Back from the Dead

It's been the longest time since I've done this thing. I barely remember HOW to do this thing. You know, words.

You do sort-of ask yourself "Why bother?"

A lot of the blogs I used to follow now seem like empty vessels for advertisers, or forced-positive scrapbooks of people's lives that only show you the idyllic 10%. Same with Youtube. I used to watch a lot of it, but now can't bear the toxic self-absorbed, social-climber nature of a large portion of Youtubers. I now watch it scarcely, save a few who will put more into a video than their last trip to Tesco. It's really funny reading some of my old posts from 2 years ago because I can see that I was desperately trying to emulate that.

I guess really what needs to happen is that I need to do something, if I'm going to be this opinionated about it, and create the content I would want to read, and share with everyone the content creators that I currently love to read and watch. Apart from the odd art post or vain Tweet, I really have lost my connection to the online world and any kind of long-form writing. Though that's not necessarily a bad thing; I have fantastic friends and an excellent life, but I've missed committing to something creative and on some kind of schedule.

Bear in mind I am promising zero. This might be the post to end all posts. This might be the beginning of something beautiful (HA). Fuck it, let's go for it. It's mental that my last post was about 2 years ago and so much has happened since then:

~*~

In no particular order:

• I've visited Paris and Japan. Though v keen to travel more this year.
• My jaw has completely healed.
• I have become a Twitch-er. Is that what they're called? Like a Witcher but less rugged and most battles happen in chatrooms. I even Creative streamed a bit. Sadly my new place doesn't have the Internet to support that anymore, but hoping to upgrade soon.
• I can now cook over 3 meals.
• I've started a bullet journal, and have kept it up for about 30 days. I'll do a post on this eventually.
• I dyed my hair red. It's okay. I'll roll with it.
• I filed 2 tax returns. I know.
• I turned 24, though I'm now a week away from 25, so that's irrelevant.
• I went to my first Comic Con.
• I've moved to London, properly. Like an adult.
• Though I'm in the same job, I've worked on many fab projects and now have almost 3 years of VFX experience.
• Still don't have a showreel, though.
• I've been to about 4 music festivals, and 10+ concerts.
• I have enough copies of ImagineFX & 3D Artist to start a WHSmith.
• I've met a wealth of brilliant and diverse people from all over the world.
• I still can't commit to anything. Art schedules, fitness routines, deadlines, you name it.
• I'm happier. More confident. More grounded. But also ready to explore new horizons and improve on being a well-rounded human.
• I've also become infinitely more bitter and cynical and can't take myself seriously when I write these things. Any posts from me will now be an exercise in online identity crisis. I'll also swear more.

~*~

In an effort to make this more colourful, I'll include that I jumped on an art meme a few weeks back. It's probably the closest thing I have to an up-to-date self-portrait. A bunch of people and artists I follow have made these and I think they're adorable.

What I'll be posting with yet I haven't decided. Some art, some life, some writing, maybe even some cooking (god forbid.) I still haven't mastered the art of presenting food nicely.

If any of you (I'm pretending I have any kind of following still, feel free to play along.) have any suggestions, feel free to comment. One thing I'd like to set up is a formal commissions list so people are able to see what I charge/if I'm available. I'm not right now, but if I need to save for things in the future then it's something I'm going to try to be more organized with!

That's all from me right now.

The next one may never come. We just don't know. It is in the hands of the Gods. Whether or not I'll stick with Blogger or find another host is undecided. I'm also going to be doing a cleanup of old posts, as some are just too awful for me to deal with.

If you have made it this far, thank you, and please hit me up with a follow!

Annie
xxx

Cabin Fever & February Art Dump!

Ahoy!

My jaw is finally beginning to look more human and less Mr. Incredible, so this is what I currently look like 

(excuse shitty quality and crazy expressions):

So I thought, as I've had some time away from work and more time to do some painting, I'd share the stuff I've been working on/starting over the past month or so. I was hoping to get more done but unfortunately jaw surgery really does take it out of you for 2 weeks!

Below includes a painting of Maddie Ziegler (aka mini Sia from the Elastic Heart/Chandelier videos), a female re-imagining of Khal Drogo inspired by the lovely miss Emma Pickles (who you can check out here), some face sketches, and the development of a female elf character. Why? Because elves.

I drew the first elf sketch during my night on the ward before surgery - she turned out to be an excellent way to distract myself! I've been trying to find some good clothing refs so I can make her outfit more convincing, obviously she's still very much a WIP but watch this space!

I recently bought a Canon 700D with some savings & birthday money, so prepare to see some higher quality snaps once I get the hang of it. Might do a separate post on it if I have anything worth showing.

I am, however, very much looking forward to getting back to work and seeing my colleagues again. I mean, doing nothing and painting all day is all well and good but now that I'm able I'm keen to get out and do things!

Until next time!

Annie

x

Rhinos, Birthdays and Surgery, Oh My!

W'ello there.

It has been a while, has it not? It's a rule that if you admit that you're doing well with blogging in the post, that will then be your last post for at least a month. You get cocky and then life happens! Life meaning life not interesting enough to blog about.

Well, actually, there has been quite a lot going on this month. Since I last posted, I have up until recently been working full-time as a Junior 3D Artist. And we worked on this spot for 3 Mobile, who are sponsoring the Irish Rugby Team:

Specifically I worked on modelling/texturing for the butterflies, and textures on Mr. Rhino there. Pretty chuffed with how it came out - well done team! When this went out Ireland won their Six Nations match so clearly we helped!

---

In other news, I've had to take a few weeks off work due to jaw surgery, which seemed to creep up on me very fast since I found out the date in November! As I'm writing this, it's been almost 2 weeks since I had the surgery (mandibular osteotomy, i think?) so I'm still feeling a little sorry for myself, but I'm already feeling a lot better than last week.

When I came out of hospital I was very VERY swollen (no, no pictures for you) but fairly cheerful (as your entire face is numb so it's not actually THAT painful). But then they put me on antibiotics for 5 days and everything went steadily downhill, I felt nauseous after every meal, got a lovely skin rash, and generally felt completely out of it. However, I think the majority of that was down to the antibiotics, because now I feel much more human, and I've even managed some scrambled eggs in with the very exciting diet of soups and smoothies I've had recently.

My face now looks pretty normal to those that don't know me, so I can go out and about to do little errands and things, but I'm waiting till Monday to brave the morning commute again (and I'm going to be forever anxious about angry commuters whacking my jaw out of place on the tube!). I think the only thing that is really bothering me right now is the nerve pain (as jaw surgery bruises the nerve that runs through your lower jaw), so I am completely numb from my lower lip down to the base of my chin. A bit like a ventriloquist doll.

There has been continuous 'pins and needles' in that area for the last week, so I'm hoping in the next month or so I'll be getting some feeling back (I'm starting to get a little on the right side! WOO!). This does mean I absent-mindedly prod my chin when I'm not thinking about it, so I'll be the crazy on public transport for a while.

---

Aaand finally, last Thursday I turned 23! Though I'll admit, my ideal birthday situation probably wouldn't be a hospital visit, face prodding, x-rays and early wake-ups. But I have the most darling mother in the world, who resourcefully made me a birthday cake out of jelly. My brother and I then made a very calorific smoothie to make up for the week before. I also got a new baby, (not really) in the form of a Canon EOS 700D. I've been wanting a mid-range DSLR for video/stills for ages, and now I can video to my heart's content. And then put loads of dragons into all my shots. Yeah.

 Perhaps I'll even Youtube one day. Haha. Ha.

---

That's all for now! Hopefully I'll have some more art for you soon :)

Annie

xx

Braces and Pretty Faces

Hello!

Doing rather well, aren't I? Clearly this is some sort of new-year-buzz that I'm still riding, similar to that gym membership you pay for in January and forget to cancel until April.

First update, and I don't think I've written about this before, but I've had lingual braces for almost 3 years now. Well, until yesterday. I got the lingual braces behind my top teeth about a year into University, and then bottom braces (the normal kind) on my bottom teeth about 6 months afterwards.

It's been a long, slow process, but finally I'm beginning to reach the end game, which sadly involves some fairly scary jaw surgery that should be happening mid-February. So yesterday, I had to have my linguals removed, and replaced with some rather uncomfortable, chunky ceramic ones on the front of my top teeth. All I can say is I am not a fan and it's making me fairly miserable, and when I'm miserable I like to paint! (Though the painkillers are probably helping as well.)

So tonight I decided to finish a painting I started a few months ago of a blogger/fashion vlogger that I follow called Helen Anderson. I'm not really a 'girly' girl in that I don't spend hours watching clothes hauls/make-up tutorials, but I like her as she's a little bit more interesting than your average beauty blogger, and her videos make me laugh. She's also in a very good band which you can check out here!

She is also obviously very pretty, and so I thought I'd have a go at a face study, which resulted in this:

Though it's fairly sketchy, I really enjoyed painting it! I was experimenting with different textures for the skin and I quite like how it came out. Could have spent more time on the hair maybe, and it's not 100% accurate but I'm no portrait artist yet haha, always on the lookout to improve.

Anyhoo, time for bed. And then work, and then bed and then work and then bed and then.... Haha. Hopefully I'll be able to do some more painting soon :)

Annie
x

Art Dump: 2014

Well, Hello!

So this is a great big pile of some of the things I created last year, and failed to blog about. So what better way to present them than dumping them all at once into one post so no one has to do any complicated clicking. As you can see I went from doodling to actually trying to create finished digital paintings and more detailed work. My head is perpetually full of beautiful fantasy women and Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings references, which I think this proves.

In order of Oldest to Newest, from top to bottom:

Still have a long way to go in terms of my art, but it's not been a bad year at all!

I do think I'm improving slowly, but having been so busy it's not been as easy to practice. I can see a definite improvement, but comment and let me know if you do too!

Back to the grind now,

Speak soon!

Annie

x

Oops!

Long time no see. Haha. Aha. ha...

I HAVE REASONS. Genuinely. Hear me out!

So the last you heard from me, I was diving head-first into the wild world of VFX, and learning from my wonderful tutors at Escape Studios, who I cannot thank enough. I would also like to give an honorary mention to Mr. Liam WOTO (not his real surname, rumour has it), who is a very talented artist and all-round-nice-guy, for recommending Escape to me. Go check him out, he draws good.

Realising that this was almost exactly a year ago makes my head spin a little. I need to sit down, hang on. Deep breaths.

Right, so for those that are interested, I completed my 18-week-course at Escape, (and yes, it was very intensive indeed!) and then, two weeks afterwards, somehow managed to land myself a job as a Freelance Junior in Soho with a very up-and-coming company in VFX, working primarily in ads and music videos.

Since then, I have been lucky enough to have worked on a bunch of fantastic projects, including a music video for Alt-J, a Freeview ad involving some charming, if not slightly creepy, singing toys, and some upcoming promos/ads that I am very much enjoying being a part of. I'll plug myself horribly below so you can check these out if you fancy! I'm getting to do all sorts of work from modelling & texturing to sculpting, lighting, rendering, you name it! We won an award about a month ago for Best VFX on Alt-J's Hunger of the Pine at the UK MVAs, which is absolutely mental.

So it's been a pretty darn busy year. I've also met loads of great, nerdy and extremely talented people, and made some amazing friends and colleagues along the way. And hence, this blog has been very neglected, which is why I am giving it a make-over!

Other things that have happened include going to Latitude & Boomtown Festivals over the summer, working with a friend on a Youtube video, going the farthest north I've gone so far (not that far, in all honesty, not even Scotland), Christmas, New Year and overall not having a huge amount of time to blog ;)

But hey, let's start the new year optimistically.

I'll be updating later this week with some recent digital paintings/sketches and doodles I've been doing, but for now, I will leave you with lots of super fun links to click on. G'wan.

Alt J - 'Hunger of the Pine', Directed by Nabil.

Freeview - 'The Left-Behinds'

King - 'Release the Magic' spots for Candy Crush Soda, Pet Rescue, Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes.

Aaand the Youtube Video I helped out on, which now has a crazy crazy amount of views, directed and mostly created by the very talented Mr. Mat Hill, who definitely deserves all the praise he can get. But those rocks tho.

More soon, I promise, but for now this is getting far too long and everyone needs a KitKat. I hope you are all having a brilliant start to the year, but now I desperately have to go to bed in preparation for work in the morning. More arty things coming your way soon!

Best,

Annie

x

Escape Studios: Weeks 5, 6 & Final Project!

Hi all!

So thought I'd update you on where I am with my course so far! I've completed the final part of my 6 week Maya Core and have to say I feel like I've learnt a mammoth amount of knowledge in such a short space of time! I am now in possession of a laptop that will actually deal with all the things I want to do, which means much more experimentation and perhaps even some personal projects at some point :)

So first of all, we moved onto slightly more advanced texturing, which meant creating a texture from scratch, adding stickers and giving some age to the object. Our tutor had already created a model of a WW2 Canister, and it was our job to create a texture, add some details like rust and scratches, and then adding pre-made stickers and roughing them away. See above for a screenshot of this in progress!

I have to say, I felt a lot more confident with this part of the course, as I've already used Photoshop in my own time for a number of years and didn't feel quite as lost with the software. Texturing is something I enjoy due to the fact you can add a lot of character to your model just by adding tiny details. It sort of creates a story, and you have to think about it a lot harder than say, just colouring in!

We also touched on some of the more complicated parts of texturing, playing with shadow samples, transparency, bump and specular maps in order to create a number of surfaces.

Finally, we moved onto mia shaders, with which you have a lot more control of the product! They also interact a lot more with your light sources to create a realistic finished image. We used a few different objects which we applied different shader presets to, and experimented with the sliders to get a variety of effects. Here are a few examples:

I have to say, i was very impressed with the mia shaders, and we're recommended to use them from now on instead of the Maya default Blinns and Lamberts. You get so much more control over your textures, and I'm not going to lie, it's pretty addictive experimenting with all of the values to see what you can make from it! It does take hours of trial and error, but the finished effect can be really satisfying :)

Finally, throughout the last four weeks we have been working on our projects, and I'm pleased to present my finished still from this:

We had our presentations on the Friday of the sixth week, and I was very nervous about it. Apart from the obvious mistakes (some of the shadows and specularity etc. etc.) I'm really pleased with my work so far and I can't wait to get on with the next project!

Would love to hear any feedback, as I can always improve. I think I might come back to this at a later stage and have a play around to get it perfect :)

Thank you for reading!

Annie

xx

Escape Studios: Weeks 3 & 4

Well hello there!

Yeah, turns out this intensive-course thing can be pretty draining! My lateness is somewhat to do with my internet/laptop playing mind games with me. So I shall be combining two weeks into one blog post. Cheeky, I know, but bear with me.

So I was pretty excited about Week 3, as we continued our modelling lessons and began to sculpt a face from scratch. Character modelling is something I'd love to get into, and whilst there are more catered packages like Zbrush or Mudbox (which we'll be working with a little later on) for detailed sculpting, I think Maya can be really good for getting your basic mesh down!

I am aware how creepy it looks in progress but hey! We started off with the polygons around the eye, and built out from there. We used a reference, and in the end I think he (sortof) looked a little like the guy in the pictures. I think what I enjoyed the most was using the sculpting tools, as it felt like a more organic way of modelling. I think this means I'll be loving mudbox whenever we get to it!

Later on in the week, and into the fourth, we started to learn UV Mapping. This, as it turns out, is one of the most tedious processes in 3D. My understanding of this is: your UVs communicate to the software how your texture should be dispersed across the model, and so they need to match up proportionately with the size of your polygons (not going to lie, was pretty difficult to get my head around). This involves unfolding your 3D model into a 2D space. The way we start this off is with a generic numbered checkerboard texture. With this you can see where your texture will stretch (if at all) and distort once you unfold the model:

We set to work on a hand, a head (one the tutor had made) and the plane we'd made earlier in the course. The aim of the game is to get all of your checkers/numbers as equally spaced as possible. This can take hours and hours of poking your UVs, which is not the most thrilling job in the world but still very important!

Finally, towards the end of Week 4, we concentrated mainly on learning the beginnings of lighting rigs, and working on our projects the other 50% of the time. I think of all the things so far lighting is one of the parts I am struggling with. I'm currently in week 5 and trying to set up a basic rig for my Gameboy, and I'm finding it pretty challenging. Unless you're pretty adept at this, its essentially a game of trial and error until your lights seem to give off the right highlights/shadows. (aka stress central). Here is a basic lighting rig we did based on a sunset environment:

As for my project, it's getting there. I feel a lot more confident with Maya's interface, and I'm even starting to use the hotkeys/menusets without thinking...like some sort of weird muscle memory. I think it's crazy that 4 weeks ago I had no idea what was going on, and now I'm only a week away (in theory) from having individually modelled, textured, lit and rendered a full photorealistic scene! The deadline is in a week and so I'm not going to lie and say I'm at all relaxed. Here are some screenshots of my model in progress, but I will probably update in a couple of weeks with a more indepth shot-by-shot (and hopefully final piece)!

I can't promise a week 5 this weekend, but I will do my best! If not, I will have a lot more free time after this first project, so I'm hoping to dedicate a bit more time to blogging then.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

Annie

xxx

Escape Studios: Week 2

Hello again!

So this weekend I'm pretty tired, I think I'm still adjusting to the early mornings and daily commute (and being squished between lots of miserable commuters every morning) I'm moving to London asap as it is much less expensive and almost halves my journey time :)

In the meantime, though, I'm still very much enjoying the course, though the stress has begun to creep in, as at the beginning of this week we chose items for our upcoming project. I have gone with a gameboy color, as I had an old (amazingly still functional) one at home! It may not look like the world's most complicated object, but take a look at the sides/back and you realise there's a lot more detail than you think!

We basically have to create it from scratch, model it to scale, and then texture/light/render it in a scene so it looks as photorealistic as possible. Not asking much, then, right? I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit nervous about this, but after seeing some other projects from past students (who like me started out as beginners), it 

was encouraging to see how much progress they made in such a short space of time!

This is where I am currently. I've been playing around with different modelling methods, including NURBS curves and polygonal modelling. Think i prefer polys but we'll see which works better! We were warned we'd probably have re-model about 5-6 times at the beginning to decide on the best method, but I'm running with this for now!

In other news this week, we finished off our brief training in NURBs modelling (as it is used much less frequently) and started to model in polygons. Immediately I found it a lot easier to get my head around!

As our classes are separated into 50% tutorial, 50% individual work time, we also learnt more about modelling in polygons and toggling between smoothing options to get an attractive result. This week involved a Mustang plane:

And a tractor tyre:

We learnt a lot of different techniques this week, including linear modelling, and non-linear modelling - which means rather than working into one surface, and adding detail afterwards, you work up from a flat plane (e.g, upper screenshot) and then once you have the details where you want them, you add deformers/rotations in order to get the desired result! I can't wait to be at a stage where I can just glance at an object and immediately know which methods to use - at the moment there seems so many different options its difficult to start anything!

I'm pretty far off dragons haha, but I think I need to master real objects first before I can think about anything remotely fantastical :)

Thank you for reading, and I'll be updating again next weekend!

Annie

x

Escape Studios: Week 1 (Continued)

Might have to cut down on the amount of screenshots I take haha.

This is just a quick one to show the culmination of all of our models from last week:

Had a lot of fun playing around with lighting tints. I like to think this could be some sort of Assassin's Creed-y/Pirates of the Carribean scene. Obviously we didn't get a choice with what we were modelling but I enjoyed the level of creativity we got when making up our scenes. Obviously the barrel positioning is way off haha. The lower screenshot is a preview of the final render (in mental ray). We didn't actually go ahead and render anything as it was just a practice (and it probably would've taken an age...)

Another update coming your way friday, covering this week's progress!

Annie

xx

Escape Studios: Week One

So this is a day late, but in my (poor) defence I went out for a couple of drinks with my coursemates after Friday's lesson and collapsed into bed when i got back, which looks like it might turn into a weekly thing so we can all blow off some steam! In light of this, I hereby christen Saturday as blogging day :)

So it's a tad overwhelming that this has happened so quickly, I made the decision to consider VFX as a viable career option about six months ago, and here I am now on an 18-week journey to becoming a 3D artist! We dived straight into Maya on our first day, and though there is certainly a creative/arty aspect to creating models, there's also a hell of a lot 

of technical knowledge that you need to learn before you can start to visualize what's in your head. I think the promising thing is that I don't feel put off by this at all, it's more a motivation to learn the software so I can play around to my heart's content (and make shitloads of dragons).

This week we've been covering the Maya interface, using several of the tools, and going through explanations of what they do and why they do it. With Maya, there's at least two or three different ways to achieve the same effect, and the challenge is a) learning how to use them and b) knowing when to use what.

In our first tutorials, we began to model using NURBs, and creating basic shapes, then learning to manipulate them using the vertices/faces/edges and a number of tools.

This involved learning how to draw EP/UV curves, the Revolve and Extrude tools to name a few. The thing I like about the course is that though our tutor provides us with a model example on the projector, even after a few lessons I was starting to make mine more individual, and I could be creative even after a few hours. Don't get me wrong, I made a whole lot of mistakes and if you don't listen you do end up missing about five steps in about a minute, so I probably annoyed my neighbours quite a lot...The majority of my class already have a fair knowledge of this software, so I'm going to have to work pretty hard to keep up!

In the second half of the week, we moved onto texturing and rendering. I think I enjoyed the texturing process a lot more than the modelling process, as once you've gotten to grips with how each node is connected, you can start to play around with colour/light values which is a lot closer to how I use Photoshop! I think this will help once me move into creating and sourcing our own textures, as at least I can navigate a little better around the software. I'd say I was most pleased with my apple (as dorky as that sounds) because I went a bit off piece from the tutorial (oops) but ended up with quite a nice product:

Finally, we created a scene from the objects we'd been putting together, lit it, and rendered it. Learning about lights was fairly confusing, but I was quite pleased with the end product. Sadly I forgot to screenshot this before I left, but I'll update this entry once I can get my hands on them!

I'm not going to lie, it's pretty overwhelming if you're an absolute beginner, and though I took on a lot I've still got a hell of a lot to practice. Hopefully I'll have a new laptop soon which will mean I can use the software at home and improve my understanding of it in my own time. Either way, I refuse to be scared off, and as we're beginning our first official project next week, I'm going to try and commit to practicing as much as possible. This might mean a few (lots of) late nights, but hopefully the end result will be worth it! They have a free coffee machine, I'm pretty sure I'll manage.

I'll post again soon with my final scene from last week as well as some updates from next week soon. Currently deciding on what to do for my first project, decisions are hard!

Annie

xx

My Resolutions 2014

As cliche and probably overoptimistic as it is, I like to set myself goals at New Years. I think to write it all down on a blog too is a good way to force yourself into keeping them, so you can track my progress and/or failure!

Even though nothing has really changed other than the fact that we have to remember to write a different group of numbers in the date box, and we're not fitting into our pre-christmas trousers as easily, it does feel like a reason to push for change.

So, here goes:

• Improve my diet. I've been trying to do this for years. Also with some recent illness I was recommended to change my diet by my GP, and i'm also horribly anaemic, so I sortof have to do it anyway.
• Get into a regular exercise routine. Again, it's a classic one, but I think now is the time I need to make a lifestyle change. I'm heading into a career area which is mostly sedentary, so if I don't change things up soon I'll be weighing in several stone heavier in a few years! It's not really a weight thing, but it'd be nice to feel light and healthy for a change.
• Create something every day. Even if this just means a scribble on a piece of paper or a photograph, I feel like in order to keep my motivation up creatively I need to push through and make it part of my new routine.
• Read more blogs and interact with the community. After talking to a friend recently about finding new blogs and things to read about, I realised that actually, I don't do it enough. I'm subscribed to several blogs, but I've kept with the same ones for the past year or so now, and so I need to push myself to explore a little. I might try and do some sort of feature every month or couple of months on new people I've found. 
• Get better at staying in contact. I'm so bad with my phone. Really bad. I'll read a text, even go as far as thinking about what I'm going to reply, and then still manage to get distracted somewhere along the line, or leave it in another room. I have so many very good friends, and as everyone is at such a pivotal moment in their lives right now, either starting careers or taking the next step, it can really test a relationship!

Wish me luck!

I'm starting my course on Monday (see previous post for details) which I'm sure I'll be blogging about as much as possible :) If you have any new years resolutions, or would like to link to your blog, just comment below!

Annie

x

Laptop Breakdown, Christmas and the Future!

Hello all!

So basically this is going to be one of those very convoluted blog posts that I don't expect anyone will read, but if any of you want to know things about where I am currently, then this will provide all of the info necessary!

First of all, I'd like to say a very big Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

The reason I've not been posting as often is due to a laptop crisis of sorts...in that it likes to randomly bluescreen/crashdump whenever it feels like it, and has been officially declared null, void etc. by a computer man in a shop (who i paid quite a lot of money just to confirm that for me, ffs.) Basically if I even remotely try to open Photoshop, plug in hardware, or open more than about three tabs, it freaks out and bluescreens. Which has put a stopper to any digital creativity this Christmas!

The good news is that I'm currently researching new laptops, which will be fun and exciting as it has been four years since I bought myself any new gadgets!

The furthest I got before it died was an unfinished 4 hour digital painting which I will share with you briefly!:

I'm very glad I managed to recover it (thankyou autosave) as it all looked pretty grim for a bit. I'll hopefully be back in business soon!

As for the imminent future, the next big piece of  news is that I have officially signed up for the Advanced 3D for VFX course at Escape Studios. Following on from the Taster course I wrote about a couple of months ago, I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with it. The course is 18-weeks, very intensive but hopefully by the end of it I can officially call myself a 3D Artist which will be very exciting! More on that soon, fingers crossed!

Finally, I had a lovely quiet Christmas with my family, and received lots of lovely prezzies (mainly Game of Thrones themed) for which I feel very lucky that I have such generous family and friends! All of my gifts went down well too. I might post separately about this if I get the time :) I can't wait for New Years Eve, where I plan to get very very intoxicated before I have to start burying my head in education again.

Anyhoo, that's all from me, hopefully the next time I write will be from a brand new, fully functional laptop!

Annie

xx

Sketch Post

Just  a quick one before I go to bed!

I'm going to try and start painting her in soon, I'll keep you updated on my progress!

Annie

xxx

The Creative Initiative, Week #4

Hello all,

So I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd join in with a lovely idea created by the blogger geniuses that are BeingLittle and ThisLovelyLittleDay (whom I think you should go and check out immediately, if you don't already follow them). Put simply, we have to create something from a weekly prompt, which I think is a) clever and b) just what I need to get myself out of my art block! If you want to join in the fun, head over to Lyzi's post here!

This week's was GRATITUDE, or what we're thankful for.

Besides the obvious things like family, friends, health and the opportunities I've been offered throughout my life so far, I think one of the things I'm most greatful for is the human imagination. It sounds horribly cliche, but if you think about it, we wouldn't have anything if someone, one day, hadn't dreamt it up.

My take on this is obviously dragons, pirates and misty mountains (can you tell I'm looking forward to The Hobbit?) but I think it's brilliant what the human mind has created, especially in art, myth and storytelling. As I'm going to be entering into a field which specializes in bringing the impossible to life, it felt right to choose this for this week's prompt.

Anyway, as next week's theme is DREAMS, this image may encompass both, in which case I'll see if I can come up with something different.

Thank you for reading!

Annie

xxx

Half Moon Run @ O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire 18/11/2013

Being a person who likes to spend a lot of money on live music (and then wonder why she doesn't have any), I try to think about which bands I spend money on. With festivals, it's different, you're going there for the experience, the people and the weird and wonderful fantasy land you get to camp in for four days, as well as you are the music. But with live concerts, I have to really like them.

So with Half Moon Run, I'd actually been on a Spotify binge (which I can't do anymore due to my subscription running out, sad times) and was putting together a new playlist to a) get ready for Latitude Festival and b) motivate me during the last push of my dissertation. I usually ignore the spam from Spotify telling me to 'check out these bands we think you'll like!' but this time I didn't. And I'm glad I did!

Half Moon Run are a four-piece hailing from Canada, and when I looked them up, Spotify only had one of their songs stored, 'Full Circle'. I knew nothing about them, listened to this track, and immediately added it to my thoughtfully-named playlist, 'SUMMER SONGS WOO'. I then stumbled across 'Call me in the afternoon' and the entire Dark Eyes album. As I used to sing (a bit, not well ha) I think the first thing that strikes me about any band is the voice. And Devon's voice is really interesting. They have harmonies reminiscent of Fleet Foxes and Fossil Collective, and a kind of keening/straining in his voice that drew me in. And they were playing at Latitude, ticking the last box.

Stupidly, though, I missed them at Latitude, and then found out that my brother liked them too, and had managed to miss them at Latitude AND Reading. But we liked them so much we took the plunge and bought tickets. As they've mainly been touring as a support act for bands like Of Monsters and Men and Mumford and Sons, the tickets weren't expensive, and as Connor informed us mid-gig, this was the biggest of their headlining gigs so far.

The support was a little-known artist called Mikhael Paskalev. I only had a look at him the night before the gig, and whilst musically him and his live band were fantastic, the songs didn't really do anything for me. Whilst the harmonies and build-ups were very impressive, it was difficult to find a central melody/ a memorable tune within them to really motivate me to listen again, as he seemed to be playing around with several different genres at once. He certainly looked the part, well, until he donned a weird cap halfway through, which I'm not sure matched the get up, but hey-ho, that's musicians for you. Still worth a listen, I think.

The band came on pretty demurely, there were no big 'bangs' or crescendos, and they led in with '21 Gun Salute', which is quite a slow starter. It surprised me and my brother, who were expecting them to begin with 'Call Me In the Afternoon' or 'Full Circle', one of their leading singles. This turned out to be a fantastic choice, as they used the songs later on in the evening to really churn up the crowd.

The rest of the album went pretty smoothly, having listened to all of it on repeat for the last few months, I'm ashamed to say I did mouth along as much as I could (despite occasionally doing that awkward thing where you know half of a sentence and have to mumble the rest so the other fans don't think you're an idiot.) The rest of the set was a classic up, then down, a new song, then the big two towards the end. I think the resounding thing I enjoyed about their performance was their obvious surprise at such a warm reaction. A favourite moment was when Devon raised the microphone during the chorus of Full Circle and genuinely grinned his face off as the entire venue sang it back to him - I think it's lovely whenever you're present for an artist realising the effect they've had on such a large number of people.

After that, I began to get a bit worried. My favourite track, hands down, is 'She Wants to Know'. I can't pinpoint what it is about the song that makes it stand out, but I think Devon's vocals are incredible, and it was the one I was looking forward to the most. They'd played right through the entire album, and as She Wants to Know seemed to be one of the lesser-plugged songs on the band's Youtube/Twitter, I didn't think it would be used in the encore. I'd expected it about halfway through. However, they actually finished the set with it. And I was just as surprised as the band as I realised that most of the people around me were yelling the chorus just as loudly as I was. All I can say is the fans have bloody good taste.

Their encore was pretty special too. Opting to scrap the microphones and take on a Pink Mountaintops cover, Lumineers-style, It was pretty adorable to watch all four of them crowd together and harmonise without all of the gear. If I sidestep the screaming girls ruining it for everyone else, it was a highlight. That and Conner's response to a bloke yelling 'CONNER I WANT YOUR BABIES' with a wink and a 'You and Me Later'. The final 'Blues' was a humble, yet satisfying finish. Here is a video of the acoustic performance:

Thank you for reading!

Annie

xx

My Taster at Escape Studios

Well hello!

This has been a very exciting week for me, as I've started to take the first steps in my plans for the future. I've always felt that though illustration and digital painting is my hobby, I'd love to take it to the next level, and turn it into a skill where I could finally work in the industry I spend days watching. So I'm (hopefully) embarking into the wild world of CGI and VFX. I love working in 2D, but creating something that moves and appears photorealistic would be incredible.

So I've been looking at a number of colleges, universities and institutions to find the best place for me to do this. One of the courses I became really excited about very quickly was an intensive vocational course at a London-based studio called Escape. I was recommended them by someone who'd trained there, and so I did some research and booked myself onto an open day.

It's not like your average university campus, it not being a university at all, but a specialist, private college where people of all ages go to gain the skills they need to get into the industry. It's run and taught by industry professionals, primarily. There isn't so much of a theoretical aspect, in that at University you'd need to go and do probably more than one year, and spend some of your time writing essays and independently researching. Now having done an English Degree, a vocational route appealed to me a lot more. I enjoyed my time at Uni and I would never take it back as it provided me with the skills I needed to get to the next stage in my life, and some of the best friends I've ever made. However, at this point I think I really just need training in the software, and that's exactly what Escape offers.

On Thursday, I went ahead and attended their Taster Session, which they offer as an introduction to the kind of training you'd be getting if you took one of their Courses, which I think was a brilliant offer, in that it helped me work out what I was getting into before I nose-dived and signed on. I met some interesting people, and got to try out a day working in 3D with Maya, one of the leading pieces of animation software. I'm not going to lie, it's incredibly daunting, there's about a million different tabs, options and tools, as well as several different methods of achieving the same goal. We were taken through the entire process, Modelling, Texturing, Camera Tracking and even a bit of Comp at the end. We all had huge, good-looking computers to work on, and a screen to watch the tutor on as he explained how to go about doing things.

The end goal was to create some cubes in the style of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes in the 60s, something a little like this:

We then had to use pre-made textures and bump maps to create two boxes with a cardboard and a metal texture. I think this was useful because it showed the variety you can achieve. I think texturing is definitely going to be my favourite part of the process, as creating the 'surface' of the object in Photoshop is part of the process. I also enjoyed creating the camera angles, as I could watch the camera pan around so I could check the angles, and it suddenly became an animation rather than a screenshot.

Anyway, here are some snapshots of the end product:

Despite it being a taster course, it was a fantastic experience and I was really pleased with the end product achieved in only a day's work! The tutor was very clear throughout the tutorial, and the people I met were lovely. Despite being one of the only absolute beginners in the class, I certainly didn't feel excluded. I learnt a lot more about the process, and if anything it made me even more excited to get started.

However, as a disclaimer I'm not 100% decided on whether Escape is the right option for me quite yet, I'm still in the process of visiting a few different places in order to get a rounded view of my options and make a calculated decision before I take the plunge.

I'm going to keep this blog updated, and I'll let you all know what I decide to do. I recommend the Escape taster session for anyone that wants a sneak peek, as it was great fun and very informative.

Annie

For Coffee Addicts

Sketches, WIPs and generally unfinished things.

So it turns out I, like many people, experience sudden bursts of creativity that generally amount to nothing productive.

I'm really good at starting things. I start a lot of things. But very few of them ever get finished, or finished to a degree where I feel genuinely proud of them or worth posting. 

This may well be some kind of perfectionist complex, and so this is my attempt to force myself out of it.

This was a painting started predominantly because I really wanted an iced tea. As you can see, it is the least finished, probably because I bought an iced tea the next day and never looked back.

This character is something I'm really hoping to finish soon. I'm proud of it and I think my painting is improving, slowly and surely. Her legs are proving to be the most irritating limbs I've ever drawn, partially because I like the rest of the image so much I'm constantly redesigning them to match.

 Think I'll sleep on it for now.

This is another sketch I've grown to like recently. I posted my progress on instagram yesterday and actually got a cheeky repost, which I was very chuffed by considering the image quality on my phone camera. It's Edward Kenway from Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, which though I haven't played it yet, I am planning on buying it soon and have been watching Hannah from the Yogscast play it through. Above all it's a gorgeous game, just like the others, and I love how big and detailed the map is. I'll update if I can actually get my hands on it! In the meantime I might scan him in and make him into a piece of digital painting at some point. But for now, he can stay a manly rugged sketch.

I think I might make more of these more often, if anything just to prove that I do draw on a regular basis. I'm also snowed under with creative projects, as well as my job so it's difficult to keep on top of everything. I'm determined to keep blogging, if anything to fuel my own motivation.

Annie

xxx