The Creative License

Cardiff skyline as seen from on top of the fort inside Cardiff Castle.

At the beginning of last term I was in a creative slump. It was when I was in the library waiting for a friend, mindlessly reading the spines of books on the 'creative' shelf when I came across an bright yellow spine that proclaimed in design-messy writing, 'The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist you Truly Are'.

The author, Danny Gregory, suggests keeping an illustrated journal to celebrate your day-to-day life and to encourage seeing the beauty in everything. He puts forward the idea of not just drawing 'an apple' or 'the door', but drawing YOUR apple and YOUR door. No other apple/door will look as this one does in this moment - their individuality makes them special and worthy of being drawn and being art.

Journal page from the 15th October. Drawn at Cardiff Castle.

Since starting the book, I have been doing exactly as it suggests and keeping an illustrated journal. Not only that but doing it in pen as well. Pen is not my medium of choice (I'm a graphite-and-charcoal kinda girl) but despite my preconceptions about drawing in pen and the terror of making mistakes that can't be erased, it's actually incredibly liberating. With other media, you can rub out mistakes as often as need be, striving towards 'perfection'. With pen, every mistake stays and there is no going back and the drawing then has intrinsic energy - the lack of perfection gives it life!

The fort inside Cardiff Castle. 

I really recommend the book 'The Creative License' to everyone. You can buy it here on Amazon. Also check out Danny Gregory's blog here. It's very inspirational!

Resolutions

This December was nightmarishly busy through a combination of coursework, January deadlines, Christmas and all the personal projects I've been up to. In all of that, I slacked off doing my daily journal.  At first, losing this extra 'job' every day seemed to reduce my stress levels but I have realised now that long term I am so much less stressed when I am doing my journal. As such, my new year's resolution is to start journaling again, every day. Here's some of my last journal entries from this year.

This last image was done with grayscale Copic markers. I'll be using them much more in this new year!

I hope you all had a very happy new year! 

Skwigly: Online Animation Magazine

As some of you may know, I was asked by the lovely Ben Mitchell (Skwigly-man, animator and author of the fantastic graphic novel Throat) to make an 'Un-Advent' banner for the Skwigly site just for the 27th. Here it is! You can also check it out on the Skwigly site. Those of you who have been following my blog will know that I don't normally promote things but today will be an exception; you really need to hear about Skwigly!

For those of you unfamiliar with Skwigly, it's an online magazine for animators; "We love animation; love seeing animation, hearing about animation, talking about animation and showcasing animation." Based in the UK, it covers news, interviews, reviews, podcasts, videos, tutorials and on top of all that has a very strong community. On Mondays, promote your work using the tag #skwiglyselfpromotions and join in on Tuesdays with 'Chatty Tuesdays' at 9pm GMT; register to meet and chat with other animators!

This has been a great year for Skwigly, with December as the icing on the proverbial cake! They've been running an advent calendar and advent animation showcase; I've discovered so many great animators and animations this month that I'd never heard of before! Watch their interview with Joanna Quinn about the making of the BAF trailer and check out their latest podcast, featuring:

• Richard Williams; animation legend of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and 'The Animator’s Survival Kit' fame.
• Ian Mackinnon and Peter Saunders; recent recipients of the BAF Lifetime Achievement Award and craftsmen behind the puppetry of 'The Corpse Bride', 'Frankenweenie' and 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'.
• Animation historian, author and Cartoon Brew co-founder Jerry Beck, currently running Cartoon Research and Animation Scoop.
• Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, directors of Disney’s latest holiday feature 'Frozen'.

Well that's enough pushing from me. Please go check out Skwigly and follow them on Facebook and  Twitter for all the latest! I'll leave you in peace now with another idea I had for the banner.

Advent Lion

Another in my series of drawings based on advent chocolates. He's the king of the table! He's also the first drawing I've finished with my shiny new graphics tablet!

Almost Christmas!

Holiday Snowmen

Another painting for you all based on two advent chocolates that I've had - two snowmen with brooms. A little bit more relevant this time!

Just like these snowmen, I hope you all have a happy Christmas with your friends and families!

Almost Christmas!

My advent calendar chocolates this year have really bizarre images on them, so I decided I'd do some paintings based on them! On the 2nd December, my calendar chocolate showed a fish, not a fish as in the Christian symbol, I'm talking a realistic fish! This painting is my attempt to make a fish relevant to christmas and I hope you like it!

On Thursday afternoon, Jake (one of the lovely 3rd years) generously gave us a flash tutorial so that over the Christmas break we can practice our flash character animation. Hopefully you'll be seeing some of that work in weeks to come.

Illustrator Backgrounds

A follow-up from last week's Photoshop backgrounds, this week was the first time I've ever created anything other than graphics and text in Adobe Illustrator and I'm pretty pleased with the result! I am really falling in love with making backgrounds!

I'm 99% sure that my major project this year will be a two-minute film about a mouse in a clockmaker's shop and so I used this project as an experiment in style for that film. Below is the background with an incredibly quickly-made mouse to give you an idea of the 'mouse-eye' perspective that I'll be using.