Animatic

Animatic is going somewhat well, a lot of issues are resolving themselves. I'd really like to have something to show by next week...

I gargle at the forthcoming week, it's a mangle of deadlines. Self set and academically driven deadlines. All vying for a drop of my blood by which to own me by.

I might end up like poor Windbag alas, thoughtless and zombie-like.

At least the burden of anticipation over my last semester's grades has finally alleviated. I know what they were now, that's enough to keep me going.

Windbag has some direction. A nifty ticket just for him, printed with some comforting letters, which are in fact numbers in a roman kind of way.

 

Brushing up

A happy new year to everyone...

I've been trying to brush up on my digital painting after the Christmas break since I was isolated from my wacom. It's been fun, a couple hours tinkering saw me create this little dude.

I may dabble with him a little more, but I've found jumping between paintings has been the most fun and constructive for me. I have some plans for a new way of studying for me, but I'll unveil them later when I have the evidence to back it up.

There's some concept ideas backing this guy up, but they're a little frail at the moment. If you like him, I'll do more! What's everyone else up to these days? I'm looking forward to seeing the artwork 2009 will haul in.

New Year

Resolution - As I face down 2009 with open hopes and wandering dreams, I'm a little anxious as to what this year will bring. I'm still trying to grasp my affirmations. I hope it will be a prosperous year, one full of potential. I sense a lot of fear will find my heart, when the end of my studies looms and the real world caves in on my head.

How will I deal with all the financial implications?
How will I accommodate the neccessity of finding employment?
Where will I be living come the end of May?
Am I to DARE, or not to DARE. Is that the question?

I have so much to do, and not the faintest grasp yet as to how to do it. Okay that is a lie, I can hypothesise as to what it will entail. I can put it all down in numbered headers in order to meet the expectations of a professional practice deadline. I can lay down dates as a foundation as to the path I shall walk, but as to it sinking into my frontal cortex the implications of all these plans meaning.

I am going to create an Animation.
I am going to create a damn fine Animation.
I am going to do this by May... or rather the end of April - yeah like that'll happen.

It is at this point that panic sets in. Awkward feeling at the pit of my stomach, like a hot air balloon I attempt to nudge it under my hopes and dreams. It balloons and swells in my throat, I choke on my own ambition. Where am I left? To close to the floorboard grain to see my horizon. I'm itching to return to the flight, to run against the wind of obligation and meet it head on, but I have to learn to balance.

Life / Work / Love / Art / Life

More on those thoughts later, right now I'm in Linlithgow revitalising the use of the old laptop. Once I return, I'll have access to my other art files and my graphics tablet - I'll be touching up some old work and posting it where and when I can.

If I don't post again before the turn of the worlds' axis - a Happy New Year to Everyone won't you.

Mindmap

Concept Development Inspired

Here's a preview of the Frogboy concept I'm working on - trying to nail down some details with a lesser ambiguous flourish of the pentel mech.

I started this sketch in Concept Development, a lectorial (lecture/tutorial apparently) taken by Belinda Langlands. Went fairly well and I've been working on it since - though I have been tackling with using my scanner thus the delay in posting this.

Honours Year is going more or less as I imagined, yet at the same time completely differently because I soon realise what I had imagined was very little. A lot of the academic side and involvement wasn't really taken into my consideration, and its coming as a bit of a surprise, though welcome.

Well, until I wake again, y'all have a good night!

Windows Live Writer??

I mean, what the hell is this?

This updating system is spectacularly irregular, it mimics the very style and visual representation of my blog - boundary by boundary, image by image. I get to see clearly the very construct of the blog itself - pre-publication. From an external source? Craziness yet it here it exists.

Uh... blogging, ah yes blogging.

Today was the first day of the rest of 4th year - Honours - Skadoosh. 12 o'clock surprise lecture - hurried walk into University up to the 3rd floor - which is now an open plan  madness. I'm trying to fathom how possible it will be to concentrate in an environment where you can have -anyone- walking passed your classroom at any given moment.

I'm liking the whole free thought roaming aspect, I'm digging that. I'm just weighing it in hand with the implications of student involvement. They will come and go as they please, they will more than likely make noise - maintain focus then, I ask you.

In other news - my Western Digital has fled inside it's shell and refuses to utilise its own USB 2.0 cable. It also nearly fried my computer...

I'm very wary of it now. Currently living in the irony that on the packaging for the MyBook it implicitly states "Put your life on it." And I did. If you evaluate that my art is my life, and my art is digital.

Having ordered a new cable, I await the farfetched possibility that it will work only when I have fed it a replacement lifeline. Time will tell on that one.

Moving Along

Time is passing, one beat and one moment trailing after the other - its pace is constant in so far as we wish to quantify and measure it. Yet retrospectfully it can travel by us, if we let it. Like a river from an indistinguishable source, it collides with us in rushes of tense action and then subsides as quickly. I feel like I'm caught in this rush again. Everything takes upon itself a surreality, as though moving fatally in slow motion.

I'm moving into another new flat - I haven't spent longer than a year in any one place for the last three years. Pretty normal for a student I'd assume though. However this is the first time that I will have been my choice to move, that is, it would have been if my landlord had given me the option. I assume, that he assumed, that I didn't wish to continue the lease. I didn't, so why still do I find a problem in this situation? I was not given the choice I'd sought for, but indirectly I'd made it in my silence.

Due to the move, packing has been essential. A life jigsaw - like 3 dimensional tetris, I've watched and been involved in the packing of my life into boxes. Neat, snug, ordered comfort. All the trimmings of home. There are the books I've yet to read, taken from the book case I've yet to move. There are the dozens of half filled sketchbooks to cart around - an essential collection. There is the console I hardly play, along with the tv I never have time to watch. There are the countless garments that have lost sight of fashion, and continued to haunt my carpeted floor. I keep forgetting what colour my carpet is.

We move on Saturday. We pay the money we don't have, to the friendly people we've only just met. So much trust is gathered in their plentiful smiles and polite demeanour. Benevolent Belvoir. Letting Life Savers. They hold the keys to the rest of our lives.

I can't wait to set up my new office/study/art room. Having constantly blended my surroundings into both recreation and workspace for the last 3 years, it'll be a change to have walls seperate these areas of my life. Plus I'll now have a lounge to lounge in, score.

That's about it for now - Uni begins in September - Honours Horrors commence after that. Hoozah.

Mainland Escape and Prelude Panic

Whoa there! How fortunate it is to stumble upon thee, I bid you stall for a moment and read on. Some adventures mark my words are not for the faint of heart, lest an attack prey upon thee. I've been been stranded by the MacBrayne skuttle boat for the last two weeks with little more company than sheep! Here I took a picture for you..



Of course I couldn't understand the locals that well. So then, I've spent the duration of 3rd July to 16th July in an offshore region of my own country of Scotland, taking in the sights, enjoying the motorhome routine of moving out of everyone's way just to get anywhere, and being witness to 3 generations of my other halves' Clan just 'getting along'. Frightful. Let me chart for you the course of my journeys...

Anyways with my Panasonic Lumix in hand, I tried to document the way there from waiting out in the Train Station in Perth for an hour for our connecting booked train up to Inverness, documenting our stops along the way.

Inverness was another play-a-wander-round, visiting places like the Victorian Market, which I didn't happen to photograph -_-. Very cool, quaint and had little shops in streets under a taller ceiling skylight. This otherworld was a neccessary detour for our search was driven by the hunger in our bellies. I found myself a bacon san'wich which lacked vital qualities like a taste... and nutrition. It happened to taste exactly like the butties from Aberdeen on Three Kirk street, and they weren't very good either. Unlike those to appear in my life later on! Skadoosh!

Skipping to the interesting moments now:

From the wake our ferry left in the scottish waters, we could spot the grellow smog rising from the mainland, and take lungfuls of fresh sea air. Spotting porpoises off the port side!

Windfarms on Lewis, is this the beginning?

I hope it is the end. No more, leave not the taint of modernity on the soils of our fathers. These leeching endeavours ruin the place which I've come to respect. Visitors remember and beware, the place is as it is for a reason, and wandering there you must remember that it will be, without our influence. Take only pictures, and leave nothing but footprints in the sand of the wondrous ever changing beaches.

The skies to welcome us in Lewis were magnificent, magical and mysterious.



Cliff saw fit to deliver unto us a sunset unique, and we stopped upon the Valtos Viewpoint which I remember well from my first visit.



Motorhoming Missile - Skaplow!



I spent After much pestering I finally managed to get a cycle run organised and it was - Amazing. I don't think Violet really understood why I wanted to. To me cycling presented a thrill, of exploring Lewis in a greater, more free sense away from the suggestion and insistence of parent control. It was quicker than walking, again more of a thrill, an exhiliration, it was a true joy ride. Picking up pace on the downhills, channeling focus into the uphill struggles, ever wary that a car might appear from around the next bend, the scenery, the sky above and all the pedalling one could muster. I have to say I didn't quite manage it all the way up the Cliff hill, but next year I will. Alone if I have to... it will be done. I want to cycle more, take just a day and a bike and go to places I've never been driven to, to see things I'll never see otherwise. I want to place more thought on what to do while there, with specific weather for them, so that when that weather comes, we can match up the activity... get it done, experience Lewis fully.

I have to say, over 2 weeks there were some points where I felt lethargic, and I did just want the comfort of sitting down and doodling, or jotting down some thoughts. All the activity was a bit overwhelming, and the indecision and choice there was staggering... that often I could not decide.

Calanais - standing stones. These were inspirational for the Dougie Maclean Project I've put on the back burner for way too long. I seen him by the by at the Uig Gala Day, but felt too intimidated to actually go up and say hi properly. Blah... here's a photo. I think my lens got splashed! Oh noes!

I'd like to invest in a tripod, I nice one that'll strap to my back so I can be kitted out and look impressive. It's a vain, naive little wish stirring at the back of my if-only list. Just to get a better focus on these images... sigh.

During the Gala day I'm reminded was a spectucular aerial display from a helicopter pilots' nerve. He held out, and was able to guide this daredevil to the hilltop summit.






On our walk to a rocky beach to go tresaure hunting for washed up wonders I spotted this lagoon of sorts, snapping it up while I could, and hurrying to catch up again.

And what were we searching for? Firewood, for a grand fire upon the beach, with help from a little lighter fluid of course. Extra toasty. We even managed to set the sand on fire for moments. Then someone had the bright idea to channel sea water down into the blaze to put it out... not an action I'd like to see repeated, the stench which rose up was amazing.