Christmas Morning, 2010

Happy Christmas! This was this morning in Carrigtwohill at my parents house, It's so peaceful here. Commence the day of many naps, lots of food, lots of wine, intermittent boredom!

Where's Me Pencil?

New blog action at wheresmepencil.blogspot.com. Initiated by the unbelievably talented Tomás, myself and five other friends are contributing to it weekly, i'm on a Tuesday, the day after Tomás, talk about being shown up! So far i've just posted stuff from my life drawing class. I'm finding it really interesting to see what everyone else posts, there's a great mix of styles / approaches. Above is the latest, very beautiful, offering from Tomás.

It's only in it's second week, feel free to stroll over and check it out.

[r]evolution of a sun album cover mock-up

So I had some time on my hands and put together this for the upcoming [r]ev album, they're getting Con Cremin (amazing artist!) to do the actual cover, so really this was just an exercise for myself, the design for it was hanging around in my head for a while, so I said i'd get it out!

The lines represent solar / heat flares, they were created using the blend tool in Illustrator, very handy! Tutorial here, with really annoying ads that they make you sit through (grrr... I actually hate video tutorials, give me text anyday). The "Hell" text is hand drawn, based on patches the band used to have (recreated patch image below), and the "revolution of a sun" text is a free font ("existence") found on dafont.com,



Can't wait to see the actual album cover! Con's stuff is unreal.

Tops

So more messing with the fabric markers, here's a sample of tops I did for the Rebel County Market (next Sunday!) Eventually I want to sort out an online shop, here's where I am at the moment though!

Cintiq Messing!

So I was at my friend Will's house the other day, and (finally!) had a go off his Cintiq, it's UNREAL! My new #1 most-wanted object of desire.

Here's our collaborative masterpiece! Haha, it reminds me of dodgy college projects & lots of messing!

Crane Fascination - Rotterdam 2010

I was in Rotterdam last week for another MEP European project meeting with the NMCI. My colleagues in the NMCI are always great company, full of interesting stories about life at sea!

After the meeting was over we went on a short boattrip around the port, which is HUGE! 3rd biggest in the world apparently, there was all this huge machinery and massive, complicated cranes. They looked amazing! Like huge steel dinosaurs, or something from a George Lucas film, deadly!

More over on my flickr

Cork Accommodation Site

I feel like i've been neglecting this blog the last few weeks, i've been tearing busy though, loads going on! Projects ending / beginning, trip to Rotterdam etc

One project that ended was the Cork Accommodation site. It's finally live, wohoo! Felt good to get it out, read more of the background here on my website.

I've a few illustration jobs on the horizon at the moment, more about them when they get sorted....

SLOOP2Desc Interim Meeting / Slovenia 2010

I attended the SLOOP2Desc interim meeting in Ljubljana (finally learned how to spell that!) Slovenia last week. It is a EU Leonardo sponsored knowledge transfer project aimed at giving teachers new skills in development of web2.0 learning resources.

We have LOADS of work to do as it is approaching the interim report mark, DEIS is the evaluator in the project so i'll be writing the evaluation report of the project so far over the next few weeks.

Ljubljana is lovely! Beautiful city, very friendly people. It was bizarre there at night time, the streets were deserted, the architecture in the centre of town is really elaborate and ornate, so it was like wandering around in some empty, overblown, moonlit stage set. I also visited the Castle while I was there, it's been redesigned and is now a really interesting piece of modern architecture, coolest castle i've ever visited! Anyway, here are a few photos, more over on my flickr.

Messing with a Logo

So i'm always trying to settle on a logo i'm happy with, here are the latest doodles, based strongly on the RGB / digital design theme of my website. These are all stylised "m"s, I prefer the tall 3 strokes one, there's something slightly architectural about it. My boyfriend pointed out that it also looks quite facist, mwahaha... tremble before me!

In other news, i'm discovering some really dodge Tori Amos songs on hype machine as we speak.... "cool on your island" ?! -- abort abort!!

David O' Reilly - Please Say Something

This BLOWS MY MIND. Seriously, it's incredible, the most moving piece of animation i've seen in ages, perhaps years, perhaps ever! I saw it yesterday for the first time and it blew me away. I love the audio in it, the graphic style of it, the beautiful work with colour and b&w sets and the emotion and heartbreak of it all. I'm going to have to watch ALL the David O' Reilly animations now, in the hope that they're all this beautiful!

Delicate Heart

Here is the final version of the "delicate heart" illustration (words by my brother). It looks totally different to how I first imagined it, always interesting when that happens!

My heart is delicate

Like snow falling,
on warm ground

This feeling,
My heart like
snow,

Is delicate,

My little brother, as well as being a maths & physics genius (boast much?!) also writes poems, he lets me read them some times and this particular one really stuck in my head, i'm working up an illustration around it, so far it's starting to look way different than I had imagined! I'm doing a lot of experimentation with scanning and photographing different materials, as well as a lot of drawing & redrawing the heart.

Lisbon, Elvin Meeting

Last week myself and a colleague, Shane Cronin traveled to Lisbon to attend the third ELVIN (European Languages Virtual Network) project meeting. ELVIN is a European Union (EU) Lifelong Learning Programme Project aimed at creating an informal social network to support and facilitate language learning.

DEIS has developed an online social network which will be opened up for piloting on the 1st of November (stay tuned for a link!). This meeting concentrated on developing pilot action plans for the upcoming usability tests.

In the meantime myself & Shane got to enjoy Lisbon, it's a fantastic city! It reminded me of an Edinburgh in the sun, it's very old with layers and layers of old streets and arches, quite the labyrinth! One of the highlights was spotting the Blu and Os Gemeos murals I blogged about a while back. So exciting to see them in real life! I'd love to know the process behind doing something like that. The black silhouette photo above is on the building next to the Blu and Os one. It's very striking as it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still under development. Here's a few photos from the weekend. More on my flickr.

Hair Illo, The Cork News

Check it out! I'm delighted, The Cork News (purveyors of fine local news and lifestyle) have published my hair illustration from a while back. Pick up the issue around town over the next week, loads of great stuff in there.

Culture night Cork, Camden Palace, The Dog Project

It was Culture night in Cork last Friday, i'd heard a bit about it from twitter and facebook but hadn't really planned on going along, until Camden Palace sent out an invite on facebook, their event looked great (as usual!). Myself and a friend (Shell) decided to go along. The timetable went something like this:

Time table for events:

DOWNSTAIRS
6pm Introduction to Hacker Space Cork
8pm Capoeira performance
4-10pm Open studios
4-10pm Circus Sqare open for all with introductions to workshops
4-10pm Electric Underground Showcasce
For details check http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=149645435074539&ref=ts
4-10pm Make your own button badges!

UPSTAIRS
4-10pm Dogs Dogs Dogs.An exhibition of the Dog project
6-7pm Free contemporary dance class with Inma Moya Pavon
7-7.20pm Poetry performance by Nuala Leonard
7.20-8pm Shape Note Singers talk and performance
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000933733395&ref=profile#!/pages/Shape-note/108698082487372?ref=ts
8-10pm A Public sharing of the Re:Birth Project
Check out www.therebirthproject.com

ALL DAY CAFE OPEN WITH YUM EASTERN EUROPEAN FOOD

I managed to catch some of the Electric Underground showcase (unreal! Photo above), re:birth and the Dog Project (photos above plus youtube video). I love the Dog Project, it's a simple idea, well executed, which never fails to bring smiles to faces! There's more info on the Dog Project on Facebook. I missed the Shape Note singers, who I heard were amazing, all in all another lovely evening in Camden Palace.

Myself and Shell also managed to hit up the Backwater Gallery, the English Market, the Crawford Gallery, Basement Space and the ESB substation that night. I was really inspired by the number of interesting and accessible events on around the city, I don't know if it's a result of a possible sliver lining to the recession but there seems to be a more and more diverse range of arts and music based events happening around town, all for free, perhaps these days people have more of their time to give. Whatever it is, it's definitely making our city a richer place to live!

Margaret Durow

I've been meaning to blog about Margaret Durow's photography ever since she was featured on my friend Lucia's blog.

Margaret Durow's photos are so beautiful, the really take my breath away, she's recently updated her site so you can check her out there and on her flickr.

More MWM

A while back I blogged about a number of deadly murals I came across on the web (not in real life, unfortunately!).

This music video based on MWM's murals is now doing the rounds online, it's gives a nice insight into the process behind huge undertakings such as these, as well as also being a very nice piece of stop-motion animation. I love watching the murals grow over the walls!

Read and see more here, at buzz-beast.com.

Fabric Markers = New Hoodie!

I bought fabric markers at Vibes and Scribes a few weeks ago and am only just getting around to using them, fixing up this old hoodie, wohoo!

PS, That lovely countryside is the view from my family home in Carrigtwohill, relaxation station!

Slow Motion Heroes

This is an illustration i've been working on for Cork band, Slow Motion Heroes. It's meant to be slightly retro sci-fi, I think it's slightly influenced by Mad Men, which i've been watching loads of and I LOVE! I went for retro due to the bands slightly nostalgic tone, and sci-fi cos "Slow Motion Heroes" made me think of the moon landing, again possibly an influence from Mad Men! I had a pretty solid idea for what kind of font I wanted to use so I drew one myself for it.

God I just noticed there, how many times can I say "slightly" in the one post?!

Other work news, we made our Elvin Beta V3.0 release today, wohoo!

Atomic 3

So as I mentioned recently i've been trying to develop an illustrative style for myself. This latest idea for an illustration (based on Blondie's Atomic) has already had one spin. Here's the second, it's totally different to the first, though based on the same drawings, I guess it's brash & loud like the first one, but in a totally different way! The type is all hand-drawn here as well, as if you couldn't tell!

Tomorrow's going to be an INSANELY busy day at work as we polish up the AIB animation to get it out to the client for Friday, so this has been nice to clear my head for the evening.

MAI Animation Screenshots

Just finished a first pass of the MAI animation, there's a lot of camera movement in the animation which is nice, gives it some fluidity. Have to find a backing track now, aargh! It takes ages to go through the stock music sites.

Atomic 2

Am crazy busy at the moment with MAI / Elvin / AIB. Just taking a quick break to post this image of the latest incarnation of "Your hair is beautiful". I had fun experimenting with hand-drawn type, the best kind i'm starting to think!

I'm also working on another watercolour version, as I mentioned previously i'm trying to work towards nailing down a style, it's hard because there are so many different styles I love! I think I might have to settle for having two styles... one of which is this colourful, playful style.

Now back to work!

Storyboards - MAI

Storyboard samples from MAI animations i'm working on at the moment. It's mad colourful (as you can see!) because the logo is so colourful, and the software itself is all colour coded. Parts of it are quite similar in style to the Sigtec animations I did last year (eg, the industry icons), this is because they are actually partner companies. This first one should be finished by the end of the week, HOPEFULLY!

Am simultaneously managing the development of an animation for AIB and the social networking project we have at the moment, so a lot of juggling!

Atomic

I want to produce a series of illustrations based on song lyrics. The first one being "Your hair is beautiful" from Blondie's Atomic (I love that band!). This drawing is based on a photograph, i've still a good bit from the finish line, i'm really trying to discover / develop my own style with these.

JR - AMAZING

After an INSANELY busy day in work, working on the Elvin Elgg-based social networking platform for learning. Soooo much to do! All interesting though.

For some quick relief, I had a look at some of JR's latest work in Kenya, I LOVE his work, it's awe-inspiring stuff. These images are some of his most famous, from the favelas in Rio and the Kibera slums in Kenya. He highlights the human faces (literally!) behind the social issues we often conveniently choose to ignore and he does it in a positive, humanist way, LOVE IT!