Cracking Animation History

I may be a little behind the times on this, but can you believe that it has been 20 years since Wallace and Gromit, the loveable plasticine duo, first burst onto our screens with their moon-cheese-filled adventure ‘A Grand Day Out’?! I grew up watching and loving their animated escapades, and so it has really surprised me to very recently learn just how old they are!
Because of all the amazing work which Aardman does, breathing life into what is essentially little lumps of clay, they have made me wish more than anything to become a stop-motion animator and follow it as a profession.

I have had some experience working on animations (my own and I am currently helping building sets for a BA animation project called ‘The Inventor of Happiness’ at Leeds Metropolitan University in my spare time (check out the trailer for it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUECw8EY1-I ,
and once my degree is over, I hope to be able to further this dream and take a course dedicated to Animation, so as to learn all I can to help for when I apply for this career. So, all I can for now say is, Happy Birthday Wallace & Gromit, and watch out Nick Park! :P

Royksopp Forever!!

Hello again!

I've been very bad and not been able to update my blog in a while! Sincerest apologies. The Semester is drawing to a close and I have been very busy trying to finish numerous projects, but I will be updating much more often from now.

I thought I would submit something unrelated to my work for a change. At the beginning of November (seems like a long time ago now!), My boyfriend and I were lucky enough to go see our all-time favourite band at my Union; the Norwegian duo Royksopp! We've seen them play before at the Ether Festival in London during Easter, so it was great to see them at a more intimate venue.

It was an absolutely amazing night, with them playing our old favourites (such as Remind Me, Poor Leno), buzzing songs from their current album 'Junior' (Happy Up Here, Girl & the Robot, as sung on the album by Robin), and we were lucky enough to hear a new song from their new album 'Senior', as yet unreleased.
I got some great pictures of them playing, and after the gig we bumped into their bass player! Who promised to pass on the message to the duo how much we enjoyed the night and loved them and their work :D!

I thoroughly recommend anyone to listen to Royksopp. In fact, go on Youtube and look them up NOW! I promise you, you won't be disappointed... :) Enjoy my photos of them!

The beginning of the night- Happy Up Here

Royksopp Forever!

Anneli Drecker, singing 'What Else Is There'

Royksopp having a bit of banter inbetween songs

Anneli Drecker, singing 'Tricky Tricky'

Miss It So Much

Vision One

Girl and the Robot (above and below)

You Don't Have a Clue

The bass player, who my boyfriend and I met after the gig :D

The Finale- Eple

That's a wrap!

The filming was a complete success this weekend. Despite the appalling weather (pretty constant wind and rain), my actors were fantastic and I managed to get some good footage. Just need to edit it and put it together. I will post it online once it is finished.

Keep checking for updates! :)

Lights, Camera, Action!

Hey everyone!

Well, this weekend I am busy busy busy filming for my 1 minute film project. Waterstones have been very kind and have let me film inside and outside of their shop, so a big thankyou to them!

The film is about a homeless man, who actually turns out not to be homeless, and is actually a regular guy, who uses all the money he receives during the day to go to the pub on a friday night!

This story was inspired by a homeless man whipping out a cigarette from behind his ear after I gave him some change and asking me for a lighter! That was what the peoples change was being spent on, not food, but cigarettes!

So, the evolution of the concept of a homeless man not being all that he seems arose, with the moral 'Don't judge a book by its cover' at the heart of it. The film is titled 'All That Glitters...(Is Not Gold)'- another phrase for the above, and I will upload it as soon as it is completed- hopefully by the end of next week, so please take a look.

Hope you will like it!

Painting work

Here are some examples of my Level 2 Painting work so far this year. More examples will follow...

This piece was created using acrylic paints, and is a study of an exploding firework, which gave an floral appearance in the sky

This piece was created using watered-down acrylics on canvas. This was taped to a wall and the paints were dripped down it, much like the work of the artist Ian Davenport.

This piece was created using watered-down acrylics, which dripped down a wall onto the canvas below, creating this splatter effect

This piece was created using acrylics on a stretched canvas, and is also a study of a firework exploding, giving off lots of coloured smoke in the process

These pieces are part of a study of a candle moved in front of a camera on a low shutter speed, creating a track of light across the lens.

This piece is a study of light reflecting off a colourful fish in murky water. The paint was applied directly from the tube to the paper to create a rippled paint effect.

This piece is a study of the shapes created from flickering fire. It is based on a photo I took last Bonfire Night of the large Bonfire in Hyde Park, Leeds.

New kid on the Blog...

Forgive me for the cliche. But I truly am the new kid on the blog, or any blog for that matter. So even considering where to start writing about, and about what, is baffling. But maybe about myself and what I am doing writing on here is a good place to start.

So, here I am; a Second Year Art & Design student at the University of Leeds (UK), and, as part of a Digital Design project, am required to create a ‘online self-promotional web page/portfolio’ - in short, a blog. Quite a daunting prospect, considering I mainly specialise in Painting and Sculpture, and like to dabble in Photography, and have just about mastered the new Windows Vista Microsoft Word and Paint, let alone having to make my very own web blog and links to examples of my work. Sure, I do have a MySpace account (but who doesn’t?!), where I have uploaded some information about myself, my work, and pictures of most of it, even dating from my A Level art (www.myspace.com/katsartcreations).

So yes, I am ‘another bloody student’, using up yet another perfectly good blog page with uncertainties and uploaded studio doodles. (Thank god the world wide web is infinite though!)

It is so difficult to decide what kind of tone to write in though, considering that this blog is being analysed and marked (maybe even at this very second) by the moderator for this module, and yet also considering that other people will (hopefully) be reading this blog too. I think I should try and write this how I would converse instead. Fingers crossed its acceptable. I hope my tutor appreciates my honesty anyway.