well earned sleep before awesome audio lecture/tutorials tomorrow with Yann

(I would upload the first 3 secs of my animation but for some reason blogger isnt liking that idea right now)

My last enemy is sleep...

I stand here on the precipice of doing some work... the mood is right, my cold vanished. flatmates annoyed that im not coming out on yet another monday night. So the only thing left is the distractions of the internet... on that note heres a lovely blog update.

Haven't actually done any work since the last time i posted on here, had a busy weekend back in Edinburgh with the family and friends, however today barbel did give me the go-ahead for the medieval architecture/modern materials idea, i just need to figure out a way for it to be interactive... oh well, either it'll come to me, or neil will bring us all together for one of his group brainstorms again. Figured out how to do certain things on flash thanks to elementary animation tutorials, so i think once iv posted this im going to finally make a start on that! In order to keep my interest i think its best i start nearer the end with all the chaos and destruction (2012 style!)

The last thing i need to overcome is the mangey little 4 hours sleep i got last night, an admirable foe who i shall battle as best i can with my newly healthy self! farewell for now good sirs and ladies

Stuart Pettie - Arctic Explorer

Back again for more? Well unfortunately my plans to get work done yesterday fell flat on its face, decided to do my animatic in flash as you well know, however the installation of flash was taking so long that i decided that nap was sounding like a good idea. May have overslept a little... does 5 hours still count as a nap? oh well by that point i was starting to not feel too good, had a little something to eat and drink, though i was still in a mood to try and get some work done, so i tried a little flash. Maybe it was just because i was tired and not feeling my best but flash was really starting to piss me off, it did nothing the way i wanted! When i draw the letter "R", i would expect to see a (rather wobbly due to the use of a mouse) letter "R", NOT a perfect rectangle instead... This at least led to one bit of "artwork"/rage.

I actually quite like the emotion invoked in it so ill count it as "art". But meh its all subjective anyway. So closing flash down i decided id head back to the old physical drawing methods of old. I had all these crazy ideas in my head for the glass/metal cathedral, but they just didnt seem to transfer onto paper, and my "inspirational music playlist" just gave me a headache. So i went to bed, feeling very ill now, got the radiator on full and wearing a few layers but i still feel cold. oh so cold. but wait! inspiration has arrived! (unfortunately of the non-artistic kind) Radiator + 2 layers + warm jacket + thermal sleeping bag + hat/gloves = WARMTH

All work and no sleep makes Stuart a very tired boy

Well thats me just returned from my expedition into uni to give my pitch, outcome: not too shabby!

They all liked me ideas for my modules, especially the idea neil inspired me with to make medieval architecture with modern day technology (currently thinking through a concept for an extremely grand cathedral made entirely of glass and metal...) but i still need to talk to barbel about that and see what she thinks. They gave me a bit of feedback on my 2 finished visual literacy images, and i think im gonna redo the alcohol bottles one in a new way, its still a bit too recognizable as it is. Other than that the only bit of negative feedback was that i should be working a bit faster, but otherwise it was all good! Now my one conundrum, im currently in the ood to getsome work done, maybe install flash and do my animatic, however, last nights 5 ours of sleep may not be enough to get me much further through the day as im already yawning. So ill leave it to chance whether i get any work done today or not.

(just realised - first daylight post! no wonder im tired)

10 minutes later - Looks like any hopes of an afternoon nap were shattered by that damn caretaker... what sort of evil man do you have to be to set off the fire alarm, leave it on just long enough that everyone thinks its a real fire, and then turn it off as theyre in the fire escape... bloody EVIL!

so yeah iv made myself some cereal (mmmmmmmmmmm ceeeeeereeeeeeealllllll....) and im gonna start on my animatic now

Maybe i was an Owl in a past life

Well it seems im making this quite a habit, both staying up late working and updating this daily (or rather nightly since i dont think iv ever posted when the sun was on this side of the planet). Got a bit distracted today with various things when i should have been working, and then when i started working i got distracted once again but in a slightly more productive way - speed drawing videos on youtube, very insightful, think ill watch a lot more. But anyway, i finished my storyboard as promised and here it is! In all its non-understandable-to-anyone-outside-my-mind glory!

Basically what you're seeing is a tornado rampaging across some landscape or other, upon its arrival near a settlement of alphabetic letters, whereupon it wreaks havoc, munching up its citizens and so forth. I think i should leave it at 5 scenes as i can easily make each 3 seconds long, and thus fulfilling the quest to create a 15 second long animation! huzzah! Thinking about the technical terms next ill probably do the animation at 24 frames per second so as to keep the motion smooth and believable (as believeable as a civilisation created of letters can be), which means 360 slides needing created, should keep me busy for a fair little while i think.

Ill let you all know how my pitch goes tomorrow (9 hours), goodnight for now guys!

Burning the midnight oil

Well it seems that yet again a powerpoint is needing done for wednesday, and i find myself up late working (it seems i really am an evening person for just about everything... maybe i should start night shifts too) Got a bit bored near the end of finishing my fully planned storyboard for my animatic, and since i cant think of anything to do i thought id give this wee blog thing a post. I really didnt see myself as a daily poster but lo and behold! 3 days in a row, and no doubt one tomorrow with my finished pitch sketches for each module.

Just to clarify for any future readers who dont happen to be doing this course (ie. if any of my friends in edinburgh decide to read this) ill give a small run-down of my workload and what iv done to date

Visual Literacy - the main task is to change the perceptions of everyday objects by creating 4 2D images, last week i actually completed 2 of these in one of my moments of motivation.

For both images i decided to create a polar opposite just to see how it would affect the various elements within the images. For the first 2 images i used a photo i took of the bottom of a pot after my flatmate somehow managed to burn rice as it made a very interesting pattern. I imported it into photoshop and had a play around to see what i could create. I used a few lighting render effects along with one or 2 filters to make the image a bit grainy. And then the rest was experimenting with the colour. Originally i ended up with the blue, but once i seen it with the orange i thought it looked much better as it accompanied the subject matter, since red is associated with fire and the subject is a burnt pot. The blue gave it more of a medicinal feel, as though its something you might witness under the microscope in some far off laboratory making some form of zombie virus. Coincidentally, red is also my favourite colour, read into that as much as you wish.

For my other image i had a clear view from the start as to what i wanted to achieve. I wanted to recreate the feeling of a drunken night out. To do this i took a picture of a selection of empty alcohol bottles (located atop the kitchen cupboards of some friends of mine) and set about it on photoshop. I started by making the colours a bit more vibrant, and then darkening the image overall. In order to get the image to appear as though the person was seeing double i had to turn the entire image into a brush, turn the opacity down to around 50 - 75% and stamp the brush on around the image. I used a lighting render in order to darken the fringes of the image, and used the liquify tool to make everything rather wobbly. I once again decided to see what changing the hue would do to the image, and i quite liked the outcome i got, as though it was a drunken night but that someone had also slipped something else into your drink. Then just to see how it could turn out i put the image into negative and got a rather interesting scene, but i still prefered the original colours. Still worth keeping though.

My God is that all just visual literacy!? Looks like this will be a long post... future posts should be alot shorter (I promise) as this is more of a catch up

My next task for visual literacy is to pick a book with no associated visuals and create a 2D image portraying one of the most interesting characters and another image depicting a scene from the book. I thought i had this all planned out, with a very good trilogy (The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks) iv been reading sitting under my bed i had been planning quite a bit in my head about how to visualise it. However just tonight i discovered to my horror that some inconsiderate person decided to make a comic of it! And theres a film coming out quite soon apparently, that i look forward to so long as we dont get another Eragon (definately the worst book to film transition i have ever witnessed). But Anyway, i think iv decided now to do it on another series of books by Alisson Croggon - The Pellinor Saga. Now i just need to Read them again since its been a while.

Animation! Probably the module im enjoying the most and possibly considering as a change in my direction in life, animations really interesting me lately so we'll see how it goes. After 2 hours i completed the first task of creating 2 flipbooks to show some basic movement, i decided upon a water droplet and a bouncing ball. The bouncing ball i added an extra kick in it to spice things up (i may get round to turning these into a short video when time permits) by making the ball explode at the end.

Our second task is to create a 15 second long animation showing the actions of certain words. My Idea so far is for a tornado made of the word "Whirl" to wreak some havoc with an alphabet city. The word "Dash" dashes (suprisingly) into the city, then the tornado begins to suck things up, and the word "spin" goes spinning away in the wind. The storyboard should be up tomorrow as promised.

Audio! another module iv been enjoying quite a bit, mainly due to our awesome lecturer, Yann seems to be able to make anything extremely interesting, and i seem to be learning more technical music skills on audio software than my friends back in Edinburgh on their college music course! Work-wise we were to clean up a very bad recording, and this i have done already, and to the best of my hearing i cant tell that it has been edited. I still have to complete the report about the task but that shouldnt take long one evening in the near future. The Next task is to create 45 - 60 second long radio advertisement for the new centre of excellence at the university. My plans for this (which i should implement soonish...) are to record lots of computer and electronic sounds, and to try to use these to create a bit of introductory and exit music (a requirement for the task) I then plan to write a script for someone with an ear-catching voice (does that even make sense?) to record for the majority of the advert. Cut it all up into a neat little minute long sound clip and hey presto!

Dynamic communication... haha... well... enough said

farewell for now everyone!

Before the Universe

A new day has dawned (or rather its darkening but that doesnt have the same ring) and yet today i look to the past. In this post ill be uploading images of some of my Art iv done throughout the years of non-University life.

So onto the first, This is a pen and Ink Tree i did sometime in 5th year, it was my first proper dive into the pen and ink medium but i quite enjoyed it and i like the outcome. I found Ink to be quite a messy medium to use for my liking, however once i have some money to spend crazy on art supplies i might bring out the old quill pen and give it another go.

These Images are primarily charcoal sketches that i did during my time at a portfolio preparation course at Edinburgh College of Art. I tend to be a very slow and accurate drawer, taking my time to get everything as i would like it, however with these we had a very limited time frame to get as much done as possible, and strangely i found that i enjoyed the quickness of it, and realised that when i work on a fairly large surface with a messy medium such as charcoal or chalk (my current favourite) i could work alot faster than with pencil on a sheet of A4. I guess im slightly backwards in that sense.

I like to think of tone as my speciality, Iv always loved the addition of tone to my drawings, and i tend to mainly work with black and white tonal drawings, however i plan to try and expand away from this monochrome niche i seem to have entrenched myself in. But for Now i might as well show my 2 favourite pieces of tonal art. The first is a demon from a game i loved to play - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and the second is a dragon partially taken from a tshirt i have

This Landscape i did in my 5th year of Art at school as well, The image isnt terribly good for showing the textures that were my main aim in achieving.

These 2 images were for my Higher Design Unit, the top one is the final piece i created as a poster advertisement for the famous band Dragonforce, and the bottom image is a concept sketch i created for the dragon involved in the poster.

Theres Still plenty of other sketches and finished pieces that ill be uploading gradually over time, when i get pictures and when the uni work is going a bit slower.

The Beginning

And so God looked down upon the Earth and it was good... but it lacked something, "Let there be blogs!" decreed God, and there were blogs.

So, thats the start of this particular universe, some of the finer aspects of this universe and its strange natural laws will become clearer as this blog progresses. I am a student of the University of Abertay Dundee studying Computer Arts for the next 4 years (possibly 5, iv got a couple years till i decide if Japan is ready for me) and this blog is how i plan to show my progression throughout these years. I hope everyone who reads this finds a bit of entertainment from my rather odd psyche, or maybe your just here to see some art, either way ill try not to disappoint too much (daily posts are still low on the evolutionary chain of this universe - but they look promising once the continents shift a bit and the ecosystems kick up). Now, to business, ill get round to uploading some of my past work soon, for now I'm currently working on my pitch for crit week at uni, still got a bit of work to do towards that so ill upload those when they're done too. But for now i think thats enough as bed and a 9-12 hour sleep beckon me with open arms.

Goodnight everyone!