New artwork, shock, horror!

Rejoice!! Some new artwork. As previously explained on this blog, my original Wacom graphics tablet pen was on its last legs and had been for a long time. It finally succumb to death and so a pursuit for a new one beckoned. And here are the fruits of my pursuit.

The first piece is experimental, depicting the fight between Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul on Tatooine from The Phantom Menace. My original plan was to have them in the far background but it just didn't work. So I brought them into the foreground dramtically.

This second piece is all to do with my Highlander high concept. When I say Highlander, I am referring to the films of which I'm a huge fan of. My idea is that the Immortals are fallen Angels, they just can't remember. Now if I were to rewrite Highlander I would never emphasis this fact. It would be very much in the background, transparent and merely hinted at for the eagle eyed. The start of the film would show this scene, only the camera would be falling through the sky and the Angel would only be seen in a couple of frames and barely visible. Basically you'd have to wait for the DVD to come out and do a frame-by-frame scan to see it (I've put a lot of thought into this). I just love film engimas like Blade Runner and that's what I would have done if I was writing this film. But sadly I'm not but I can still think about it at least.
Check them out properly at www.mattskilton.co.uk

Hopefully my next update wont be too far away.

Live Journal, aka livejournal, aka lj

Just a quick note to say that I am now indeed posting stuff on livejournal and my jounral can be found here:

http://mattsmudge.livejournal.com/

This blog shall therefore return to being used as an output for my artwork, of which I hope to add two new pieces to very, very soon. So please keep checking this bog, but for my intimate news then check out my lj.

Cool man!

At last!!!!

I’ve only gone and done it!! I’ve only gone and finally bought a Wacom pen!!!! After losing out on an auction on ebay for £28, I feel into a lull of depression. I then forgot to bid on another ebay auction. But to my amazement, another one came up at a ‘Buy Me Now’ price of just £20. And it came with the 4D mouse thrown in. So I snapped it up and it arrived this week and it feels like it’s been a revelation. I can’t believe that I put up with my broken one for so long. So this is great news.

To continue the trend, I wasn’t quite successful with my job application the other week but the actual interview went very well, so well in fact that something else is being planned for me which is both exciting and a relief as it means I should remain employed for a bit longer at least (just been very distracted by a leggy women walking past my house with very orange legs).

I also completely failed to talk about my great theatre experience last month, in which I went to see the Danny Boyle directed Frankenstein at the National theatre. It was blooming amazing!! I’m only 29 (yes, ONLY) but it’s going to be very hard to find something that’ll satisfy me as much as that did. However, if anyone/thing can do it, then it could well be the Terry Gilliam directed opera The Damnation of Faust, which I’m seeing next Friday and has been receiving right good reviews. And best of all the day before that I’m seeing the amuzing Brit Electropunk band Robots in Disguise (which doesn’t have anything to do with Michael Bay, Roast Beef or Megan Fox, even though she’s not even in the third travesty that will greet us in July). (Sorry, just been distracted, again, by someone who works at my cinema and lives near me who’s just walked past my house with a big, heavy coat on, all zipped up and with the hood on despite it being bright and warm outside). Anyway, can’t wait for both and I shall blog my opinions after next week.

Then in June I’m off to the Sud de Francais!! This will be good, oh-yes!

I’m also considering moving my blog to a livejournal account too. This requires me to investigate exactly what livejournal has to offer me but I guess there’ll be no harm in using both, certainly initially, or maybe return this one as an output for my artwork which was its original intension.

Okay, final bit of news; I may have had an idea for my 30^th Birthday bash in August. More to be revealed soon and I’ve now gotten to that point where turning 30 does not seem that bad after all.

A Grand Fail!

It feels ill timed and a stupid idea for me to write about me failing on the eve of an important interview but I’ve been meaning to post this for the past few days and haven’t quite got round to it…. until now, on the eve of an important interview. This time last year I set myself the target of generating £1,000 through various means, namely the sales of goods on ebay. I was inspired to do this for a few reasons, for which I shall now explain: This time of year is very expensive for me, as a car owner, because I have my insurance to renew, my road tax to also renew and this year due to the Alfa being two years old, a full service to fork out for! So immediately I’ve spent over £800 and that’s on top of my other monthly bills and rent.

This time last year I won an iPod from work, which I duly sold and thought to myself ‘Great, free money!!’ I then promptly got a double refund for some mouldy Loyd Grossman Naan bread (which I’ve never purchased since, I should sue for damages really) and that gave me the idea to see just how much money I could gain by being clever. Granted, there’s not much clever business involved with putting something up on ebay or unknowingly buying some mouldy bread, but I had a stock of Star Wars toys that I wanted shifting and now seemed the perfect time to shift it. And so my £1,000 target was born, because I knew a thousand pounds would cover the vast(ish) expense I’d face the following year.

A year has passed…… the total has been counted….. and verified……. the total is………….£255.12.

Okay, I fully accept that this hasn’t gone according to plan. I lost some motivation after some big items that I predicted would do well on ebay actually didn’t sell at all. I then couldn’t even shift a new Sony DVD player (another prize) for next to nothing and then work decided to get ridiculously busy. But while I haven’t been able to generate £1,000, with the amount of over-time I’ve done this past year, I have certainly accumulated well over £1,000 extra, so we shall now end this silly game!

I do intend to sell more stuff on ebay though, so when I do actually reach £1,000 I will let you know. I also have yet to fork out for that Wacom pen. Sometimes even I suck!

Time to concede defeat

It was the Summer of 2002. Attack of the Clones had been released and the ‘Art of ….’ book was truly amazing! The reason why it was so amazing was because it was full of new (to me) exciting illustrators, whose medium of choice was digital! Prior to this point I was a bit sceptical about this medium, especially as my main influences at the time were Alan Lee and Arthur Rakham. If you mention ‘digital illustration’ it tended to conjure up dark and dank images of semi-clad pale skinned women confined to SF novels, likely to be ogled by virgin men at the back of Waterstones. I was getting ready to start my third, and final, year of my degree. And then I made the rash decision to give digital a try. It wasn’t cheap mind. Thankfully it was my birthday though and so I managed to wangle my parents to buy me a lovely A4 Wacom tablet and Painter 7 software.
I spent many hours that Summer getting to grips with it, hoping to have an array of stupendous illustrations ready to show off for the start of term. And I did. In fact it took ages to convince everyone that they were actually 100% digital illustrations because they didn’t look it (because they didn’t feature semi-clad pale skinned women).

Digital suited me well because I was always too precious with my pencil marking & paint brush strokes. I didn’t want to waste a single gram of paper. The real beauty of digital is that it allows you to try something and easily delete it if it doesn’t work out, or if you go wrong. Since then I’ve never really looked back. I was a bit of a trendsetter at college because I was the first to turn to the digital medium in the illustration department. I bet they all do it now.

To cut an incredibly fascinating story short, last year my Wacom pen broke. This is a critical tool for my illustration work and also very expensive to replace. I’ve tried wrapping it up with rubber bands, masking tape, hair ties, glue, made splints for it using kebab skews; all only providing a temporary fix. Last week I was working on a new piece and it breathed its last breath. And so I’ve taken the plunge to buy a new one! It wont be as fancy as my original one but it’s half the price and will do the job. Once I’ve got it I’ll be able to get back to doing some work and I’m hoping it will spur me on a bit more.

On the plus side I’ve had more time to catch up on watching stuff. These past two weeks I’ve watched the following: ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, ‘Sky High’, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ (several times), finished ‘Supernatural’ Season 1, watched all six episodes of ‘Nathan Barley’, 'Red Riding' Part 1 and now I’ve started ‘Skins’ season 3. Not bad for a Wacom pen-less person.

The Demise of 2 & 4

As mentioned in my previous blog, the other week we had two new Sony Projectors installed at work. This meant that two of our lovely 35mm Cinemeccanica Vic-5 projectors were unceremoniously thrown onto the floor and dragged out of the way.

Late last Wednesday night, I gathered the energy and took some snaps to depict their current state in the casting shadows of the Sonys and the future of cinema.

WARNING!!: These photos may induce a tear to the eye for all those that love a bit of good old 35mm.

Click this link to be taken to my photos

We've been to Wembley, we've been to Wembley etc etc

In a desperate bid to manage two blog entries for the month March, I’ve rather hastily knocked this one up to temporary satisfy my blog count needs. I did have a blog entry all written, but then realised I can’t post it until the end of April (which now inadvertently has added some tension and drama to what that may behold….prepare for disappointment).

Anyway, you can guess what I’m going to say next; the last few weeks have been beyond ridiculously busy! Last week we took delivery of two new Sony Projectors. This required me to spend pretty much all of last week in the Projection booth, to the point where it would have been worthwhile re-directing all my post there. The install went on for longer than expected, but we’ve had the equipment up-and-running for just over a week now and I must say I’ve very much warmed to it. So far so good then, the only upsetting part is seeing our old 35mm Projectors just lying on the floor, seeping out oil as if it were blood. I took some photos last night which I’ll put up on my website next week.

Away from work, I managed to accomplish something on my imaginary bucket list; I saw England play a football game at Wembley. The game in question was the friendly against Ghana. The atmosphere that greeted me as I walked out of Wembley Park station was amazing, heightened by seeing the Stadium booming in the background. Inside the stadium was very impressive. The view was excellent despite being very near the top, and it felt like an enclosed arena. At some point I might actually write down my bucket list, but I can now say that I’ve watched England play at Wembley :D

On Sunday I went to Natbat’s birthday games day. It involved eating cake and playing board games. Being the competitive soul that I am I took things very seriously and didn’t like losing. It was a great day and a welcome relief from work. I then got to meet Basil, Fiona’s dog, later on as I drove the Essex contingent back to Essex. A real honour and he very much liked my watch. Meeting Fiona’s parents was great too.

All that and I’ve now got a (much needed) holiday in the South of France booked up courtesy of Fiona and Ross. I’m really looking forward to it, namely because I should finally get to wear and use the swimming shorts and goggles that I bought last year in a vain attempt to start swimming again.

I’m hoping in a couple of weeks things will calm down a bit and I can then start looking at having a bit more of a life away from work again. Wish me luck!