Just wanted to cover a prosthetics make-up practice. Did this very quickly and it’s a bit lack-luster because it’s acrylic paint and PVA rather than my make-up, which I didn’t have with me.

It’s (obviously enough) a missing finger.

“Not for the squeamish, not for the faint of heart”, I give you:

Sorry it’s very one angled. I hope to try this again with my wax and see if I can’t get it to look good at a side-view. It did quite well head on but I didn’t really get the shot.

Here’s the best one I got:

I’m so glad I have all my fingers.

On a less gory note…

DUST FACE

That is all.

Today has been very good indeed.

Moving on.

Last night TomSka gave me the “present” he got me from the Expo. I use the term loosely because it was my money that payed for it, nevertheless (a word that is actually 3 words-FACT) he did take time choosing it and carrying it around and being generally good at friendness. TomSka, I salute you. I also salute anyone who may have helped TomSka. And I salute everyone everywhere. I’ll just salute do the one global salute. Ok.

The present was an awesome T-shirt.
Here is a terrible picture, of a lovely thing:

As I haven’t blogged in a while lets go back in time. And through space.
A couple of weeks ago, give or take an unspecified amount of time, I got this:

To be quite frank, Farscape is brilliant. Do you remember it? It was on around the beginning of the millennium. It’s a Jim Henson production which means, as is true of all things truly great, it is full of puppets, as such the majority of the aliens are physically there but do not have to be the precise hight and width of humans. Having said this, there are the classic sci-fi prosthetics as well as the ever present CGI space scenes, all of which are carried or with great finesse.

There is a good cast too; lead by Ben Browder playing John Crichton, a human astronaut sucked through a worm hole into the depths of space. If you like sci-fi, or puppets, or worm holes, or food cubes, or biomechanical ships, I’d certainly recommend it. If you don’t like that stuff, Why? Why don’t you like that stuff?

It is a pretty expensive buy so either, like me, get it second hand or, like Bing, take some form of shady action. Not that Bing did. Bing is very law abiding.

As well as Farscape I also got this:

It was fantastically kindly sent to me as a university present by my sister’s Godmother Lucia.

I’ve started reading it and so far it has made me sad. I never saw the film but the book is good and I advice you to read it. I’d like to say more but I haven’t got very far yet. Anyway, consider yourself informed.

Back to today:
Today I made this:

Its the first time I’ve properly animated a full figure that wasn’t made of plasticine XD
It’s called Throwing Practice.

That’s really all I’ve got on me at the moment. I leave you with this haiku:

Though I like autumn
It is too cold for icecream
Why not have some fudge?

I’ve been a bit lazy with cakebomb of late. The fact is I’ve started a new course at university and it’s tiring. I’m now on an animation course at Lincoln at it’s actually pretty great if, also, reasonably work intensive. Socially I’ve been active too, with various trips home, trips away and trips to me visitors. For instance Nichola, an old (pah… I’m 18… Do I have OLD friends?) and very close friend has just left which, understandably has left me a little blue…

Anyway enough of that nonsense… if you wanted to find out how I’m doing you would have emailed me and/or probably did. Yes, even you. In any case, how about finding out WHAT I’m doing? Ok?

Well sit comfortably then.

First, here is Hemmingway:

He was designed (crudely) for a brief exercise in character design. He is a mechanic who is good natured and very able but some-what looked down upon because of his species. RACIAL SUBTEXT AHOY. So, yeah, not a lot to him but it would always be fun to make up a story for him and makes his design more streamlined.

I’ve also made two animations but, to be frank, you can’t see them. You’re not missing much because they’re just exercises in acceleration and deceleration and arcs of swing and overlapping and stuff and stuff and stuff… I have done other things too but I have very little to show for my labor so you’ll just have to exercise a little patience XD

Non-work toils have been good. I have done a-plenty. Autumn is here and with it the annual activities of leaf-peeping (XD), puddle-hopping and goose-bating. I’ve been out and about on the town buying up the contents of local DVD retailers as well as the Nik Naks section of Lidl. My shared playlist on iTunes, known as “goob” I believe, has been very popular and to know if you’d like it you should listen to Joanna Newsom, Amanda Palmer, The Blow, Ludovico Einaudi and this amazing guitar player on YouTube who may or may not know I have her music…

As well as all these wonerful things I have finally visited the pet store in which I showed so much interest… There were rats, rabbits, hamsters, newts, puffer fish, gerbils, chinchillas and this:

Want one?
Why not?

I don’t have an awful lot more to report on as it happens, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I’d forgotten you. For those of you who are waiting for a Craatoon (here a shout out to mi hermana mayor) I apologise, I will do one soon I’m sure.

To tide you over just look at my face:

Sorry if the mood has been a little sombre tonight. I have multiple sleep deprivation and my grammar is failing me.

…a cat.

I want a pet but right now I can’t have one so I have this cat instead.
Please enjoy this cat.
This cat is wild.

(Would readers of the above statement please be aware that the afore mentioned cat is not actually “wild” but safely domesticated and made of plasticine.)

Wow. First blog written in my room at university…

I’ve been in Lincoln for a week a four days now and have accumulated so much knowledge. I’ve learnt that you can make outgoing calls from a mobile, that soup can be a good meal more than once a day, that Chuck Russell’s The Mask is still a good film, that living almost solely in a bedroom does not mean you are more likely to keep it tidy, that there is, in fact, a limit to how many different meats you can put in one sandwich before it is no longer edible, and that, sometimes, foolishly, architects decide to put toilets IN showers.

You may have noticed none of these facts are media related, this is because our course is taking its sweet time to get started. Until today this was bothering me a bit (and some) but when, this morning, the only reason I managed to complete my photography workshop was because it finished an hour early, I had a sudden change of heart.

8 coughing fits, 6 tissues (I use them sparingly), 5 temperature spikes, 2 bouts of nausea, 1 dizzy spell and 7 episodes of West Wing later and I’m writing a blog to fill in time before it’s a reasonable hour to go to bed (again).

So here I am, and I’m taking this time to share some of Lincoln with you… Here be photos I have taken about the place, little snippets of the new world I am entering… enjoy!

This is the Odeon at night… I haven’t managed to visit yet (apparently it’s expensive) but I expect I’ll get there soon:

This is Curry’s. I like it because of all the awesome colours. Curry’s is beautiful:

This place is next to Curry’s… I plan on visiting soon as I think it has actual live animals in it!

This is my wrist in a club called Ritzy’s (I think)… I’m not really one for clubbing but doesn’t this look cool?

I took this at my best night out so far. Slow Club! FREE! Plus Charles (obviously the male member of the duo) remembered us moving the chairs to dance when we saw them in Cambridge. Both him and Rebecca are very friendly people.

To anyone who has seen my room at home. I thought you’d like to know the faces have followed me here:

You’ve seen the Odeon, Curry’s, the pet store, Slow Club and Face…
“What’s left to see?” You ask…
Well I thought you’d like to know where my chocolate lives:

Well obviously; where else but on my floor, between my bed and a piece of cardboard.
YAY for organisational skills XD

Anyway, I’m going to finish this episode of West Wing while I get ready for bed.

I wish you all sweet dreams

P.S. Leo is angry at you

Reading Mina’s blog you’ll see she asked the members of cakebomb to post pictures of themselves as little kids… after a lot of searching and narrowing down, and in no particular order, here are mine:

A birthday morning:

A birthday morning… more:

Board meeting in Cornwall, I’m two:

Isa Vitch… With a mop broom:

So utterly gangsta’:

Proof positive that I did wear that 123 hat Mina found in my draw:

MORE PROOF:

Christmas, me and my big sister:

Christmas is lovely:

My sister is lovely:

XD:

I have soooo many more… Photos are YAY

I am shocked and appalled. APPALLED!

I have had DVDs before which are two sided. Those DVDs were the box set of season two of Due South on Region 1 Discs… I didn’t like it.

For those of you who have never met this phenomenon before I will explain a few things about it. Two sided DVDs have there good and bad sides (I say this metaphorically of-course, there is not one side with good things on and another with bad). One good point is it’s a space saver
e.g
Big old series one:

Little old series two:

As well as this, for all I know, this also brings costs down (makes sense right?) but I wouldn’t like to pretend I knew that for a fact.

On the down side two sided discs are a bugger to keep clean and having to polish the discs with a spectacle cloth every time I wanted to watch them really marred my experience of my box set. Plus, this speaking as a person who has an almost foolish disrespect for the fragility of DVDs, I found having to treat these discs with kid gloves to keep them unscratched intensely irritating.

Now you have a little background information lets move on shall we? The astute among you (and Im sure, like me, you are all wonderfully astute) will remember my last post was about DVDs and in particular faults with my new copy of IT.

If you’ll remember (or scroll down) my copy stopped half way through the film.

Well then, imagine how annoyed I was when, after inserting my new copy of IT, I flicked to the scene menu and found that this copy stopped in the same place! >>> DX

In a bid for, I don’t know, my own sanity I guess, I took the disc out and flipped it over. It’s (pretty much) blank as both sides so it wasn’t a completely crazy whim…

In fact it worked like a charm.

LIKE A CHARM! LIKE AN EVIL CHARM!!!
I had bought the DVD for three or five pounds so I didn’t realise the discs blankness was anything other than cost cutting on Warner Bros’ part… and I didn’t guess earlier because, let’s be honest, WHO STOPS A FILM HALF WAY THROUGH TO FLIP THE DISC!? This is not a STORY TAPE! I AM NOT LISTENING TO “JUST WILLIAM”!!! What were they thinking!?

do you know what’s worse… there’s even extras on the first side. Extras… instead of film ending… extras.

On a brighter (less insane, lacrimal and stupefying) note:

I had a good weekend at a music festival in Cheltenham and bought (amongst other things) some bangin’ juggling balls:

Aaawh, look at the glooow XD

Juggling is the cools.

Anyway. I’m now watchig IT having already watched Princess Mononoke and working for ages to make something I don’t, it turns out, need.

Now it’s time to make something else equally pointless but wholely more fun.

Happy Wednesday and may you always stick to VIDEOS of IT.

After getting my results last Thursday I just had to celebrate… Some people do this by drinking, others by dancing, some by vomiting profusely (usually after drinking and dancing). I, however, buy DVDs. I would have liked to drink as well but I lack two things: 1) the inability to take proper care of my passport and 2) any other valid form of ID.

Anyway, DVDs…
Here’s the horde:

I started by watching IT, a film which I have been aquatinted with for a number of years and that I enjoy mostly right up until the crap ending. Before the ending, however, there are a number of excellent moments and possibly the best thing about the film is the characters.

For those who haven’t seen the film (or read the book which is much better but also much longer) you should know that the story switches between two times…zones? One in which all the main characters are children and one in which they are adults. I like the child characters better though most of the adults are very awesome, save a couple. This said, by far the best character in the whole film is the clown Pennywise played by Tim Curry:

He plays it very well, being sufficiently creepy as to be the most scary thing in the film… this is somewhat damaging to the finale of the movie, however, because Pennywise is not the final big bad guy… at least not in clown form. I’m not suggesting they should have made pennywise less scary, obviously, but with such a nice lead up the end is a bit of a let down.

Here I am continually ragging on the end when I haven’t mentioned my main point about this DVD. Yes I prefer the kids to the adults (not least because one of them is played by Seth Green, a fact I enjoy simply because I hadn’t noticed it before), yes the grown-ups get my back up because the characters seem to have gotten wussier as they’ve gotten older and therefore the second half of the film is a lot about that, and yes oh yes the end does suck BUT regardless of this I would have liked to have seen it. My main problem lies not with the film but with the DVD. An hour and a half in this movie stops dead in it’s tracks pretty much on this shot:

(There’s a lady screaming just afterwards but this screen shot is, visually, and in almost every other way, more interesting.)
This image, though fitting, comes before an awful lot of other imaegs that are quite a lot more important.

Fopp, I love you, but today you are the angry maker…

Wish me luck exchanging it.

As for the other two films all, so far, is well. Rosie and I watched Beetle Juice yesterday and it played all the way through and we enjoyed it. Rosie had seen part of it as a kid and been horrified and though having seen The Nightmare Before Christmas every day of my life growing up, yesterday was only my second viewing of this Tim Burton film (my first only having been the month before). It’s a good film with some very classic Burton in it and I’m loving the Jamaican Folk Music.

As for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I was introduced to by Mina a month or so back and that is, as yet, unopened, I’m looking for to another well played (and hopefully complete) Tim Curry performance…

If you are wondering why it is I have yet to open up my nice new copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show here is the reason:

I got this as a congratulations present form the very generous George and have been enjoying re-watching the series ever since. All four days or so that I’ve had it that is XD.

History:
Just after the first season/volume of Heroes ended, I and the other cakebombers binge watched the entire second series in a night fearful that it wouldn’t come to the UK until we had gone our separate ways, to universities about the land, and saddened that we maybe wouldn’t watch it together as we had the first series (long sentence is long). As it happens we could have watched it together after all, though I’m glad we did it the way we did because it would have been twice as difficult for me to watch it with them than it was for me to watch it alone… The show having been scheduled on Thursday this time around, a day when, for various reasons, I don’t get to watch most of the shows I’d want to…

Anyway, all this means that I haven’t seen volume two in quite some time and that the conditions under which I did see it left me with only limited memory of the content of the series.

I enjoyed it very much the second time round and even found the bizarrely awful green screening to be less detrimental to my enjoyment of the show on this repeat viewing. There are also some wicked extras on disc 4 which I, personally, feel it would have been worth buying the box set just to get my hands on… Then again I’m biased, not having have had to pay any money for it (thank you again George).
Here are some scenes of beauty and woe form disc 3 of Heroes season 2:

I also got The Golden Compass as a present from my mum (thank you) and I’m really interested to see whether there is a documentary about how they made the daemons on the extras…

Other than that there is not much news… I’ve been doing excessive amounts of art which I can’t post about until a) some pieces are finished and b) some have been given to my cousin for her birthday…

OH, wait I forgot to mention… Sylar is only hot in the second half of this season (what with all the dirt and vest tops) which left me with with all the other guys in Heroes to pick favourites from in the first few episodes… Don’t look down on me… why do you think that many famous people are very very attractive?

Anyway, now you’ve stopped judging cast your peepers on this:

I ain’t no fool, I just like beards
Now stop reading my blog and go do something constructive.
XD

Last Tuesday I was really bored, so I texted Bing and asked him for a task. This is how desktop madness came about…

I made Bing this Desktop:

(The writing reads “warriors of space and sea they roam the galaxy in search of treasure and other rich stuff fiends of the waves demons of the stars lead by their captain brave-handed Bing”)

When Bing didn’t come online that night I sent the desktop to Tom instead and he liked it enough that he wanted one too. Tom’s brief was more specific (because I actually asked him for one), he wanted a CakeBomb side-scroller game image.

This is what he’ll get when the two of us being online finally coincides again:

(The writing reads “Lvl 1 <3 x 3 TomCakes”)

I’m currently using the one I made for Bing as my desktop but if anyone’s interested I made a desktop around a year ago and which I have been using up until this point.

It looks better on a mac than it would on a PC:

(There isn’t any writing on this one.)

I was doodling in Mina’s sketchbook yesterday and happened to draw Hectapus, Rosie liked him so she coloured him in…

Though this began as a purely trivial Hectapus is in fact a T-shirt design for me and Rosie and we were looking for a little outside in-put because when you were a T-shirt it’s other people that have to look at it… XD

Here is your basic Hectapus:

Now, what we’re not sure about is the colour and whether or not to use a texture. Your opinions?

Here’s me gettin slightly over excided witht he intensity of colour (yay)

Hectapus looks angry because you keep looking at him.

Well, actually, I made this a whole heap of time ago and I’m only uploading now because a small heap of time ago I was told I should and an even tinier heap of time ago Mina took some nice picture of it so that I could/would.

This guy I made of plasticine with a wire-frame skeleton. He has ten legs and I designed him first with a line-drawing in my English class… One of my most creative classes for character design (I’m not a bad English student I promise) and I then worked off the sketch.

He’s partially inspired by Totoro (from the Studio Ghibli film”My Neighbour Totoro”, 1988, Hayao Miyazaki) as anyone who’s seen it will recognise from the colour-scheme and fur pattern motif on his chest.

This is the Decapede:

I’ve seen awesome picture where people have put fish in balloons. I figured “Why stop there?”

So I downloaded Pixen.
It’s a small programme dedicated souly to pixel art and for the most part it’s very good… as a first time pixel artist I can’t say much constructive about it but if you’re looking to get into this style of art this programme is quick to download and easy to use. Pixen is your friend.

This is my second peace of pixel art, the first was a new icon for the programme. Mine is better than theirs.
Here is Octopus:

I did this AGES ago.
It’s in the style of Ashley Wood, a very talented artist who makes graphic novels.
Google him XD

I was proud of it at the time lol

I did these the other night purely on a whim and thought I’d share them…
For your viewing pleasure:
Ink Owl:

And Dragon:

Despite the title and ink owl’s name these were actually done digitally XD

Me and Bing might be working on summit else for ya’ll too… Here’s hoping ^_______^

So our art exam is this coming wednesday and preparing for it has completely and utterly monopolised my weekend. I’ve been up since 8:30 working on this rubbish practice that has, I’m glad to say, actually been really helpful. I didn’t start it today but I finished it about half and hour ago (10.20 East coast time lol).

This is the (very) offending article:

The next one should be a lot better I hope XD.

They’re a re both based on this sketch:

Wish me luck D: XD

I was doing an F X make-up test for a film we will hopefully make in the summer and I got carried away. I haven’t put other work “of this nature” on CakeBomb before but there is no good reason why I shouldn’t. When this started out it was going to be a very, very deep graze but it turned into an infected electrical burn. The armed picture is real, the wound is not XD.

Mr Bat is an anagram or the beginning of mine, Tom, Bing, Mina and Rosie’s names…
We love it…
This drawing is based on Bing’s idea of Mr Bat XD

I drew this in pencil first, then photoed it and colour it in digitally.

Here’s an explanation explaining the order stuff happens in and why…

It’s a robot made of cans and a mouse is giving it some corn, but the farmer saw him take it from his field so he’s running after him… There’s a dragon that says he’ll save the mouse but then he sees a knight and his adoring fans, so he calls his big brother who comes and brings a dragon fly.
Meanwhile the mouse king arrives to help the mouse but he notices the farmer has brought his truck and it has his cat inside, so he sets the mouse army on it. A big frog has also come and he says he’ll sort out the mess but he gets distracted by the dragon fly because he is big and juicy, but his friend the beaver comes and tell’s him not to eat the dragon fly because it would be bad for water/dragon relationships, a grass snake comes and agrees. The grass snake has given a spider and a lady bird a lift. Another lady bird is talking to a mole who is watching the whole situation unfold and is worried about the mouse, he is also looking up into the sky. In the sky there is a hot air bloon with a man and a cat in it and the man has dropped his icecream, a vole finds it and is about to commit nomicide. The last lady bird is looking at the farmers truck and notices the wheels are muddy but the top is clean which means it must have rained yesterday, but it’s sunny today and the sun is dazzling and th clouds are floaty XD Also in the sky is a rocket that is going to the moon. There is also a plane in the sky toeing an advertising banner which reads “ring 08005550134 for FMUC”, the dragon fly sees this advertisment and dials the number on his mobil and a spanner and hammer arrive to try and sort out the mess. They are the ‘fix-me-up crew”.

That’s it.

These craatoons are going up on The Vault now (the link’s at the very top of the page), but I figured this would be a nice way to finish up. This is my 15th one published and the rest are post published on The Vault. I hope there are lots more to come XD.

I’ve got a few digital pieces to put up when I get the time but collage is SUPER HEAVEY just now… well kinda…

On this particular craatoon (titled “sharing” on the vault): The last phrase in this one is what goes through my head whenever something even remotely like this situation arises…