Good Advice Juggling Camera

Lovecraft is Missing by Larry Latham. A very well put together webcomic (still in progress but a good number of pages). Loads of suspense and some great character development. But if you go to the blog section there is also some very helpful advice on things that ought to be common sense, but always seem to get forgotten -storytelling, colour theory, useful things like that.
Turns out HE cant draw straight lines EITHER! And he really cant, he has a shaky hand. I checked through the whole thing and, unlike Thompson who does them anyway despite hating them, not a building in there is entirely straight! It's just using your quirks as part of your style.

I'm feeling a bit uninspired. We've just finished for Easter, and the week before a holiday is always mental. There are a hundred things you need to do and it seems like none of them are work related. Plus I managed to get my days muddled and miss my tutorial. Well done Michelle. So now I'm just pooped, and would like to a) have a break whilst b) still get lots of work done. Hmmmm...
Been sitting up late doing some little character drawings based around Chocfest which was a week or two ago, and is a kind of amalgamation of two of my favourite things, chocolate and juggling. It was a good day, although I spent most of it bemoaning my lack of a decent camera. Still I managed these, which aren't tooooo awful.











It's a beautiful place, the sun was out and the atmosphere amongst a group of common-minded people all enjoying the same weird hobby is always lovely. I just wish my camera wasn't so prone to blur, even simple shots seem to much for it, it has no focus at all, and it either makes everything very grey or very very yellow-like in those three above. None of the people shots I took on it were really worthy, these two shots of Selby Abbey were the only ones without any significant blur, but that's only because nothing is moving!... but then I nicked my friends super-awesome Nikon camera with the telespcoping focus and fared rather better, although he's not put half the pictures I took up on Facebook so I cant post them here.



I know they say a bad workman blames his toold but not in this case. It was an awesome camera and I got some great shots, mostly of people I know who might object to me showing them here. But yeah, I meet a lot of interesting looking people, so I figured I should draw some of them. If they come out ok I'll put them up.

Anonymously footwear

I seriously need to start writing people's names down when I find images I like. Normally I just save them on the fly and sort them out later, but then I never know who to credit.

Also, some BEAUTIFUL sneakers:
Princess Leia Sneakers

These are the Princess Leia Sneakers, apparently designed around that slave costume she wears, you know when she's in Jabba's Palac in RotJ. The rest of the outfit is more or less a bronze bikini, but are these shoes not GORGEOUS.

Welcome to the Jungle

...and now I have that song in my head.



















From 'Gungle', by someone who only gives his(/her) initials, which are W.J.C.
Simple, angular, scribbly drawings, cel-coloured by computer with textures... so more or less how I am trying to let myself draw. There's a Flickr page full of these called 100 days in the Gungle and I daresay there's a book about too.

Other random finds include:

Dr Who Comic cover art


More Scuba Diving (I had a phase on my Tumblr with scuba diving. I don't know why, there was just loads of great scuba-themed art at once) I like all the layers to it, the depth it has.



and something from A Softer World which I like a lot, in that quietly but contentedly aware/sardonic and bitterly funny kind of way.

A fellow straight-line hater

Turns out even Craig Thompson hates drawing buildings.

Doot Doot Garden Blog

Although he still does them, perspective and everything. I guess this means I have no excuse.

I have never been taught how to do decent perspective in my whole educational life. I guess this is one more thing I need to go find out how to do. Research!

Jemma said...

I remember what it was. It was that I need to try drawing bigger -that is, images with more bits in them, more people, more objects, whatever.
Possibly I forgot that bit because it unnerves me somewhat.

She's right though. I can't explain exactly what it is about the idea of big images that still makes me nervous but I think maybe this is my last hurdle. I was doing big things, well big Thing, in semester 1, and it failed. I guess there's still some bad emotions attached to that thing (I've not watched it since, I know I wasn't happy with it) and it wasn't the fault of the project for *being* big, but it certainly didn't make anything any easier for me on top of everything else.
Even with those connotations aside, a big thing requires an investment of time so there's more pressure for it to work, and I still have that little niggle that says 'Yeah you can draw 1 original character, yeah you can draw 2, but can you draw 3? 3's pushing it a bit, your proportions are getting sloppy and one of them isn't as good. 4? We're running out of poses on 4, and this has all taken a while, are you sure this idea is going to hold water? 5... and so on. The idea of doing 20 people in one drawing does scare me a bit, but this is the level my class are on, so I need to push up. Fred (I think it was Fred... no it wasn't, who was it? Stephen! It was Stephen) Stephen did this one project that was a map of about a dozen major landmarks in London. That kind of thing, on that scale, doesn't give me a full scale freak-out any more but it does still make me feel quite insecure. But then I see Paul Duffield go do this:

and I wish I had the guts to do something with that many people, and I proper background. I'm getting there. I'm a lot closer than I was before, but it's a risk. It's not certain, it's not 'safe', and I need to stop being safe.

Maybe it's all in the planning. Do a neater plan than I usually like to do, so I know exactly what is going where (a way of working I like less since I had repeating myself, but maybe it's a necessary evil) and then break it down into sections. Do one bit at a time, and build it up in small and maneagable chunks.
That's doable. It'll take longer but I can do that.
Aaaaand breathe.....
And proceed.


Also Jemma says play with inks and other media (I still dislike collage). I've not really painted anything since Alastair critiqued something of mine a bit strongly near the end of Part B, and it kind of blew my confidence with that too, but I did like painting things before -I was quite a scruffy painter, neat lines but rough areas of colour. I've not done that since either but that was a while ago. I think I was so worried about doing 'a good drawing' back then that I let it tighten me up too much. Maybe I should try that again too...
Maybe I should stop waffling about it and just do it!
Maybe I will.
...

Renovate

After about 4 hours of teaching myself rudimentary blogspot-related html code so that I can locate the one line of code necessary to beat this template (the only one I can actually put up with as my template) into submission on an elemental level... "Aaah! That looks little better." Still haven't quite got a background figured out, but at least this place looks a bit less generic now. And a bit more like a beach. So yay for that.
I'm pretty sure I have the hexidecimal chart memorised by now. Quiz me. I dare you.

Note to self, learn Dreamweaver sometime in the near future.

Formative Library Future

Hmm, it occurs to me that I should post more of my work up here. Problem is I don't really like the way blogs display images. Also I like having this place mainly for writing and linking to things other people have done, since so much of my world is full of my own work right now. Maybe if I decorated this place a bit more, put some wallpaper up, moved in some furniture, I'd feel more like hanging some pictures.

Had Formative Tutorials today, which was a pretty pain free experience. Me and Jemma seem to agree on my work, which is good, and the thing we agree on is this:
- I have made a successful recovery from Semester 1, am producing a decent amount of work, and it is of a decent quality if a little safe. This period has mainly been about me building my confidence back up, proving to myself I can still draw and come up with good ideas. And it has been successful in that respect. HOWEVER...
- Having proven this, I mustn't rest on my laurels. Yes I have shown I can do better than I did in Semester 1, but really that wouldn't be hard to do since it was pretty awful :) Now I have product work that is 'okay', that is my new minimum benchmark. The work for the second half of this semester should build on that and even the worst bits I do from now on should be at least at the level. The rest should be better.

To make this happen I should:
-Stick to this pattern of having a slightly large project in the background, which I flit in and out of in order to do smaller projects, generally about a week long. This stops the big scary things getting too big and scary. For the little things Jemma suggests some adult editorial work, maybe from magazine articles. I think this sounds good- I did an editorial illustration for Label as a kind of test for myself, and it went okay so something with a bit more sophisticated and imaginative scope would be good and help me think about my audience. Short things are good, because if they go wrong it doesn't matter.
- Do an evalutation after Easter of what are my best bits of work. Work out what is good about them and use those things as guidelines for producing future work.
-... I think there was something else but I maybe have forgotten what it was. I guess I'll find out when she sends the form through but I wanted to get this down while it's still clear in my mind.

On a final note - I went to the Library the other day to return 3 books, and came out with 6! I always do this!! They aren't even related, or clever or anything. One of them is a semi-reasonable story about 6 friends having mid-life crises. Why can't I just pick up something decent, like a Hemmingway or a Lewis or something? My appetite for books is such that I'll eat pretty much anything! *sigh* I did grab 2 Haruki Murakami's though, so that kind of makes up for it I guess.

Also, finally found a video of the 2010 Winter Olympics sting. What a cool advert! (I realise that's not the best analysis in the world, but it is very cool!)

It's one of those things that I look at and wish I could do one day. Bits of it I'm not even sure how they did it, it looks like 3D shapes that have been cel-coloured to appear flat, Galactic Football style.

My housemate Laura is doing a project on space and keeps blowing my mind with all these amazing things. Last night we watched a dvd over dinner about all the amazing stuff there is in space, and just how tiny we really are. Makes you think a lot.

Webcomics

By which I mean mostly non-published work done by individuals in their own evenings after work. I am currently lurking around several of them.

Freakangels- by Paul Duffield. http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23 Set in some future where London is flooding, breaking it up into small communities, a group of psychics that share what they refer to as 'the package' are attempting to make a home for themselves amongst the ruins and wreckage (which they probably caused.) It's a good story, simple layout to read and although Paul's faces do bug me on occasion the range of characters is refreshing enough that I'm still following it. Updates every Friday.

Hanna is not a boy's name- by Tessa Stone. http://hanna.aftertorque.com/?p=4 LOVE this. The way it's set out, the format of the pages, the drawings, it's all interesting down to the little details and textures. The creator works in landscape pages rather than portrait, and everything is nicely thought out. The story is not so unusual -supernatural detective attempts to save the world from evil while making a buck -not that they have any success with that- but the characters really hold it up. The nerdish, over-enthusiastic Hanna (wielding his literally Magic Marker) is a joy to watch, backed up by some equally excellent characters like seedy physician Doc Worth and '...', the mild-mannered zombie who narrates the comic. This is just... it's just FUN. Updates whenever.

The less than epic adventures of TJ and Amal- by E.K. Weaver. http://tjandamal.com/
The art got me onto this one, the drawings really are fantastic. Simply done but really well observed in terms of character traits.
In just one day Amal manages to break off his arranged marriage, come out to his traditional Indian parents, get disowned, and then get very very drunk... He comes round next morning to find TJ, “a lanky, dreadlocked vagrant, frying eggs and singing Paul Simon in his kitchen”. He discovers that while drunk he agreed to give said pasty vagrant a lift to Providence, a mutual destination, and they set off. I suspect some kind of romance will emerge later on but for now it's a classic roadtrip story with some very funny observations about life and stuff. I like it :) Updates every Tuesday.

Dead don't hurry- by “Inkless” http://inkless.deviantart.com/art/Full-DDH-154711112
Okay, so this is one short comic rather than an ongoing one, but I think it's lovely. The story is sombre and charming.

The Dreamwalker Chronicles- by Daryl Toh http://dreamwalkerchronicles.smackjeeves.com/comics/505404/box-full-of-tales-volume-one-cover/
Based around Native American myth, this tells the story of teenager Kyle, and his travels with a young boy who reminds him of someone he knows, except that he has a box for a head.

Broken Saints- http://www.brokensaints.com/
I found this about 5 years ago. Although my good memories of it may just be nostalgia, I was very impressed by the scale if nothing else. I'm pretty sure the whole story adds up to 24 hours of flash video, done mostly with sound-tracked still images, very little movement at all. Four people from different corners of the world are slowly drawn together by a signal, a repeating sign that travels across the globe. When I watched it there was no audible dialogue, only background music. Since then voices have been added, and actually I think that this is the only thing that lets it down. I preferred it before.

Spera- http://spera-comic.com/ray2.html
This is a great idea. Different artists get given chunks of the story and do a few pages of it in comic form. The variations in style and pacing can be quite dramatic and also the story seems to be unfurling quite slowly it's a nice process to watch.

Here we go again

It's going to be good this time. Everything's a lot better, I really want to do my best and get some good work out, and a lot more of it. I feel I have time to make up.

So far... well mostly I've been reading. I miss reading, so I've been doing a bit more of it.

Books
Life of Pi - Yann Martel - This was a title we could have picked for a project in Part B, but I didnt do it. I finally got to read it though, and it's great! I mean really, it is an excellent book and the imagery is really clear and vivid. It's one of those things where the narrators voice is so unique and individual that you really do see what they're describing.

The Diary of Anne Frank - Again something I've been meaning to read for a while now. It's strange to read the account of a teenage girl, her first crushes, her strops, how no one really understands her, how much she dislikes her mother, while all the time you're watching the dates at the top of each diary entry, feeling less and less pages in your right hand as you reach the end of the book, knowing what will happen to her once it ends. I wonder when it's going to stop, obviously she can't account the Annexe's discovery by the Nazi's, so will it just stop on a normal day? Will Anne be describing doing the washing up, or peeling some potatoes? Will she note what the weather is like outside? Very disconcerting in some ways, but a good thing to read in it's own way.

Why there almost certainly is a God - Keith Ward - A counter-arguement to one of Dawkins conjectures. Fascinating in all it's detail and mind-blowing science, but also pretty understandable. Ward basically sees belief in God as not only reasonable but rational and logical, and he goes about explaining why. Even though I've still not got round to finishing it, this book was a key part of me coming back onto the map at the end of last semester. It's nice to know that insanely clever people believe in God too, especially when a lot of other people seem to think you are daft for doing it, which can be very discouraging on a low day.

The Pressure's Off - Larry Crabb - Has totally challenged the way I see the world, and I'm only on chapter 2!

The Red Canary - Tim Birkhead - A gift from a friend. Who would have thought that the eugenics of canary breeding could be so interesting! No, I'm actually being serious.

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger - Re-reading it actually. I leant my sister my 3 year old copy when the film came out, and now I'm reading it again. Bizarrely I took it with me on our Part B trip to Chicago, not realising it was set there, and kept being surprised by references in the book to places I'd been that day! It's happening again now I'm watching Prison Break (which is fantastic by the way! Really gripping) which is mostly aet around Chicago for season one. I keep thinking things like "That looks like the waterfront by the Aquarium..." "I've been on that ride at Navy Pier!" and "That looks an awful lot like Wabash Ave."

Comics/Graphic Novels

Alice in Sunderland - Bryan Talbot - Heard good things about it, but honestly I was underwhelmed by it. Some parts were good, and it's a nice approach to your run-of-the-mill guidebook, but I found myself bored a lot of the time, it seemed very long and I resent that he used filtered photographs for the majority of the backgrounds. BAD Photoshop filter.

God Save the Queen - Mike Carey and John Bolton - Liked this one. Nice and weird, although the main character is a tad obnoxious. The art was good, although some of it was clearly filtered photos they were then retraced, worked into or recoloured managing to make me not mind. Quite a nice simple story, in which a teenage girl learns that taking drugs is bad for you, and her mother is secretly kick-ass.

Hellblazer: Empathy is the enemy - Denise Mina - After enjoying the film (seems an odd choice for me but it's not really about religion at all, like how Life of Brian and Dogma aren't really about religion, it's a basic logic-trap plot, and I like those) depsite/because of that oddly loveable wet blanket Keanu Reeves taking everything far to seriously as usual, I wanted to read a Hellblazer. I liked it. Didn't blow my mind with awesome, but it was well done, well drawn and intruguing enough to keep me sticking with it.

Blankets - Craig Thompson - Re-read, for the upteenth time. All hail birthday money from Grandparents that lets me buy these massive things. The story is sweet, thoughtful and melancholy, and something about the economy of line he uses I love. It's so simple, yet elegant which gives me hope for my own drawings. Plus it's good to know that someone else understands the trials of 'Christian camp'!

Skim - Mariko and Jillian Tamaki - (yes they are related). This graphic novel is a bit charming, and deals with the first romance of the half-Japanese overweight emo-wiccan-artist social outcast Kim, known as Skim. Understated, quirky, and great.

...
You know what, I'll save the rest for next time.