So an Update

Well I know I haven't been that much on here for the past few weeks and like I said before Uni is taking a lot of time up so I am going to say this. I know we all have our own personal things happening in the outside world and  at time those things end up taking over everything. I am not worried if you can not find time to post some thing ever week. This for me is meant to be fun and enjoyable and if you need to take time away from this that fine.

So on a brighter note Here is a some thing I have done in Illustrator.

was going to use this for something but ended up deciding not to use it. but still looks cool

It really is doomed

So the harddrive in my laptop decided to give up on living a full and happy life, the netbook doesn't talk to the scanner well and is too wee to run Photoshop but just to top it off the first time I use a brush with inks it breaks on me, I think it was last used in high school, half the bristles fell out after his left hand. This picture sums up today pretty well, with a cold and everything my rage meter is full all the time poor laptop, I may have called it some hurtful names.

New harddrive on the way so should be back to normal soon.

Then it went Kaboom!

Busy week at work and university I'm afraid, essays due and new projects so have some tank animations, just done in Photoshop with the animation window. I'd love to draw an entire RTS army, or several armies... now that would be fun.

EDIT: It looks like you'll have to click the images to see the animations.

Searching for Inspirado

What do you do when you are in a rut?
 How do you find inspiration to help you back on your way?
 I do what I do in every other situation and turn to YouTube. Seriously, I rely on that site so much, it is becoming ridiculous. But I do love it so much, and one of a good thing to watch is someone else drawing (see below).
 
Because I am a little bit stuck, I felt I would give advice to people who may also be stuck in a rut. It may sound a bit rich, but trust me, as an artist there is no worse feeling in the world, than not being able to create something.

So I am going to give you 5 tips of getting over that creative rut.
1) Do something to take your mind of the subject of non-working. I know it sounds crazy, but focusing all your energy on something which isn't happening is depressing and does no good. Putting pressure on yourself to do something, can back fire, and can make you hate what you are trying to do. So try and relax, watch a movie, read a book, just de-pressurise yourself.

2) Find what inspires you. Again, sounds a little silly, but it works. Listening to NWA's Straight Out Of Compton, got me through my HNC in Art & Design, it really motivated me. I can't explain how it worked, but it did. It made me excited, and that's what you have to do. Find something that makes you excited, something that makes you take on the world. At the moment, for me, it is The Lion King. I feel so creative when I watch that movie. The good thing is, if your inspiration relaxes you, that's point 1 tackled too.

3) Write a list of what needs done. Something you were probably told to do at school, along with making a study timetable. It is recommended because it works. Write a list of EVERYTHING you need to do, and prioritise. If you have a lot of heavy duty stuff to do, you may want to put something light hearted in between them, just to give yourself a break. And just work through the list. The idea behind this, is that it helps you visualise what you need to do. Most of the time, you write a to-do list, and realise that most of the stuff isn't as important as you first thought.

4)Free yourself from distraction. I am the boss of finding a distraction, so I know how much this can set you back. If you are struggling, your mind will automatically start to wonder. And if it wonders onto a site like Facebook, bang goes hours of your precious time in a heartbeat. So switch of the distractions, log off of twitter, switch your mobile phone off, just put the temptation away. If it is too hard for you to stay away from temptation, do it in bits. Schedule yourself 45 minutes away from the Internet, and have a 5 minute check-up.

5)Don't give up. I am aware that this point contradicts some of my previous points, but it is true. Whilst I am saying try to relax and not pressure yourself, it is important that you don't give up. If you can't get something done, give it a break and try again later. The hard part of anything is perseverance. Giving up never achieves anything, so keep on trying. If one thing isn't working, go on to something else. You can always come back to things later.

These are all points I have used throughout my life since School, really. Everyone has a point where they want to give up, and that they feel they are no good, but keep your head up. You can do this. If you couldn't, then you wouldn't have been given the opportunity to try.

PMA every day!

It Lives!

I tried to think about what I wanted to draw last night, and I was pretty keen on trying to draw a cheesy scream, but no matter how I tried I couldn't get the feel I wanted. You'll notice if you watch the video below that I erase, and redraw A LOT I really just wasn't feeling it at all...

Hands.... hands are a pretty big nemesis of mine, at one point I stopped the recording because I had tried it so many times I wasn't going to waste all the time showing it. I'm not so good at showing emotions on faces either and you'll see that I had to mess around with it for ages, looking back I can see exactly what worked and what didn't but at the time I really just couldn't figure it out. That's what it's about though, learning as you go.

I'm impressed so far that this blog has worked, at least as far as my goals have gone, each week I draw something and that's a lot more than I was managing before this so that's a thumbs up.

Abstracted

I guess one of my favourite things to create digitally are abstract pieces. And most things come around with practicing with some techniques.

^^This image reminds me of a flower. There is something about, with its appearance of layers that I really like. I like the pink outline as well. I think it is simple, but it also has a depth due to the overlapping parts.

^^This image, is different, but still was made through experimentation on Photoshop. Mostly with swirling the cloud effect. I like the smoothness to it.

Mutants and Masterminds

Our Monday role playing group swapped to Mutants and Masterminds for a few weeks and I got a bit carried away with my character story. So much so in fact that I wasn't even able to describe it to the group... so they picked some bizarre creation that I didn't really like all that much. So my homework for the week is to go and create my original concept.

Lab assistant, that was used as a guinea pig unknowingly by his now former company, while working with an extra dimensional rift experiment, he was attacked by elemental spectres and now has to share his body with 2 of them(not sure what elements yet). The longer they inhabit his body the more of his mind they destroy. Another worker in the company knows about his deliberate involvement and anonymously tells our hero of the conspiracy, he then aims to find the lab co-coordinator that was in charge that day to find more about what happened. Fights with the idea of revenge vs cure.
Spectres can only communicate through his subconscious or when he is asleep? No direct conversations?
One was destroyed by the other, the remaining one fights to control his body? To keep the element under control he has to use an opposite force for example spectre is a fire spectre, he has to sit in a freezer when at home.

A lot of question marks, regardless I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted. His company gave hims some lame excuse about his arms (which turn into fire and ice later on) and bandaged them up with some ointments, these actually contain chemicals that subdue the change (like the freezer example in the quote).

Just me having fun at lunch and coming up with ideas but I wanted to draw the character. There's a video below of me drawing this, I actually forgot to press record for the first half, my bad...

I'd like to be like the guys and say how I make a lot of things, but I need to be honest here. Most of the things I make, especially digitally, happen by mistake. And I don't even want to think about how a tutorial for making mistakes would work? Actually I can, it wouldn't work.

As you can probably see, this is a swirly thing. I went through a phase not too long ago, where I used the swirl effect on anything on photoshop. And, by playing with things such as 'glow spread' and how solid the lines appear, something quite cool happened. I am not a good teacher, I am more about doing what you feel and trial and error. Which is why I am kind of reluctant of telling people how to do things.

I guess you can say I am in an art rut right now. Nothing is coming to mind, to create something. Though I am taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where I have to write a novel of 50,000 words throughout the 30 days in November. This is something I have been preparing for, and I have been putting a lot of energy thinking up the storylines. There is a chance that I may be inspired to do something artistic alongside my writing, but right now I have a one track mind. But I am really excited. I take on projects, because I look at them inspiring me in other areas of my life. So if I am trying to picture a character in my story, I may draw them. I did before, and it does give me overall inspiration.