because all i've been doing for the past week or so is thumbnailing comic pages and my brain was going to go all expload-y thinking about badly-drawn stick figures in wobbly boxes.





WOOOOO! SUMMER! YEAH!

that's a thing that happens sometimes.

...

right?

but that's enough of that. by the end of today you ARE going to have the first quarter of the graphic novel sorted. and then maybe we can do some actual drawing, yeah?

and in the mean time-



whoar.

so now you've joined the horde of recently graduated and woefully unemployed ex-students, you're going to be updating the shit out of this blog, right?

...

aaaaaaapparently not.

wait wait wait! i haven't been being totally crap! actually, been keeping myself pretty busy- there are things in the works that i should be able to show you soon. like little people about to go toe to you with big, fuck off japanese monsters:



a little snippet from something that will hopefully be going in the back of a book http://richwriting.blogspot.co.uk/ doing with markosia. fingers crossed.

in the meantime, i bring you the head of our former life-drawing teacher!



part of a series of drawings (resulting in some rather nifty tea towels) we put together as a thank you gift for our tutor folk. we're rather sentimental like that.





*****
so a while back there was an episode of the nerdist where one of those most hostfull of hosts mentioned that they couldn't get enough of a group called 'pale young gentlemen'. i followed up this hot tip. my ears have been thanking me ever since.

oh man. i know i'm normally a little on the tardy side when it comes to putting things up on here, but this might be taking the cake a little bit….






so these are some pages from the sketch book i was carting around _last_ summer. at one point i took a couple days out to visit one of our exchange students in their home trier, germany.

what a time. trier is an_incredibly_ nice place. managed to get quite a bit of sketching in too, so brace yourself for some more chicken-scratch doodles!

----

meanwhile, caught some snippets of regina spektor's 'what we saw from the cheap seats' over the speakers while waiting for a gig to kick off the other day. while those weren't exactly the most stellar conditions to listen to it in, what made it over the general hubba-baba sounded pretty funky and resulted in a next-day (near) blind buy. i'm quite glad i did that, mostly because it meant i got to hear this:



THIS SONG. OH MY GOD THIS SONG. also, mouth trumpet solo? A-MMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZING.

---

ah, haven't done too stella a job of updating this thing recently. mostly just been trying to get back into the swing of things following the whirlwind couple of days that was our degree show…

speaking of, hope you've got a strong gag reflex because it's time for the obligatory holyshitit'sallover post. things might get a little… sentimental.

but yes. The Degree Show. that was a thing that happened.




asides from managing to trash the one thing that was going up on my wall at the eleventh hour (i will now be forever grateful for spare print outs. and our tutors who are FREAKING MAGICIANS when it comes to things like mounting, hanging and generally making things look neat and tidy), the show went up without a hitch.




guys. it looked pretty dope. despite the apoplectic stress fest it caused both tutor and students alike, it seems that levelling the fmp up from a 6 to 12 week project really paid off. i would paste in a million and one photos of all the shit hot work but for some reason, can't seem to be able to post more than five pictures per post. boo and hiss and boo. BUT! you can see more of folk's work (along with a really crappy intro by yours truly) HERE.







not going to lie, i am going to miss this course and everyone on it more than you will ever know. had an absolute blast there and couldn't have asked for a more top notch bunch of people to do it with. hell, even our exchange student's were the jam! here's hoping this won't be the last time we work together. lastly, our tutor's are due for a massive thank you. asides from working their socks off, those guys were mad enthusing. i learnt so freaking much from them and everyone else on the course.

so thankyou.

now.

let's got out and destroy the world.




p.s i recently learnt that michael nyman and damon alburn worked together on the score for a little movie called ravenous. it's about cannibals in early america. i watched this film when i was like seven or something.

i remember it being very, very good.

always wanted to go back and revisiting it- and after learning that tit-bit of information (aaaaaalong with the fact it's going for like £2 on amazon), that's a thing that's happening. give this track a listen. it is WONDERFUL.

so that final major project thing, huh?

initially this was just going to be a comic designed to be read on a computer or some sort of snazzy digital reader do-hicky thing. my tutor though the we could spice it up a bit by adding some interactive elements but then it turned out the programming skillz required would melt minds. so instead we made a movie. here it is. i hope you enjoy it.



sharp teeth is a cracking read by toby barlow. the super dulcet narration was provided by our print tutor phil shaw

some pages from this year's macmillan competition offering.












will be putting the rest of it once it's all coloured in and whatnot (which'll hopefully be a thing happening once the degree show's out the way). unfortunately, this time round they were having none of our submissions. but that's totally cool- went along to the show up above foils last week and holy moly. there was some very good stuff there.

here's a gloriously incomplete list of winners and highly commended folk. give them a look. they'll knock your socks off:

http://jasonhibbs.co.uk/blog/

http://rubytaylorillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.sophyhenn.typepad.com/

http://lofi-illustration.tumblr.com/

http://saragibbesonillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

http://elladraws.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.samialadawy.com/Blog-2

http://laurenmayillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

bonus content!

'everything is a remix' is a really nifty, bite-sized, homemade documentary looking at how ideas are reused again and again and again in everything from entertainment to innovation. asides from that, once it gets rolling, it is a visual treat. give it a butchers!

more do overs in the key of flat colours and cheeky filters:

(closer look. because for some reason blogger's being lame and not allowing for full image view size. boooo on you blogger. boo on you.)

man. that psycho poster was pretty weak sauce in the first place but i'm not too sure if this is any better. a bit too much all over the place perhaps? (and not an ounce of good composition to be found!)

oh well. TOO LATE NOW SON.

pretty much ripped wholesale by this scene:


ggggooooodddd. this film is so good.


aaaaaaaaaand speaking of redos, someone decided to translate radiohead's ok computer into 8-bit. the results are totally jammy. give it a twirl!

more drips and drabs from the Final Major Project. the comic itself is done, but i still need to 'animated' it for our degree show so i'm going to wait for that miracle to happen (ha!) before sticking the whole thing up here.

gosh. what a tease.

in the mean time, here's a handful of links to some of the other middlesex folk's outcomes for this whole Final Major Project thing. check it. they're totally rad.

fredrik's fake freak show, abi's collaged children's book, and some rather spiffy animations by katie and eileen.

aaaaand then there's this crazy map hector's putting together. it was still in the process of being finished when i took the photos but it is totally one of my favourite things ever:

god damn guys. god damn.

some things are still being worked on. but you can come and see them in all their finished glory at the truman brewery between the 8th and 11th of june. more on that right over--------> HERE

so.it's over.

but not really. apparently the fat lady's booked in to play our degree show because that's when we officially put this degree business to bed.

so. i will hold off getting all mushy and sentimental until then. besides, there's still a crap tone of work to be done before our show at the truman goes up! hell yeeeaaaahhh!!

in the mean time HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY RE-DID THAT BLOODY CHAMBER PROJECT. and just in time for hand in too…

company of wolves:

the bloody chamber:

puss in boots:

cover:

ok. so not quite as disastrous as last time… perhaps? i'll leave that up to you. and the external examiner. oo err.

while we're on the topic of thugs with rather twisted sexual undertones, i recently discovered the rather twisted world of jeremie perin. the guy is responsible for some of the most cockamamie bug fuck insane music videos you EVER have seen. you will be left reaching for the soul-bleach. that i promise.

here's one that's not quite so lude. actually, it's pretty beautifully animated... and the art/ character work is freaking stunning. that said, this started off looking like it was going to be pretty freakin' pervy. but then the two minuet mark happened. and things went more bananas than gwen stiffani could ever imagine….




finally, today is happy norway day- so go out and have yourselves a rip-roaringly good time!

YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE FINISHED YOUR MACMILLAN BOOK BY THE END OF THE DAY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE IN THIS.

here are some cheeky panels from it. the story's about a magic dog who can't spell. it was going to be called god the dyslexic dog but then it turned out that there was something all ready going by that handle. boo. also, it might have been a little offensive to religious types. double boo.

888

podcast time! oh my god. girl on guy with aisha tyler is totally my jam. i would quite like to be her when i grow up. this episode is with the director of bellflower, a super homemade movie that's an apocalyptic romance. er. i haven't seen it, but it looks super slick and hearing about creative people getting creative is always a blast.

PUT IT IN YOUR EARS RIGHT HERE.