Saturday 28 February 2009

Cups of tea 92 - 95

Over the past3 days, I have had the over-whelming urge to draw.
Seriously, I haven't been able to think of nothing else in terms of recreation / what i'd rather be doing instead of work. I've had such a need to pick up a pencil that I'm actually sat here shaking from energy drink, LCD Sound-System cranked through my Skullcandies and my sketchbook recieving a firm pounding from my Uni-Clipturn. My hands are so stained with lead that i'm currently typing with my ring finger/pinky. I fucking love drawing.

Seriously, if I had enough incentive to draw, I'd love to be an illustrator. I guess I'm just not as naturally talented at it so I don't find the time to do it enough. I mean something will ALWAYS put me off when I get into drawing, which is kinda sad. I'm going to try to stick to it this time however... I'm getting better at figures/animals :)! My perspective drawing however leaves a lot to be desired.

Other than this, work was actually alright, I had stuff to do so I didn't mind it. I got in, watched Scotland vs Italy and then between writing my essay / drinking tea / mercilasly tickling my nephew for trying to poke me in the feet, watched the Ireland vs England Game... Possibly the worst game of the six nations imho, it was so bloody boring...

So I've talked enough crap about drawing so here's two pages of my sketchbook, hope you enjoy kids... and please, don't be overly judgmental of them...

Friday 27 February 2009

Cup of Tea 91

Before I start, bloody French...
I couldn't post yesterday because of the lack of tea! I know... I didn't have any milk which sucks, but nevermind... I've finally got one!
There's very little to write other than i'm starting to coast... nevermind. I will get back on top of things this week. Time to goto bed. Nos Dar all.

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Cup of Tea 90

Alot to say but i'm really to tired! Must Condense. Into. Paragraph. -wheeze-.

Got up at 11, went to Gregs, realized lent started today and couldn't eat pastry so bought a box of wheatabix and milk. Got home did some design. Stressed out over home much I have to do atm and went to subway. Bought Dragon Quest on the way home (COD5 traded in got me £25 and with the student card I got it for £1.99... WIN) Worked until half 9 then went to the cinema to see Push. It was ok, reminded me of jumper. Came home finished working, wrote blog, went to bed. Ahhh Now i'm getting ahead of myself!

Pretty fun day but also harsh amounts of work... I really need to use the College Diary I bought to plan out a timetable of when I do work / See Gemma / Play Games... -sigh- It could be worse, I could be Tom and have to give up Cola for lent... God, I'd miss the Caffine! I leave you with the six finished Stamps. I don't really like them, but i'm sure someone will!

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Cup of Tea 89

Aye, I am so sleepy. Please don't tell my manager...

A most normal Tuesday was had today old chaps. I got up at the usual 0800 hours, had a spot of blighty and went chim-chim on my merry old way to the University. Such technological wonders astound and intrigue me, so much so that I did absolutely diddly squat. Cor Blimey, if I hadn't gone I wouldn't have missed a tuppenny bit. All I did was sit at the old Macintosh and had a chinwag around the water fountain with some of the chaps about global policy and who's butler was the better shoe shiner.

OK, so that's a lie. I fancied a bit of a toff rant... as Gem will undoubtedly agree, I've been in a bloody strange mood today. It is true, I did nothing this morning in Uni other than get a little help with my stamps brief (as much as I loved my game boy, I wasn't to happy with the other two stamps...) so now I'm on the same track, just using different shoes I guess.

Learned some nice things in my illustrator elective though, a few things I didn't know how to do such as additional strokes / fill colours and also got a better understanding of the arm tools. Also gotta draw 5 rough sketches from a list to vector up next week.

Unfortunately, I've been subjected to a the biggest '70s cheese music for the past 3 hours, thankfully it's now stopped (I hate ABBA...)... So as any gentleman would do I just slapped The Fresh Legs on full blast and stuck a speaker to the wall! I also got added by quite a cool clothing company earlier, might have to pick up one of THESE on Friday.

Right then kids, time to go to bed. Tomorrow there's an Essay to write, at least 6 master Pages to design and two more stamps to design (and tweak the current 4). So I'll leave you with a gander of what I've done... as much as I hate internet pictures these will have to suffice I'm afraid... to late to go out finding interesting looking TVs, especially with the rest of the work I've got on!

Monday 23 February 2009

Cup of Tea 88

Goddamit I need my sleep. Thank God for the Wednesday Lie in or I would most definitely be a dead man by Friday!

While I would like to follow my weekend trend of very little design work, I forced myself to get something done for the stamp project i've got to hand in on Friday... and if I'm being honest I'm quite happy with what i've produced for it so far! Admittedly I think the text needs a little tweaking here and there but it's relatively sound / to the specifics I wanted... So I present to you the first of three of six stamp designs... don't they just pop?



And with that short but sweet entry, I think i'll hit the hay. Not alot else to talk about and I'm afraid I'll fall asleep at the keys. Nos Dar Cariad. x

Sunday 22 February 2009

Cup of tea 87

A most uneventful day, but inspiring.

I worked 7 - 4 (worked through my lunch, my head was pounding and my chest wasn't much better) slept until 8 and then woke up with this over powering urge to design... I could have also eaten a small cow so I cooked up some roasties to go with my reheated Sunday dinner and got to work on some concepts for my stamp brief. It's almost finished now, I'll start to digitize them tomorrow and post one or two up to gather opinions. A bit gutting I can't get authentic white noise though, that would have been shweet! (Hurray for photoshop filters).

I've also come up with three or four concepts for new street art pieces... I say new but I haven't really DONE any, just cooked up concepts... these will be pretty cool though... going to try the first one on Plywood board, need an organic surface to create the effect I want so I can always do a grundged to fuck background... They kinda tie in with a collaboration project I'm Starting with Gemma, but I don't want to say to much about that just yet! After all, it would hardly be an underground movement if I went along blabbing about it now, would it :O? I say that like we're art terrorists haha... We're really just kids with chalk drawing on sidewalks...

EDIT / P.S.
The street fighter thumb is ALOT worse... ooops.

Saturday 21 February 2009

Cups of Tea 84 - 86

Anyway you spin it, today was rubbish blog day.
Got up, packed, went home, read some of Brian Eno's Diary, went to work, came home, eat food, watched The Good The Bad The Wierd (Good Korean Film) and now i'm about to goto bed. Nothing interesting to report (I even read 4 papers trying to find something to talk about!), No Design (though I've FINALLY figured out how to do my stamp brief) and I've got a cold. I should have stayed in bed...

Friday 20 February 2009

Cups of Tea 82 - 83

HADOKEN! Oh yes... this is the real world... no need to dragonpunch here... too much street fighter make Mat go giddy. Okey, poor attempts at humor and misquotations of the shining aside, Street Fighter IV makes me want to draw in water colours all day. Seriously, not only is it beautiful to play but also to look at.

I've played it for a good 8 hours today (then I watched "Shooter" with Mark Wallberg... I wouldn't recommend it.) and God, if I didn't have work tommorow I'd still be playing it now. The only problem being of course it has acctually worn away the skin on my button finger. No word of a lie, it is RED raw.

That is acctually missing skin at the top of my thumb kids... fucking Sagat WHY ARE YOUR MOVES SO COMPLEX.... WHY IS AKUMA NOT A STARTING CHARACTER!?!

But enough of that, It's not a games Blog. All i've really done in terms of design today is buy a new 0.3 mechanical pencil and a new project sketchbook for a brief on "Bring back Spam" (The Meat). Should be fun I guess, just got to get stuck into it over the weekend... Now if only I had space to store these Sketchbooks...

I spent my time between street fighter and Gemma as every uni student does... having a Nerf War! It raged almost two hours of Foam Dart Shooting madness, flanking corners and taking survillians hostage but oh, the joy it caused!

Also talked more to my brother about going to visit him sometime in Easter Break... We're going to see Takashi Murakami's Exhibit and there's some Design Award Thing going on at the Design Museum that I wouldn't mind taking a look at... So it should be fun :)

Now, if only I didn't have work in the morning :(

Thursday 19 February 2009

Cup of Tea 81

Today has really been a wasted day.

I got up wanting to hurt people, went to lecturers and nearly fell asleep and then have been running on a mental capacity comparable to that of a wooden cow. Suffice today nothing has been done all day. Hell, I even couldn't play street fighter IV properly which made me die a little inside (not to mention the 360 Controllers REALLY aren't built for Beat 'em ups....)

However, I did pop by the comic shop and get some new toner paper (its the last two sets they've got, so i've now got a stash of 8 to cock about with, one of them even came with the proper toner cutters -squee-) So I can be all manga-esq! I really want to write a comic though... Been reading Gun Smith Cats all day (baught the Omnibus... its almost 400 pages!) and love it sooo bloody much. Going to pick up the second one tommorow while it's still there!

And with this rather boring turn of events (or typing of blogs) I will go to bed.
Night Night.

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Cups of Tea 79 - 80

Yes I'm appalled at myself too... there actually hasn't been ANY tea drinking in about a week! Shocking... Even more shocking is that it all boils down to me being to lazy to fill the kettle... So you can guess how work's going... However, I did switch Brands! I now Drink Saga Tea, its 38p for 50 of them in Tescos in the international section (It's a Polish brand).

I've done very little this past week. I had a great valentines day (Thanks Hunni) but apart from that I havn't done anything worth mentioning. I did attend a talk by Ken Garland however (see earlier blogs for First Things First Manifesto) on metaphore which was amazing! Afew people I spoke to didn't really get what the point of it was but the art he showed was simply epic.

It was mostly polish artist's who I'd never heard of under Polish communism and how they had to use metaphore to communicate how much they hated the socialist regime forced on them. People like Stasys Eidrigevicius and Andrzej Pagowski who's work almost makes me shake with how good it is. Bastards haha.

Hmmm now what else to talk about... I feel after such a long time that I should give you something that's at least afew paragraphs long to read. Incidently, please try and pass this blog on to people who might be interested... I've got no idea who reads this other than three people so it'd be nice to have afew people reading it as incouragement to post! Also, if I don't post X360-uns, Myspaces, Facebookers etc. Spam me with messages giving me hassle if I miss a day. I really need to stick to doing this!

Along side it, I finally started creating my new visual diary with all the cut out paper, flyers etc. that've been floating around in my bag for the past 6 months... really need to keep adding to that, but now it's there it'll gradually fill up over time I'm sure.

Also for James (Jammer) here's the Alphabot front cover for the Children's book project as you wanted to see some design and also the newest Cool for Cats flyer i've produced.



Monday 9 February 2009

Cups of Tea 76 - 78

Argh. I write this so tiredly! And for no real reason other than the mental wear and tear of having to get up ridiculously early and attend a theory lecture. C'est la vie.

Nothing really happened today design wise because of this, after me being all fired up to design last night, I'm like a tired man shielding his eyes from sunlight today. Got the new issue of Grafik (bitterly disappointing for £9...) and the new Juxtapoze (Which for £3.50 was a bloody steal). Also picked up Rocksound, Art Rocker and NME for analysis for my magazine brief and all I can really say on them is how ugly magazine design can be when you really look at it.

Take Artrocker. It's a magazine for Indie bands / the general London music scene but the design reflects that of the local paper. The column's are horribly spaced and feel much to static, the backgrounds make the text hard to read and the image layouts seem very forced, just slapped onto a page at random, jaunty angles. Where's the passion of the music? The fire and contemporary spirit of what these people are trying to do? I don't know. I honestly can't read some of it because of horrible design. Yes, I'm becoming that guy.

And I guess that's what seperates it from being something you'll find at your local supermarket / corner shop like the NME or Rock Sound, the layout. The other two are cleanly collumned, spaced appropriatly and generally are alot nicer to read. Aestheticly they do it for me too. Not to the degree of say a surf magazine or Front, but there's definatly a sense of style and modern feel to the magazines that make's you want to look at it.

And for the record, I don't condone anyone to read NME. Skins is on the cover. Great stuff if I'm 16, to anyone else, no. Who the fuck cares? I certainly don't believe it's made "Music Better" as the cover caption states. Though the second season had Crystal Castles on it... That was pretty awsome.

God, I'm turning old and bitter.




Sunday 8 February 2009

Cups of Tea 67 - 75

Yes that's right, almost 10 cups of tea... and most of them today haha!

Where to begin, the week's been a little uninspired, all I've wanted to do really is see my girlfriend and sleep but alas, snow and noisy people didn't really allow anything xD So I sat uninspired and perhaps lazily didn't really design for a week.

I started the week by reading computer arts projects and being slightly daunted by the ammount of research that went into some logos... but alas, I'm kinda past that now. It's given me a sense of what I should be achieving to create great work... but then again I guess it's all based on what a clients budget will allow. God, I feel so dirty saying that >.<...

But this weekend after turning my brain back on from work designed several stamps based on power wastage due to standby buttons (I won't bore you with facts, my parents were ranting about it while I was designing them xD) and one or two drawings for a future project which you'll soon see!

Wednesday 4 February 2009

Cups of tea 61 - 66

I'm almost out of tea and sugar. Damn.

Just a quickie to let whoever's reading this know i'm not dead... the country coming to a stand still because of snow has kinda given me the insentive to be lazy... after all clients can't get to offices in the snow... HAZAA! It's a really bad worth ethic admitidly, but it's helping pass the time none the less... I'm currently catching up with Lost (watched season 3 / first 10 episodes of season 4 in less than a week... wOOt!) and im doing research for the stamp brief i'm currently working on.

Some design tommorow kk lol?

Sunday 1 February 2009

Cups of Tea 57 - 60

Christ alive! That's 60 cups of tea in 32 days. When you think about it that's not really that much, but seeings as these boil down to one day of not having one cup and the next having 6. I must drink moooore!

Design seems to slump for me at the weekend... Work just drains every inch of inspiration and replaces it for sheer hatred of working a 9 to 5 (even though I work from 7... BAH). I just don't get how people can be content to working in sheer, spirit crushing retail. It makes me believe in Ken Garland's first things first manifesto even more... Seeing people buying things because their told, completely impulsively and it's usually bollocks. Two customers have summed up this weekend for their sheer comic genius that couldn't be written by even the Python team.

One woman once showed a television with an i-pod dock atop it didn't comment on this feature as "how marvelous technology is these days" but from the front of the television and the "keyhole"... to which a college said "I think you'll find that's the stand by button."

The second, a young girl about 19 (I love saying "young" about teenagers, I'm so bitter about being 20 haha) asked a friend to recommend a good, dry white wine. He curiously responded "Yes, of course. Which country?" To which she replied "Well. I'm Welsh..."

I'm not pretentious. Just being subjected to such events for the past four years is purely spirit crushing. Gotta hate retail. No wonder a lot more people are applying to do creative courses... Much like First things First, my own personal statement against this is using the depot number 96... I go on about it a lot to people I know so I won't mention it again. But I put a small helvetica "96" in every piece of work I do... they're usually VERY well hidden but i'm thinking of making them a more prominant piece of my work.

God, let me win the lottery so I don't have to do this anymore xD