angrybears.net - angry blag

2011-11-10T13:51:00.002Z

the blogspot version of this thing DOES NOT EXIST FROM NOW ON.

follow diversion -> angrybears.net/type

ah thank ya

2011-06-04T10:18:00.004+01:00

attempting to work towards final college deadlines of the year.. which all fall on the same day... 2 days to go. autoshutdown possibly imminent.

2011-05-15T13:04:00.007+01:00

ummm... snippet of final and a WIP of the Airside collaboration with my course at LCC. this is called "hey, let's ditch the animation idea and go for... embroidery!!!!!" it's finished. I'm amazed I still have all my fingers.

based around 3 words picked out of a hat - cynical, passionate, crusade - linked using a narrative. and lots of tea. and the entirety of Black Books on 4OD.

2011-04-16T19:58:00.003+01:00

and another one before I forget. a year overdue? me? nooooo. never.

bertie seize the world:
http://www.myspace.com/bertieseizetheworld
http://www.twitter.com/bertiebeats

2011-04-15T22:33:00.014+01:00

NO MORE REALITY NO MORE REALITY NO MORE REALITY

(MORE! http://www.soundcloud.com/no-more-reality)

canon 7D / first edit since like a year ago. neeeeedddd praaaacctiiiccceeeee.
also, look ma, and update and it's not even 6 months since the last one!!!!!11421

2011-04-02T13:21:00.011+01:00

ermm okay I really am not very good at keeping this thing alive.

for what it's worth updates include my still interning at what is now officially Electric Light Studios. finished applying my monkey coding skills to their brand spanking new online existence the other day. also have spent the last two months desperately upgrading my AFX skill levels working on various things with ELS which has gone roughly along the lines of this (the full video is still not on the intertubes hmmm):

2010-12-12T23:12:00.005Z

lynx.
college coursework done. quietest weekend in a very long time.

2010-12-04T00:31:00.007Z

oh my god surely I have better things to do than take photos of film cameras. by the looks of it clearly not. got my grubby little hands on a non-camcorder camera for the first time the other day (oh my freaking shit manual focus. MANUAL. FOCUS.), then was allowed to man one the next day! how on earth did that happen. that is actually pretty damn exciting.

behold what I will now smartly refer to as EX3s - exhibit A - and EX1s - exhibit B and C.

lovely bundle of buttons. thank you wonderful guys at warner! can't wait to get my hands on these again, figure them out a little more...

2010-11-07T22:12:00.006Z

donkeys.

2010-10-28T22:12:00.007+01:00

upgraded my laptop's RAM earlier today, to 3GB. mind you my dearest is almost 3.5 years old now, so this is quite a leap forward. mostly it's so my work placement work (which consists mostly of AFX) goes a little smoother, but it's great to see things running faster in photoshop and indesign and whatnot aswell.

speaking of work placement-
more on that later.
later.

2010-10-09T17:31:00.014+01:00

well college started up again this week, first workshops were on thursday, and I've got an internship with the video production team at Atlantic records so hopefully this blag won't die a horrible death or fall into some sort of coma, which is likes to do a lot.
above is a result of a one hour workshop session based on marrying words, two portraits of virginia woolf and my personal desire to abuse photocopiers.

2010-07-17T13:51:00.005+01:00

MRI scans of various fruit and veg... I believe that is all that needs to be said.

oh and I added another city to the tourist collection - roma, italy

2010-06-07T15:10:00.010+01:00

final major project, hand-in today -

as a failed attempt at ha-ha I put coffee grounds over the dark brown stenciled 'logo' on the cover. so it smells of mmm coffee.

2010-05-26T17:24:00.005+01:00

summary of the first fda year-

as usual, I have learned more in the last year than I had ever anticipated. I finished foundation having learnt more about living in London than anything to do with art, but it has been so different this year.

basically, there're certain basic rules I realised I never knew existed until we were introduced to them continuously throughout the workshops and lectures and projects. what helped was putting everything into practice, trying stuff out for yourself and seeing how you could make it work to suit our own interests in aesthetics. also, seeing what DIDN'T work. I'm learning a lot about presentation and how to improve it through learning more about typography and graphic elements and methods, and it really helps that the tutors know what they're talking about and are enthusiastic about it all (unlike last year). being around my classmates and tutors has really helped me continuously try to open my mind to every possibility.

something I found useful last year, and this year even more so, was the importance of undertaking collaborations and projects outside of the course, especially in ones where the other person/people aren't graphics artists. working with other people is great anyway because you're not stuck in some impenetrable bubble making awful mistake after awful mistake and having no one around to tell you you're fucking it up. sharing ideas, skills and time with people has proven so valuable as a learning experience, and it's introduced me to some amazing people. sometimes my failure at time management has come back to bite me in the arse (6 projects at once NOT SUCH A GREAT IDEA PROBABLY), but something tells me I'll keep doing it anyway because it's genuinely a lot of fun, and the results so far have always been worth it. one of the things I am going to do my best to take away from the experiences is the idea that every project, no matter how small, can and has to be done to the full extent of its potential. why only go somewhere halfway if you can go the WHOLE way? it makes for so many interesting and exciting results, but it's something I feel is missing from a lot of design and general artwork that I've seen around, which is kind of sad, both for the work and the artist(s) involved.

in the future I want to continue working on developing as many skills as possible. I'm not so fond of typography but I've come to realise I have to learn how to apply it regardless, because it really is a key component of design and visual communication as much as all the other elements. just because I don't like it and it's therefore my weakness doesn't mean I can't find a way around it, a way to enjoy it. I also want to continue building experiences and relationships with people through collaborations, whatever subjects they may be.

having said all that, the main focus is still learning to organise my freaking time properly. it's been the biggest weakness and barrier, but I'm happy to say that I think I've really been working on it since last year and have improved somewhat.

thanks for everything guys! it all has been/is/gonna be amazing, I look forward to every new week of challenges and other things that keep my small attention span and general tendency to get bored/lazy well occupied...

2010-05-22T13:41:00.009+01:00

illustrations for olympic terra this timethe project consisted heavily of references to local ecology and its restoration. the plants and animals played a vital role in the bioremediation of contaminated soil. I had to do illustrations of the animal and plant species that would be (re-)introduced to the area during that process. the reason certain plants were picked was because they absorb a certain contaminant. barges would be set up, segregating the soil from the mainland. the plants would grow and in doing so absorb the contaminants. I thought this was a fascinating concept, because the flowers everyone regards as beautiful and pristine and whatnot are literally derived from and consisted of awfully toxic chemicals that the industry left behind on Marshgate Lane. they're beautiful but deadly, etc etc. here are some (a Brassica genus left, alpine penny cress centre, and Leptochloa filiformis right), of about 5 -

as you can see, they're put together out of the photos that we'd taken from the area, which kind of reflects the concept of being put together from the chemical contents of that same soil, but to be honest it was mostly just me digging a style I'd been messing around with. it's a lot of fun, and really quick to throw together, and I think it looks pretty neat. I'm no plant expert but photos of the real plant were used for reference, so hopefully they're actually individually recognisable.

I also did the animals, there were 7 or 8 in total. various birds and aquatic life, done in the same visual style. house sparrow and sand martin, and a common newt, made of soil -

here's a detail shot (aka original file size). black redstart, made up mostly of wood (they live in the trees afterall)

2010-05-19T15:23:00.006+01:00

back in march I started a semi-collaborative project with Victoria Lee, a student at CSM doing her MA in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments. her specialty, and project, was architecture-based, so I was her graphics monkey.

so i thought I'd share the process for some of the aspects... it was definitely a lot of fun, despite some crazy hours and hurdles. I think I haven't learned this much about layout/presentation since I had to learn indesign to a relatively professional level in 2 weeks back in high school. plus, collaborations are great because you work with other people and everyone gets so much feedback from each other, it's incredible. I think I definitely prefer it to working alone.

anyway so this is about the logo. the project itself was called 'Olympic Terra' (later referred to as 'Olympic Terror', ha), and was about contaminated soil in the Stratford area, where the new Olympic park is being built for 2012. at one point I was over at Victoria's and she gave me some soil to muck around with (sounds weird but I'm sure there was a perfectly normal reason), and I ended up just doing some random stuff, too distracted by the television (we don't have one in our flat).

later, we came to talk about logos, and I remembered this stuff I'd done. it fit the idea we had in mind pretty well - natural soil, kind of has a 'handmade' graphic quality to it (because it was, eh), and somehow unintentionally I'd ended up drawing a sort of oval in the middle which would fit perfectly as the stadium that was in the middle of all of this, as well as symbolising the more straight-forward O in 'olympic terra'.

so I used some images and put together a logo base. it was time to pick the font. I'm pretty useless with typography but we came to the conclusion we wanted something eroded and earthy to keep with the key element of soil, while maybe adding a kind of documentational feel, like you'd find on old labels of plants and animals from the 1800s explorations. enter tuer's cardboard.
we also did a few more types to fit the 3 main chapters Victoria had set out during the project - contamination, bioremediation and architecture - so we could visually separate the chapters in the book, whilst keeping a general aesthetic going.

in the end, the logo was used in the book layout and was also laser cut (not really, more like burnt) onto some greyboard to use as the covers for the last 2 presentation books we put together. unfortunately I'm an idiot and forgot to take photos of them, but maybe I'll add them later incase I have the opportunity to see the books again (the deadline just over a week ago, they're gonna be kept till the exhibition in mid-June).

2010-05-12T01:04:00.009+01:00

the latest most awesome news -

my friend robert and I have been working together on a music/visual project (he's the music and I'm all the arty farty + web stuff), currently dubbed Bertie Seize the World, for a few months now, and decided to submit it for the Deutsche Bank Award at the end of April. we got shortlisted, and after the final presentations on monday found out he/we won!

um...!!!!!!!! insanity! total insanity!

above is a screenshot for one of the short films we did, a kind of preview of the music. now that we've won the award, the money can (and will mind you!) actually realise a lot of the stuff that's been planned for the project for this summer/autumn. exciting exciting! though it's yet to fully hit me...

2010-04-20T00:20:00.000+01:00

letterpress! I mentioned the induction some time ago, but it took us a ridiculously long time to finish stuff. it went from idea to idea like a hummingbird on crack in a field of nectar pods. what can I say, working in a group isn't easy especially when everyone seems to have mixed up the schedules, bleh. the process itself is quite awesome, but any hand-process is quite nostalgic nowadays isn't eet.

many thanks to dan for the extra photos!

here is the final thing (edition of 25 I think, we all got 5 each) -
(the text says ESCHATON - The end of the world, end of time, the last judgement, climax of history)

2010-04-09T19:08:00.001+01:00

this is from yonks ago but it's recently become important (in light of the Olympic Terra project). at the very end of january I went to help out at a Thames21 volunteering event, we were cleaning out trash from the Lee Valley River by Three Mills Green. one of the Thames estuaries there is basically the end point for a lot of the junk that's thrown into the river; the stream carries it right into this lovely historical sight and fucks everything up. it's pretty gross, people should be ashamed. a lot of it is obviously driftwood but the amount of plastic, styrofoam, crates, shoes and other more disgusting things is mindblowing.

this is what it looked like after about 4 or 5 hours work from our group of around 9 people. apparently it was something like 20 wheelbarrows and 35 bin bags of trash. and STILL:

however, I went back there when collecting images for the Olympic Terra project (totally unrelated, weird coincidence), and decided to have a look at the area Thames21 had focused on. gobsmacked. isn't it beautiful?

2010-03-20T17:46:00.006Z

final animation for the 'Happy Mondays' college project with design company Bunch. silent because the final projection will be silent, and we had to rely on using only visuals to communicate within 20 seconds. the brief was to create something to affect monday morning Tube commuters.
used this project to learn the basics of After Effects. it's awesome! as straight forward as photoshop, I'm looking forward to messing around with it again.

2010-03-18T23:06:00.001Z

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

pollution in china. amazing. horrifying. you know, one of those days.

2010-03-04T05:40:00.006Z

hmmm I don't think I've posted this here yet. this was my final piece for the term 01 major project (the one based on a specific client, message and target audience we got after rolling some dice). second attempt at stop motion animation ever, was a lot of fun despite 15 hours (80% of which were PURE FRUSTRATION) of work for about 45 seconds of actual animation (logo at the end is also mine of course). enjoy hope you like it.

2010-03-02T04:09:00.007Z

that is all.

2010-02-23T01:56:00.014Z

is it a bird? is it a plane? is it bicycle repairman?

oh, no, wait... just a bird after all.

you can't really see it when you look at it straight on.

2010-02-20T14:52:00.008Z

so now that the illustration project is complete I thought I'd look back and see what was done and maybe reflect a bit.
A) I thought it was great. the fact that we had one week deadlines (with internal deadlines in those) meant that when it came to assessment, there was no last minute crazy the night before trying to finish stuff off. it all flowed quite naturally, no stress involved. and at the end of the four weeks I was even a little surprised how well it all worked out!
B) great opportunity to draw something proper again, I haven't had the chance to do this in a long time for some reason (projects upon projects, wanting to try new techiques and being overwhelmed by all the new things that were being discovered, etc). I felt as I completed each week's assignment that I had learned a lot about editorial illustration and my personal place in it, learned a lot about what I'd done right or wrong generally. personal development, yay.
C) the result was clear cut. there was room for experimentation but in the end there was a definite response we had to come up with. I kind of like that; too much freedom can be a bad thing in my case (I tend to never finish anything...).
D) integrating the blogs into the project was also a very good idea, it meant you could easily see what everyone else had done (for whatever reason). people could share easily and it was all a very open atmosphere.

now for the other side:
A) I wish the crit sessions were structured differently. The final one was pretty interesting (Catherine from Arena came and gave us her thoughts), but other than that it was generally quite... uninspiring. sometimes because there was nothing said, sometimes because everyone was just too brain-numbed waiting for their turn to contribute (the first session especially!). the positive-negative-interesting was a good idea but I really wish we had had small groups of students sharing work with each other and giving each other feedback and most importantly of all getting to know each other a little bit. it felt like people tended to shy away when it went through a third party (eg. the tutor). I think in smaller groups people would feel much more comfortable sharing their thoughts and starting discussions maybe. but hey.
B) thought the diversity of the articles we were given was perhaps kind of... bland. maybe too abstract? All Ears is fine but 4 times in a row it just gets a little boring. we were encouraged to experiment, and maybe it would've made sense to make the articles more 'challenging' (ie. with varying levels of information/content/theme/length etc) as we went along (so that the last one required us to use everything we'd learned already but still teach us something more).

that's all I can think of at the moment. generally it was a very enjoyable and positive experience! and I'm even quite happy with the outcomes, I feel like I actually got somewhere with this, so it's all good... I'm really interested in comparing the assessment outcome now, hopefully we'll get it back soon.

2010-02-15T03:16:00.006Z

amazing amazing amazing.
so much beauty in this. jónsi's new solo work Go is sounding incredible so far, must see it when he comes round to this continent (hopefully). I want to dance and cry and laugh and jump up and down when I hear it... I've loved sigur ros a lot for a while but decided to really look into some of their projects closely and am so surprised that I never actually grasped until now how beautiful it all is and how I feel like he's creating the world like I've personally always wished it would be. where man is aware of his inseperable link with nature... now that may not be what the projects intend but that's cetainly what I get from it all.

a youtube comment made me think (what!? major paradox there)... "Ironic, how some of the most beautiful music makes everyone think about death." it's sort of true isn't it... but maybe it's more to do with the fact that awareness of death means there is a greater awareness of life. I read Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying some months ago and he mentions this a lot, and that our western society is failing to grasp life by neglecting our own death and we are suffering more because of it. I wonder about my own stance in this... I wonder about how much it overwhelms me sometimes that life is so beautiful and it's all around me all the time and I am part of it... I wonder about what paradise is like... can it only be reached through art? I wonder about what it would be like to live with birds and animals in a harmony that does not involve predatory relationships... I say wonder rather than think because I try not to think so much anymore, I cannot be left with myself for too long, everything becomes so egocentric and I find that distracting and weary. and wondering can be like dreaming. and you wake up and the world is so full of life. how fortunate are we...

2010-02-08T00:54:00.010Z

last all ears for this project, #4. sort of timed it... took about 2 hours. was quite entertaining I s'pose.

2010-02-03T01:01:00.008Z

all ears #4 (last one for this project). pretty obvious response I guess, but I've been quite exhausted today so it didn't get any better and I cannot function in the mornings (deadline is at 11:30 tomorrow).

2010-02-01T01:10:00.008Z

all ears final number tres, 72dpi... went for very simple. very simple. decided to include the robot element after all. it's too amusing to just ignore. what a creepy scientist man. well he would be wouldn't he.

2010-01-29T23:11:00.007Z

daniel eatock lecture at LCC! he's so brilliant. his work is definitely some of my favourite around. it's just playfulness and no pretentions, I really love that. someone asked him what the meaning behind his work was, I slapped my forehead. he gave was I think is the right answer though - there's none, there's honestly none. it's just a record of a wonderful way of viewing the world. his work and methods brings a smile to my face.

very refreshing.
gives you hope.
take one with every meal.

2010-01-28T19:24:00.009Z

2 hour stop motion workshop. have a look:

and us chopping away at this masterpiece:

2010-01-27T00:13:00.011Z

this angry blag is practically on fire! ho ho ho.
okay so these are 72dpi roughs for 'all ears' article number three... a dilemma of choice. the two concepts are quite different in the sense that one represents an idea briefly posed by the text and the other a representation of one of the expressed thoughts (just to make it sound really fancy...). SO WHICH ONE SHALL IT BE?

to explain some things, as I left off the notes this time round - in exhibit A (left) there is a slighty indistinguishable blobule in the red circle on the 'stage' front barrier. this is a very rough brain clipart thing, basically indicating: "no brains beyond this point" (cue the static laughter - she is a robot!) the robot part additionally refers to the fact that a group of guys ask her to dance the robot in the middle of her normal repertoire for some extra moneys.

exhibit B, presumably, speaks for itself once you've read the first paragraph of the text (referring to the sudden interest in the 'ethics of professional nudity' when there is a lull in everything else; to hide this fact, it's been upgraded to a science.)

2010-01-25T07:39:00.007Z

at 7:39AM I feel I have every right to be totally knackered but that's what you get for cramming pretty much most of every major deadline into the last 24 hours before it's due. but hey, it's all finished, so yeah. so this'd be the final (at 72dpi) for the second illustration assignment... done in a weird backwards way but I think it turned out surprisingly close to how I'd pictured it. weird huh.

2010-01-23T16:03:00.008Z

letterpress workshop, 1/4 (introduction).

crazy to think this is how everything was printed before the introduction of things like mac in 1984. I'd go mad after about a day of that kind of work probably. but it's very exciting in smaller doses.

2010-01-20T04:57:00.005Z

rough for all ears second article. wrote down key ideas of it, going to go for the burning car and pound signs in the end after having a brief talk about it with my tutor. might do it as a linocut...

2010-01-18T01:02:00.009Z

final thing for the first project... 72dpi version. somewhat small. a little bit different from my rough I think (oh by the way I added some of the other sketches. it felt... useful... to do so).
this is pretty much the first college work I was genuinely enthusiastic about putting together (though that might be because work done was proportional to amount of cookies I was rewarded with). almost as enthusiastic as with my own stuff (which involves no cookies). I am so happy about that. it doesn't feel as impersonal, doesn't feel like I've churned it out just for the sake of an assignment, largely evidenced by the fact that I finished it EARLY. that was a big problem in foundation last year, couldn't connect to the projects and therefore didn't care for the result... was worried it'd be the same this year, but so far, not really. let's hope that continues.
but anywho. time off until 6pm tomorrow. woohoo!

2010-01-13T03:02:00.010Z

some of the work for the rough draft of the new editorial illustration project, based on a column by Michael Holden done for the Guardian - All Ears. hard to get an image out of the text that doesn't end up relatively 'generic', or sees the text in a new light or whatever. but maybe that's not the point. can't continue trying to squeeze out something when it's probably not even there. must accept article for what it is!

final-ish rough draft is probably the one on the top right. morose man will probably be broken up a bit when it comes to detail. I like the idea that he's "in fucking bits". faces need more... character? right now they're just based on upside down and rightside up half-circles...

2010-01-07T22:51:00.004Z

Białowieża Forest, one of the last remaining old growth forests in Europe, and the biggest one, located on the border of Poland and Belarus. some trees there are over 500 years old... some over 900. the rare wisent, which are basically eurasian bison, live there, and generally this is the most biodiverse area in the whole of Europe. apparently the Eastern Europe used to be covered in a forest like it in the not-so-distant past. even further back it used to stretch to Britain.
according to 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman, this is also what the whole of Europe will look like in roughly 900 years if humans where to disappear completely tomorrow.

doesn't it look incredible? so undisturbed. how amazing would it be to visit, or live in. it's a stable National Park at the moment, actually expanding slightly as the nearby villages are being abandoned for cities. I wonder if we'll ever manage to bring things like this back.

2009-12-08T02:39:00.006Z

the time has come. stay informed:

COP 15, UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen 2009

here's to some responsible decision-making and sensible policies over the next 10 days.

2009-12-03T03:11:00.020Z

meet the star of what I'm attempting to do... it's the 1960s baby and the baby boomers are carelessly having a good old drug-induced time. 'the good old days'. the riots, the radical hippies, the panic, the vomit.. (ahem, sorry, couldn't help it)... and all the trash they left behind. except now ladies and gentlemen it's time to make space for the kids... literally. the recycling rate in the UK is a measly 35% of all waste. the landfills are slowly choking the land. we're running out of space to dump our ridiculous amount of waste into.

it's impossible to stop the current consumption craze but the least people can do is recycle. there are absolutely no excuses left, no reason why anyone shouldn't. it's common friggin' sense.

(<< i love the unintentional peace sign in its middle)

2009-11-30T01:40:00.011Z

new work by Mr. Donwood...

...who is stunning and never fails to inspire me, to remind me that I need to be more productive, etc. etc. I had the luck of meeting him and chatting for a bit last january (probably said lots of incoherent gibberish, ack), he's pretty hilarious in a... slightly weird way. something that, to me, is really special about his work is that somehow it manages to convey a very very clear atmosphere, almost emotion. I get this pretty rarely from visual art (not including photography). this topic has been swimming around my brain a lot recently... about how visual art is great for expressing emotion, but hard to use to convey it. sure, you can convey a message, but it's absolutely not the same thing. music and motion graphics are so much more direct. music especially seriously dominates most people's and cultures' emotional lives it seems. yeah, there are images which strike us, but to me it seems that kind of impact is rare. but nearly every piece of music manages to do it. read a book by Oliver Sacks (Musicophilia) where he talks about this strange power of music... it's a shame that it's difficult to really affect someone's emotional life with a painting... most visual art is now used for filling white empty wallspace. having realised this I'm really starting to get more and more interested in motion graphics and in particular lighting (best example of how lighting creates emotion is probably here), as well as how they all relate to each other. there is more to say but I'll leave it for another day.

been mucking about with the 100 collage challenge project... I do not like the fact that I need to be some/most of the way through any project before I realise I've got a better idea, or a better way of doing it, or that I'm bored, or that it's boring - and all this after supposedly thinking I had something I'd enjoy till the end. every time! every. time. and sometimes again and again. not that I'm complaining, the second/third/tenth attempt always feels better, but it means I find it hard to finish anything. thank god for deadlines, I serpaws.
so tomorrow it's off to Oxfam. will it work?

2009-11-28T01:22:00.010Z

fun! working on an assignment! can't be! things starting to make sense!

ladela..

2009-11-25T23:59:00.010Z

How to be an eco-designer, or, a better title by Nat Hunter (of the brilliant Airside) - How to be a 21st century designer. part of the Green festival happening @ UAL throughout november. (great publicity, guys. I found out about it completely by accident.)
2 hour lecture in Davies Street today... very informative. diversity amongst speakers kind of each representing a different aspect of industrial creativity. very refreshing. Guy Robinson's (of Sprout) presentation was probably most poignant - he had a section of current emissions facts and the general whatnot. it's been a while since I updated myself on the figures, and he shared a lot of useful links, those of which I wrote down I shall pass on. the URLs are self-evident in terms of content.

www.redesigndesign.org
www.carbonfootprintofnations.com
www.transitiontowns.org
www.biothinking.com

"WASTE IS A DESIGN FLAW"

2009-11-23T00:49:00.012Z

decided to try out a new way of... er... sketchbook? just starting to put it together...

so behold! the... aptly named.... sketchwall?
well basically instead of putting it into a closed book I'll put it up on the wall (not really sure what 'it' is though). novel ground here for me... the paper's there so our landlady doesn't rip my head off - blue tac, as I've learned from experience, tends to leave awful greasy marks on white painted walls that DON'T EVER COME OFF.
you see, I can close a book, chuck it behind the couch till another day. the consequence of which is forgetting about it, and then doing the project at 4am the day it's due. but I cannot, no matter how hard I try, close a wall. and I see it very regularly as it's in my studio/media/work room (where the laptop is...). fortunately my bedroom is next door so I don't have to try and fall asleep to this overbearing reminder of 'more work less lazy'.
so fascistic wall stays in 'office'. comfortable pillows, blankets and refreshing imagery stays in bedroom.
let's see what happens.

2009-11-13T02:03:00.015Z

pressure group / become greener / recently retired professionals

seems simple enough, turns out it's not that easy trying to target that age group, as its age is pretty much scattered between 45 and death. and I'm sure most elder members of society are somewhat sensitive when it comes to mentioning the latter. research has shown me that in the UK few seem interested in things outside of a) gardening, b) reading sunday papers, c) walking in the outdoors, d) watching daytime TV and perhaps e) ranting about 'kids these days'.

looked into a lot of environmental pressure groups... nothing much new there, as I'm an avid follower of groups like Friends of the Earth anyway... But its interesting to put into context? decided to start by putting together my own client, an environmental pressure group - Grassroots - just for the fun of it. logos. urg... the joy of seemingly pointless subtleties...

2009-11-11T01:45:00.006Z

whatever, for now I'll keep this thing on blogger after all. tried to put together a .php-based blog but that crashed and burned miserably as well and at least this layout works for now.

life-size blue whale

absolutely beautiful... been watching the Life series on BBC, highly highly recommended. I'll never get tired of nature documentaries (or documentaries in general). stunning cinematography in them these days what with the HD settings and high frame rates.
Just nowadays it makes me kind of both happy but really devastated seeing such beautiful creatures because most of them are being eradicated, biodiversity is falling and habitat loss is killing off a lot of creatures we haven't even discovered yet.

I had a brief discussion with a friend the other day about how Western culture, because of 2000 years of Christian upbringing and consequent focus on human nature, has completely eradicated a genuine appreciation for things outside of the human lifecycle and human interaction it seems. A lot of other widely-distributed cultures, like most Eastern, African, and Native American religion, and indeed paganism in europe before Christianity began to dominate, puts the relationship between man and nature pretty much in the centre. what kind of world would we live in had Christianity not been so dominant (and dare I say totally repressive for nearly 1900 years)? would we have learned to truly appreciate the value of our surroundings? food for thought..

2009-11-07T01:17:00.005Z

50 Creative WWF Campaigns That Make You Think Twice

was browsing through some old-ish bookmarks today.

2009-11-05T14:10:00.012Z

finally obtained a proper internet connection at home, after two months of being an e-hobo...

Chris Jordan's new series: 'Midway - Message From the Gyre'

chris jordan's stuff has always been pretty powerful, mostly dealing with our negative environmental impact and the amount of stuff we thoughtlessly consume. plastic, no matter how useful, has become one of the biggest problems, precicely because it sticks around for so long especially as litter. birds and marine mammals are frequently found with stomachs full of plastic bags and bottle tops... it's beyond tragic.
if you haven't yet, please check out his work. it'll really make you think...

Take Your Top Off is something I picked up in college the other day... I don't think they've fully launched everything yet but their little flyer gives enough insight into the problem, and what you can do to stop ocean life choking on plastic.

2009-07-09T02:00:00.007+01:00

"I do not think therefore I am a moustache."

JP Sartre, 'Nausea'.

2009-05-29T21:29:00.007+01:00

haha oh shit look what I did...

http://twitter.com/kooshinni

please blame getting mindlessly lost on the intertubes at 4AM and thinking I should probably try and keep up with the future or something. erm. my life really isn't remotely worth any notice so most toots will probably be mentions of ULTRA SPIFFING things I trip over on the 'net.

...is the past tense of 'tweeted' actually 'twat'? genius.

ps. I think it's kind of pathetically funny how every few weeks the portfolio layout changes because I'm still looking for something that works... at least a little bit... hmm...

2009-05-12T20:45:00.003+01:00

went to see Andrew Bird at Shepherd's Bush Empire last night, and it has totally rekindled my love for him. that man is more of a genius than I first thought he was. really. so here we go.

maaaagical. and that's only a fraction of it all.

2009-05-05T00:17:00.003+01:00

5 differences
and
6 differences

I loved the first one, only just found out he made a sequel. I wish I had enough patience to learn Flash coding.

2009-04-29T20:28:00.004+01:00

I like videos.

2009-04-08T17:22:00.005+01:00

temporarily bored. thus, moar (sensible?) YouTube madness. Don Hertzfeldt is one of my favourite people ever.

The Animation Show:

Rejected:

let's all go to the lobbyyy...

2009-03-26T01:10:00.007Z

I love The Onion.

but big thanks to Alex for pointing out this gem.. though as well as being absolutely hilarious it's actually vaguely terrifying, with a strange sensation that there's an airport I've come to know very well recently which is all too strikingly similar (that's right, H)

2009-03-19T01:11:00.006Z

"What is this final state of the universe? Zero isn't a world like our world, where things exist separate from one another. Zero is the permanent background, a larger world that exists behind the finite world we experience. Zero is like a whole pie that can be cut into infinitely many different slices, yet is always whole. Zero is timelessness, it is the ultimate top-down viewpoint or omnipresent perspective. In the same way the mathematical zero can be seen as the combination or sum of all the positive real numbers and all the negative real numbers, the cosmological zero in our future is the sum of all possible matter universes combined with all possible anti-matter universes. This final state of our universe is the quantum superposition of all universes of the multiverse. It is a sum of all life, all knowledge, all information, all that we were, are, and become. It is the one great infinite sum, the implicate whole, the ultimate singularity, which is why it is so much larger than the past, infinitely expanded, stretching infinitely in all directions. The physically real zero in our future is literally everything forever."

sometimes when I'm feeling uninspired and dull I come back to this page to promptly blow my brains up and remember that all around me there is something that I can't interact with but am nevertheless part of that is beyond incredible. and it fills me with awe. and everything is okay.

http://www.everythingforever.com

2009-03-14T02:07:00.005Z

(better watch it straight on vimeo + full screen: larger version)

how gorgeous. though it does have a rather Sony Bravia ad feel to it.

2009-03-05T19:42:00.006Z

my new home as of September '09.
the moment I walked into this building nearly two years ago, I fell in love and knew I was going to do everything within my ability to study here. and now I will be. it's such a relief, as I was worried I was doing something horribly wrong, but they accepted me for both of the courses I applied to with very positive feedback. I've picked the offer I'm accepting, and now just have to pass my Foundation year in order to ensure my place. it's incredibly exciting.

2009-02-25T01:05:00.012Z

for some reason a commonly recurring dream theme of mine is celestial bodies... and when they show up, it stops everything else and is magnificent beyond words.

last night I was in a hotel, going down on the lift to walk the dog at 6AM. when I walked out, my parents were there, and I could see the moon in the distance, very low. but when I turned around again, the moon was filling the sky, and you could see the 'sunrise' in terms of how the shadows on it started moving when they passed a certain point.. like time lapse. but then I turn around because somehow I know sunrise here (where ever 'here' was) is incredible. and what I see is absolutely incredible... first a light, and then a huge, bright blue glowing sun that completely fills the sky. you could see how its surface was moving, how the giant solar flares rose up, how everything was shifting and moving and glowing and suddenly you realised that this huge fucking thing was, infact, just a huge nuclear reaction and you understood it. like this, only an unimaginable neon blue... kind of ala my sloppy photoshoppe above...
the sound that accompanied the moment was amazing... just imagine a darkened sky with a bright blue inferno with all these beautiful flares and loud bass sounds are reverberating all around you in this amazing pattern. I remember saying "they do like to show off the sound system every time...". then after the sun rotated past us, the next 'sun' showed up (guess this solar system wasn't like ours) and although it was slightly less impressive, I remember being amazed by just how close it was and how it was a kind of dark red with amazing, glowing golden cracks all over the surface.
...yes, I get beamed imagery, amongst other things, from distant solar systems by extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms, while my brain explodes trying to grasp things like this. other imagery includes a bright cracked purple sun above a field of burning coal and sudden images of a huge moon surrounded by slowly floating giant satellites around you.

I want to go back into the mountains, dreams there take on a whole new level of 'vivid but fucked up'. it's been two years since my last visit.

2009-02-18T12:25:00.004Z

take a few minutes to look up every now and then...
http://www.theskyinmotion.com/

2009-02-13T15:28:00.007Z

now to pimp the work of possibly my favourite animator group ever, Shynola.

www.shynola.com

happy Friday the 13th.
oh and happy 1234567890 day

2009-02-12T03:07:00.003Z

my brains have melted out of my ears and onto the carpet due to the obscene amount of college work I've had to do in the past few days
so I'll take this and possibly other opportunities of brief freedom at some ungodly hour in the early morning on a college night to share some good ole youtubings or something as similarly mindless

this guy graduated from LCC recently...
I love LCC more than digestives coated in nutella (it's the only way you can eat them, seriously).

2009-01-15T01:08:00.007Z

Today I remembered mashups.
And it was the end of any work I'd planned on doing.
Ended up listening to probably over 50.
Here's a list of some of the best, in terms of how strange yet awesome the combinations/results were.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kfadLhw14l8 (Queen vs. OutKast)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ8Rdc3tVFA (Coldplay vs. Korn)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UW8pWb74Kt4 (Green Day vs. Eminem)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jzG5Pkj08QU (Lou Bega vs. Eminem)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3qiH-6iC2Yc (Kanye West vs. Radiohead)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5brPwTWP8 (Chocolate Rain vs. Radiohead)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XSTH-9h4tN8 (Beatles vs. Shaggy)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VNWCclOqUHw (Prodigy vs. White Stripes)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SW0ulJ5QCcw (Aphex Twin vs. Bright Eyes)

If you forget the original tunes, some of these are really quite something.

2009-01-03T02:45:00.008Z

snow is silence
just 4'33''
it's lovely

2008-08-06T01:45:00.001+01:00

sus-tain

–verb (used with object)
1. to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure.
2. to bear (a burden, charge, etc.).
3. to undergo, experience, or suffer (injury, loss, etc.); endure without giving way or yielding.
4. to keep (a person, the mind, the spirits, etc.) from giving way, as under trial or affliction.
5. to keep up or keep going, as an action or process: to sustain a conversation.
6. to supply with food, drink, and other necessities of life.
7. to provide for (an institution or the like) by furnishing means or funds.
8. to support (a cause or the like) by aid or approval.
9. to uphold as valid, just, or correct, as a claim or the person making it: The judge sustained the lawyer's objection.
10. to confirm or corroborate, as a statement: Further investigation sustained my suspicions.