well. that's that for the muswell hill project. until you get around to over-hauling the damn thing of course! urr-hur-hurr.

speaking of all things reportage-y, let's segway right on over to something far more exciting. every year, the illustration department packs their bags and sods off to another corner of the globe for a couple of days. come this time tomorrow, we'll be making tracks to antwerp. holy shit. i am alex's barely contained sense of excitement. srsly. i cannot even begin to tell you how much i'm looking forward to this. omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg.

last year we did madrid. here's an incredibly cool video adam clauge made documenting the whole thing (that link will only take you to his post concerning said trip, but you should really do yourself a favour and check out the rest of his blog. boy can paint/ draw/ take a photo/ bake/ make pasta/ like you couldn't believe).

Madrid Uni Trip from ALEKADZIE on Vimeo.

oh photoshop. i love you and you're totally awesome and everything, but i need to stop thinking i can count on you to swoop in at the 11th hour to make sense of vague and nebulous half baked notions of lay outs *cough* horrendous top spread */endcough*. it's not you, it's me. no, really.

oh, also, you need to redraw that bottom one- you do a much better job of aping observational drawing when you do it with a graphite stick. ssssssllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy.


on another note, instead of doing some much needed reading up on the much neglected dissertation this morning, i opted instead to finally getting around to watching this:



mary & max had been on my radar since before it even came out three years ago, but that's just how crap i am at ingesting media. man. this thing was good. its sense of humour's possibly one shade darker than emperor palpatine's allegiance of the force and oh my gosh is it sad.

huh. that doesn't exactly sound like a stella review, does it? but you might want to check it out. it's also go this stuck in my head till forever, but that's okay because this ditty be aces:



PEACE AND LOVE AND ALL THAT JAZZ.

more from the muswell hill book;



ewww. when this thing gets it's much needed revamp, any halfway graphic elements are going to be the first thing out the window. this thing would have worked a whole lot better if i'd either gone hard-core one way or the other. me thinks you should have stuck with the sketchbook look. mmm yep.

oh viaduct. i have wanted to go a-drawing round here for forever. many thanks to this project for allowing me to indulge.



*BONUS ROUND*

have you ever wondered where all our shiney things come from? this episode of 'the american life' is a fascinating, if not utterly harrowing account of what goes down in the sweat shops of shenzhen.

from the repotage book. not that the name gives away any clues, but 'cheeses' is muswell hill's very own cheese shop. NO FREAKING WAY, AMMIRITE?

but seriously. this place is quite possibly what awaits any good fromagaphile on the other side of the pearly gates.





heavens to betsey. this book seems to be a one man effort to make my tutor eat all the complimentary things she's every said about my understanding of design. things that came up where those circles need to go like right now, along with most of the things drawn in pen. also, don't be a lazy bones and hand letter this shit yeah?

sorry, that was boring.

but here's a trailer for 'john dies at the end'. holy moly, this movie looks gloriously batshit.

reportage book project stuff. sorry for the drips and drabs-ey nature that these are going to go up in, but my blog seems to wig out when you try and put more that five images to a post. a booooo.

cover wrap -


page one-


wwwwwwwhich are totally going to get swapped around when it comes to re-jigging this thing. and that'll have to happen sometime before our super final assessment because this thing is chock-a-block with rushed visual faux-pas and things that made my tutors toes go a little on the curly side. aw yeah.

but in the mean time, a "new" release from neutral milk hotel? oh my god yes. their front man's touring this year- how i would have given my eye teeth to go see that. except i think we're going to be in antwerp when that's going down. and tickets are, like, £300.
...
oh well. you'll always have your ipod.

so one of the projects i'm currently trying to nail down is this book about all the old shops in muswell. what with everything turning everything into yet another supermarket or ubber bougie hair dressers, they're becoming something of an increasingly rare breed.

anyhoo, some in process stuff. i apparently learnt NOTHING from the last talk with the tutor about this because we are still very much in 'AAAAHHH, LET'S JUST DO A LOAD OF SHIT AND CHUCK IT AT THE WALL AND HOPE IT WORKS' vein of things.


(warning. high levels of funky perspective can induce brain aneurisms)







hopefully going to get the brighton rock project licked today. this is not a lie i tell myself.



p.s. recently discovered you made it weird, another wonderful show on the ever expanding nerdist network. holy shit. this show. it's pretty much just pete holmes sitting down with a fellow stand up and rapping for an hour but oh my stars and garters, is it good. HERE'S A LINK TO A PERTICUALRY FINE EPISODE WITH TJ MILLER . put it in your ears, son.