StaceyW Arts: Every day's an arty farty day

Enter the dragon head

2010-02-13T20:05:00.004Z

Here's another project I've had to do at my job in the library - for the Chinese New Year which funny enough is tomorrow in my time, I've been asked to create this Chinese dragon. I'm not sure what else they're doing to this display but if they're doing anything else interesting I'll be sure to get a shot.

First I drew and painted the dragon's head using several printed references I was given from the staff. The design had to be quite big because it was being put up on the boards on the walls so eventually I had the final design drawn on a piece of my own paper that I took the trouble of bringing in. Also brought my own watercolours as I've done with the birds, because well, felt tips aren't the best things to use to fill in such large areas with colour. Several layers and blends of watercolour later, I gave it a final touch of gold glitter glue. I had a bottle of gold paint somewhere at home that I would have brought in, but where I've been moving everything about it's gotten misplaced.

Then I was assigned to create the body just by sticking scraps of different coloured paper and foil [or rather, a McCoy's multi-packet] in some wriggly manner and then cutting it out. Might seem easy stuff but it was actually quite tedious to position everything and then stick them down with PVA glue. Then again this is the children's library after all, plus I get paid to do this sort of thing so who am I to complain?

First post of the new decade

2010-01-27T15:31:00.005Z

Hello, I'm back on Blogspot. I hope everyone's had a happy New Year's, Christmas, Boxing day, Guy Fawkes etc. All I can say for myself is that the past 3 months have been a rollercoaster.

First of all, I did indeed go to the MCM expo in London ExCel, which was absolutely fantasico. I will certainly be going again and cosplaying the next time which is in May, hopefully by then I'd actually be able to buy more stuff from there. You can view my take on it at DeviantART, and more photos can be found at my FlickR page.

The next epic thing going on is that I now have a job at a library, as my profile now states. Unfortunately I don't work many hours a week, which isn't my fault, but the pay has been amazing [for me anyway] and I've been on some major spendups as well as supporting my family with it. Some of the things I do there include shelving, shelf tidying, unpacking and stamping new books, flat packing boxes, and even art and craft - since they've discovered that I draw and paint, I've been set up on working on displays for the children's library most of the time, as well as preparing pieces of paper, felt etc so that the kids don't have to when they make penguins. Below is a recent project where I had to draw some birds for a birdwatching event the kids are having.

The robin's a bit fat there, but I think it's given me a little experience on drawing birds, something I rarely ever draw. I've also finished up a pretty funky looking Chinese dragon for Chinese New Year, which I might post as soon as I can get a photo of it. Additionally, I painted up some sort of mural in the women's toilets, which is basically a montage or stars, moons, butterflies and a mountain. I'm surprised my clothes didn't get ruined while I was doing it.

Lastly, just the last weekend alone has completely flipped my world upside down. Not only did I go to the cinema for the first time in 2 and a half years to see Avatar, I have found myself an other half, and that other half is none other than Aaron Foster aka Gagaman. For the past 5 years I've been a fan of his artwork via DeviantART, but it wasn't until about 3 years ago [or 4, if the first time I ever spotted him counts] that we had bumped each other in real life at boot sales, funny enough, and I plucked up the courage to say hello.

Since then, we had been very good friends because we're very like-minded, but after the expo in which we spent quite some time hanging out with each other, we had gotten closer and closer, and eventually arranged some days to meet up and hang out some more. It was only when that last weekend came and went, that I've expressed my feelings for Aaron. Now, I'm still besotted [I'm shaking as I type this] because of how he feels for me.

So that the past three months. I am only praying that the future stays this perfect.

I'm just gonna spit it out

2009-10-11T23:01:00.002+01:00

Am I getting good at facial anatomy yet?

Now for the one thing that's eating me up right now. For a few months I've been thinking about coming with an old college friend to the MCM expo in London after we had a chat about it on MSN and she said, "come with us sometime". I was thinking of cosplaying as Penny Crygor from the Warioware games, but I didn't really put much effort in looking for costume parts so if I do go then I'm just gonna dress ordinarily. I told my mum that we've been on trips before and that it's like a comics, movies and media con and at the moment she seems OK with it.

There's the next worry, having the money for it. I still haven't started my job at the library because now they're saying they're refurbishing the library I'm working at, and at this rate there's no way I'm getting my first wages until very late in the year, so any money I get from my incapacity benefit [I get no more than £20 a fortnight from that] or that I get given, I'm trying to save for if I do go. I never get to go out anywhere so why should I miss out on anything?

Other than that, I'm due for an MRI scan tomorrow, at least I don't have to pay for that. For the last month I've had to see doctors about how I'm being affected by Asperger's physically and so far, so good. The neurology doctor bangs me on the knees and such, then I have a blood test, and now that. Not sure what's next after that.

Background studies oh joy

2009-08-21T22:06:00.003+01:00

I'm still doing background studies, both videogame and real life/photo inspired alike.

Obviously judging by the Ray gnomes, this is Rayman 3 inspired, though the aims here were to build up layers of colour among pencil lines. Not sure I like the way I tried to apply detail, but I do like how it's almost like it's night time in the Fairy Council, just like in the game. Not forgetting that there's also light coming from the window; maybe next time I'll add little fairies.

Almost a month back I did something similar, based on a trip I took years ago when I was at college.

Here, not only did I try to experiment with light pencil lines, I also tried the splatter technique, something I actually don't use often because well, not so easy to mask this paper with masking fluid so I had to use paper. Man, this was such a boring place, all we ever did was poke a dead fish that got washed up on the beach; shame I lost the photos I had of it. What I do like here is the bushes - the colours used for that were just a mix of viridian and Payne's grey. It's amazing how many more colours can be made by mixing, something I do practice a lot.

I still have some unfinished scenes to finish.

Back to basics

2009-06-20T22:49:00.003+01:00

The old template and title had to go, it gets ever so rusty after a while. So what have I been up to the past three months?

First of all, I turned 22 years old in April. Wasn't really anything special, what with the credit crunch and everything, but certainly not the worst. I got a good amount of birthday money and put most of it to good use. Nearly a month later, we spent one whole day at Thorpe Park, where we gave one of the latest rides, Saw, a whirl...whoa man, that was so wicked!

However, a week before the day out, I made the tough decision to pack up the voluntary work at the charity shop. I felt that my general life would hardly improve if I carried on for much longer, and in turn, I landed a job in a library within the borough. As of now I've yet to start, and I'd had just sent my medical and criminal record forms away. Only time will tell about my luck with this.

Regarding art, I pretty much struggled, I'll have to admit, again. I have a feeling that I'm not improving at all, and a part of me wants to blame video games. Another part wants to thank them though, because I think that even if you're only drawing WarioWare related doodles, you're still drawing, and any drawing is healthy, right? When I'm not drawing such scribbles, I'm attempting animals, as seen below.

That's the cat next door, and he's a cheeky sod. He dreams of coming in our house one day to eat my dog's food, but he'll never get in when Jessie's about.

Experimenting with "anime"

2009-03-15T20:31:00.003Z

Today, I decided to fire up Inkscape [kinda like to Illustrator as GIMP is to Photoshop] and try an "anime" style for a change. I've never been too much of an anime fan, but I'll let you in on saying that there are a few anime shows that actually appeal to me, and no they don't include Naruto and Bleach. When I was younger I had tried to copy its attributes, but it often led to some disastrous results.

I'll have to be honest, I'm surprised with the results here - it amazes me how simple things like shading and highlights really bring such a picture to life. I've studied a few anime shows, and most of the time the lineart is done with think lines, so I tried that.

Inkscape is a nice alternative to Illustrator once you get the hang of the most important too of all - the bezier. It works completely differently to Flash, Paint Shop Pro, PaintBBS and Photoshop, but it doesn't take long to get used to. I've used it to make my hand drawn lineart smoother and more crisp with a feature called POTrace, before importing it back to Photoshop, and what's nice is how it can export a lovely PNG file that's ready for colouring elsewhere. You can colour in this as well, which I've done apart from the blush, but if you want to go beyond cell shading, then plonk it into Painter or something.

I suppose turning a non-Japanese product into this is just pot luck - some top-end American, British etc cartoons might work, others won't, and vice versa.

A new [scanner] light

2009-02-28T20:30:00.003Z

Last week, I was at a jumble sale, in fact, the very one I picked up a Nintendo 64 from, and found a scanner there for £3. It looked quite a nice one - an Epson Perfection 2400 Photo. So I bought it, but for a while I thought I had some bad fortune. When I set it up, while I found that the software was indeed XP compatible, it was making a sound like a hammer hitting nails, and I thought it was broken. The next day, my grandparents came round for dinner, and I asked my grandad to see if he could fix it. It turned out that all it took was to flick some kind of switch at the back that somehow locks the pulley inside, and now I'm free - to scan!

Despite being a clunky thing, it works wonderfully, perhaps more so than the old HP I had, so now I've had the chance to scan and upload some paintings and sketches that I had left unscanned for well over a month.

Recently I've come back to one of my old fandoms, the Worms series; since I found my copy of Worms Open Warfare 2 on the DS. I ran out of games that I haven't beaten at least once, so I thought, why not? As a result, I've finally finished my crappy old comic The Shovel, and I'll probably end up making another anytime soon.

This painting was inspired by a time last month when my mum and I were baking a cake for my older sister, who turned 23 then. The first time we made one, it became nothing more than a pile of crumbs, and we were quite baffled by it because we were sure we got the proportions of butter, sugar, eggs, flour etc just right. We must have missed, or used too much of another ingredient. The second time, it had little black dots in it, which I think might have been just burnt sugar. I also put too much food colouring in the ready made icing, which wasn't even that nice anyway, so it ended up being a red blob of gooey, sugary mess. But it had to do. My sister recently started to take interest in cake decorating, so hopefully we'll make better, prettier cakes in the near future.

Finally, good old James Pond and his amphibian sidekick, and I imagine they'd be about five years after the last game of the franchise, Operation StarFI5H. While I was doing this, it had finally come to my realisation that using strong colour isn't really the best idea if you are going to shade something, as you can see with their jackets. Never mind.

An ancient muse

2009-02-14T21:17:00.004Z

Glad to finally have some motivation again. In the space of 24 hours I managed to finish two pages of a Worms comic that I left unattended for a whopping four years, and I'm now on a bid to complete the last two pages of that, and to complete a stitching to give to my grandmother. I never felt so busy in all my life yesterday.

Now for a story.

Three months ago, I was assigned to visit the University of East London, for the sole purpose of learning how to cope with the journey there, and to meet with a man named Martin, that was one of a few people that had come round my house to talk to me about my future. From where I live , it takes about three trains and a bus to get to the campus. The first time I came, it wasn't so bad, and I met a lady named Bee who, with Martin, talked to me about getting into University and the help I would get if I enrolled.

Two weeks later, I had to come again to meet them, as well as a lad with Asperger's, and two ladies that discussed their learning and financial support they offer. That went quite smoothly, until I went home. There were some severe problems with the Docklands Light Railway, which turned what was normally an hour long journey to one of three hours. The second me and my mother walked through the door, I was sobbing, because I know that going to Uni would become a complete disaster. I felt at my most broken that night, like my future has been shattered. All because I'm too socially inept to take this journey.

I felt like I let down and wasted the time of those I met on those days. But I had to think. Why did they even suggest that I should go to Uni anyway? Apparently, I already had the qualifications I needed for Illustration, so I didn't need to go to college again, but now this is what they're suggesting to me. I'm not going to that college I went to again, even if they relocated. It was such a disorganised waste of time, and it wasn't any wonder that I wasn't the only one that dropped out.

I haven't really a clue on what to do next now. I mean, I want to have a good professional reputation, but I know it's going to take a lot of work.

Bbbbrrrrr

2009-01-06T20:21:00.003Z

I'm really surprised that the snow we had on Monday hasn't completely melted yet. It's been so bitterly cold, thank god I have this heater to take place of the crappy radiator in here. Even more so, I'm surprised I'm still actually drawing, despite freezing my socks off and virtually living on toast at the moment.

Just to be safe, I have officially discontinued use of my old scanner. Thankfully my new digital camera that I got for Christmas can spill the beans on what I've been working on.

Fanart based on a very good Wii game going by Wario Land: The Shake Dimension. I actually started this last week, and have been doing it little by little, because colours that accidentally run into each other while wet don't really make a happy painting. Bigger brushes don't half make a difference when doing such large areas though. More WIP shots are on the way.

Stripey scans

2008-12-22T22:30:00.003Z

With Christmas dawning near at the speed of light, I've decided to take a break from stitching so I can concentrate on drawing again. Unfortunately, in recent days I've noticed something really peculiar with my 6 year old scanner. At first it started scanning things as if someone put coloured cellophane over it, then it started scanning with like, horizontal bars. Like when a printer gets all dry and makes lines in what it prints. I take it that it's a warning that maybe after Christmas I ought to buy a new scanner. Bit late to ask for one for then, gawd knows what mum and dad bought me apart from a Wii game I've been waiting to play for 3 months. In the meantime, I aim to draw more with the tablet.

I've got one more day of work tomorrow, and then I've got a 5 day weekend until next Monday. This will be such a blast, what with movies on the telly, games, family etc... wish I could have 2 weeks off though, just like the old days when I was at school age. Pros and cons of having to grow up, gotta love them.

Coming soon from StaceyW Arts

2008-12-15T22:54:00.004Z

Good evening. I finally started work on my portfolio site. Very early stuff so far, and for some reason CSS has become easy again. I've not come up with a name for this site yet, but one thing's for sure, a dog looking very much like my own will be its official mascot.

Blimey, the difference setting things to higher resolutions makes! And studying photos, Jessie doesn't really sit still for long enough when I'm drawing her. I'm currently painting this sketch up in Painter and it'll be used somewhere on the site for decoration. Thing is though I'm still trying to get my head around how blending and painting works in Painter, I still haven't found a brush I'm most comfortable with.

The site will showcase only the very best of my art. How much of that I haven't figured out yet, but either way this won't be launched until 2009.

Now if only everything I do these day doesn't hurt my back.

Photoshop drawing video

2008-12-13T23:24:00.003Z

Finally it's up.

I've been meaning to do a video like this for a really long time, and I realise now that it's much harder to work on something while the capture app is on because of the slight lag. It's basically to show what happens to the picture when I'm CGing stuff in Photoshop.

Yeah yea yeah I know my choice of music is shit bla bla volume slider.

From the murky depths of our loft...

2008-09-25T17:49:00.003+01:00

LOL Lion King.

So last week, my dad took me and my sister up into the loft so we could get some old junk down and clear it up a bit. Some of the things we found included our old toys, books, a NES, and these horrid things. Or to put it lightly, drawings I made when I was in primary school.

When I was in year 3, before I was moved into the special unit where I spent year 4, we crapped on several sheets of paper and bound them together with treasury tags to form books. I found 3 of those, Religious Education, Science and History.

Seriously, what the hell?

Now these I definitely remember drawing when I was in the unit. They had like this Acorn or Amiga computer or something that had an MSPaint like thing and I mostly drew canids. I can even remember wondering why certain bits wouldn't fill in because of one pixel. First one is just some dog, while the other is supposed to be Vixen from Animals of Farthing Wood or something. I dunno.

But damn, do they take me way back! I feel so damn old.

Me ol' Bamboo [or new, rather]

2008-09-19T10:59:00.006+01:00

Earlier this week, I ordered a new Wacom tablet. It's come to my reality that I simply cannot afford the big Wacom daddies [Intuos or a Cintiq even...oh a girl can only dream], so I opted for a Bamboo one which costed me £30 from Amazon UK. I wasn't expecting the greatest quality from it, in fact it wasn't the same one pictured, but when it came yesterday and I started fiddling about with it...gawd, it's a LOT smoother than the old Aiptek I used for the past 5 years!

So I spent most of the day drawing little fan sketches as seen below.

As much as I'd love to have an Intuos or a Cintiq, they're really pricey and it would have taken me years to save up for one. At least I won't have to worry about it now and I can spend money on Christmas gifts. The Aiptek I believe, costed a little more than this, and here is why any Wacom tablet is better than that:

The only one used a serial port. How behind the times can you get? Even if I got it fixed up, I would have had to get a USB adapter to plug it in. All this thing has is a USB to slip in, easy as pie.
I can't get over how smooth it is. Any lines the Aiptek made were really bumpy. The Bamboo doesn't do it 100% perfect, but it's still looks neater.
Easier to set up, in fact, it worked straight away when I plugged it in. You do have to install the driver software to get the pressure levels, as with the Aiptek, but when I first used that it took a long time for it to start getting detected.
NO BATTERY for the pen! That's right, the old one had to have a AAA battery in, and it was poorly built. The Bamboo pen doesn't need any of that that nonsense.

The only thing I don't like about the Bamboo so far is that it takes a lot of work to handle. Perhaps being loose with it might make my arm feel a bit more comfortable.

It also comes with Art Rage 2.5, which I've tried before, didn't really like, but if this CD has the full version I may try it again. But I installed Corel Painter 9 and have Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Flash anyway so it's no big deal really.

I urge anyone who's looking into getting a tablet to get a Wacom one. They're the best. No other tablet label does it better. Here it is in action.

How I typically paint a painting

2008-08-02T21:26:00.008+01:00

Hi again. I'm feeling generous today, so if you ever wondered how I make certain types of my art, now's the time to see. In this tutorial I'll be going through my latest painting, "Fuchsia Air", step by step. This painting used watercolour, gouache, graphite pencil, white acrylic ink and colour pencils.

First, I taped up a piece of Waterford 300lb paper onto my card board with masking tape. That helps it to keep the painting taut while being worked on, and gives it a somewhat neat border around it [sometimes paint can leak underneath it but it's going to be digitally trimmed anyway]. Then I start my sketch, trying to be as neat as possible, which is important because erasing isn't a nice thing to do.

The next step is to apply masking fluid, which is a mixture of ammonia and latex and is used to protect certain parts of the paper from being painted on. You don't have to cover the whole character here, just around the edges, and I've flicked some about to make sparkles. A word of warning though: always use an old trashy brush to apply this stuff. It dries quickly to a sticky state on the brush and will not come off. It's also important to use a bottle within a year, otherwise it stains your paper with ugly yellow bits.

Now that the fluid is dry, I'll paint in the background with one colour. I painted it dry with a half-inch brush and then blended in some water. A few specks of salt were added, though I got impatient and used a hairdryer to dry it off. The masking fluid is then rubbed or peeled off, whichever is safest for your paper [it can tear sometimes], and now I'm ready to paint the character.

Here I started painting her skin and the fuchsia with a lot of colour. Most other artists use light washes and build it up, but I usually paint with thick colour depending on what colour a part is. The trick here is to work with that quickly but as neatly as possible, and to use an appropriate sized brush [here I used a size 2] to apply colour that's still wet. Texture can be added by lifting colour off with a wet tissue, the type you wipe your nose with as opposed to toilet paper.

More parts of the drawing are filled in, and now I've started shading and highlighting. For the shading, I used violet paint, which works well with warmer colours. In fact, it works so well with wamer colours I added some around the edges of the background. For the initial highlights, I switch to a size 000 brush and paint in some white acrylic paint as lightly and carefully as possible. The masking tape is removed early as no more work is needed for the background.

Time to bring in another medium, gouache. This is like watercolour, but with white paint mixed in, making a much thicker paint. Recently I found it very effective to produce coloured lineart in a traditional piece, as opposed to colouring pencils and re-inking which I used to do and didn't make good enough results. The gouache I use it a bit too thick straight from the tube, so I mix it with water on a non-absorbant material [like this Fererro Rocher box I re-used] to make it flow better.

White watercolour paint is added instead of the acrylic ink to give more subtle highlighting, such as in the flower. If it's too light, it can be painted over. The lineart is applied as carefully as possible with the 000 brush.

The lineart is done now, but I found that the yellow ochre I used for the nightie didn't look so good so I went over it with a 2H pencil, a HB is too dark for that. More shading is applied as well, but again this has to be done with care to avoid the gouache from running - dry gouache paint can be reused when water is used on it. I also started applying details, like the stigma of the fuchsia.

Final touches are added, like the design on the nightie which is painted in blue to add a little cool colour to a warm painting, and white speckles painted on with the acrylic ink. Since this is textured paper I'm using, I picked up a couple of colouring pencils and drew on certain parts to indicate scales, mainly on her face, chest and arms.

And here is the final result. I hope that this tutorial is helpful and informative, and until I show up with another tutorial, happy painting!

Card making

2008-06-29T13:32:00.004+01:00

In all honesty I haven't been making a lot of digital art as of late because once again my tablet has gone a bit doo-lally. While I found that I can make oekaki art for example entirely with a mouse, it just feels a lot better with a tab. So, I've taken up the art of card making.

This one here is an original painting that I just painted onto a bit of watercolour paper I folded in half, and for once, I'd take a crack at using gouache paints again as well as watercolour and white ink. I found that using an older shader brush can achieve some realistic effects, like the daisies in the grass, the foliage in the background and the tarmac. As with all techniques, it takes practice to get it the way you want it. The full picture can be found here.

It's a little known fact that I really like cross-stitching. Although very time consuming, it's a soothing activity for me really, and a rewarding one too, as the finished results can make great gifts for the family, even if they were copied from magazine designs. During the last few months of last year I was working on a Christmas themed one that I aimed to give to my nan as a present, and despite a few mistakes here and there, it turned out to be a lovely gift that my nan loved.

This one above is old, must have finished it months ago, but it was only until last week I decided to make it into a card. In Hobbycraft, they sell lots of different cards that are designed for card making - ones that come in different colours and sizes, and one that have already had holes cut in them, perfect for stitchings to be stuck in. For this though, I had to buy two, and cut a heart shape in one of them to match the shape of the heart. Maybe I should get cookie cutters next time and try those to cut out neater shapes. I don't know who to give this one too, so I'll make a few more. I just hope that they never get thrown away after all the hard work I put into the stitching.

Back to paints now, and here is my desk that gets easily trashed, and two more cards that I'm painting on. The one on the right is done entierly in gouache so far, as it is much more opaque than watercolour. For the other one...something tells me that the masking fluid I'm using is going a bit off, and it ain't just in the smell, it also discolours [and sometimes tears!] the paper.

It might be quicker and cheaper just to get a pack of 40 Christmas cards from your local Woolworths, but to me, making my own cards feels like I'm putting my own effort in it. What it was, I bought a pack from the charity shop I work in and gave a card to each of the other volunteers, and my manager said to me "These look like PDSA cards". Quite embarrassing as back then I was a bit strapped for cash.

Eyes-a-popping Joe

2008-03-31T17:58:00.005+01:00

Oh my god.

See that fella on the left? That's me, during the only shot I had at acting. I played the main character of a film my sister was working on when she was studying media at college way back in 2004, called "Eyes-a-Popping Joe". Not sure what exactly it was about, but I think it was about this guy trying to warn a young girl [played by my younger sister] that she's gonna get run over by a car. Apparently it was supposed to be a surreal film.

Filming it was quite an experience. It was shot at the beginning of 2004 during the winter, and god only knows how cold it was while I was clad in a thin back cloak, the slipperiest shoes I've ever worn, a hat, and two of those goggly eyes from one of those bouncy eyes glasses things from the joke shops. I had to walk all the way to the park like this, carrying the props with me which made my arms ache right into the next week.

It was then a long day of sitting on the damp grass and playing my parts, where I have a tea party with Jesus [played by my sister's friend, who's female BTW] and try to suffocate the young girl with a pillow. Man, the laughs we had due to our poor acting, but eh, no-one else would do it. The final result was a ten minute film with some weird colour effects and a Billy Idol song at the end. You should see the damn out-takes, they're quite hilarious.

Art dump numero dos

2008-03-07T23:35:00.000Z

Blimey, after looking through my 2008 art folder it seems that I've been doing more art than I thought. So here's just a selection of what I've done in the past month.

This is one of a number of commissions that I've sold to a few members of furry website Furaffinity for $5 a piece. I had to lower my usual price so that I could quickly round up some money in order to pay for an eBay sellers' fee that pretty much took me by surprise. The first lot's been paid, and now I'll have to wait for the next invoice to come. In the meantime, I've been selling a few DVDs that we don't watch anymore, and thankfully all of the ones I put up so far sold.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a toddlers' programme on Nick Jr called Yo Gabba Gabba, which pretty much absorbed me these past few days. It's kinda like Sesame Street but shorter, with only 5 costume characters, and with more modern musical pieces. Soon I had read an article about how some hackers used a picture of Brobee to deface a Metropolitan Police website, which was one of the funniest things I read last week. So, here is Brobee being a British policeman, watching you in a newsagent near you.

As of late I have come back to one of my old fandoms, the Rayman fandom. I bought a copy of Rayman Raving Rabbids for the GBA the other day [more info on that will be posted on my new Rayman blog], and this picture was inspired by a certain level in said game.

I've also made myself into one of Rayman's kind for use in the Rayman fandon. Not to worry, I'm still keeping Robo.

Lastly is an original that I am quite proud of. For this I had been experimenting with Chinese brushes and ink, which were effective for making silhouettes of trees and foliage in the moonlight. I think I was remembering some scene in a collection of Disney cartoons called Make Mine Music where there were two swans flying about in a blue lagoon. Other than that I'm not sure why exactly I chose to paint swans, but eh, anything for an original piece.

Bye Bye Wartie

2008-01-25T12:32:00.000Z

A mere two hours ago, I had my first ever operation. A simple procedure that took only ten minutes, in which I had a big wart taken off of my ankle. I had the thing for several years, and only recently it had become problematic because it looked like it was going to fall off, and whenever I got dressed and that, it'd catch it and sting.

Basically, it looked like this.

And after I had the op...

... I had three stitches, and I'll have to come back next week to have them taken out. Because of these I'm not sure on whether or not I should go to work or not since one of my only means of getting there is by walking. If anything is not right by Monday I'll give them a call. So why am I posting this? Well, because this blog is also about my real life experiences, and that was quite an experience to me since I never had any operation in my entire life. Besides, this blog needs an update anyway.

It started with the usual iodine application they do, and a local anaesthetic near the wart. I'm not really one for needles, so there I just took deep breaths, and that was over. All I could feel then was the doctor and nurse pulling the skin about and make the stitches, and after about ten minutes as I said, it was done. I couldn't put my shoe back on though, so I had to limp about with half of my sock on my toes. Maybe I should have brought a slipper. Oh well.

At least now, I won't have anyone being grossed out by the "thing on my ankle" anymore, neither would I worry about my clothes catching it. All I'm worried about now is how I'm going to shower with that dressing on...

Say Hi to Jess

2007-12-08T21:22:00.001Z

I've been meaning to post this for a long time but I had spent too much time downloading stuff via bittorrent. That's my little doggie being all cute like she always does. To think that only today she was having a nutty half hour over a glass of water!

Doesn't she look adorable though?

I'm thinking about...taking a break from fanart so I can concentrate on drawings like this, because I get much more kick out of drawing things from life than copying the same cartoon picture over 100 times. Having said that though I've to make more Duckula images to replace some of those on my fansite that are rusting a bit, and I have concept art for a rather mental SpongeBob SquarePants/Crystal Maze parody to finish.

And to be honest, I don't give a shit if I don't get so many comments on my original art on DeviantART. It's a good thing actually, most of what flows into my inbox is quite retarded, especially on my old Mario fanart.

Cheerio.

Holy Rhino Daily Dev!

2007-11-09T19:09:00.001Z

Remember the painting of the Rhino priest I showed you earlier? Well, the other day this very pic earned me a Daily Deviation at DeviantART, meaning that along with a number of others, it was featured by a gallery director [in this case, by one of the two directors for the Anthro gallery] for a whole day. Man was I ever thrilled by it, it shot my spirits so high I could barely type into my Livejournal because I was shaking! I got a shedload of favourites flooding my inbox as a result, and well, I don't know what else to say about it.

I always wanted a Daily Dev someday or another, and every day I looked and looked to see if I got one. And it's a good thing I got one on one of my anthro pieces, because it shows that those are just as appreciated by many people as my fanart. Maybe I should do more stuff to do with anthros and animals more often!

Anyway, for good measure I shall post some oekaki work I did a few weeks back.

My hips don't lie...

2007-10-03T21:30:00.001+01:00

This pretty much sums up how I've been feeling recently. For about two weeks now I've been having this dull ache in my right hip and it worsens whenever I move around. I've tried having hot baths and using freeze gel, and I've tried to rest, but nothing seems to work so far, so I guess I'll have to suffer it for the time being. I could really use a hot water bottle right now. [Art was done in a friend's oekaki].

Blackpool 2007

2007-09-16T11:06:00.001+01:00

Last week I travelled to the north west of England to have a short holiday in Blackpool, one of the most popular seaside resorts in the United Kingdom, well known for its long line of dazzling illuminations and being home to one of the country's tallest towers.

We left home in the morning on Monday, and were on the road for over six hours driving nearly 300 miles, including the time when we had a flat tyre and stopping twice to have a few snacks and going to the toilet etc. By evening, we finally arrived in our caravan park which was about six more miles from the actual town. After we unpacked and set ourselves up for the next few nights, we had a look around in the town, had a meal in a chippy [which I hate because chips and egg are the only 'vegetarian' things to eat, nothing healthy at all], and mucked around in arcades and the Central pier, where I could see the sun setting into the sea... I can't tell you how beautiful that was.

As it got darker, the lights were coming on, so we then drove up to see them again. Since we were constantly on the move, I had to take some video clips with my camera. The whole line of illuminations was a never-ending five miles long, and had various themes such as sirens, small characters and even Doctor Who, not to mention a giant disco ball and some road side displays. It was pretty cool to see those first hand, I must say! By the time we went back to Fleetwood, it was night time, so we stopped at an ASDA store for a few bits and went back to the caravan.

The next day, after a lengthy wait at a garage while some new tyres were being fitted into our car, we went to Blackpool Zoo, were we got to see several animals such as orang-utans, giant tortoises, capybaras [they're like giant guinea pigs], tigers, lizards, monkeys and parrots, the latter of which were being displayed at a special time which we sat through at one point. There was also another part called Amazonia which was like a walk through dome where all these squirrel monkeys were roaming free and jumping everywhere. It was a good thing I brought two SD cards, because I almost thought that I had no room left on the first one I used!

Despite almost being harassed by some kind of black and white goose for my lunch, we had a great day out there.

Wednesday was even more epic - we went most of it in the Pleasure Beach, where me and my mum went on most of the white knuckle rides except for Bling, including the all mighty Big One. Now, I have to admit, I was nervous when I went on this one, but it was such an awesome ride down a 230ft height! Other great rides included InFusion, Space Invaders and Valhalla, which was one of the best water rides I've been on, and I don't even like water ones!

After all that, my dad dragged me into a steak house which I didn't want to eat at, but fortunately they had a vegeburger that wasn't that bad. This was followed by yet another drive up and down the illuminations area much later at night when the sky was pitch black and you could see them a lot better.

The next day started with a good visit to the Blackpool Tower, a rather posh looking place which started with an aquarium, and had a massive ballroom that reminded me of Moulin Rouge. It was just so beautiful in there, what with all the red and gold designs and a guy playing on a wurlitzer organ.

But the bit that really made the day was when me and my mum went up the lift and into the top of the tower - while my mum was shitting herself scared, I was amazed by how I could see the whole of Blackpool from up there! Sadly the weather wasn't that great that day, and my camera's battery kept going flat whenever I wanted to take a good shot, but that's not to say I didn't take any pictures from that high up at all.

We then went around the shopping centre getting some bits for ourselves and for our family. I bought myself a plush of Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants from a shop called Who, which to my astonishment had a life-sized Rayman statue on the upstairs floor. It wasn't for sale, but I really didn't think I'd ever see one, certainly not in Blackpool anyway. I also got the second season of SpongeBob on DVD, and a DVD of the entire Sonic SatAM cartoon from their HMV. I'm surprised I still have some money left after all the other crap and spent it on!

We left Blackpool the next morning, and drove for yet another six hours, coming back home in the late afternoon. I thought it was a great holiday, we got to do all those things in such a short time, and it was a whole new experience for us all. I can't imagine what this blog would say if we had gone to Great Yarmouth instead this year.

We're in talks of going to Spain next year, where my sister is currently at.

Some more sighing

2007-08-17T22:28:00.000+01:00

Guess what, I'm in a bit of a rut again. Since I got my old tablet working again, I've been wondering, do I really need to get a Wacom yet? Don't get me wrong, the old one is a dodgy old thing, but it still works and serves me well. I can remember when I first got it I couldn't draw on it at all! Trust me, you don't wanna see the first pictures I did in them. Ever.

I did a bit more tidying up in my other wardrobe recently and found more sketchbook type paper. There's the thing about me, whenever I'm out shopping, I always buy stuff like sketchbooks, pads and pencils even though I don't really need them, which is why I have so much stuff that could last me well into the next decade or two.

There was quite a few things I needed more than all that stuff, such as a new pair of non-in-ear headphones [I wanted to avoid using the shitty iPod in-ear ones whenever I could because my ears are infected again and they make it worse. That reminds me, I've got to get some new medicine for that], a new microphone and some new ink cartridges.

Artsies!

2007-08-07T22:42:00.000+01:00

I've been on such a creative flow since I got the old tab working again, I thought I might have took some time to do some art in it. It gets just a little dodgy at times, but hopefully it'll last me for long enough, considering that it's a 4 year old Aiptek Hyperpen 6000.

Hello back to you Berk.

It's supposed to be Simba of Lion King fame, but gone quite horrible wrong ;D

Fishie! Man, either GIMP's brushes suck or I suck as CGing.

The latter I spent the most time on, since I was trying out the ink tool, which, with the right tweaking, proved to be more effective than using the brush. Thing is though, it's really difficult, and there are times where you have to flip and rotate the picture just to ink with the tab more comfortably. But as they say, practice makes perfect!

Good news everyone

2007-08-06T23:26:00.001+01:00

Today I was cleaning out my wardrobe, when I found my old tablet, and I thought, maybe if I tried to install it again it might start working again. So I went looking for the software discs, but for some reason, every time I put both discs in, the computer kept crashing, and I tried to use CD recovery programs to get the setup out. I got very impatient after about 3/4 hours, so I went to see if there was somewhere on the net where I could find a set up, and much to my luck, I did. And even better after a little tweaking and changing of batteries, it works! Even in GIMP, where it previously used to bugger up on the old computer!

So there, I'm happy, but I'm still saving up to get a wacom, for when this old tablet dies again. Damn, I'm on a creative flow now, and it's close to my bedtime.

And again

2007-07-09T16:59:00.000+01:00

I had yet another bit of palava in the last weekend. On Friday, I was just doing my usual business with my PC, when all of a sudden the screen went black, yet the machine was still on. I thought the CRT monitor had blown again, as it was only going into standby mode. Luckily my dad's mate came over later that evening, and he had a look before telling me that the graphics card had blown.

The next day, my dad took it over to his mate's house for a further look, and sadly, the PC was rendered unusable, so I had to go without it for most of the weekend. Not only that, the folks were away for the weekend too, so I had my sister come to "look after me". She ordered us all some pizza and I just spent the evening up in my room playing Paper Mario on the Gamecube.

Yesterday evening though, I was given this new PC that I'm using right now. It's not as good in terms of physical specs as my old one [lack of SD port, half the hard disk space I had], but overall it's a better PC than I thought it'd be. It's also a good thing I have my external hard drive where I keep most of my files, so all isn't lost... It also came with a flatscreen monitor which has a whole lot of USB ports in.

So what am I doing now? Well, I've got to see if we can get a new line of ink cartridges for my printer which seems to have buggered for some reason.

Oh, and have you heard the new songs by Nightwish yet? Now, although my favourite album by the band is most definitely Oceanborn, I'm really excited for this upcoming album, which is one of many things I'm looking forward to in September. I like the new singer's voice [seriously, I would had absolutely fumed if they had chosen Lady Angelica as once rumoured], and the music is sounding as great as ever, so what's to complain about it?

Finally did something original...

2007-06-26T22:52:00.000+01:00

And by that, I mean not a copyrighted character.

There's loads here that I need to work on in future, but I'm proud of the fact that I can pull such an artwork off. This comes from a number of drawings I've done of anthropomorphic animals which were derived from a book about animals I love to look at everytime I go round my nan's. It's just that the way the animals have been depicted that make me imagine something human about them, like this creature called an olm - makes me think of a jazz musician for some reason - and some bird called an umbrella bird that makes me think of Elvis. If anything though, I just HAVE to make a picture of a cock-of-the-rock, which is basically a bird that looks like it has an orange segment on its head, not to mention how funny its name is.

Wish the weather here would better itself...

Life I guess...

2007-06-15T23:28:00.000+01:00

I can't say that I've had anything truly exciting happen to me in the past couple of months. So I think I'll make a low down:

The job. I work as a retail assistant at a charity shop, the PDSA [People's Dispensary for Sick Animals], where I spend about two hours either changing over clothes - that means taking them off the rails, replacing their tags with a new date on them, and taking them back again - sorting through donation bags having to throw anything that's in poor condition, and steaming, which is like ironing but it's like a hoover with an iron at the end.

The only catch is that I don't get paid for it, as for all voluntary jobs. Luckily it's only down the road and a ten minute walk away, so I don't need to take the bus there and back. The people I work with treat me fairly, we can all get free snacks and drinks, we can even buy stuff we find in the sort before they get put out on sale, so what's to complain about? Well, I can't seem to feel the difference for me yet. Of course I'm getting more exercise by walking, and when I want to I can take a walk in the park, but all in all I still end up sitting here on this PC for hours on end, so I don't know if two hours is enough for me or not. But I guess any time I spend there is experience, which is what I'm aiming for.

Next thing is art. So yeah, I've had another commission and I made a new piece of fanart of The Trap Door that I submitted to DeviantART today, but other than that I don't seem to draw much other than silly little doodles. The other day I tried to do some oil painting, but all I seemed to do was just smudge paint all over the piece of canvas and getting everything dirty at the same time, hands included. Perhaps I need to study more, like the local park for example. I love it there, from the bridge and brook to the view at the top of the hill. Running down it with the dog like I did some time ago was thrilling, oh why can't I be bothered to do that on a regular basis? One day, I need to take my art supplies to the park and actually get recordings of it. Feck only knows how that would help me in terms of both my artistry and my health.

Lastly, last month I finally got to stay for a night round my sister's flat in Westcliff. Though I felt withdrawn from not having internet, it was brilliant to get away from the humdrum that goes on back at home. So that night, we spent it watching telly mostly, from stuff that's on Virgin TV On Demand or my DVDs that I brought over. The next day my sister took me to the shopping centre in Southend, where I bought a couple of Tria Markers for real cheap in an art store that's just as heavenly as Hobbycraft, and that's before something funny happened. On our way home to her flat, we stopped at a bagel shop where this nutty woman looked at me and said "Have you seen Happy Feet?" She also kept saying to the shop owners things like "What part of Israel have you been too?" and "Do you have desserts here?"...oh gawd, we just wanted to finish our bagels and get the hell out of there. It was a fun day nonetheless, and it's time like that I feel I'm at my happiest.

Before I go to bed, I must tell another funny yet embarrassing story. I was at work on Tuesday where I was tagging clothes, when one of them fell down. Clothes that fall down piss me off, so I bent down to pick it up, and my favourite jeans had ripped a massive hole! God this was so embarrassing, I had to keep my arse covered so that nobody could see it. Since I work in a charity shop, I could easily buy a new pair for just 49p, so that was what I had to do. The thing about jeans is that most of them have legs that are too long for me. I loved those jeans I had, because they fitted me well, though not perfectly since my arse is too big for them now. Something tells me that I have to cut down on the candy.

I'll leave you with a small illustration.

God I love Stoppit & Tidyup.

Welcome to my crib!

2007-05-19T12:17:00.000+01:00

Everyone once in a while, I like to tidy up my bedroom, because well, seeing so much shit all over the place just isn't very nice at all. So without furtherado, I show you my nice [well, almost] clean bedroom!

This is where I spend up to 90% of my waking time. I forgot to tidy up around there, as my desktop usually gets really messy with glasses, wires, discs, candy wrappers and my sister's make up wipes. Oh and there's my new guitar, and my sister's old CD player that she gave me. All too often will you hear songs by Enya and Lesiem playing out loud on this, hehehe!

This is where I keep some of my junk, like DVDs, CDs and SpongeBob products. I've been collecting SpongeBob things for about 4 years now, and it's hard to fund out where to keep it all! Underneath this shelf is my printer, scanner and my games consoles [PS2, Gamecube, Dreamcast and Mega Drive].

Recently I was given this desk where I shove most of my art materials onto now, along with this nice lamp I got for my birthday. It's a bit narrow at the top, but it's big enough to hold an A4 piece of paper I guess. I'll tell you something though, it's better than doing drawings on the floor like I used to. I also stuck all my watercolour paintings on this wall for inspiration and decoration.

And here's a close up of the desk. It's pretty damn nice to keep all your tools, books and that in place, and man does that lamp make such a difference?

Cowabunga!

2007-04-28T14:58:00.000+01:00

OK, I admit. In recent days I've been rather obsessed with the heroes in a halfshell, the Ninja Turtles. It was the painful neurotic type of obsession, the kind that makes me feel miserable and find it hard to keep my feelings in without spilling it all over the Internet. When I simply can't get the image[s] out of my head. But what was bugging me most was whether or not I should pay nearly £7 to see the new TMNT movie in the cinema.

In the end, I did, just today. And it was such a BRILLIANT movie. I couldn't stop moving around in excitement, the animation was just stunning. And to think that I wasn't that big of a TMNT fan throughout my childhood [personally, I thought that the new version looked awful, I tried to watch it but just couldn't]. As for the old series, well you know what 80's cartoons are like being horribly animated and inconsistant at points, but it was more bearable. What I do find fascinating though is the difference between the original intro and the UK version of it [I live in a country where it was known as HERO turtles at the time] - oh man, the edits! They're hilarious!

Man, feels good to have watched A movie after about 1 and a half years. It's damn expensive though, that's the thing, but it's nice to treat myself to something special every once in a while. I'm gonna be shouting shit like "Cowabunga dude!" for the next week now! Either that or what me and my sister used to sing over the old theme tune - "Heroes in a halfshell, PEEL-A-PEEL!"

Art dump numero uno

2007-04-25T10:51:00.000+01:00

Man I haven't posted any art, drawings or whatever in like, forever since my last commission. So yesterday, I suddenly had a boom of ideas and tried to draw some of them down... some of them however... these two I've done of my "fish-sona" have got to be the scariest things I've ever drawn.

Summary of my new job. I hope no-one in the library saw this one.

Um...OK...what?

Well, here's a less scary, un-inked picture of the Robo meditating while listening to Lesiem albums..."Wherever I go, wherever you are, the peace that you bring has lifted me so far and now I see, its a miracle..."

"WILL YOU START THE FANS PLEASE?" I can watch the Crystal Maze in the kitchen now that we've got a Virgin Media box in there ;)

Straight after drawing Richard O'Brian and his crystals, I looked at a few jars that were next to the telly. Guess which one's which.

Also drawn were a few new Rayman and James Pond fanarts which I might post next time. Or colour them. Whatever I feel like doing. God it feels so good to be drawing again.

One week without my internets

2007-04-14T16:18:00.000+01:00

Man what a palava that last week was. I've been without home Internet for an entire week and I had to pay £1 a pop on one of those computers in McDonalds. They're awful - they have no mouse so you have to literally poke the touchscreen just to get it to scroll, and the metal "keyboard" is a surefire way to break one's fingers. You can't even cut and paste or print, save or basically do anything apart from going on the Internet.

Thankfully, I got my broken modem plug replaced today thanks to someone from Virgin Media who came round and put a new digibox into the kitchen. Oh I missed real internet so much!

Anyway, while I was away I did loads of different things. I finally got to see my sister's flat after a trip to Ikea, I've had an interview at a PDSA charity shop and got a trial to start, and I turned to the golden age of 20. I had a lovely birthday on Wednesday...

Me, mum, my sisters and Carla's boyfriend all went to London for shopping and stuff. I wanted to look in Forbidden Planet first, which took us about an hour just to find and I didn't even buy anything from there. Then we took a bus over to Harrods to meet Dean the boyfriend's sister, and that's where I bought a Mr Krabs plush in the toy department, along with pissing about with display toys.

Lastly I had a good look in Virgin Megastores and HMV for a bunch of CDs I wanted, but only came out with two - Lesiem's Auracle and Enya's Day Without Rain, which made good use of the gift voucher Danielle got me. I also opened up to a new SpongeBob bag and socks, a Once Upon the Forest DVD [used to love that film as a kid], and a nice new 160GB external harddrive. Cool eh?

As for art, well at first I didn't do much, felt rather uninspired. But yesterday I bought some new dip pens and nibs and an A6 sketchbook [for whenever I go out]. I wasn't too happy with the former at first and I ended up breaking the feeder on one of them, but I soon got used to one of them. So far the one I like best is slightly better than my 4-year-old calligraphy one.

I also finished a commission while I was away, which will be on DeviantART shortly.

A new hope maybe...?

2007-03-23T20:37:00.000Z

The other day, my sister came home and stayed for the night. The next morning, she gave me the suggestion that I try apply for some local voluntary positions in places like libraries and chairty shops. So I joined a site called Do It, and sent my profile there to a few jobs.

The next day, I got a letter from the PDSA. It came with a guide to what voluntary jobs are on offer, and an enrolment form which I've yet to fully complete [just need two references]. I really hope I get this, for so many reasons - the PDSA charity shop I want to work in is only down the road, so that's a great opportunity to get a good morning walk more often; I need the work experience, and most importantly, to get out of this house! I can't stand doing nothing but be trapped in here.

Of course I can't keep all my hopes up, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I've also got another commission! Thankfully I won't have to ship this one, as it's going to be CG'd. When I went to ship my last commission I had to pay £6 for a recorded delivery! I must remind myself to update my commission info at DeviantART.

One more thing, I'm into a new band! They're called Lesiem, and by god it's amazing stuff! Can't seem to find the Mystic Spirit Voices album in the local mall yet though, but I might be lucky in London. Who knows, I might be able to bag hard copies of Lunatica and Delain albums while I'm at it. Oh, and I wanna get Within Temptation's new album as well.

I'm cold...

2007-03-10T20:45:00.000Z

I don't know how I've become like this, but I seem to get really cold so easily, despite being clad in one of the warmest pyjamas I have, and having socks on. I do have a radiator right next to me, but I don't have it on in case it gets too hot in here. And I can barely be arsed to put my dressing gown on. So yeah, I'm kinda bringing this on myself, but who do I get so cold in the first place? It's March already and it's supposed to be getting warmer.

I guess I just don't feel at my best these days. I really miss my older sister since I hadn't heard from her in almost a month, I had a PMT triggered tantrum the other week because I couldn't get home in time to tape Harry Hill [which I did in the end thanks to a repeat], and I've barely been able to go out since if I ever get a £20 note it's spent faster than I can type the next paragraph.

While I did manage to get that Ducktales DVD at last, within the past two weeks I decided to try herbal tea. First I had a go at green tea, which is pretty much like normal tea but without the milk and sugar. Then last Friday I tried nettle tea. Not bad actually, but it does taste strange. It's supposed to have iron in along with loads of other nutrients, since my mum thinks I get anaemia. I haven't noticed any of the benefits kicking in yet though...maybe it's to keep drinking it more or perhaps not using boiling hot water. I would have thought it'd be expensive, but I got my box of 25 for just £1.05, not bad at all!

I really feel the need to take a good long break from computing, but what will I do within the time? Everything on the internet just annoys or upsets me and I feel so snappy and miserable. Life outside the internet is so boring because I have no job and I'm barely given any chores to do, neither do I have much money to take myself somewhere a bit nice than Romford. I guess that's what happens when you live on a maximum of £20 a month in benefits since I can't find a job that's suitable for me.

Ugh, and I feel a headache coming on now...

Keep on Spinnin'!

2007-03-01T10:32:00.000Z

So much for my Youtube rant when I find things like this.

You've probably seen me go on and on about this all the time, but here's why.

I can think of about three times when this whole ITV schools on 4 thing used to scare the complete shit out of me. First was when I was just a wee girl in infant school, aged about 6 - so the class I was in were sent to the main hall one day to watch Time for Maths, which was an equally scary CGI programme which was set in a farm. I can remember a scene from this which involved a spider so bloody clearly!

But what else I can remember clearly was when I first saw the "ITV" rotomotion...everything from the music to its plain 3D creepiness had me trying to avert my entire face, but it was only when the clock came on...I actually screamed and tried to run out of school! I only made it through half the corridor when I was caught by a teacher, taken back to the hall and then made to watch the programme.

Act 2 took place a year later, when I started year 3, and they still had tapes they recorded within the time ITV Schools on 4 had run. This time, we were taken to an upstairs room and made to watch what I think was Believe it or Not - well, it was definately a programme about religions, since I can definately remember it being about Sihks. And you know what happened? The 3D clock came on, and yes, I freaked out again. My teacher even rewinded it to see if it was that I was reacting so badly to. I spent the rest of the lesson with my eyes closed and ears plugged. God knows what my teachers must have made of both these "incidents".

After Easter in that year - 1994 - I had to be sent to another school, where I had to be in the special unit for since my old school couldn't figure out why I was being such a retard with everything, not just ITV schools. Act 3 actually didn't involve the CGI graphics, as they were long gone by the time I moved into that school. But the memory I kept still caused silliness when we were made to watch school programmes.

Instead of the roto and the clock, there was just a picture of what the programme was going to be about [in this case, Ancient Egypt], and a simple number countdown. Thinking that the clock would still appear, I just simply couldn't stand to watch the TV, so I was sent to a table where I did the same eyes-closed ears-blocked thing as I did last time. Not only did that kept me in late after the day ended, it also costed me a trip to the British Museum.

Later I was then finally reassured when I actually tolerated an episode of Science Start Here, and saw no sign of the dreaded CGI.

It's funny when you think of one thing so differently now than when you were a kid. Mind you, I didn't like anything 3D when I was little - I didn't like the Herbs, Morph, Huxley Pig and lots of other things that were 3D. Nowadays I just laugh it off and watch it like it doesn't scare me at all.

And another thing - I know why it is now, but back at the time I used to wonder why in bleeding hell there was a huge ITV thing on Channel 4! This whole thing is almost 20 years old now, and to celebrate, I'm planning to make a remix of Just a Minute, the song that was used in the clock. Because I'm uncool like that.

And to reassure myself, I wasn't the only one.

Traditional Toolkit!

2007-02-24T01:49:00.000Z

Better make this one as quickly as I humanly can, it's really late here...

This past week as been nothing but dog walks, tidying up and laughing at Britney's head. But I've been wanting to do this for a long time now.

Well, I have to come down to this and say that in recent times I've become such a traditionalist. It was only when I realised that I had LOADS of watercolour paint left anf I thought, why not use it?

So I pulled out my camera and took a few shots. I must warn that this will be an image heavy post, so dial-up users brace yourselves!

Well, here's most of it. Markers, paints, pencils and all other bits and pieces are kept here.

The rest is kept in here - oil paints, Karisma pencils, a couple of pallettes and a box of spare Copic markers.
Here's where I keep all my sketchbooks and pads. I tend to buy a lot of them over time, and I get though them so quickly drawing all kinds of crap in. I usually get either A4 or A5, but I happen to like 10x7 inch ones best now. Just the right size.

Paint, masking fluid, a Nutella jar used as a water jar, and white ink. I have black ink as well which isn't shown here. The pallete below is the latest addition to the toolkit. Personally I don't really like tubes that much, so I decided to use the paint in "pan" style...

Pens, pencils and erasers are kept in this little tin. This could do with sorting out big time, since I shoved all kinds of pens in there, however old and worn out they are. You can also see a few plastic rulars and a cutting mat, which is obviously more durable than cardboard.

Brushes now, and as with the pens, I keep an assortment - meaning old and worn to brand spanking new ones. I use old ones to mix paint and apply masking fluid on.

These are Faber Castell Polychromos pencils, and in the tin are gouache paints. I hardly ever use the gouaches, and I've barely touched the pencils in forever. They're such a bitch to sharpen, now I remember why I sharpened them with a knife rather than a sharpener!

I just LOVE these - Copic markers. I've used these for about a year now and they're perhaps one of the best types of traditional tool I've ever used! Shame they're so expensive and hard to get hold of! I have to take a train ride to one shop I know that sells them. There's also one Kurecolor too which I used to be able to get locally. They can be just as good as Copic, but not many colours are available.

Now here's all the random crap I keep. I really should get rid of some of this, since I don't even use it. It just ranges from crappy old oil pastels [oil pastels a few of my artistic mortal enemies along with charcoal] and a toy water pistol.

And here's the rest - curve rulers, sharpeners, knifes, scissors, adhesives and the rest of the bunch are kept in here.

Of course, just because I have tons of art materials there it doesn't mean I've stopped using Photoshop! That's one of my more important tools for when I need to do stuff like colour adjusting, colouring, inking and cleaning.

Youtube is getting on my wick...

2007-02-16T14:10:00.000Z

So yeah, I'm a Youtube user. I go round looking for free cartoons and other bits of TV other have uploaded to watch, might add to favourites, and probably give a comment on occasion.

Of course, Youtube are heavily backed up by third parties such as Viacom, so they are rampant on the removal of copyrighted material almost as soon as it's uploaded. I myself have uploaded copyrighted material many months ago, but for a number of completely different reasons I wish I hadn't!

It all started back in March when I first joined, and after a while I just uploaded a bunch of random crap. It was only when I got a copy of Rayman: The Animated series on DVD from a French seller on Ebay in April last year when I decided to upload all four episodes. Much later I was asked to upload several Count Duckula episodes by a friend, and that's where the troubles started.

In July 2006 11 videos containing Duckula episode parts were flagged. From then on I decided not to upload anything to Youtube again, but that didn't stop the subscribers coming in. As of now I have 57 subscribers, some of which are rather empty in everything. I'm guessing all they expect of me is more Duckula episodes, or perhaps more Rayman content. Either way, I'm not uploading them there. Disabling comments and bulletins won't be enough.

I keep getting asked to send episodes to people I don't even know through email - and they don't get to me just from Youtube, they come from MSN Messenger as well. It just takes too much of my time to upload the same file over and over again to different people via Yousendit. Plus I'm not on the best connection out there, so my upload rate is crap to no end.

Of course I'm a bittorrent user, but I occasionally use that for series I might not be able to get on DVD anywhere, such as Animals of Farthing Wood and Harry Hill's TV Burp. When I do get DVDs, say of Count Duckula, I'm most likely to replace the downloaded episodes with the legit ones that I can rip from them. That doesn't mean I fully support piracy though.

What I don't support is the sale of copied CDs and DVDs, which in the long run may ruin the CD and DVD playing systems they're run on. But then so can legits, but not as badly. I think this is because they make the system work much harder than legit ones - I should know because I used to play pirated games on my Dreamcast an awful lot in the past few years, and in the long run they wore my console out and I had to get a new one, so I'm no longer playing pirates on it.

Shame I said that, because I once had to buy a set of burned DVDs of the Detectives on eBay for my dad. Thankfully they were of good quality for TV rips, but that's not always the case. Most of the junk they sell on ebay could be of really poor quality and are not worth buying, even if it's that one series you loved so dearly. With downloads however if they're not up to your standards, all you need to do is press Shift and Delete.

Piracy is such a hard issue for me to talk about. So let's just say that if I was asked to say if I supported it, my answer would be yes and no. I can't wait for CD and DVD recycling banks to come locally...

Back to Youtube, well I've been thinking for a long time about whether to close my account or not. I think I will anytime soon now.

Five years younger

2007-02-10T20:36:00.000Z

Oh I wish I could actually look like I'm about to hit my 20s. And to have an ID. Because today I went out shopping with my mum, and I was about to buy a copy of Look Around You 2 in HMV after seeing that I could actually afford it now. However when I got to the till, I was asked for ID. So basically that clerk must have thought that I was under 15 years old! I had to get my mum to pay for it then, and so at least I have the DVD now.

I feel embarrassed. I really don't like looking like I'm 14. I'm 4'11'' tall, have a babyface and I wear bright, child-sized clothing, while hating to wear jewelry and make up. Therefore, I must be about 5 years younger than I actually am. It was OK when I was last asked for my age when I tried to buy a South Park video way back in 2000, when I was actually 12 going onto 13. But not now.

Looks like I'll have to stop wearing kids clothes and look out for really small more grown-up clothes I guess. Maybe then my fat arse won't ruin them.

Next post: I'll be showing you my toolkit! I.e the kind of things I use for my artwork.

Blah...

2007-02-02T22:35:00.000Z

Last night was one of the worst ever. Most likely my fault though because I was up until about 2AM finishing my commission painting. I have an art trade to get through as well, along with stuff for my Duckula fansite which still isn't complete yet, so it's best I work on these come the next week. Not too much though at one time though, unless I want to feel totally out of myself again.

Well I've been trying to take nasties off my mind by purchasing more DVDs than I ever did - just within this week I got "SpongeBob SquarePants: the first season boxset" [I've been wondering where in this country I could get a copy of that] from ASDA for £12, and in HMV I got lucky with Stoppit & Tidyup. Got kinda pissed when I went in Virgin and saw that The Trap Door was £8.99 when I paid £20 for my copy in HMV! Ah well. I'm gonna try and nab some comedy shows on DVD, like Look Around You and Big Train. And perhaps a few Dreamcast games while I'm at it.

My copy of Rayman 2 on Dreamcast has somehow stopped working, the console won't pick it up or anything. I even tried a boot CD but it still wouldn't work [I can't really play some of the pirate games I have anyway because my TV doesn't support 60MHz]. At least I have the PS2 version though, while that one seems more complete the graphics aren't as crisp as the Dreamcast one.

I also found a bunch of moth maggots on my wall as I was taking some of my sister's posters down...I've had these little pests infesting my room for about 2 years now. In fact, they've been infesting the whole household! I hate having to kill them but I have no choice really if I want to get rid of them.

Snow

2007-01-25T16:56:00.000Z

Yesterday we had quite a blanket of snow.

Above here is a rather rubbish attempt at joining a panoramic of nearby park which I went down yesterday morning to take some snow shots. Snow really doesn't last long in this part of the country, so I thought I'd might as well go and make the most of it while my other was away. Trouble is though while there were some things I really wanted to photograph, my camera had run out of battery.

So I ended up walking over the place hoping for the camera to gain a little bit of energy back. I then stopped and looked over at the brook under the bridge, watching its gentle flow below me. After that, my camera was still flat so I decided to go to the empty basketball course and build a snow Duckula [see my Duckula blog for more on that]. Oh boy. As I didn't have gloves on my hands were so cold that I couldn't turn my front door key to open the front door.

I'm surprised that I didn't get ill after all this.

Oh, and I got another commission the other day.

Whoo-hoo!

2007-01-18T22:40:00.001Z

I got my first commission today. Ever. I'm so happy! And guess what, it's not FANART! This is most an exciting new challenge for me.

Otherwise, last night I decided to sort everything to do with all my games, DVDs, CDs etc out. While I was doing that, I got out my old Dreamcast. Tell the truth I have two - one broke down so I had to get another. But believe it or not, after at least two years of being stuck in that dusty old wardrobe, it still works! All I'd probably need now is a nice new packet of button cell batteries for the Dreamcast's VMU so I can play Chao Adventure.

Yes, that's right, I've been playing Sonic Adventure again, for the first time in several years. Putting the disc in the console feels just like it's Christmas 1999 again. I used to play this so much I even managed to get all 130 emblems. I used to think I was such a hardcore gamer because of that, and getting millions of points in one round of Columns. Nowadays it's not so much like that. Hell, I even died on the first level of Sonic Adventure while playing it yesterday!

So many memories...and I've yet to start all over with Rayman 1 on PSOne! It's funny how we use things a lot when we first buy them and then leave them to collect dust on a shelf.

Changes and that

2007-01-15T17:36:00.000Z

First off, if anyone out here's got me in their RSS, sorry about the crazy posting. I've decided to merge my personal blog [Robocoddess] into this one, so I can post both personal stuff and art here. That eventually meant the termination of Robocoddess sadly. I've decided to look into this layout's code as well and changed a few colours, fancy stuff may follow soon.

Far as the real life is concerned, well my sister and her boyfriend came down for the weekend, because tomorrow she's turning 21. It was my mother's birthday yesterday, so what better time to celebrate? Well it wasn't much more than a not-so-posh buffet thing. Didn't eat much other than the cake. And for some reason, I was eating pineapple when my tounge went all tingly and horrible...kind of worse than what tomatoes do. I'm still feeling it a tiny little bit. Man, never reacted this badly to pineapple before!

First art of 2007

2007-01-12T21:13:00.000Z

Allow me to show you the first major ~~fan~~ artwork I made in 2007.

This is based on the 1987 CMTB cartoon "Stoppit and Tidyup", something I couldn't really remember seeing until very recently. After watching all of this and the studio's previous work, "The Trap Door" [I bought the DVD yesterday], I actually like this a little bit more. For something that looks like 'cutout' animation I thought it was very well animated. I love the weird voices as well, especially Tidyup's [well, if you call those 'voices' that is], along side Terry Wogan being the narrator.

This artwork made use of my gouache paints which I hadn't touched in more than two years, along with my usual watercolours and black and white ink. Also used Karisma pencils for the outlines. Might not look so 'official' here because I made it from memory in my sister's room, and man did it give me a backache or what? Took me a total of four hours.

Believe it or not, the CMTB cartoon I remember most is "Bump the Elephant". I can never get over that theme tune, so I'll be leaving while singing it in a retarded manner.

Ooow....

2007-01-12T19:22:00.000Z

My ears are literally on fire. It's no fun being a music fan and having earphones constantly plugged in each day therefore causing ear infections. I've been getting these in both ears for almost two years now. It's funny, ever since my right one became deaf it's been more prone to getting infected than it did before then.

The weather here's been rather mad too. Yesterday I went down to town to get presents and cards for my mother and sister, whose birthdays are within the next 4 days. The wind was terrible, and the second I walked out of the door, I yelled "Jesus Christ!" while rain was splashing all over me. Still, I got to the bus stop, and it was a good thing I had enough pound coins! The bus fares have shot up to two pounds now, and on my way home I went on the wrong bus! Gah!

Well it's still very windy out there right now. A surefire way to keep me from sleeping, along with both my parents having televisions on.

The next week should be slightly different, what with all the birthdays and all. I hope my sister likes the card I drew for her before Christmas.

Things

2007-01-07T15:17:00.000Z

I think I can hear my dog crying again.

My little mutt had her womb and ovaries removed on Friday, and at times she has to wear one of those cone collars...well, she doesn't even like having ANY collar on, let alone a veterinary one. All she does when she wears it is cry for the attention to have it taken off. She only has to wear it for eight days from now.

Man...if anything, I could really do with a total rearrangement in my room, now that I have it for my own. I have SO much stuff - CDs, games, VHSs, DVDs, books and magazines etc - yet I just don't know where to put it all! For the moment I've shoved all my VHSs under my bed, moved my little table nearer to the window where the lightbulb actually is, and made just a start in cleaning up my wardrobe. I'd love to have a nice new working desk to make my artwork on, and maybe some more shelves to store all my old sketchbooks in.

Oh I've been listening to Enya an awful lot in recent days. It's such beautiful music I couldn't leave my iPod alone, hehehe. I bought the Watermark album last week - the one with the ever classic Orinoco Flow - but the Memory of Trees album which a friend sent me on Christmas Day is my absolute favourite, next to the Celts which I downloaded. I just love the haunting vocals and the ambience, and how they're sung in all kinds of languages [including made-up ones]. Makes a change to the heavy symphonic metal I used to listen to I suppose.

I'm after a number of DVDs as well, such as Trap Door, SpongeBob SquarePants season 2, and Look Around You 2, and looking forward to the future releases of Ducktales and Count Duckula season 2.

I'm hungry. I'd whip myself a nice spring onion sandwich, but I used my last one!

Mmm....

2007-01-03T22:40:00.000Z

Today I had the weirdest drink ever. It was a mix of celery, lime, cucumber and orange. Apple and cucumber I've tried once before, which I actually really liked, but this one didn't deliver the good. Celery just doesn't taste good as a vegetable, let alone a juice. Good job I only bought a small one this time...

While we're still on about fruit and veg, I tried a rather sexy one last weekend - a dragon fruit. I was in Tescos walking around and I saw one and thought "I've heard about these, but never have I seen one in a shop before". It was bright pink with green...flappy leaf things, but costed £1.89, but I bought it anyway. When I got home and cut it up, the rim was the brightest magenta pink I've ever seen in a fruit! As for the inside, it's white with lots of tiny black seeds. Tasted like kiwi, but less acidic.

You know, ever since I got my iPod nano for Christmas, which I love very, VERY much, I've been trying to fill it up to the brim as much as I could. That meant buying AND downloading Enya albums, digging through the MP3s on my PC and going through all my collection of old trance CDs. I ended up with nearly 400 tracks so far, ranging from my Nightwish collection to a bunch of videogame music I downloaded somewhere, such as that from Maple Story and the Neverhood. I miss both games. Maple Story I uninstalled because I absolutely HATE its community, and the Neverhood actually stopped working for me. Oh well.

Oh I've been listening to Enya WAY too much lately. As in, at almost all times, including when I go to bed and try to get to sleep by listening to it. It's such nice music I couldn't get enough of it since Christmas...

Wow, 2007 already

2007-01-01T14:08:00.000Z

Really and truly I should be updating this more. There was hardly anything worth noting here throughout 2006, so hopefully this year will be more interesting.

Changed the colours to that of the Count Duckula blog so this one can go alongside as a sort of "general life" blog. Of course I have Livejournal and Deviantart, but there I just make short ramblings, hehe. Perhaps now that I know quite a bit of CSS and HMTL I should go and really pimp them all up.

Well today I seem to look more ill than everybody else here, and I haven't even touched just one drop of alcohol! Mind, it's only because I was up till about half past three last night and I ended up waking almost two hours ago. Sucks to be StaceyW I suppose. Those "disco lights" and the loud music downstairs were doing my head right in.

I think in recent times my body and mind have spiralled out of control, and really and truly I should do something about it. Getting to sleep is literally a nightmare in itself and my skin is so sensitive that a cold matress feels really damp. Not to mention how I sometimes keep feeling like I'm going to die of posioning, such as my mouth drying up, headaches and shivering really bad.

See you later. My body awaits a new cold.

Freak crosses

2006-11-23T20:32:00.001Z

Presenting something that's a bit older than my first Rayman fanarts...

Tweeknot!

The Tweenies as "rock" stars. This is one of many freak artworks I've done over the past god knows how many years. I don't know how I ever came about with this one, but one thing's for sure I had fun. Milo [purple] is Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, Fizz [yellow] is Marylin Manson, Jake [orange] is Corey from Slipknot [I didn't know his name back then so I just called him "Jake the freak"], and Bella [blue] is the rather cold Alanis Morrissette drummer. My sister coloured this in for me - I loved how she gave Milo all those yucky tattoos on his arms... This was from 2001 as it says, but this ain't the only freak crossover I've done...

Now what the FUCK was I thinking?? Well it's basically James Pond characters going as characters from the Mega Drive game Phantasy Star III, an RPG that despite the poor graphics, sucked me in. You know, when you can't stop playing it. Pond himself is Rhys, Angel Fish [the girl] is Mieu, and Finnius is Wren. What happened was that during my old 'seismic-saffya' days on DeviantART I was in a Sega club where they had a contest about crossing over 2 Sega games. It took me a while to realise that James Pond didn't count because of the other consoles the series was on, like Amiga and SNES. I didn't enter anyway, nor did I finish it.

Most recently was this.
Yes, it's Engie Benjy in Metal Slug attire...well, it's supposed to be anyway. You see, after "accidently" seeing it years ago and in recent days, I saw that this guy treats everything as an emergency, whether someone can't open a jar or a spaceship needs new shoes... Besides Boohbah this is one of the most whacked out things to ever be on TV...whatever possessed Bridget Appleby into creating it I don't know. So I though why now cross this with Metal Slug?

Wait, since when did I liked Metal Slug? Well, that was from earlier this year when a few friends of mine got me to play Metal Slug 3 on a CPS2 emulator [kinda like MAME or something]. It really was a good game I must say, it ran so smoothly and it was awesome making a zombie version of your player spew blood as a weapon! I even did a picture of Engie doing that, but I never finished.

Stay tuned for more strange artwork from me...if I ever find it.

Where am I?

2006-11-05T20:23:00.000Z

I don't know where I'm going right now. It's been long since I posted in this blog, what with the Duckula one and my more recent art blog, where I post about all my old art.

So here's the deal. I've been pretty much lonely in recent times. Both my sisters have been spending more time away from here with their boyfriends now, so I barely get to see them. Sure, we all get our times when we hate each other, but I do miss them when they're away. Least I still have my mum and dad, and Jessie, but I barely have any friends in real life.

So I'm what, coming up to 20 years old, and still depend on my parents. Barely able to find a job because nothing that's on offer interests me, or is interested in me. Still extremely uncomfortable with travelling too far on my own because my parents get worried. Just...where am I?

But wait? What did I do in the past two weeks? Well, for the first time ever, the other week, I took a train. Just me, on my own. I did it because I wanted to find an art shop in Shenfield, a town not far away, that sells Copic markers. Because the last time I went there, I was with my younger sister, and she was very fed up with me going around in circles. This time, I found it, picked a few marker colours, and headed home. However, I lost my other ticket, so I had to buy a single one to get home. I was so glad to have had some money left, otherwise I would have panicked to no end. So basically when the trip should have costed me £4.30 [minus bus fares], it costed me over £7. Add the bus fare, and that's more than a tenner. Oh well, we learn from our mistakes.

It doesn't end there. When I got back to Romford, I nearly got hit by a bus. I wasn't paying attention to the other side as I was heading over to try and catch a red bus I'd probably miss anyway. I just wanted to get home. There's no telling me what would have happened if I hadn't heard that horn...

What else? Well, the other day, I had an appointment at the local hospital. I missed it last year, so I had to wait a full 365-day cycle for the next, and if I didn't come to this one, I'd probably get a little telling me I hadn't come, and probably be thrown out of ENT. So I took a bus to Harold Wood station, crossed that huge road, and got into the outpatients block. Talking to the receptionist was tough, but mum had already rung them up about it, so I didn't need to bring any cards or anything, and got my seat. I never felt to depending on mum being here then.

Eventually a nurse called me in to wait for a hearing test. I then took it [by sitting in a booth with headphones on and you have to press a button when you hear a beep over rushing sounds], and saw my mum waiting outside. I then had to wait to actually see the doctor, who said that even after three years since I lost hearing in my right ear there's nothing much I can do about it. For some reason none of the doctors I've seen about it advocate the use of hearing aids, but I decided to try it, so the doctor is going to forward me to someone who does hearing aids.

It's not nice having only one functioning ear. I hate having to turn my head around so I can hear someone speak. Sometimes I worry about being deaf completely, because when it happened, it happened so randomly, without any warning.

So, two achievements in a fortnight. My mother said to me..."I'm proud of you doing that [taking the bus to the hospital by myself, she couldn't take me because she was working at that very time], well done".

I'm still lost though...

Random Post #1

2006-10-13T17:00:00.000+01:00

Because my art blog needed updating.

I think I'll start off with these scrappies I did for my sister at least 3 years back. You see, there's this guy who presents the CBeebies show 'Tikkabilla', and the BBC Schools programmes 'Words & Pictures Plus' and 'The Song Catcher', and we thought he was the best voice ever! His name is Paul Ewing, and he has some kind of weird Cornish accent...it's so unique, we love it! So together we came up with some weird portrayal of him we like to call 'What Paul Ewing is like when he's not on Tikkabilla', where basically he's a nutcase who thinks potatoes are 'dodo eggs'...we come up with such weird things, me and Carla...

Beside that is another picture I did for her in 2003, basically loads of craptastic Squidward drawings. Carla really liked him at the time, because she loves miserable, grouchy characters like Ren Hoek and Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. I also did a drawing of Smithers from the Simpsons earlier for her, which is beside the collage above the Paul drawing but not viewable in this photo, again she liked him at the time. Her room walls are covered ENTIRELY with posters, magazine cutouts and the like...

Oh yeah, I was about to forget...yesterday I spend about £17 in Hobbycraft buying new art materials, like watercolour paper, a graphite stick, some black ink and some white acrylic ink...man is the latter beautiful? I tried it out on my latest Count Duckula fanart...and well, what can I say? I think I should get more of these acrylic inks when I can afford them - they cost about £4.50 a bottle! This stuff is really opaque in white, so I painted the moon with it.

Materials used in this: watercolour, Faber-castell PITTs, Copic Marker, FW acrylic ink, W&N black ink, Cotman coldpressed paper [again beautiful stuff, but costing me at least £5].

More 2004 stuff

2006-09-26T11:13:00.000+01:00

The stuff I have from 2004 just keeps on coming.

Oh dear lord, the state of my room! And check out the hideous rug! It was there to cover up a huge inkstain I accidently made on the carpet the year before. Thankfully it's replaced with a bigger, navy blue rug. When I move into my sister's old room when she moves out, I'll have no rug at all. I didn't have a desk you see, even though this room is the biggest of the house, I have to share it with my younger sister, and she hates seeing all my shit everywhere. I actually can't remember what I was actually doing here...maybe the Foster's Home drawing inside my sketchbook.

Here we go, college stuff. This was from when I started my attempt at the National Diploma in Art and Design, which I sadly dropped out of in the first few days of 2005. After induction, we had to be in groups, which I really HATED, and design some kind of tower thing made from cellotape and newspaper. It was a good thing I brought my shitty old camera along that day. When we were finished with out paper towers, our tutor made us burn them, and take photographs of the fire. OK...weird... Personally I called this a 'paper virus', because of how tall it was and those long bits that stuck out of it.

Now we're talking, old lineart for a Sandy Cheeks fanart. Round about that time I used to like inking with a small brush, because sometimes it could get just as good results as using a nib. This was just about before I learned the art of pentooling in Photoshop.

Finally, some more Ceramics stuff. This was my board for my Ceramics things only - the rest of my overall college work was in another room - and it's mostly of my old tiles and some chalk drawings. Those things are the bottom are my large pot, and my weird-ass tomato thing. The rest of my ceramic things aren't visible in this photo. Now, the drawing of the aubergine...there was one side project we had where we had to make 'angular' models of fruit and vegetables, and I chose aubergine...and well, the final model I made looked sod all like one. I still have this on my windowsill.

Oh Dear...

2006-09-18T17:48:00.000+01:00

In case you're wondering, that's supposed to be Will Young. And yes, it's an old college work from 2003/4 I found hidden under my bunk bed. For this project my class had to rip up bits of greyscale paper or newspaper and stick them down to form a depiction of a famous person, using different tones at the same time. I'm not a fan of much of his music [in fact, at the time, the radio used to play 'Leave Right Now' so much it was totally doing my head in], but I chose Will Young because my sisters were, and I thought it'd be some dedication to them.

As the photo suggests, this was done on a massive A1 sheet of paper, so you can just about imagine how long this took, what with the little pieces of paper and all. I made the background - which was made of pieces of old schoolbook covers - just to make it look better. But that face! Jesus, I didn't even make the nose, because I was too lazy too. So as a result it freaked my sisters out a little. Also, he looks like he's got a fat neck.

But meh, that college course was rather school-like, so we didn't create much more than catalogue collages, Photoshop filter abuse and papier mache things. But then, at least those things were practical, which was what I think art courses should totally be, rather than stressing out over paper assignments about artists we don't like or have never heard of.

I think I better leave right now before I fall any deeper into embarrassment...

Round 2

2006-09-17T18:23:00.000+01:00

More from my non-college October sketchbook of 2004. Most of this is Team17 worms stuff today.

Starting off with sigworm stuff. Sigworms are characters based on Team 17's Worms which have different features that tell them apart, and were used a lot by users of Team 17's fanart section of their forums. I was such a user in summer 2004, and one of few females there. They used to call me one of the best up there...

That second one there is Christmas themed of a sort, with a Roy Wood [Whizzard] worm, and a worm that gave his friend his heart last Christmas. But the very nexy minute, he died.

Then there are Balamory themed worms. I was bewildered by that children's programme at the time because of its bright colours and strange writing. PC Plum and Spencer are my favourite characters from the show, because of the policeman's stupidity, and the painter's eyes that pop because he can't stop brushing. I made some worms drawings based on Big Cook Little Cook- another stupidly funny cBeebies programme - as well, but I'll be showing you that in a future post.

Next are some rather daft drawings based on my own sigworm, Saffya, which is the very creature in my Blogger photo if anyone was wondering. Why the hell I drew her in a tellytubby suit I have no idea, but it seemed kind of funny at the time.

As a fan of the DDR arcade videogames, I wanted to draw Saffya playing it, but alas, worms have no arms or legs! Team 17 worms however had Rayman style floaty hands that appeared at will. But I could imagine... and I did. I drew this sort of pair of metal legs that she'd sit in, and with pull strings, she'd move around and stuff, much like Masterkaag, the first boss from Rayman 3.

And lastly...this.

I also had this idea of some animation that I never got round to making, where another sigworm makes a clone of Saffya, which goes haywire and another female sig is called to kill the clone. Saffya would try to talk the mutant into not destroying the city, but the authories killed it anyway.

I used to be so good at drawing worms. Where did it all go...?

To be continued.

Round 1

2006-09-16T14:47:00.000+01:00

Just posting some old sketchbook things I found lying around. The following is from 2004, in one of my own, non-college books.

This here is 'Charlie Chav', a pen doodle I made in a cancelled class at college. That college used to cancel classes an awful lot, but I abused the time a lot. Spending more time drawing whatever I wanted rather than what the college wanted. This drawing in particular is obviously a reference to chav culture, which was just about being recognised at the time - burberry hat, Nike trainers, gold chain, cigarette...yep, that's a male chav alright! Yeah, it does look fuck all like Charlie Chalk which I named the drawing after, but then, I'm always referring to children's programmes when it comes to my more stranger cartoonings. I love parody of such, so that's probably where it comes from. Oh yes, I can't forget that there were actual chavs [or perhaps wiggers, to make it more precise] in this class, and my last.

One more thing. Never use permanent marker ink in Daler Roweley sketchbooks. It yellows the other pages a LOT.

The next one is even weirder...or perhaps, nothing more than a piece of newspaper wrapped up in black acrylic paint and white acrylic scribblings. I was just experimenting there, after looking at someone else's sketchbook where such thing was in it a lot. Not just with the newspaper, but with the way I was painting white paint over black paint. Acrylic paint can be so nasty in paper sketchbooks, always sticking even though it's dry... The newspaper article is about schools giving kids free condoms I believe... which, I personally think isn't too good. Might prevent teenage pregnancies yes, but not underage sex. I'm talking kids aged 11 here losing their virginities and having children like they always print about in newspapers and Closer magazines...what is this world coming to...?

Alright, enough jibber jabber on the real world, and onto some more drawings.

Army dogs. With plaits and cigarettes. Now just...what? Just to prove that not every thing thing that I draw is cartoon and game fanart. But then, this was modelled after some old Chad Valley toys I used to play with, that my father brought down by accident, so whether that counts or now I don't know. These toys were called 'Puppy Dog Tales', which were like My Little Pony but with dogs, and from 1998. They even made a magazine, bless! It's not often you see anything made by Chad Valley that gets published as a magazine actually, but I believe it has the same address as the office that published the old Puppy in my Pocket magazines [I had LOADS of those still sitting in the loft]. Nostalgia plays a really important part of my will to draw.

Unfinished Little Britain/Worms comic. With worm versions of Lou and Andy. Lou would go and get one of the worms packages, and while he's gone, Andy, who's supposed to be disabled, goes and shoots the enemy worms Matrix style. And Lou would wonder how they were all defeated. Couldn't think of a way to end it, but looking at it now I'd make Andy say 'homing pigeon did it'. This was when Little Britain was HUGE here, they were running the second series which while some scenes were shocking, others were gut bustingly hilarious.

I think I'll take a break here, but I'll be back with some more weirdass drawings.

Gothic Tiles

2006-09-15T20:43:00.000+01:00

My younger sister nicked my camera once again, so I had to scan it. My older sister found it while she was clearing out her room. I was scared that the weight would break my scanner...

It's a set of 'gothic tiles' I made in Ceramics while I was at college in 2004. I believe I used white buff clay and black slip. It was my input for a project in which we all had to make about four gothic tiles, making sure they 'repeated' when put against each other. At the beginning of the project, my class visited the Victoria and Albert Gallery in London, as there was an exhibition of gothic art going on there.

The thing was that I thought this was for Critical Studies, my least favourite aspect of my art course, so I took my Crit studies sketchbook instead of my Ceramics one. Nevertheless, I still drew a few of the artworks at the exhibition, and bought some postcards. If only I had both sketchbooks still, I would have scanned some pages and showed them off. If I ever do find them, I will.

When we actually got round to making the tiles, we has to make three kinds - the ones shown here, some flat tiles using red buff clay with markings all over them I believe, and white buff clay tiles with the first letter of our names on. Being called Stacey and all, mine had the letter S, and we made them look gothic too. We had to make all these bumps on these, and I didn't even know what I was doing, so I just shaped the top of the tile randomly, and my teacher thought it was a great example! Heh, the thigns you get when you don't know what you're doing eh... I coloured that tile with zinc oxide I believe - it came out green, and I'm pretty sure magnesium [or was it managnese?] oxide makes clay go dark brown... Both that and the red tile were possibly lost...shame, I would have shown you the S tile, because I was bloody proud of it.

2006-09-03T20:03:00.000+01:00

Today was a dark day for my artistic world.

A week ago I was in my sister's room when I took one of my Duckula novels to read in. I then had the idea of illustrating that book, so I drew Nanny dancing to music that sounded so bad to Duckula that he begged her to turn it off. Days later, I got to colouring it with Copic markers along with watercolours and colour pencils. After taking this photo, I was almost done, it had a background and everything.

Then I left it overnight, on the floor. While I was a sleep, I heard the sound of a cat vomiting - that cat being a cat we're looking after for someone - and I thought he was dying then. So I turned the light on, looked around...and there it was. A BIG puddle of watery cat vom all over my artwork. And man, was I pissed off? This was something I did NOT need at quarter to seven in the morning! I had to throw it away, much to my sadness.

Of all places the cat had to vomit, he had to do it there. Maybe it was because I kept pushing him away because he was getting too close and stepping all over it while I was working on it. So now I know - NEVER leave or make artworks in a room with uncaged animals. My only choice now is to remake it...perhaps better it even.

This however cheered me up.

I've been chosen as a featured artist on Photo Lucidity, which is a new photography site related to Fanart-Central. This means that the photo of Jess I have there will be on the front page for all of this month. It's not long been up, but damn, I feel honoured to be seen like this! And my little dog Jessie is a star!

Been a while...

2006-04-27T00:03:00.000+01:00

Whoa, February? I almost forgot that I had this thing.

So came past my 19th birthday - wasn't too bad but I chose for it to be that way - on the 11th April.

But as they say, for every good time you have, there's always a bad one. On the 16th April, my pet dog had a fit that gave everyone a scare. So much of a scare in fact, that it rediced everyone to ears. My mum was crying, and she said to me as I came in the room, "She's dying!". My parents made a decision to have my dear dog Sandy taken to the vets to be put down.

Then came a miracle. I heard the care come back as I was running though all the memories of having Sandy around, and out came Sandy! As well as my parents. Mum said that by the time they came to the vets, Sandy recovered from her state of ill mentality.

But the miracle didn't last. Three days later, Sandy had to be put down for good. Below is a short video of the very last time I saw my dog before the car door closed and my parents drove her away [that is my voice BTW]...

It was a saddening time for all of us.

The next day however, a shine of light came as dad brought home a new puppy - a Jack Russell and Cairn terrier cross that we called Jessie. She seems to have a 'Scrappy Doo' personality - not afraid of anyone, although she does get scared when she hears a loud noise. And by god she don't half bite when she's hyperactive. Just today I got a small bite mark on my arm that bled...I do hope she gets over that as she grows up.

She does however have the CUTEST face when she's not so hyper, and more sleepy. A lovely little dog if you will...

The end of Seismic Saffya is nigh

2006-02-15T21:51:00.000Z

On the 22nd November 2002, I joined a website called DeviantART.com, the moment I discovered it. I told a friend that I joined, and asked to sprad the word about through the then small Rayman community. I was welcomed and watched shortly after.

I thought it was the best art submission site there could be, because you could upload an unlimited amount of work on there without having to wait days. I had originally intended to submit my art on Side 7, but I was having a lot of trouble getting an account on there for some reason. This wasn't a great time because I had the feeling that whatever I drew had gone to waste, until I found DeviantART. My gallery filled up with all sorts of Rayman and James Pond crap, and I got better at drawing as I went along, got new software and made new friends.

However, it's not always been sunshine and lollipops. I've had all kinds of shit given to me, from copyright violation notes to just plain ignorance. One time, some arsehole posted an extremely immature message on my page because he saw a message I made on a SpongeBob SquarePants fan's page. At another, a young deviant left a nasty comment on one of my old Rayman comics that reduced me to tears. I wasn't one to take such harsh comments, and I'm not one now.

Also, I have the feeling that everything I've done was all in vain. Every moment I spent drawing lineart, colouring in Photoshop, looking for the right materials to work with, every penny I spent on them, all gone to failure. My most successful piece on deviantART was a drawing of Patrick Star in a thong, which received over 100 comments and favourites. However I placed the deviation in storage for the reason that it was only yielding favourites by people who don't give comments, and comments that were nothing more than floods of emoticons and the phrases 'this is so wrong!' and 'I find it disturbing yet funny at the same time'.

Things like this don't help me at all in terms of improving my art. So, I savour any meaningful comment I receive.

In turn I believe, I haven't been making as many comments myself as I used to do. Art that I'm interested in - fanart of my favourite cartoons in other words - isn't as easy to find as it used to be because the browsing part of the site is flooded with either Sonic the Hedgehog (which consists of Sonic X screenshots and sprites that have been manipulated to look like new characters), Invader Zim and any anime fanart. I only add artworks to my favourites at will, as opposed to a few individuals who add absolutely anything that comes through to their inbox. In my case, the same few people add my stuff on a regular basis. They do this to everyone in their watch just to get attention.

But that would be hypocritical of me to say. I'm an attention whore too, because I don't get enough of it. I constantly look at how many pageviews I've got because I know that what I get in a month is what certain deviants get in a day. Some of these lack in the artistic skills that have taken me years to develop, and they're more popular than me. One deviant in particular received 500 favourites for a simple flash animation of Gir from Invader Zim just blinking and rolling his eyes. I spent 9 months on a flash movie, and I only got 7, and 31 comments . Things like that make me fucking sick!

The next bone to pick is how DeviantART doesn't allow the closure of unwanted accounts at one's request. There are thousands of accounts that are left unused, either because one has joined and has since left, or they've been banned. The only way you could ever have your account removed is if you've actually murdered someone or caught up in a legal investigation. All you can delete at your will is your deviations and journals, but nothing more. There are hundreds of things I've said on deviantART that make me wish that I could just wipe out all traces of my existance, but I can't do that.

A certain user, and fellow student of the college I used to go to, has been constantly attacked by a spammer who's laid disgusting messages on her page and those of a few others. And deviantART's moderators are doing nothing but banning the several accounts this person has made just to attack these people. DeviantART set up NINE accounts names 'deviantARTModerator1', '2' etc, and all they say is 'This comment is a violation of the Policy equitette, please be more mindful or we will set administrative action' blah blah fucking blah. Have nine of these is just as wasteful as what this spammer has done all over deviantART. And to not let a user remove their page at their will is a crying shame.

The problems don't end here.

From the day I've joined, I've been a slave to it. I've visited almost every day since the 22nd November 2002, the only times I'd been off it for more than 7 days would be when I'm on a week long holiday. It became a way of life for me. Such a way of life in fact that it was costly. I blame deviantART for the fact that it has taken more than three years of my life in which I'll never get it back. I've been so consumed by how many pageviews and comments I'd get that I could have used the time to do something productive. No fucking wonder I couldn't get a college assignment done. No wonder I got school grades that I was dissatisfied with.

I need to move on. Three years is a time too long for me to be a slave to a website.

I'll still keep my deviations up on my page. It would be incredibly selfish of me to deny the wonderful people of the world of my work, no matter how much of a waste it's been.

Kroc, TRP86, Raygirl, Psyke, Splapp, Melonhead118, Error 404 and the many others I've come to contact with, thank you all so much for the great times I've had. I can never forget any of it.

Soon will come the end of Seismic Saffya. It won't be the end of me, just Seismic Saffya.

I need to go to bed now, it's awfully late.

It's the music that we choose

2006-01-19T14:44:00.000Z

Suppose you're like me and you'd rather listen to your music privately rather than blast it so that the whole town can hear. That happens to be something my dad does often. But it's at it's worst when the song bears these lyrics...

"Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?

Don'tcha..."

That was just the worst song of the year 2005.

The sad truth is that there hasn't been a decent song in the charts in the past year. Not one. The worst example of these shit records is the number of dance records that one might call 'funky house'.

The exact start of such so-called music isn't known, but one of the pioneers of this is Eric Prydz and the song 'Call on Me'. This was a number one hit over in the UK back in 2004, staying at the top for abour 5 weeks. Now, the song just consisted of the line 'Call on me' going over and over again, but that wasn't why the song sold so much. It was because the music video was of sexy girls doing aerobics in skimpy leotards. A real mothfoamer for perverts who only bought the CD just so they can watch the x-rated full video.

The fact that this song contained samples from an 80's record started a huge fad in the dance scene. One by one a song from the 80's and even 90's was victimised - from Roxette to Jermaine Stuart to the New Radicals - and thanks to that, I stopped tuning into PureDance radio and stopped buying Clubland.

So why did I listen to dance music in the first place?

Once upon a time, I was well into the music from the early 90's. The stuff that would always top the charts, like 'Mr Vain', 'I'm a Dreamer' and the like, and as the years went by, we actually did like stuff like Steps, B*Witched and 5ive. This was a time when mainstream chart music was actually good.

But there was one song that made my love for trance music hit the roof - DJ Sakin's 'Protect your Mind' from 1999. But my, this song had samples from Braveheart! What made this any different from Eric Prydz? It was the MELODIC part of it. The song from Braveheart was beautiful, and this song combined that with the mesmorising 'n-tiss' percussion.

As the years went buy, I carried on liking mainstream. Until the day when I got attracted to Scooter and 'the Logical Song'. Again, that contained a sample, and also a guy screaming random shit in the interlude. The only difference was that I had an adolescent crush on that guy. As a result, I was a HUGE fan of trance.

There had been some classics in the mainstream such as 'Pretty Green Eyes'. That song, unlike most other trance tracks, was ORIGINAL, as were some others by Ultrabeat. Songs like that should have been at number 1, unlike DJ Sammy who got his surprise number 1 with his version of the Bryan Adams track 'Heaven' (which was quite good though).

In 2003 I bought a number of CDs of Scooter - the 'Push the Beat For This Jam' album and 'the Stadium Techno Experience', and well as a few CD singles. I loved them both to death, in fact, when I bought Push the Beat I wouldn't have it off my stereo for months! I even had the DVD for my 16th birthday!

However, song by song Scooter got weaker, but there was one song that I loved - 'Jigga Jigga'. This song had a haunting verse of female vocals, which was just beautiful. And that, in my opinion, was where Scooter ended for me.

In 2005, I decided to get into stronger, faster trance. I remember picking up a compilation called 'the Ultimate Happy Hardcore album', which was of 6 CDs. Only the first three had some really good songs on it, the rest was bloody scary. Then I bought the Clubland X-Treme Hardcore album, which was bloody brilliant. I'm still waiting to see if Clubland could release another hardcore album.

Stuff like this made me glad that it's there, because in the mainstream then were TONS of this shit funky house and hip-hop. I was getting really sick of these having samples and covering 80's classic!

Then came the godsend that was my broadband. With that, I downloaded Limewire, with which I could download most songs that I desired. I downloaded lots of stuff that I wouldn't normally be able to buy, like the Waka Laka song, and lots of songs that I heard in flash movies. But then, one day, I decided to give Nightwish a try. Lots of songs came up there. Although this was all goth rock and metal, it was when I heard this line from the song 'Sleeping Sun' I was intrigued...

"The sun is sleeping quietly, once upon a century..."

I wanted more. In the space of a few months, I gathered lots of Nightwish music, as well as that of Within Temptation, another goth rock band with a female lead singer. Some were really scary, while others were beautiful. Each of Nightwish's 6 albums had at least one song that I really liked, for how melodic and wonderfully sung it was. Metal music with an operatic female voice. This was nothing like I've heard before.

Within Temptation are similar, but less operatic than Nightwish. But when I got to check them out, I was gagging for their Mother Earth album, and when I did, I was dreadfully excited by my find. The first song of theirs I got hold of was 'Memories', which didn't sound too bad, but I was yet to hear better. In the end, I found that this band was a LOT better than Evanescence.

These artists really knew how to make the music I really liked - music that is rich with melody. I love all that frilly classical stuff, I love woodwind music, I love orchestral, acoustic the lot! In todays mainstream I heard too little of it, and too much of this 'I wanna make hot love to you' shit.

If you haven't heard any songs by Nightwish and Within Temptation, I suggest you do so. Of Nightwish, I recommend the Oceanborn album, which...well, there's just something about that album that I really like about it as opposed to the other albums. Of Within Temptation, I'd go for Mother Earth. Some of the songs there are dull for those whole really love their heavy metal, but for people like me they're brilliant.

Thank you so much Limewire.

The 25th comes and goes

2005-12-26T20:02:00.000Z

Seeing as I haven't updated this blog in well over a month, I might as well dish the dirt about how my Christmas and Boxing day went.

There I was, waiting patiently during the last hour of the 24th. I was on the computer, and I whacked on a VHS of the Muppets Christmas Carol for about 20 minutes. Then I just had a more-than-one-person conversation on MSN until midnight arrived. I signed out and went straight downstairs, shaking, waiting to get though the opening of presents. I didn't get much though...

A new digital camera and printing dock
A dressing gown
The X Factor: The Greatest Auditions Ever on DVD
SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights Camera Pants on GBA
A tin of marshmellows
Photo inkjet paper
And socks

I wasn't really happy with the marshmellows, because I don't eat them (I'm vegetarian) so I can't really enjoy them. However, I loved the printing dock that came with my camera, it produces a real Kodak photo in a few minutes by just the touch of a button! I've used up the sample pack though so I'll have to buy some tomorrow...if I can find a stockist somewhere in Romford.

The camera itself is a LOT better than my old one. It has 4.0 megapixels, lots of settings, the abilty to record movies with sound, and it has an optical zoom - when I turn it on the lens pokes out! Trouble is though that some of my photos come out wrong depending on the kind of light in where I'm taking a photo. This going to take a LOT of getting used to.

So after we all opened up our presents, it was time to take them upstairs. I put them all in my camera's cardboard box and carried it by the handle, but as I got to the top of the stairs, the box broke and everything fell down the stairs! I was in a right panic, but thankfully everything, camera and printing dock, which only had a few marks on the outside, was fine.

My sister wanted to try out her new iPod mini, and she was really desperate to listen to a song on it. We were having trouble with it though as she just plugged it in without installing the software, so I had to do that. My computer was being unresponsive after this, so I had to turn it off by the plug, turn it back on and shut it down again.

In the morning, I was about to set my Internet connection up again when my sister took my computer over and started it up without me setting the Internet, and I wasn't very happy. It took us ages to learn how to turn the iPod on and off and how to disconnect it. Then I learned that we had to use iTunes to put songs onto it. When I loaded it up it was transfering all of MY songs that were in the library! All of my songs from Clubland X-Treme Hardcore... I told her to reset the iPod and I had to clear my songs from the library and add all the music she wanted t have on it. Everything turned out fine in the end.

Later on the family arrived - my aunts and uncle, cousins, my grandparents, my cousin's girlfriend and his sister's baby. All 14 of us had the Christmas dinner and did the 'traditional' stuff like pulling crackers and putting on those stupid paper hats. During this my cousin's baby wouldn't stop crying! My sister and I were the only ones who didn't have turkey since we are vegetarian, instead we had quorn roast. And lucky me, I didn't have brussels!

When we had the table cleared from the front room we all opened up more presents:

a puppy calender
2 sudoku books
a SpongeBob mug and tin full of marshmellows
a shower puff
and a SpongeBob lightup furry top pen.

I also got £30 from family and friends.

Again, the bloody marshmellows got me feeling disappointed. The family knows I'm vegetarian, but they only got me those so I can keep the mug and the tin, which I've already got from last Chistmas and Easter. But I'm guessing that I'll have to use one and keep another for display. I was really hoping I'd get chocolates because I would have enjoyed eating them (who doesn't?). All wasn't lost though, for I found one of three Lindt reindeers hidden in the Christmas tree.

Then I just spent the rest of the night on my computer.

The next morning, I was just waiting for us all to get ready to go round my other grandparent's house. This was a lucky time to have, because my older sister was about to go to work on Boxing day, but she took the day off. We didn't do much round there though, but it was good to see Nanny Eve again.

I spent an amount of time doing some sudoku puzzles in the bedroom, until I came out and had egg and chips for dinner. My nan's not as good a cook as my Nanny Shirley, but she did a really nice egg that she fried with olive oil. I thought that was what the weird smell I could smell in the kitchen is, but it wasn't. It made the egg taste no different.

After that we opened out a present and card each - I got a box of Thorntons chocolates with vegetarian gummies - they tastes horrible though so I didn't eat them - a pair of really thick gloves, and £50! In the card, which was from my uncle who wasn't even there - he came and went in fears of snow on the way home - there was another £20, so that plus what I got yesterday adds up to £100! I must use it wisely!

Until we went home my sister and I just pulled crackers for the fun of it and were playing with the crap toys inside while watching the Simpsons.

And that was it.

It was quite a good Christmas after all. It's not as magical or anything nowadays because we're not kids anymore and it never snows dot on. I'd love to spend just one Christmas abroad in my life, especially somewhere like the north of Finland or somewhere nice and snowy in Europe. But snow or no snow, Christmas in the United Kingdom can be just as nice.

I won't be looking forward to New Year's Eve though...

Sometimes beautiful, sometimes insane...

2005-11-17T19:20:00.000Z

There's been a lot of concern in the house regarding our pet dog, Sandy. Mum and dad took her to the vet two Mondays ago, where she was diagnosed with having arthritis in her spine. So she's been given painkillers to ease the pain, but now we have another problem. The dog has since been drinking an excessive amount of water, and as a result of forgetting to let her out to the garden to relieve herself, she has been urinating all over the carpets and rugs around the house, as many as seven times today alone. Just today my dad and I have noticed what looks like blood in the urine. Sandy will be taken to the vets this coming Monday, and lord knows what shall happen next.

Sandy's a very old dog, at an age of 15 years. That happens to be a longer life than the other family dogs, such as my aunt's German Shepard and my grandmother's Yorkshire Terrier. Both dogs didn't live beyond twelve years due to major health problems. Sandy on the other hand is a mongrel - part Border Collie, German Shepard and whippet - and apparently these dogs have a longer lifespan that many pedigree dogs. She also had an operation earlier this year where a cancerous tumour was removed from her underbelly. I remember feeling the lump so clearly, and the scar and stitches...

I can only hope for the best for her...Sandy has been a part of the family for 14 years, and the house would feel so empty should the time come...

Somehow my feelings have transformed from good to angry and envious in the space of a few hours. I watched Little Britain earlier, which was great despite the same old 'Lou and Andy', 'Computer says No' and 'I'm a lady' jokes, but there were some really funny sketches such as the Stars in Their Eyes spoof where Ann takes on Celine Dion, singing 'Eh Eh Eh!' over 'My Heart Will Go On'.

I turned envious for the reason that my sister has won a competition in which she is to attend a coffee shop in London. She could only take one person with her, and that person was Mum. I asked if I could come, but Mum refused, and now I'm not very happy. I like going out very much, and it'll be a shame to be stuck in my bedroom as usual nearly althrough the day. So yes, I'm rather pissed off by that.

When an Atheist comes to a Baptism...

2005-11-06T23:16:00.000Z

What a lovely time I had today. I had to go to my cousin's son's Christening.

Dressed in a long violet skirt, a purple-blue top and purple 'Arabian' shoes, with my hair straightened, but my face having makeup on, which I really hate, I arrived with the family to the church where the baptism was taking place at about fifteen minutes before 3 o'clock, the time of the baptism.

When we were all allowed in, after waiting a few minutes in the freezing cold rain, I was surpised about the huge number of people already inside the church. Apparently 2 other children - another baby boy and a young girl - were to be baptised at the same time as my cousin's son, Bradley.

After the speech of the priest, Bradley was baptised first, and he actually took it well, as did the girl who seemed to be at least 5 years older than him. The other boy, who seemed to be a couple of months younger than Bradley, did cry I think, we all definately heard crying while he was being baptised, but he seemed to be OK afterwards. I could barely see all this because my younger sister - Bradley's godmother - was in the way.

I don't like being involved with religious occasions. At such times, I get the feeling that as an atheist I don't belong around lots of Christians. I don't like having to read the hymn book and sing them, which fortunately we didn't do, but we still had to read the Baptism part of the services book today.

The buffet that followed was a tedious four hours. Luckily my mum cooked and took some of my special sausage rolls over which I had away, as well as a few bits of salad and quorn 'ham' deli. Eating tomatoes gave my tounge the usual burning senstation, while the piece of baguette I had near the end could have made me lose my teeth!

At the end of the buffet I was desperate to go home. My younger cousin's girlfriend was somewhat addicted to dancing to the Pussycat Dolls' song 'Don't Cha?' (one of the worst songs to top the UK charts this year), which played for about four times in a row. It was so annoying, as was my drunken dad. When we dropped off my sister's friend at her house, my dad wouldn't come out of the car, but just piss about.

So there...it wasn't THAT bad was it...

Also this week...

I checked up on the BBC New Animation webpage to sadly find that my animation, Perry the Puff which I entered 2 months ago, was not in the final 12. I was very disappointed by this at the time, because I spent a very long time working on it, and I felt like it was all for nothing. However, I learned a LOT during production. I know a lot more about Flash than I did when I started the project, and I'm willing to learn more of it. I'm thinking about producing a sequel to the Wad Bandits episode I made.
I had to wait till about 2AM on the other night for my parents to stop partying downstairs. It was my mum's neighbour friend's birthday that night, and I'm assuming that a LOT of alcohol was consumed between them from the hangover my parents had the following morning. As soon as I got myself into bed, they stopped their karaoke. GREAT timing!
Last night I was round a friend's house to watch some fireworks. But instead of the fireworks, which were too close for me to see them since they have too small a garden, I stayed inside and watched parts of a few movies - Team America, SpongeBob SquarePants movie and Watership Down - my friend was more interested in the fireworks, so I was on my own in their front room watching the movies on their HUGE plasma screen. They had a kind of digital TV that I never heard of before, and lots of different channels, including Filmfour where I watched Watership Down. And due to the other two movies being played on the Front Row channels, I got to see the vomit scene in Team America twice. There wasn't a lot for me to eat there, so my mum just gave me some bread and a bowl of beans. After the films, I had a go at WarioWare Touched on my friend's DS.

So there.

What a wonderful world...

2005-10-24T13:22:00.000+01:00

It seems as though all I've been doing this week was watching the blue squares slowly pile up in Azureus and check on DeviantART, Livejournal, Hotmail, MSN Messenger and eBay on a regular basis while pumping Nightwish into my system at the same time. Having to clean my rat's cage out without any assistance from my younger sister didn't help, where I destoyed a pair of my pyjama pants by accident on the job. She wasn't willing to help even on her half day off, or the weekend.

Then I broke my headphones. Should I get music withdrawal, I'd either have to listen publically or borrow my sister's MP3 player plugphones. Both are problematic - my speakers are crap and crackle badly when touched, not to mention that when others are in the house they tell me to turn it down all the time. My older sister and dad are hypocrites, they play their music up really loud and I can't complain - she thinks everything I listen to is shit and has some 'epileptic fit' whenever she hears stuff like 'Pretty Green Eyes'. I think just about the same about the weird crap she listens to, except I don't go all shitty. As for the plugphones, they're too short.

Jesus Christ, it's lunch hour already and I couldn't be arsed to have breakfast, so I'm having both breakfast cereal and a sandwich. Because I'm a fat pig of carbohydrates.

Thankfully at the end of the week I had a little creativity going on. My younger sister recently aquired an MSN Messenger account and has been using it during the late evening, giving me a chance to do some drawing. I've produced for pieces of lineart which I am now colouring, and these will be submitted to my DeviantART gallery as soon as I can.

Another 'amazing' thing I did this weekend was join the family for Sunday dinner for once. This is something I barely ever did, except for Christmas and at the restaurants, and for some strange reason I didn't have a problem with anything but my cousin's 5 month old son, who wouldn't stop crying simply because he wanted his mother to hold him. I much enjoyed my vegetarian 'chicken dipper' pieces and sweetcorn, which I'd usually be eating next to my computer.

What I've been consumed with lately is this BBC New Animation scheme. The end of October is drawing near and I've been hoping and worrying at the same time about what it's going to bring. If I become a finalist, I'd be very happy, seeing as Perry the Puff is the first movie I ever animated. But if I don't, it'll be such a letdown after the hard work, tension and sacrifices I had to go through.

But whatever happens, I've gained experience, I did my best, and that's what matters the most.

Hope to get the artworks done, get a new pair of headphones and learn to take care of myself a bit more in this new week.

Until next time, take care and cheerio!

Over the hills and far away...

2005-10-16T16:57:00.000+01:00

It seems as though life doesn't want to get too exciting for me at the moment.

All that's happened is that is that one of those little dog statues I got from eBay - the Jack Russell - came through to us on Thursday. My mum was very pleased with her new addition to her huge dog collection, but we're still waiting for the Dalmation. On Saturday my James Pond fabric transfer came, all I need for that now is to look for a time to get it ironed on a t-shirt...I don't know how to iron though, that's the thing.

My sister also got me to buy a Rude Dog t-shirt from eBay, she's payed for it with a cheque and we should be getting it very soon.

On Monday I bought a copy of a Nightwish album called 'Angels Fall First' for £8.99, and Count Duckula on DVD. Sadly I only like about 4 songs from that album, including the bonus track 'Return to the Sea', the rest were a bit much for me. That's the huge trouble with albums, you end up only buying them for at least one song and not liking many of the others. I've been meaning to try and get Nightwish's other album 'Oceanborn', but I can't find that one anywhere, neither can I find the Within Temptation album 'Mother Earth'. Wish I could pay to download music legally...

Speaking of downloading, I managed to catch an episode of Invader Zim from Limewire. I did so because I was annoyed with the amount of people on DeviantART who just can't seem to stop going on about how much a godsent the cartoon is. I certain don't think so. From the episode I saw - 'the Nightmare Begins' - I didn't find it as bad as I thought it would be, in fact, I thought it was quite good, but it certainly wasn't brilliant. The word 'doom' was overused, and it had poxy school scenes, which I don't like anymore.

I also caught two episodes of Super Mario Bros 3 cartoon through a torrent, one of them I remember seeing part of it on POP. I did have an episode called 'Reign Storm' on a videotape somewhere, but I lost it apparently. There's a number of reasons why for this cartoon and Sonic SatAM I'd rather use P2P (and possibly get in trouble) that watch it on POP.

This POP channel is a Sky only children's channel that is controlled by GMTV (part of ITV). At various points a animated green dragon appears - he was originally called 'Tricky' and was used in a Saturday morning TV show of the same name that dates back to 1997. This was a live broadcast, meaning that he was animated by special software while a voice actor spoke, making it a 'live realtime animation'. The same kind of thing is widely used by Cartoon Network. I have a rip of the original TV show to prove it. The POP version was renamed to 'Rorry', and a new voice actor was used to make prerecorded animations.
It started in 2003 with very few programmes. One of them was a dreadful cartoon about vikings. As the channel stayed on air, more cartoons were added to the schedule, including Tube Mice (a very poor cartoon that looks like it was animated by preschool children), the Raggydolls (fair cartoon from the 80's about ragdolls), White Fang, and eventually in 2004, Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons. Most recently in year the 'Snorks' was aired.
Super Mario's cartoons aired were the ones based on 'Super Mario Bros 3' and Super Mario World, while Sonic's were 'Adventures of Sonic' - the one where Robotnik was voiced by the late Long John Bauldry - and Sonic SatAM, the one which was set in a futuristic world.
When they were first aired on this channel, they were shown 3 times a day. However, more recently they are now being shown only once or twice a day, at very ridiculous times (for me at least), because during the day they play some really rubbish cartoons, such as a remake of 'the Archies', 'Cyberchase' and 'Wheel Squad', as well as a two-hour slot of pop music videos...really bad ones.
And the real reason why I'd rather P2P these Sonic and Mario cartoons is because...being the cheapass channel POP is, they have no synopsis of each episode, meaning that you can't tell which Sonic and Mario series is going to be played. At the moment they're playing Adventures of Sonic, a cartoon I now really hate for its sillyness.

So there, POP sucks for many reasons other that Sonic and Mario.

Last night was a little more eventful. My grandad was celebrating his birthday round his neighbour's house (who's also my nan's sister I think), and we had to pop in there and say hello and gobble up all their party food. I ate very little other than cucumber, eggs and cake since everything else was meat...they had huge sardines... I had to go in their bathroom to wash my hands from some chocolate cream...wow, their bathroom kicks ass...lovely curtains that look like curtains! To make things a little better, they had 2 pianos, and they let me use one of them. It was so cool, even though the old guys that were there were doing karaoke.

Then I was told that I could stay in my nan's house, on my own. While there, I watched the X Factor (that Chico bloke sucked so much ass) and kept stepping out into the garden to look at the moon. After X Factor finished I had a little nap before it was time to go home. On the way home we stopped for some McDonalds and I carried on torrenting.

The Good, the Bad and the Yucky

2005-10-09T19:51:00.000+01:00

I've had a mix of good and bad times in this weekend:

The Good

I have now seen every single episode of the first three seasons of SpongeBob SquarePants, excluding a bonus episode called 'Shanganaied'. The episode that made this complete was 'Christmas Who?', which I believe was never aired over here, but was released on a compilation DVD. It wasn't as brilliant as I hoped it would be, but it did have some funny bits, like when that puppet bird ate all the cookie dough.
I went to a boot sale this morning, and came home with a Count Duckula plush. I should have got the Terrance and Phillip (from South Park) plushes as well, damn me. I could have had a lot of fun imitating their fart jokes.
A friend on MSN showed me this video of the moment in Catchphrase where everyone mistook Mr Chip's swinging cane for a penis...that had made my Friday night! (If you can't get this to work, try watching it on Mucho Sucko).

The Bad

I caught a cold from my sisters late this week, and as a result I had a lot of trouble getting myself to sleep. I had some pretty bad discomfort in my nose on Friday night, that somehow eased if it was filled up with mucus. Thankfully, although I still have a little trace of it left, I'm feeling a lot better now. My poor sister however, has it worse. She works in a very smoky enviroment (she doesn't smoke herself), which I think is why she's got a very course cough. It must feel dreadful. She's OK otherwise. This cold I have isn't as bad as others I've had when I was younger.
This morning, after a lot of the usual tossing and turning, my dad turned his TV on. You see, he does this every single night, all night for as long as I can remember, and the noise from it drives me insane! That morning, I got so annoyed, I got up and went downstairs. My mum came down shortly and saw me sulking in the kicthen. She says that I've overreacted and blames my sleepless nights on my excessive computer usage. I tried to convince her that my dad does indeed play a part of my sleeping problems, long before I even started playing videogames. I'm going to take her advice and log off the computer at 9.00PM tonight, wind down for an hour, then go to bed, and see if it really is computers that are making me insomnic.

The Nasty

When I got home from the boot sale I was about to give my rat some of his food...but as I was to go about picking out the alfalfa pellets, sunflower seeds and peanuts (rats don't seem to like those pellets, and the latter two I pick out because they're bad for rats), I found a maggot among a handful of the mix! I screamed so damn loud, and threw the half empty bag away, meaning that I now had to give my rat a bowl full of fruit and cereal. He's such a greedy pig, after about ten minutes of placing the fresh food in his cage, it was all gone!

Let's pretend you never heard that ;P

Joys of eBaying

2005-10-05T22:29:00.000+01:00

One night, my dad decided to get me to look up some Beswick dog statues on eBay, which my mum obsessivly collects. We decided to go for a 'Dalmation' dog, and by the time it was in its last few minutes, other people were bidding like crazy for it. I managed to win it fortunately, after about 13 bids, and after a few emails my mum sent the cheque over (my parents don't like the idea of Paypal, so they have to send cheques over.

This here is the first dog I won.

Sweet, isn't it? My mum has a whole cupboard of dogs in the front room. Thing is though the bid went up to £26.50, and including postage and packaging, my dad had to pay £31 for it in total.

And just about half hour ago, I won this dog as well.

I've yet to get this one paid for, the price didn't shoot up as much as that other dog and it's going to cost us £8.50 - I don't know the full amount yet.

Oh yes, then there's this I've bid for myself, I don't think I could ever find any of that other art around on the Internet...I might as well, it was only 99p to start with, and I add just a penny to the top bid! And still, to have James Pond on a T-Shirt would be SO cool!

It'd be so nice if there were more to James Pond things on eBay than just the videogames.

Great Yarmouth 2005

2005-09-16T15:47:00.000+01:00

Yes, for the past few days I've been doing time in Great Yarmouth, a coastal town in Norfolk, United Kingdom, over 100 miles away from where I live.

Using a 7 seater car which we borrowed from a neighbour - which was ten times better than the cramped turquiose coloured 2-door car we have, we drove all round the twists and turns thoughout the motorways and small towns. Whe we left, the sky was all cloudy and horrible...

...but when we arrived, it was actually sunny! In fact, it remained sunny until Thursday. It's a great job I took my hat with me, even though it shrunk in its last wash.

We had a 'meal' in the tavern in the camp, where I had a salad sandwich. I refused to have chips at all, and there wasn't anything else around there that I liked. My dad wasn't happy about the food there either. We were waiting for my grandparents to arrive, so I stepped out on my own to check out the gift shop, and when I got back, there were my grandparents!

Eventually we got the key to the caravan and started unpacking. Everything about that was fine, except for the toilet room - it beared one of the worst smells ever! My mum cleaned every part of it, but it still stank like vomit. There was also some dark yellow stuff around the doors which we hope wasn't vomit either...the way some people treat property that's not theirs eh?

Later on me, my sisters and grandparents went down the beach for a bit. Apparently some of those energy windmills have been placed around the horizon, so that wasn't something I've seen before. The weather was fantastic at this time, the sea was a lovely dark blue, and the sand felt just lush, not too boiling hot.

Then we all decided to go down the seafront. Firstly we were waiting for a bus, bus since there was no sign of one coming, we had to walk all the way down to the pier, arcades and that. The sky cast a gorgeous sunset before the night arrived.

At one of the arcades, I put a pound in one of the crane machines, and somehow managed to win a SpongeBob plush on my first go - one where he's dressed up as a basketball player of a sort. The other times failed. I must have been really lucky to win a plush from those crafty machines, my mum and sister tried to get it themselves but kept losing.

You see the trouble with these caravans is that the walls are so thin it gets really cold overnight, especially at these coastal holiday camps. I had to wear shorts on the first night, and by morning I really didn't want to leave bed because of how cold it was.

On Tuesday, my dad took us all up to a little town 30 miles north called Cromer. It was one of those towns where all the senior citizens like to go, like Walton on the Naze, where I went to last year. Most of the shops were suited to older people, but they had wicked interiors. Like this shop that sold artworks for instance. The interior of that looked a bit like an art studio (well yeah!), and down below there was a basement that somehow reminded me of the ceramics room I worked in when I was at college. It literally had this model of some oriental misty pond thing - think the video for 'Turn Off the Lights' by Nelly Furtardo and you'll get the idea.

There was however a small shop where they sold second hand games. Nope, there weren't many Gamecube games, but I managed to catch a copy of Worms 4 Mayhem on PS2 for £22. Elsewhere in the town my nan and I bought ourselves some raspberries, apples and peaches from a grocers, and that was about it.

Later on we had a look around the independant shops in the seafront, and stopped in one of the restaurants for a meal. There I had a mushroom omlette and some salad - it was OK I guess, I didn't eat all of it (it was fairly big), but I didn't think I was used to eating mushrooms quite yet.

I really should have taken some photos of the streets of Cromer while I was there, the weather kept on shining out its sun.

Wednesday, we were taken to a little wildlife park not far from the camp. While there I had a small photo-taking spree, taking shots of all the animals that weren't behind glass. One of the birds in particular - a pink cockatoo - was making the loudest noise you could think of...and I thought my own budgie was a noisy bugger! But I think the highlight of that was when we got to the tiger section...a tiger was sitting right at the end of the netted platforms we had to walk on. I couldn't take a shot of it unfortunately because it was way too close. But it was beautiful...it pains me to think that heartless people kill these graceful creatures so that their bones are made into medicine...

Other animals that I did take shots of included crocodiles, many birds - pelican, owl, cockatoo, peacock - a chipmunk, baboons and monkeys - one monkey in particular was carrying a bin liner around the cage and another of his kind was chasing him! I took a short movie of them with my camera.

Back at Great Yarmouth, I had a walk around the high street bit of the town, and, with the help of my sister , I bought a copy of Paper Mario 2 on Gamecube. It was £30, and I only had twenty, so my sister lent me ten towards it.

But I still found no copy of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. Not in one game shop.

By Thursday, the weather got really crappy. No more sunshine. Luckily it didn't rain when we were hanging around in the theme park, but when we went back to the independant shops, it did. Real hard. We had a meal in another restaurant where I had... mushrooms on toast and corn on a cob! Actually, this time the mushrooms were really nice, as was the toast, though it was soggy. I wanted to have more. For dessert, there was a chocolate cake in front of me...mousse, fudge, whipped cream...it was so sweet and sickly, it was ungodly!

I wanted to check out a few more shops, so only my mum went with me this time. She wanted to get some money out anyway. The little DVD shop around was a waste of time going, and that little game shop that was under the bridge wasn't there anymore. It shut down. Now THAT was a real waste of time. That was when the rain poured right down and we got soaked to death!

Back at the caravan, I found that my CD player wasn't working anymore, to my misfortune...I think putting in those Ni-MH batteries in it killed it, it said in the instructions that I shouldn't...well, it was a bit of a risk to take really, I didn't want to listen to the crap on the car radio.

On Friday morning as we were waiting for my dad to get back from taking my grandparents to the station, a black cat just randomly popped into our caravan! It had no collar on, but was quite friendly, all it wanted was some food. Since we cleared the fridge of everything, my sister went down the shop and got it some cat food. The cheeky bugger was trying to open up the fridge and get up on the work surface. I took a few movies of it on my camera while it was eating. I think it goes around the camp and begs for food.

So in all, I had mixed thoughts about this holiday. While some times, like when I won the SpongeBob plush, were great, some times, like the heavy rain, were quite bad. But I had a good time.

Now, I should set up my Gamecube and play Paper Mario.