Retractable turrets with nice faces.

So. Researching material for a future project, and realised that I just love these guys.

New background design

I knocked it up last night, instead of sorting out a dampness problem in the bedroom (Landlord's fault).

Every layer in the final design was still named 'TEST'-something; maybe I should have called the whole thing a test...not sure if I completely like?
I did like the simplicity of having no background, but ultimately it doesn't really suit my personality at all.

In the image are some mild references to things I tend to like, such as:

Photography
Minecraft
Talking Heads
Half-Life
Metalocalypse
Trains
London(?)
Victorian military technology
Three wolf moon
Various Soviet things
????
PROFIT

No, I didn't actually make a huge list of things I like and then narrowed it down beforehand, as clever as that would be...it seems to have been pure chance that these things ended up in there. Honest.
  

Think Big. Play Small.™

I've started a little project that really is quite little.



Right now it's just a tiny (unfinished) picture. But at the earliest opportunity, this tiny little image of a convenient two-thousand nine-hundred and twenty-five pixels will (hopefully) take on a new life, the likes of which you have never seen before.

Duke Nukem 3D art - by 7 year-old me.

I'm sure you've heard of Duke Nukem before - ya' know, that hedonistic game character who shoots alien invaders - Either from the new Duke Nukem Forever or the old skool Duke Nukem 3D from 1996. Don't worry, there's nothing 18+ in this post!

I have been playing Duke Nukem 3D since it first came out - when I was 6 years old. Is that bad? Safe to say Duke Nukem forms a decent chunk of my childhood!

I recently uncovered a small gathering of Duke Nukem drawings I had done when I was 7 - about half a year after the games' release.

Click here to see the full album on Imgur.

The most inspiring thing about the game for me is the level design. 3D games before Duke Nukem 3D mostly involved endless, dull corridors as the setting; and not much better are the photo-realistic environments of modern games. Where's the creativity in that?
Duke's levels are an art. Not only can you explore the most wonderfully mediocre of settings, including police/fire stations, banks, subways and even a Japanese restaurant, but their layouts are simply brilliant.

Thanks for taking a look at this rather odd addition to my blog...if you like Duke Nukem 3D, don't forget to check out
DukeCraft - my Duke Nukem 3D Minecraft total conversion.

Meet Jazz.

She's my dog. And she doesn't really like tanks.

Watch in HD to appreciate how fluffy she is.

Summer work...

So, it seems I haven't posted anything on here since before the summer. To be honest, most of my own creative work has been on hold during the holidays, except for Lumen Soup, which is the start of my 3rd year collaborative project with Livvy Brewer...

Other than that, I have done a little bit of community outreach (is that the right term? Probably not...), including running a small drop-in animation studio at the Basildon Festival on behalf of the Basildon Arts Collective and Basildon District Council. This was extremely successful, over the two days I introduced hundreds of people to traditional 2D and stop-motion animation.

Photography by Darren Chaplin

  
Many people popped in to my animation studio to just have a peek or to contribute a frame or two towards the 2D animation or stop motion film. As well as many children, parents and grandparents, I was visited by artists such as Aden Hynes , and also got a bit of help from Stephen Metcalfe MP.

I've been having a bit of fun with my new Canon 7D, which has replaced my 40D because of its HD video capabilities. I also grabbed some fat memory cards and a Rode mic just in time for the War & Peace show.

(The quality of Blogger-uploaded videos is AWFUL, by the way. I'm heading to Vim/Tube next time)

And, on impulse I grabbed the 7D on that night when they said on the news that there would be lots of shooting stars. Here's the time lapse night sky over Lancing for about 3 hours...

I did a little bit of standard photography in Lancing and Basildon. You get over 9000 points for correctly guessing which is which! It's not that hard if you look closely...

Combine my new camera with my annual desire to put my 1/16th army to use, and you end up with a few videos, a few gigs of strange model photography and a couple of juddery After Effects compositions that feel a bit Attack of the Cones in style, but with more Olive Drab. I hope I don't ever get in a spot of bother for telling people that I do 'Model' photography.

This is a rough source image (It was not my intention to advertise Kid Robot, but hey), for capturing a model at various angles in a stop-motion kind of way, to be composited in After Effects. That rubbish crinkley blue screen is actually my old apron from Asda, which would seem like a bad idea if it was ever actually used...

Also over the summer I have run a few animation and game design workshops which have all been very successful. So, from now on it's back to my own creative work...