My animation is up!

http://vimeo.com/6842438

And if you like Neils music, check him launching a new album at the luminaire, kilburn high road, London on Friday night from 7.30. £5 at www.wegottickets.com/event/54145

Ooooh, too much excitement for one month!

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.