life without garfield

http://www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Races & Faces

The last two weeks sermons at church have been very inspiring and relevant, from Hebrews (one of my favourites) about running your race. Through these messages God has been motivating me to complete this masters course and this project.

http://www.co-mission.org.uk/fcc/sermons.php (the sermons aren't up yet, but I guess they will be soon as some of the admin crew are away)

Woke up earlier than usual this morning and read some of 1 peter. So throughout the challenges of the day 1 peter 1 verse 7 kept reminding me in a new and amazing way of the reality that 'faith is of greater worth than Gold' having an everlasting beauty and worth.

Despite having 2 hours to play with in the morning before tutorials due to waking up, I managed to make myself late as I got distracted by a new creative idea for my project. I was going through my flower pressings collected last week at the allotment in order to photograph them at University under a rostrum camera (as seen above in first image).

One of the flowers stuck to my finger accidentally and to my delight I saw a face appear on my fingertip. Thoughts of super-speedy finger animations and collages caused me to get trigger happy with the camera and before I knew it I'd missed my bus.

In a way I've not applied the last sermons message very well as it was about being 'trainable' and annoying my tutor is not the best start to the week in applying that message as I believe I should listen to and value his advice as difficult as I find it. I might have some nice pictures today but will I have a film in five weeks time and finish this race? For a start I'm going to stop blogging, going out, and watching films and animations now. Research over.

good animations on youtube

At last, found a channel on youtube full of really excellent animations!

http://www.youtube.com/user/pentruochi#play/uploads/43/ziL9-OqYk2M

Encouragements

Hey ho!

Crafting wise I'm feeling fruitful and hopeful. Gary Powell (the external examiner) was an extremely cool chap, full of positivity and encouragement for all. I mentioned God a few times talking about my animation and asked him to clarify after 'are you a Christian' and he said yes, which was good to know there is an uplifting Christian artist about town (I like his stuff).

Also good news on the time-lapse front. I want to use time lapsing live flowers in my animation, overlaying them on drawing. See my first experiment here from the allotment trip from the last post: http://www.vimeo.com/6011686
Having sent out messages to over 20 time lapse artists last week, who've posted their flower videos online in various sites, I recieved one positive answer today.

Dan Linfield: http://www.vimeo.com/danlinfield who also plays the piano pieces in his videos, a pianist, curiously like the subject of my animation. Spooky. The extra wonderful thing about this is he has uploaded about 12 suitable flower videos. Most of the people I contacted had only uploaded one or two videos.

R.e. life...I sold two compact cameras on my second day at Jessops! Woohoo! This had nothing to do with me though... just two extroadinarily passive and I guess affluent customers. I did set off a security alarm in the process. :)

A family member has the swine flu :( but maybe better now than later.

weepop!

Had an eventful & tiring day... first day at Jessops, lovely people and customers... then trying to create a time lapse flower animation with friend Matisse in flower allotments in New Malden all afternoon in the humid hot weather... we enjoyed a brief attack of flying ants which was a refreshing break from the time lapse monotony..

The day was completed by coming home to the arival of my copy of Amidas EP 'if the wave loves two suns'.

My friend Andy is in Amida so I've followed them over the years. I bought the EP through weepop, following the link from Amidas website. http://www.myspace.com/amidaband

I'm overwhelmed by weepops personal touch. Handwritten address, company stamped envelope (the postman didn't stamp my stamp so i also have a reusable stamp), handwritten personal note to me. A personalised sticker with printed Amida artwork. A free weepop BADGE. A sherbet sweet. then another handwritten card.The EP cost me about £4 including p&p so I recommend you buy one of the remaining 93 copies of the EP before the rest of the nation falls in love with weepop and Amida.

I already knew three of the five songs and am impressed with the re-recordings of those, with some new angelic strumming and seismic keyboarding. I have to think about the two new ones a bit. Right I'm done in and out like a light

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Neil McSweeney

For my final project, I'm making an animation to this track.

http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+McSweeney/_/Flowers

Neil is from Sheffield.

Music Video Log

Have been watching 'festival favourites' on VH1

Most relevant to my project was 'Live Forever' Oasis video directed by Carlos Grasso, where the band are digging up what looks like a community garden, only at the end you realise it is a grave. They bury their drummer in it, but then he ressurrects himself at the end holding drumsticks. I can't stand Noels slurry vocals myself but the words are quite relevant to my own garden themed music video project:

Maybe I don't really want to know
How your garden grows
I just want to fly Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain
As it soaks it to the bone

Maybe I just want to fly
I want to live I don't want to die
Maybe I just want to breath
Maybe I just don't believe
Maybe you're the same as me
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever

Maybe I don't really want to know
How your garden grows
I just want to fly Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain
As it soaks it to the bone

Maybe I will never be
All the things that I want to be
But now is not the time to cry
Now's the time to find out why
I think you're the same as me
We see things they'll never see
You and I are gonna live forever
We're gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Live forever
Forever

Also watched:

'Right here, right now' -Fatboy Slim, showing animal evolution in an eastward scanning journey until a big fat man wearing a 'why try harder' T shirt ends the journey by slouching on a bench prompting the camera to scan upwards, signifying the end of the journey.

Elbow 'Any Day Now', very simple illustration of job direction/confusion in an unbothered young person. Love this song, reminds me of when I worked in a mudane job with one other engraver who gave up career path of graphic design for monotonous work and his family in Sheffield

'FEAR', Ian Brown I hadn't heard this before, really clever wordplay in the initials of the word' Fear'

E.g.

Forget Everything And Remember

Forget Everybody And Remember

For Everything A Reason

There were more lyrics like this! Then a chorus of 'you got the fear? with references to beliefs and religion'. The video is of Mr Brown on a bicycle ride in reverse, starting in Chinatown (London or Manchester I'm not sure which, but I'd thought London). It seemed to me to be about progress of your journey in life.

Frans Ferdinand 'Take me on' Great graphical style with newspaper print and typefaces enlarged and carefully selected, clever laboured animation of figures.

Blur 'Boys N Girls' Kind of tacky video.

Katy Perry 'Hot N Cold' 2008. I enjoy this video of a bride annoyed at an indecisive groom.

Simba

Simba is 16 years old and my landladys cat. Whilst practising the piano for tomorrow morning in church, the cat jumped up and started nudging my with his nose. He is quite big and I am quite ticklish so this was quite distracting.

These events might not seem that strange to cat people out there. However, this is REALLY UNUSUAL!! He keeps himself to himself usually and only rubs my legs occasionally if he wants feeding. His bowl was full of food today and I'm actually slightly worried about him because of this outburst of affection. He is very arthritic and mid-nudge he kept twitching and I wondered if he was simply craving care!

I wrote this note for my landlady

I'm trying to play this Simba!


Simba did give me an idea for my Major project - as I was playing he seemed to be listening to the music and responding! Which reminded me of this music video i love, by bens fold. It seems that there is a chimp with marital problems who comes in and helps Ben and his band set up the piano in the studio. You then watch the chimp listen to Bens playing as he sits on the sofa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDpiBYy5iNA&feature=PlayList&p=A71046A18303F6EC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

Maybe I could have a cat respond to the piano playing in my music video (MA major project)!

Other exciting news - I start working in Jessops Tuesday morning. More excitingly for me I researched Gary Powell today - he our new is external examiner for our final projects. I'm quite overwhelmed because he seems to be an artist interested in the very same kind of issues and visuals that I love and also seems to be a Christian writing openly about his faith e.g. here:

http://domain742622.sites.fasthosts.com/faith2/gpcontact.html

I'm more motivated to work hard now because I feel like were singing from the same hymn sheet & I kind of dont want to let him down with shoddy results! He works in similar painterly aesthetics and I imagine will be more critical because of the similarities. Yelp!

I smell of old cat now (he drools and malts at once)!