Slacking!!!!!!

Yeah so its been nearly 5 months since i last posted on my blog, which some would deem as lazy, but i've actually been grafting out there in reality and have now completed my 1st year, so the time has come to transfer that effort to the digital dungeon of Blogspot.com for the viewing pleasure of Alex & Stewie.......

I would like to give them a special shout out for not jumping ship like everybody else and even though they've been spread more thinly than the last knob of butter on a dinner date between Big Pun & Fat Joe, they've managed to get us through the year smoothly and have shown a great deal of interest in the 1st year group, unlike,.,.,...,.,.,.,..,........ Well, if your reading this blog you already know who i mean, so i needn't say more!!!!

So anywho, i've finished my 1st year in Multi-Media Design and I have created a large body of work for you to enjoy, starting with two slide shows of PDP work i've done in my various sketchbooks:

- The 1st includes my early attempts on photoshop, my apple related research (see Dec '07), a montage of photos from a trip to Amsterdam and a range of doodles I draw whilst bored in class.

- The 2nd is a small book entirely dedicated to typography. This was meant to have been assessed as part of the years work but was forgotten in the chaos, so it will also be carried on next year.....

"We interrupt your regular programming to give you these special messages"

We're gonna go back, way back, back into time...

For my third review i thought i might turn the critical eye upon myself and some previous animation work i did whilst i was a student at Leeds Met.

The brief entailed making a stop motion animation to act as an intro to a new TV programme. The work was done in groups, although mine only consisted of me and one other person, we were to create the audio track from elements of the visual and synchronize one to the other.

We decided to do our intro for a student cooking programme, which meant we would have to create the soundtrack from eggs cracking, pots and pans and any other kitchen based items. We spent 3 weeks creating the beat and everything you hear aside from the scratching is homemade. The shoot took us two weeks and post production one more,this was extremely time consuming because of distinct lack of animation skills we had, which was to be expected considering we were music tech students.

We received a distinction for the piece, which i feel we deserved simply for the amount of man hours myself and James Cope undertook, whilst others shared their work load between 5 or 6 people. The visual editing is pretty hideous and naive, but it is a light hearted video that is carried by an up-tempo instrumental, which references the images on screen enough so much so that the viewer doesn't lose interest.

I would like the opportunity to try something like this again, though i much preferred making the soundtrack as opposed to the pain-staking procedure of moving vegetables around at no mile per hour.

I hope you enjoy the old-school flavas and for those with sharp wits, keep your eye out for the fight club reference!!!!

Praying to that porcelain toilet

'Cannibal Ox' are a rhyming duo from New York, whose debut album 'The Cold Vein' was released on Definitive Jux records in may of 2001. It's sound brought promise for a bright, changing future in hip-hop, with El-p providing the space age industrial instrumentals for the two emcees Vast Aire (the big fella) and Vordul Mega (the nipper) to propel their outlandish wordplay over.

The album features many stand-out tracks, though only one made it to a visual medium (not that a music video is a gauge of a songs brilliance) "Painkillers" can be viewed as just another run of the mill drug ballad, but the poetic detail and observation both lyricists apply to the chosen topic make it stand apart from many of its predecessors. Vast Aire gives one of his better performances on the album and manages to combine hilarious metaphors with eerie descriptions of life.


"I might tell you something that'll change your death /Pain kills the life, Pleasure loves the breath"

The video is synchronized to the track perfectly and director Zach Johnson uses the standard 'rap to camera' style in a such a way that makes you forget that is was probably made on next to no budget. All in all the video is one of the better of its kind and is a good representation of the music of the Def Jux label.

The Original Stencil Pioneer....

"I am Blek, Blek le Rat. I am a French graffiti artist. I was one of the first artists to use stencils for an artistic purpose in Paris in the beginning of the 1980s—in ‘81 exactly. At first, I put rats and I made them run along the wall. I wanted to do a rat invasion. I put thousands all over Paris...."

'Original stencil pioneer' is a short documentary film about revolutionary french graffiti artist 'Blek le Rat'. He is said to be the one of the innovators of stencil art in Europe and also one of the first people to bring the influences of New York across the Atlantic.

The film documents his life in graffiti and allows the middle aged artist to reflect upon his career on the streets, as well as his degrees in Architecture and Graphic Design. He talks in depth about his reasons for his political stencils and why there was need for them in Paris in the early 80's.

The pieces chosen show Blek's progression, rather than simply showcasing his best work. This may initially seem tedious, but the narrative shows the strong connection between the man and the art. The interviews featured are interesting, but there isn't enough exploration of a career spanning nearly thirty years in length and this is the major let down of the film. Many shots are replayed over and over and the general editing of the piece doesn't do justice to the creative genius it attempts to portray.

The DVD includes a gallery of additional photos, but these are simply stills of work included in the film and do not help to feed the hunger the viewer is left with after watching the short 30 minutes of footage.
Overall the film serves its purpose in giving you an insight into the man behind the art, but in no way does it delve into enough detail of a mind that has altered an entire generation of artists, including most notably 'Banksy'. The body of work included is limited, though this may be due to the fact it had either been removed or that Blek did not give director 'King Adz' full access to the photo collection him and his professional photographer wife will have collected over his vast career.

Despite this drawback the film is a good watch for any creative type and for those who are interested in graffiti or hip-hop it is essential viewing.

To read an interview with Blek click on : THE SNEAKY BLEK

Hungary Hungary Hippos!

I recently went to Budapest with City College for a so called 'Cultural Studies' trip.... I had also recently recieved a new camera for christmas off my lady and so the two were combined to bring you this lovely video montage.

Instrumental by Myself and my brother Tom.

All my photographs are included chronologically as well as additional pictures+video footage supplied by Steve Miller.

Nature vs Average

As another part of my course we've been asked to study other artists and also do a project on typography... But because i've been so swamped with all the other tasks we've been set, i haven't really had chance to do much work focusing on _________ (can't remeber the guys name!), but recently i had to rake my garden for my mum so i decided to try use the leaves in a crazy-arty-linear-structury-thingy-me-giggy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the result, along with a mild dose of rake burn. Don't enjoy, just look and leave.......... Now!

The tale of a boy named 'POPS'

Aswell as the normal projects i get given, i have also been asked to create a PDP, personal developement plan. This can include anything creative or related to college and is to be carried out throughout the whole year. As my first blogged piece i will tell you a little story about a boy named 'POPS'.............

At a young age 'POPS' always loved to doodle on shit and after having spent the first twenty years of his life doodling how other people told him to doodle, he decided he wouldn't obey the government permitted doodle laws any longer and he would show people how well he could doodle in public.
After recieving training and advice from many fellow doodler's, mainly his drunken master 'The Incredible Sensini', he decided it was time to do his first real doodle!
He tucked his jeans in his socks, packed his rattle-rattle cans in his backpack and set off into the night with his chemically altered buddy to find the most boring wall they could.
Along the way they encountered many dull walls and took it upon themselves to brighten up everyones world with their ultra-stinky-ink doodle tool, which 'POPS' always carries for emergencies such as this.
Some people, mainly the 'Blue Piggies', don't allow the un-corporate to do this and often punish people in a worse way for this playful act, than they would punish someone who beat up an old biddy for instance.
This aside 'POPS' and his mentor sneaked through the night across many rivers and under countless bridges until they found the most boring wall in town.
So as to make it a surprise for the public, 'POPS' worked in total darkness on his doodle, spending many hours inhaling the lovely colours and enjoying the feeling of ice on his balls, before leaving
on his journey home with his now mysteriously red eyed teacher...They left before either could see the doodle they had created, but soon returned the next day with their average friend and his crazy-silver-box contraption.
When they viewed the doodle from the other side of the river 'POPS' became very excited and when he crossed over to view the doodle up close, something wonderful happened................................................HE BEGAN TO FLY!!!!!!!!

'POPS' now realised why the 'Blue Piggies' didn't like people doodling everywhere, because if everyone doodled in their own special way and worked together, then maybe the corporate ghouls which watch over them from their oversized billboards, would no longer be able to tell them lies to keep them scared and in turn stop them flying too.
'POPS' vowed from that day forth that he would try to doodle more than ever before and hopefully one day others like him will help people understand the importance of doodles and the reasons as to why the 'Blue Piggies' don't want you to doodle!

THE END

Its all ME ME ME....

The brief for the 2nd project was based around the design process for creating a 30 second animation about yourself, with focus on the use of 'Final Cut' and 'Photoshop'. I once again got my brain-storm on, coming up with as wide a range of ideas as i could related to the subject of me.
This ranged from a photo-timeline of all my grand 22 years of life, graffiti/toy related work, artist/architecture research and then onto photographs i took whilst travelling. After completely exhausting the sketchbook for all its worth, i came to settle on the ideas of doing a stop-frame animation of a toy spray can running round a scale model of the Hulme bridge, causing all sorts of colourful mischief...
I decided on this because i thought it would reflect my urgency for creation and within the blank canvas of the model i would be able to include references to my life, such as my girlfriends name or a favourite album.
I created a few trial animations to test out frame rates and the way in which i would apply paint to the canvas. Whilst i simultaneously created a beat in Pro-tools to synchronize my work to, which was constructed as a tribute to my favourite band 'Company Flow'. I also got my friend and graff writer 'Nayse' to create final designs for me to replicate onto a wall of my model, as i personally suck@graffiti. I then set about shooting my animation.....
The shoot took me 7 hours including set up and was a one time occurance as once i had applied the paint there was no going back. I used regular poster paint, toothpicks for application....

((Whilst performing the shoot i was mostly listening to 'Dark Side of the Moon' & 'Led Zep II'))

In my sketch book i had shown aspirations to edit the backgrounds of my animation and replace them with skylines from my travels, but this deemed to time consuming as i didn't have enough time to learn 'Photoshop'. I edited my piece together in 'Final Cut' to my beat@96bpm, this took around a week as i was still getting to grips with this program aswell.
I re-shot one of my opening scenes as it was out of focus, but found i couldn't replicate the correct lighting and camera angle as i had to try and exectue it on a different model, this led to the scrapping of this re-shoot.
As a project deliverable we had to design a CD cover to accompany our work, which i did as a paradoy of the famous Pink Floyd cover featuring a Prism, which i replaced with a silouette of the toy i used in my animation.

Everyone from the group had to present their work to the class individually, with our fellow students then helping in the grading process, so as to help us understand the course criteria better and thus developing our critical eye. I received a distinction for my work, but this was mainly due to sketchbook work i had done and not the final animation. Both myself and my tutors were disappointed with the out of focus scenes and the loss of narrative within the animation, but this only leaves room for improvement in future, which always is a good thing!
Hope you enjoy it and if you don't please tell me why...

How'd ya like them apples?

For our 1st project we where given a list of words from which we were to generate 25 ideas, these ideas can be as abstracted as we desired from the original subject and had to act as an introduction of yourself to your fellow students.
I choose apple, then got my brain-storm on and from that came up with idea for my final presentation...
(I will post pics of sketch book+final piece when my pesky mum comes back with my camera!)