Somethings old, sommething new, something borrowed and something blue (sort of)

While I could just say that I've been busy at work and being distracted by other hobbies (convinced I have too many), part of me feels that I struggle to update this thing less than 3 months at a time is due to me being uncertain of what to put up. With that in mind I'd thought I might as well put up some recent stuff.

The talking rabbit is the only real thing in this image btw

This collection of scraps is images that I've drawn while at my current job (got a lot of scribbles in my work pads). Also a lot of it is part of my continued quest to become a versatile artist (although think I need to work on drawing landscapes)

Many of these images have ended up in the "To colour" category, whereas many of them will never see anything of the sort

 This image is a rarity, in that as soon as it went into photoshop, I continually worked on it till it was done. Always enjoyed watching My Neighbour Totoro and colouring this image was also an experiment in colouring without having lines in the image.

Had so much fun doing this whilst listening to the intro theme (the Japanese one, not that horrible disney dub :P)

 Seen loads of these on the net and always wondered how hard it would be to do one myself, again so much fun to be had when being creative :)

Yoink!

Finally some PPI Shark to round it off. For those not in the know, PPI shark is my coping mechanism at work in order to deal with the monotony of dealing with PPI complaints, plus it helps brighten up my office surroundings a bit.

He often comes with something smart or relevant to say

Some drawings and stuff

Hey folks been really busy over the last couple of weeks and had little time to actually do stuff that's practical in terms of working on a portfolio (full time job with totally wack hours will do that to you), that being said what time I have has been spent thinking about things (plans and stuff).

Trying to think of things to put on the blog :[

It was my birthday earlier this month and rather than enjoying it with friends and family, I was sitting in work :(. The pic below best describes my feelings about my job.

Rather than turn this entry into a negative rant about my job, thought I'd highlight that despite this eating into my time, it has allowed me to doodle and also made me want to get back into animating more.

How I survive work, taking every day with alot of sarcasm (also watching too much Azumanga Daioh does this)

While I'm not a very patriotic "british person", let it never be said that I didn't do anything for the Queen's Jubilee :)

People on the train, unsuspecting that I steal their character likenesses while they go about whatever it is they do

Work collegues during our downtime (we sometimes look happy at our job)

 Still find observational drawing fun to do when I have downtime, but really want to start drawing stuff for myself again (character concepts and storyboarding). Stay tuned though, will soon have something in the works to show other than just old uni stuff and frustrated rants (well maybe some new drawings but probably a few more rants)

Well that lasted like... a year?!

 Jeez, gonna have to do better than that, alot better. It probably goes without saying that I've left this blog to the wayside for quite some time, in that time I've had alot on my plate, finding a job (not one that I'd like to stay in but it means I have money while I look for one that I'm trained in), getting involved with projects and trying to work on my portfolio, as well as hobbies and other stuff (airsoft being one of the).

 But enough excuses! Time for content.

 As stated before this was the project that I primarily worked on as part of my final year at my animation course. The story concept was by the awesomly talented Brian Lindsay (who also has a blog http://yodasportrait.blogspot.co.uk/), and originally started out as being based on the same format as classic cartoons such as Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes. The main story centred around a Scarecrow ("Mawkin" which is another word for Scarecrow) who tries to scare off two crows from a farm. The production blog which we had to do as part of our course is still up and alot more content can be found there http://mawkinsbackfire.blogspot.co.uk/.

These were how alot of my storyboards started out in 3rd & 4th year, drawn on Graph pad paper and inked and coloured

 As with Wednesday's Child, I was primarily responsible for the storyboarding for the animation. Brian, myself and a few others (Luke and our lecturers Wayne and Sharon) threw a around ideas back and forth with regards to the story itself and there quite a few drafts of the script. 

Scarecorw line drawings for the "Bananna Shot"

There were a lot of brilliant people who worked on this project and we definetly had our share of stress and fun during the whole thing.

From plain pencil sketch...

..to beautiful vista (the work of both Brian and Sarah Dargie)