Case Study and Symposium

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! Eat too much, drink too much and make merry. My parents are wine-makers but I rarely drink - at least I did the first and the last, though.

Here's my case study. It's very self-explanatory. The voice is apparently my own (I remember recording it ... but it sounds nothing like me):


My mark was 67% (a high 2:1), which I'm happy with - now to tackle the accompanying essay. As with the previous year, the Christmas holiday is the one time of year where I find it very difficult to work - I have to prepare myself for it, preferably with a cup of tea and a mince pie.

The Symposium, on 7th December '11, was certainly very enjoyable. There was a talk by the fab Dazeray, which I managed to record the first 20 minutes of:

I met many interesting illustrators, both fellow students and graduates, and it was a fun experience! I also got to talk to first-years about my experience so far in second-year - it was a little embarrassing as my RVJs were nowhere near complete, but I certainly had some stories to tell (mainly centering around time planning!).

I usually do an Achievements post at the end of the year - I most likely won't get time to do that this 31st December, though. If I remember this January, though, I'll do it then.

Have a nice new year, everyone.

Moving Image (Can You Hear Me Out Here?)

It was very, very convenient to have my own scanner during this project.



On the whole, I'm very pleased with it, and very pleased with the responses I got. Those of you reading, whether you're in my Illustration group or not - if you've not watched David Lynch's The Alphabet (YouTube link) before, I recommend it! The first time I watched it I was pulled in - unnerved by the surrealism, but my eyes didn't leave the screen until the very last second. A great piece of work.

Completely new brief next week. Bring it on!

Embodiment: One Year, Four (and a half) Journals

I picked 'The Day's Leisure' because it's such a nostalgic tune. Clannad isn't particularly nostalgic for me (although I've liked the series for a while), but the music just ... is. Gotta love Key.

Anyway. This is sommething I've been wanting to do for New Year's Eve to mark my first year in journalling. After I finish Book Five, I'm thinking of getting a Moleskine - I flicked through one belonging to one of my university course-buddies and the paper quality is beautiful, it'd be a real dream to write and collage on.

The photographs are ones I took over the course of the year, which is nostalgic in itself. The journals themselves are currently in storage and not very easy to get to (with the exception of Book Five, which I'm still working in) - also, I treat my journals like time capsules. Once they're put away, I'd like to leave it several years before digging them out again. Unfortunately, there are no photographs of Book Two, which was a text-only, spiral-bound A6 journal - but I do still own it.


I wish everyone a super 2011!

New Stuff

... wow, it really has been a while. What with working for money (for upcoming university) and having other stuff to do, this blog gets kinda neglected at times. But not to worry, I'm here - and with something Crashy-related, too:



I got a little bored last night, so I seized the nearest pad and a biro and got to work on some doodles of the Doctors (I coloured in Brio for my new forum signature).


Aaaand ... something CMTV related!:








Guess which show has a summer special? I'm pretty darn hyped for it, and you should be too (and if you haven't seen CMTV 6 yet, you need a smack on the butt). This was finished off last week, before I went away on a mini-holiday to meet Smaz's family and friends (awesome people, by the way) and the videos were uploaded after I came back.

Also on CMTV - a new little news item on the unreleased Crash 2010 game. I'm happy to see all this material (especially that animating and concept art, it has me drooling) yet sad that this game never really came to fruition. I do hope Crash is continued someday, though.


Until next time, you blog-lurkers, you!

More Embodiment

Not a lot is really happening art-wise right now - a lot of my time during the week is taken up by my part-time position in an office. I actually really like most aspects of my job, so this isn't entirely a bad thing - but this has resulted in me pouncing on the prompts in Embodiiment and doing something artistic with them.






Last week, I retrieved some of my A-level artwork from my old sixth-form college. A lot of the stuff there I left behind, but I took most of my canvasses, a couple of sketchbooks and a few large paper sheets (also, my 3D cups-and-teapot piece). I expected to be there only for a few minutes but I stayed for a while just looking through all of my old art - most of which I hadn't seen in over a year, but it feels so much longer! The things I took home are on top of my wardrobe now (along with my Foundation portfolio) with the exception of my Spider canvas - that's hanging above my desk - and my teapot n' cups piece, which are on my window ledge.


That's really about it so far! As awesome as I find the Embodiment project, I am hoping to practise my artwork beyond this little book sometime this summer. (Maybe even get back into doing some digital work, as I haven't seemed to use my tablet in a while.)

This needs updating

I've been pretty busy.

First things first (I use that saying so much online and offline) the exhibition is now open! The opening night was last Thursday, and so many people came in to see our work and support us. There were some last-minute changes to mine involving mounting some sepia-toned photographs onto the wall behind my main piece (the table, the doll and the book) and having to re-mount my lino-cuts for the exhibition into a folder, as my original plan of mounting them onto an A1 sheet like everything else did not work (not one of my proudest moments, as lino is weighty and I should have known that, AAAARGH). But in the end, everything worked out for the best. Photos soon. *phew*


I've also been doing more in my Embodiment art/text journalling project. I've gone back to Ryman sketchbooks (I tried the lined journal, and although I like the compact nature of it I needed tougher better quality paper and A6 was a bit too small) and I think I'll stick with them as I just love working in them so much.






(You know, watching this back, I'm really heavy-handed with the gluestick. o_o)


The video only shows the making of the background; the writing and heart-stickers were applied during a train-journey on my way to visit Smaz (who is alongside me in the photographs I use). I also got the chance to use up some of the old wallpaper that I've had since last summer (and before then were on the walls of this house before my family moved in) and although it takes a lot of glue to stick down, it's quite a nice texture.


Also, I recently finished colouring a poster for Korusan's game Tita Gasman, which is featured in this year's CM Home-Cooked Games Expo. I highly, highly suggest you check out CMTV's feature on it - the gamers are talented fellows and they've put in a lot of work over the months. Check them out!




For now, I shall leave it. There's more to come - next up will most likely be the exhibition post. I'm overseeing it tomorrow and Wednesday night. :)

Glowin'

I got the idea for the drawing when walking home one night.

I originally wanted to put an English translation of 'Life is like a Melody' (by Lia, which was originally recorded in Japanese) beside her, but my Japanese is too gosh-durned awful for me to make a decent translation. x_x

I wanted to do something completely digital - I usually do my line-art traditionally and scan it in to colour it, but I figured I should get some practise on the line-art front.


On another note, I have now heard from three of my university choices (well, technically I've heard from all four of them, but three have asked for work/invited me to interview). I'm looking forward to 'em, but nervous as heck.

The CMTV Christmas Carol

It is truly wonderful to see the hard work and enthusiasm everyone at Crash Mania puts into CMTV, and this Christmas special is no exception.

Happy Holidays, readers!

Polyrhythm shows her face (and her old sketchbook)

There's not a lot more I can say there, really: if you haven't seen it yet, do. I laugh at myself a fair bit. I really enjoyed doing the video-blog, and as I've had positive responses I may just keep it up. To those of you who commented, thanks guys! <3

Floating Spanners

Well, I did do my charity sponsored-walk. It was tough, but well worth it. I didn't quite reach my target but I still raised a good amount of money and it was a great night (it didn't rain either) so all is well.

In other news:


YouTube has been playing up tonight so I'll just leave the link to the drawing video here. N-Gin can also be seen in his steampunkish glory in full-view here.

So, so far in the 'Oh God, Not Another Crash Bandicoot (Fan) Re-Design' series we have a Cortex, a Tropy and an N-Gin. Brio's quite steampunk in the Victorian sense anyway - the design of his lab, the Jekyll and Hyde parody, etc - so if I ever choose to 're-design' him I'd have to focus more on the mechanical aspect. Oh well; I never intended it to become a 'series' anyway.

Updates one of ... three [digital ver.]

Now comes in DA flavour!

Here, have some moar CLANNAD fanarts.

A slideshow video of stages is here. I downloaded HyperCam recently; but this was before I got hold of it so it's a stages-video instead. Besides, this did take me a long time because I worked on a humungous canvas.







DeviantArt link to this Cortex doodle

Well ... Cortex - although we love him as he is nowadays, the comic-relief - always was awesome at being a serious/slightly scary bad guy, too, back when Clancy Brown voiced him. His evil laughter in Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back were enough to want to make me hide behind the sofa (and, in general, an evil laugh really makes a great villain). I wanted to try and incorporate that side of Cortex into the drawing.

If you want to see me speed-CGing this, I've provided the YouTube video below:


The lineart was traditionally done and scanned in. I've only just got hold of HyperCam and I'm still all excited over it so I was focussing more on recording what I was doing on the laptop. Below ... you can see the first drawing I recorded with the software.



This Coco sure looks angry. Go see her be angry some more on DA.

The deviation is aptly named, don't you think?

I ... don't think it's a good enough CG for my main DA gallery; I can see numerous mistakes. Still, it's viewable in my DA space and several Crash fans seem to like it, which makes me happy. ^^




I'm posting three times tonight for easier organisation. It might make more sense to have one uber-post, but what can I say, when I'm in the mood I like to organise ... stuff.

Another Update

This being done before I'm off to analyse some Wordsworth for English:

New Drawing Videos

DeviantART link: http://untitled-lishie.deviantart.com/art/Paul-Bono-Hewson-112240471


DeviantART link: http://untitled-lishie.deviantart.com/art/The-Hands-112768060

Not keen on the latter one at all, really, now I look back on it.


Oh, and neeeew sparkly layout.

Wow, guys

... I was poking around on YouTube for drawing tutorials, and I found two really good videos.

One is "How to draw Eyes" by Sycra:


And the other is from Eclectic Asylum's How to Draw series, on Value Shapes:


I'm already learning good techniques from these videos, so I thought I'd share the goodness.

Oh, and speaking of sharing goodness (bwahahah) here's some of the digital art I did today. I am proud of 'em, even if they are small sketches and could be improved muchly: