First off, I apologise for not posting often this month. My personal life has been quite hectic so I don't have much time at all right now to update. However, there's one update ... you've probably all seen it but I'll show you anyway because I'm uber-proud of it:
Do you like? This Star Wars parody was done for B-Mask for CMTV. It took me a while to do, but I feel it's one of my best digital pieces so far. I felt that using lighter line-art worked a lot better, due to the previous work I'd done on the Tita Gasman request for Korusan.
As part of our Foundation Diploma, we have to keep studio diaries. It's a good habit to do anyway, continuously evaluating your work and keeping track of your ideas, but it's a requirement of the course. As it grows, I've become quite proud of my little book, so I thought I'd show a few snapshots.
I try and keep half a hour of my college day (usually at the end) for writing in and sticking samples into my diary as I know I'd forget to do it if I was at home. *facepalm*
Little samples are neat to do as well. Not only does it function as a mini 'prototype' for what you wish to do, but often they turn out pretty cute (particularly if you employ sewing or anything else 'delicate') alongside your writing. My favourite has to be the last page.
And, for something different, I finished Korusan's request. It was a lot of fun to work on, with its colour and subject:
I recorded most of the colouring process too:
To find out more about Tita Gasman, visit Koru and bmspriTer's forum here.
... not only because Halloween is stuck on the end of it (and last year was spent with my duvet and the Most Haunted special on Living TV), but a few significant things have happened since then. On the sixteenth, I'll have been on Crash Mania for a year. Still a relative newbie compared to you old fogies, I know, but it still seems like a long time to me - especially as this year's been going so quickly!
I've also been running this blog for approximately a year. I know, the first proper published entry is in November, but I originally joined in October:
See?
Also, October is the month when I generally notice winter's settling in. The weather wasn't bad today, but there was a chill to the air, and the evenings are getting rather darker. Speaking of settling in, October is also the month where - if I'm in a new place - I start to relax a little. New school years, new sixth-forms, new college. I do like this time of year.
I've finished with the Fine Art taster for the course now, and have started on Design. I much prefer Design, I feel, it was quite hard for me to originally get into Fine Art (especially as we were given the topic of Architecture ... buildings sure aren't my strong point). Anyhow, here's some of the Fine Art stuff I've been working on for the past couple of weeks:
I feel the collograph (first photo) worked the best. I also really liked the photographs as well, they turned out pretty awesome just for reference shots.
Now - other work I've been doing. I scrapped most of the old Tita Gasman lineart I did for Korusan as I realised it wasn't working out that well, and started a new piece. That, hopefully, should be done soon - I'm really happy with how this new piece is turning out. I'm recording myself CGing it, so a video'll go up the same time as the finished piece (therefore, no, you're not seeing a preview - ahahah~)
Remember when I mentioned I was doing work for CMTV? This is what I did for Episode One, and don't worry - there's more where these came from:
It's a lot of fun to work on these member portraits (or as I nicknamed them, 'cornersprites', as I imagined they'd appear alongside a name-bar when introducing a character). I also have a few more pieces for CMTV to do, but they'll remain a surprise until Episode 2 is released. *ssssh*
That's pretty much all that's significant. I did do a small lolita-ish themed drawing, but hopefully I'll be writing an article to go along with that (it's not often I discuss fashion so this should be interesting) when I get the time to.
Not as many photos here - most of the day, we were too busy to pause and take photos until the very end. That being said, it was brilliant fun.
Today we got into groups. The previous day, our tutors told us to bring in masking tape and one other form of fastening (not glue or anything wet). I brought in a stapler, string, Sellotape, and dressmaking pins - others had also brought in a variety of bits but a few had only brought one along with their tape. Depending on which fastening we had with us, we were put into groups that had a 'fastening in common'. As you can guess, ours (our team being Naomi, Susie, Mary and myself) was string.
Coming up with our team-name was rather easy. All the credit for it (and for making our tutor laugh) goes to Mary, who just had it pop into her head randomly. We all giggled and 100% agreed on the name, and off we went to do the task that had been asked of us.
What did they ask us to do? Again, we were studying qualities of objects - and had to represent it in some way so that it was part of the environment we were in (like an installation) and yet using one of the words given to us yesterday (texture, shape, decoration, etc.). Some people selected the windows, others selected the banisters of stairs, others even made use of some lamps that were left in a corner.
We came across a few chairs.
We found particular interest in the texture of the seats, as it was a straw-like material woven into the frame. Some of it was frayed, and dangling from the bottom, so using some card (provided to us by our tutors) we made a 3D frame and various styles of string (plaits, twists, some even made from the leftover card) to sew onto it.
We finally balanced it on three plungers we found, and there we have it:
Everyone turned out some really interesting projects.
So, in conclusion - it was an awesome visit! The museum was great, and I'm understanding the work a little better now. On Monday, we start work in sketchbooks, which should be fun.
Now ... I was originally going to make a big long post on this as yesterday I was absolutely cream-crackered and fell asleep after I came back from Day One (the original-original plan was to post after each day). However, one big long post would be way too long, so I've decided to divide it back into two. I took a few clips of video and lot of photos while there - a loooot of photos - so I've picked the best ones to display here. So - Day One!
We all scrambled onto the coach at about 9.20AM. There had to be two coaches because of the number of us, so some students remained behind to wait for Coach Two. The trip to Ironbridge (where Enginuity, the museum, is located) took about an hour or so.
So, an hour or so later, we all stumbled out of our coaches and got here:
The second photo is just before a presentation was given, about the kind of work we had to do yesterday. (We had a similar one today, to get us all into groups - but more about that later).
The work we had to do over the two days was finding qualities of a subject. We didn't draw the item, we had to find its individual qualities, and - using mark-making techniques - portray them.
From a list of words, we had to select two and focus on those types of qualities. Decoration, Edges, Texture, Movement and Shape were five of them (I'm afraid I can't recall the others right now). The ones I originally selected were Decoration and Movement, but Movement turned into Edges as I progressed with the work. *facepalm* My subjects were a series of clothing on a rack (and one hat on display). I took a few close-up photos of the hats, as they had interesting qualities to their decoration and trims:
I especially like the lace trimming on the bonnet.
Then, at 12.00PM, we were allowed to go for a lunch-break and I took the opportunity to go exploring around the actual museum itself (we spent our working-time in a little side-room which seems to be set up for schools and colleges to use). I can definitely see steampunk fans enjoying this, there were a lot of older technology and gadgets on display, as well as a lot of clothing from the Victorian times around. Not only that, many of the machines you could play around with!
Me operating some of the machines and taking a peek around, wheeeeee:
NOTE: My camera records in Quicktime, and by way of video-editing software I only have Windows Movie-Maker (which can't handle MOV files), but OneTrueMedia came to my aid here!
The blue dress was in the window of an in-museum costume shop! I was going to go and have a look inside, but they required I take my shoes off and I was wearing lace-up boots. x_x So I was nosy and peeped through the window instead. :D
I love, love, love how the light caught the subject in the first photo. A lot of these pictures will be awesome inspiration for steampunk elements I incorporate into my work.
I adore this dress, it caught my eye straight away.
That's the Crazy Boiler you watched me feed those balls into (assuming you watched the video). xD
*beep beep*
*brring brring* I love old-style telephones. :)
There was a flight of steps leading to a higher floor (where the 'phones were), so this is a shot of the first floor from there.
Another interesting article of clothing. The dummy, too.
One of the objects that people from our course had to study to look for 'quality'. I didn't study it myself (I had the clothes for the morning), but as I poked around the large room we were working in I came across this and decided to take a snapshot. 'Shape' would have been ideal for this sculpture/carving. ^^
Lunch-time was over, and we returned to the large room. We had to swap items and start a new sheet of quality studies, so to get more 'Edge' studies in I parked near these signs:
And indeed, they were much more effective to study for 'Edge' (a few things could be used for Decoration, but Edge was the main one - it was vice versa for the clothing). I paid particular attention to the wear-and-tear the signs received over the years.
This is the work I did in the morning. Unfortunately I didn't have time to take a shot of the work I did with the signs, but here's my clothing study:
And ... I believe that's it, for Day One! If you do get a chance to visit England (or if you already live here, if you go on holiday to somewhere in the Midlands), Ironbridge is worth a visit if you're into this sort of thing. There's not just Enginuity but around nine other museums, and a nice little town.
Part Two of this post will either be 1) put up later tonight, or 2) put up tomorrow.
First off, if you're going to make a big thing out of 09/09/09, I wish you a good celebration. :3
Here are a bunch of real-life studies I've done over this past month. Two are incomplete, but I liked the way they turned out regardless. I'm not a fan of the last one at all but, as my new college tutor says, you shouldn't throw anything away. I used charcoal (and a little chalk) on said disliked piece, and I don't think I've quite got the hang of it yet. The first one is probably my favourite (closely followed by the second).
All-New Art College is going rather well (and I'm getting practise in making packed-lunch ... maybe sometime this year I should try making a bento, they look interesting). We're going on a two-day field trip to Ironbridge tomorrow (we're not stopping overnight, we're just going there on both days) so hopefully I'll have photographs and drawings from that visit.
If you, the reader, are back at school this week - and especially if you're just starting at a new place - I hope this year goes well for you.
If you attended a British primary school you may get the reference in the title. If you are like me, the song is now stuck in your head. My first induction at the All-New College was yesterday; my second is tomorrow. 'Proper lessons' start next week. Here's to a great year!
In other news, Crash Mania is holding a contest - the deadline's the third of September so I wasn't sure whether I'd finish this in time. It was a great chance for me to do some Crash fanart, use some new techniques I'd learnt, and a bit of a change from the normal stuff I do (Crash isn't a 'serious' or emotional series at all, so I experimented a bit with different themes and different interpretations of what is considered 'epic').
So, for those of you wondering about that Brio image I CGed in my tutorial - this is what it's part of. I was a little inconsistent with how soaked I made the characters look, so I'll have to watch out for that next time, but it was an interesting project and I loved playing around with things, seeing what looked best. ^^
