Huzzah! (And Beware of the Dragon!)

Well today i finally got off my arse this week (been really tired from all the work i did last week) and headed off to St. Giles Cathedral on the royal mile to meet up with the ministers secretary to discuss my animation for dynamic communications. It went very well and they gave me permission to do the work , so long as i dont post the animation on any public viewing websites (that includes here unfortunately, so anyone wanting to see it can ask me and ill send you a copy)
So while i waited for my trusty camera-man Dechlan, i did a bit of drawing

This is the really cool organ they have on the right side, thought it would make a great line drawing but alas it was far too detailed for me to finish before my camera-man arrived and we could begin working.

So thats a rough overview of the storyboard i had created for the animation, and in a much shorter space of time than i anticipated (only about an hour and a half) we had enough i believe (and hope) in order to do the animation. So now all thats left is to actually combine all the images in the way i have planned and get the show running!

In the last scene of the animation, our lego hero is seen to be building a church of his own.However, what we do not witness in the animation is the shocking story that unravelled in this lego mans quest. Lego bricks aint cheap (even a 1-square block proportionally in comparison to the lego man would be the equivalent to a bulky TV to us) so in order to cut back on costs, used bricks from his own house. Demolishing it in the process.This unfortunately led to the death of our Lego Hero's love, as she was crushed by a falling balcony.
Bereft of his loved one, he continued on his quest to build the church, but alas, ran out of useable bricks upon his own land. And still in a state of shock and despair, set about stealing his neighbours blocks too! But this angered the neighbours pet dragon greatly, as the removal of his chamber walls interrupted his slumber!They fought long and hard in an epic battle, but in a move to end all moves, our Lego hero-turned-renegade took forth what life-energy he could from all the living things around, and fed it into one giant blast of pure energy.This proved to be too much for the dragon to handle, and so he fell at the hands of our Lego man, and defeated he lay, helplessly watching his lego bricks taken from him.

Alternative Ending!: Dragon breathes fire on the lego man, and eats his remains.
Just to be clear, this little side story will not be associated with the final animation at all and was just a little bit of fun me and Dechlan had!

Wanted: Dead or... em... plastic

Things iv done today

• Woke up at 8am - WOOHOO! big achievement for me
• Finished reading my book that i used for my character and scene images (i had already read it so i already had an idea of which scene i was going to do etc)
• Sorted through my lego and created my starring character for my dynamic communications stop motion animation!

Hes such a camera whore...
Afterwards i began to think logistically about the animation, this is all presuming i find a cathedral willing to let me do this. But basically i came up with a plan to reduce the workload by quite a bit, and quicken the pace of filming somewhat. I decided to clone my lead actor *ignores protestations of angry lawsuits outside* so that instead of painstakingly moving his legs everytime i wanted to do a scene of him moving, instead i could have a bunch of him, all slightly changed so that i could just replace them one by one. See Below.
However 4 is the maximum i can make... damn me in my childhood for only buying 4 sets of the archeologist lego! Damn me!... So im currently about to search for any friends in Edinburgh with enough lego that they might have some of the parts to clone my lego man. The Hair and Torso are the only ones im short of, the torso is from the archeology sets, and the hairs in a whole bunch i think (its black just to be clear). Any help is much appreciated! (and will earn you a place in the credits)

Recovery

Well, it would appear that all those all nighters didnt go unnoticed for my body. I thought i could fix my sleep pattern in one night, oh how i was wrong... Been doing ALOT of sleeping the past couple days (yes days, not nights). But i still managed to have a great time seeing loads of friends on Friday night, so its all good.

Today i managed to get up slightly earlier than nightfall, so i decided to put the tree up! Always fun, and puts me in the holiday cheer. Theres just something about putting all those shiney things up while listening to some very christmassy... er... Iron Maiden songs... but yeah! Christmas spirit is very high right now!

Also very happy from the knowledge that SAAS (in a seemingly Christmas Spirit related moment) finally acknowledged my poverty, and increased my payments by like £100 and backdated the £400 odd they owed me! so now i can actually afford to shop for food! And i should still have a little extra, huzzah!
Work-wise: getting up early to start some sketching, and going to begin planning the filming of my stop motion animation

ITS CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS! (8)

well, titles pretty self explanatory, curently in my last visual literacy/animation tutorial of the year, just handed in my finished essay at the coursework box, and yesterday Me Dan Eilis and Neil had a victory pint and burger at the pub! gave Gary a phone call to see how far hed got in his essay, turns out he was out drinking in perth and right now is either hungover in bed, or frantically writting something! But yeah, after this tutorial im heading off to the bus station, heavy bag on my back, and making my way back to edinburgh for 3 weeks of being with friends and family (and doing more coursework - but im a bit too cheery these past few days to be terribly bothered about that, ill get it done)

So to all you Dundee folk reading this, if i dont see you today, then have a merry Christmas and a happy new year! see you in January.

Finally got the momentum

My good mood from having completed my character sketch and most of my visual literacy work is continuing (partially because of the bit coming up and partially cos a fellow student passing by my window at 8am just now gave me a thumbs up for my room decorating skills - giant che gevara flag Wins!), i stand on the brink of a completed essay, with a small bit about digital photography being prepared in my head in order to put down on electronic paper. That will take a load of my shoulders, as the rest of my deadlines are now just under a month away, giving me plenty of time for their completion! The sketchbooks are still a little bare but now that Neils given me some coloured chalks i feel up for doing something with my favourite artistic medium to date.

So since iv not had a chance to actually do anything yet on that front, ill just post some pictures of my past chalk favourites from high school for your viewing pleasure

This ones a still life of a guitar, radio, trumpet and double bass on a blue cloth. Its probably my favourite bit of art iv ever done, but that could be due to the fact that iv done the image so many times, in different ways, that i could draw it right now without even looking! But yeah this one in particular i put a hell of a lot of effort into, and it got me an A in the end for all the staying up late finishing it that i did.

This ones a self portrait i did the night before my interview to get into Uni (even the REALLY important stuff i tend to leave till near the last minute it seems - need to change that quick)

So anyway have a good day everyone! And happy birthday Freya!

I'm on a roll with the coursework!

Currently, my mood is glorious. Im as pleased with my final outcome as i think i ever could be! And my confidence of using photoshop has skyrocketed with the completion of this project, I feel ready for anything this course can throw at me! But enough victorious speech, lets get down to business. In terms of conveying the character from the book, i think this portrays Cadvan from "The Gift" (by Allison Croggon) just as i imagine him. He's a man whos constantly sent on missions to far off places, so imagine that his "dark, roughly woven wooly hood" (in this case i stretched it into a full blown cloak as it seemed more appropriate - and theres definately a bit where its acknowledged hes wearing one, but im not going traipsing through all the books to find the quote!) would be very worn and torn, weathered by the changing climates he has to endure, and ripped in places as indications of the many battles with creatures of The Dark. He carries his satchel with him everywhere, containing his lyre and numerous other things in order for him to function. I imagined him on a very windy hillside - with a possible storm on the horizon behind -with his long black hair flying loose and free, accentuated by his cloaks mimicking motion. Hes holding onto his Satchel and the hilt of his well hidden sword in order to keep his balance on the rocky terrain.

I made the image alot darker than i had originally intended, seeing as Cadvan is a wholly good character, i thought to show this with a pleasant landscape . However as i progressed in my painting i began changing my mind as "pleasant" doesnt fit in with the atmosphere created in the book. The forces of darkness are closing in on the forces of light, hence the storm, and also the sharp contrast of Cadvans Pendant of his School casting light in the gloomy dark surroundings. Another reason for the darkness is to show Cadvan's mysterious side, he is a man that holds many secrets, and even conceals his own dark past. I did this by casting his face in shadows, but allowing his eyes to be visible, as he looks to the future and the well-being of human-kind rather than dwelling on his past.

On the technical side of things i arranged the composition in such a way that vertical and horizontal were balanced, along with the diagonals of the mountains, which each take the viewers eyes towards the character, as the focus of the image.

Any feedback appreciated! Im gonna get cracking on the last leg of this essay now, hopefully finish before Me, Dan, Neil and others meet up at Uni to record some things for our Audio Adverts (Today (well technically yesterday now...) we got Neil's Laughter properly recorded 18 times! so plenty to choose from for our adverts!)

A new way of thinking

Well this blog is meant to be a place where i can show my ideas and how they develop etc (and also write a few random mumblings along the way - try and make this a bit interesting for whichever tutor chooses to read this), but just now i thought i might as well share another kind of development!

Earlier today, once i realised drawing curves of the human body with a mouse is extremely difficult for a beginner such as myself, i borrowed a bamboo pen tablet off my flatmate Sean. I thought hey it should be just like drawing in real life! I found to my surprise it really isnt, and im currently in the process of shaking off the awkwardness of drawing without looking at my hand. Came up with some "interesting" first attempts before i realised i should really start from the basics of drawing and work my way up till i felt confident enough to attempt a proper character sketch (so i made a coffee: Its going to be another long night/day/night again)

As you might see i ended up having quite a bit of fun drawing basic shapes, and elaborated with a bit of randomness. Did a few more of these and thought yeah i might as well try a character sketch

Not too displeased by the result of my first pen tablet character!(sorry inga for drawing a cliche pirate if you see this!) Although he is far too cartoony for what i want to achieve once i master the art of the bamboo, so im going to keep working at it till i feel i can start my proper character sketch (The real ones not a pirate dont worry). Hopefully ill have something to show for it before i go to the Audio lecture tomorrow.

2:00am: figured instead of spamming everyone with new blog posts every few hours ill just update this one (what can i say im really into this blog now, it doesnt even seem like a bit of coursework anymore)

Been working away at my figures, and i thought it about time to try my character out, its a very rough sketch, and most of the pose i still find horrible as, but it gets the general idea across as to what my image will look like, and im hoping that as i progress through the layers (lesson learnt from previous post!) that the pose will sort itself out a bit better. I think by day-break ill have come a long way from my simple shapes and silly pirates (although my pirate has given me possible future inspiration for some non-uni work, ill see how things go)

Say Hello to Cadvan

7:43am: iv re-worked the pose quite a bit and i think its nearly right, noticed the shoulders were a bit too wide in proportion to everything else, but that can be easily fixed. The blue outline is temporary while i work on the image (its basically just a refined version of the sketch). Sorted out most of the colours and through experimentation got quite a cool effect on the cloak using the dodge and burn tools,

The Mayans Planned it All Along!

Just now i was drinking away at my coffee, listening to some good music, and wandering around in the realms of facebook, when a conversation i got into led me to a shocking discovery - The Mayan's are right, the world will end in 2012! Just hear me out, i know everyones seen the film and all, but the actual Mayan civilisation did predict the end of the world in 2012, so lets ignore the film completely (even though its awesome) and look at this from outside the box. In a seemingly unrelated bit of information, i think everyone knows Maya (wait a second, that sounds a bit like...), the 3D modelling software used by many. But whats this i hear? Maya is releasing new software... In 2012!!!

My theory is that those cunning mayans still live on, and have been plotting our demise since we destroyed their civilisation. They were a very advanced civilisation so they probably realised that technology would be far more advanced by the 21st century (or whatever that date is in their calendar). So they waited, until they found a way to utilise these technological advances to their ends. They slyly, with a hint of irony, developed a piece of software named after themselves that would be used widely by a large number of unsuspecting people. In my experience many people have called Maya an evil program, so perhaps they were right, and subconsciously could see that it was harbouring something entirely different, just waiting to be released... the end of the world!

But anyway yeah, coursework! Working on my character sketch today, hopefully have an initial sketch up next post (maybe even a smattering of colour) , and then ill need to get cracking on the last 700 words of this essay. Tomorrow me and the guys have decided to get our minds together and write our scripts for our audio adverts, and we've booked the recording studio so we can record each other (and possibly some other sounds, so ill see how much electronic stuff i can fit in my bag... keyboard should fit hopefully.

P.S. counting the top bit as some creative writting, even though it could very well be true!

It is done

Done. Finished. Complete.... Need Sleep... Precious sleep...

To the stars

Momentarily paused in my endeavors to finish my image when i noticed i had made an interesting galaxy-like effect. Decided to see if it could actually work to create a galaxy.

Answer: Yes

Bsaically i started with a black background, picked a middle shade of blue, paint brush opacity down to <> 50 and the centre is just a large white smudged dot. Took 5 minutes and im quite proud of myself on my little side-quest. Back to work now

Photoshop taught me some valuable lessons...

Well i figured out what was wrong yesterday, i had mixed up my tone layer and my colour layer, and had added colour to the tone, so then when i tried to get the colour from the colour layer, it all went crazy. And yes that was just as confusing to write as it was for you to read (better elaboration in 2nd point below), so short answer: Im an idiot.

So, like i said this task would be a steep learning curve for me, and it has, oh boy has it ever! Im just going to write here a few points here for me to note in future

• Instead of working on individual parts of an image and changing between layers all the time, work on individual layers - this stops confusion, and reduces the brain damage from the head/desk relationship
• Dont have one layer per aspect (ie dont have just one tone layer for the whole picture) - split the layers up, make them multiply! - This way if you mess up one bit of tone or colour, fixing it is a hell of a lot easier, and this will mean you wont use all your milk on coffee and have nothing for cereal in the evening (this is when you'll wake up)
• Layers can have opacity (thanks sean) - this ones just handy to know, its not going to affect my sleep pattern (i hope)
• History tool is a god - This one is a very sharp double edged blade... on one hand it can save your life a lot of misery and suffering, by sending you back in time to change your actions. But on the other hand sometimes it gets bored due to its godly status, and decides it would be fun to watch you figure things out without its power.
• Tone is a bitch to fix... especially when you have multiple tones on each other (refer to second point)
• Maybe lay off the smudge tool a bit - what, i like it and it works perfectly fine! - still, i think you used it on every surface - it makes them look good ok... - just try and lay off it will you.
• Finally, take a look at more tutorials when you get a chance!

So all in all, last night was me finally realising what all this business with layers is about, perhaps im a bit late to the game, but at least i finally made it! (well sortof, still gotta finish this image)

MaThey be time for sleep

Well todays been very productive, after a much needed caffeine intake i was full of energy, so instead of reading more of my book (which i enjoy) because i thought that was too lethargic a task, i just made up my mind on which scene i was going to use, and todays mainly been spent on photoshop making it! Its about 3/4 finished id say, and i would finish it right now, however out of the blue for no reason, photoshop has decided to go colour-blind... no joke, any colour i choose in the pallet isnt the same one that the brush puts down. At first i thought maybe i was doing something, lack of sleep after-all, so i let it slide, but it never went away, and just to proove it wasnt me i copied one of the colours in my picture, and painting over the top of said colour, could see the difference as clear as day!

So thats photoshop scrapped for tonight, however im not feeling the least bit tired (silly caffeine) so i might do a bit of work for something else (apart from flash, iv had enough of adobe software annoying me tonight!)

Heres my book scene so far (work in progress)

The photograph at the top i was using for colour reference since its a sunset image, the white blob on the right is going to be a light shining, and showing the 2 main characters scaling the walls

The 23rd hour

Well thats all-nighter number 4 almost completed, however this time theres a difference, im not going to have a "nap" at 4 and wake up at 9, no im going to keep myself awake so i can work and my tiredness will be worth it in the end! I'm determined to finish reading my book tonight, once its finished ill decide which character and scene im gonna choose (taking notes on a few more) and then get the initial sketches drawn and scanned to be photoshopped early next week. This weekend i have decreed shall be a weekend of work! essay and animation WILL be finished by sunday, even if i need to sleep the whole of monday as a result! because then i have a week to concentrate on my first ever proper photoshopping attempts. It'll be a steep learning curve for sure, but im determined to make it work. To spruce this post up a bit i think ill upload a few favourite photos i took of my holiday in Ireland this summer - i still count this as recent works of my art.

Such an amazing place, far too many photos to show on here unfortunately, unless you guys are up for a post with 1000+ photos that is! I may just eventually get round to uploading them (along with Peru Photos) to facebook and adding a link here

Coffee - A students best friend

So today i actually managed to get up at a reasonable hour! was up quite late last night playing music on my ipod dock (i finally got round to putting music on my ipod lol) and played through 2 epic bands discographies till the early hours of the morning (i was considerate and turned it down at around 1 or 2...) but yeah work wise - while listening to music, i was reading through my book that im going to use for my character and scene sketches, and i think iv came up with a good composition for the scene im going to do

Its a scene from the beginning of the book where the 2 main characters make their escape from a fortress where the lead female is being held as a slave. They have a "glimmer-spell" on them so that the guards cant see them as they scale the walls, however the alarm is raised when shes found missing and the guards are all out searching at sunset (so colours are going to be contrasting draks shades and warm yellows, oranges and reds.

Character-wise im still about 50-50 between the 2 main characters as they contract quite a bit, if im feeling ambitious i may just do them both (surely theres nothing wrong with doing EXTRA...?). Still, time is always the deciding factor in these things for me.

So other than those, im still reading through the book, gonna do a few more ketches and notes for other possible scenes then move onto the characters. All other work is still where it was the last time, im hoping that i can finish reading the book sometime tomorrow, which would place me at a good point to finish writing my essay on friday night, and animation on the weekend.If that was the case id actually be ahead of schedule! My oh my!

oh and just so that the title actually has some relevance, heres some photos i took that seemed quite interesting

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