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Dead Nyan Cat
19, 09, 2011
My first piece of pixelart animation was of a dead nyancat, for candy the magic dinosaur and www.asittingduck.com.
It was definitely a very fun experiment, and something I’d love to do more of. Watch this space.
Barriers of entry
06, 07, 2011I just want to discuss a simple idea with you today, that of contact areas of websites.
My work relies on word of mouth from happy clients, as well people stumbling up on my portfolio on this here website, therefor it needs to be as simple as possible for people to get in touch with me.
Simply make the barriers of entry as small as possible and you’ll get more people getting in touch.
Sometimes people display their email address directly on their site, for people to copy and paste at their will. This opens it up somewhat for Spam bots searching for any people to send crap to. I opted for a contact form, which has proven to be fantastic. You don’t need to leave my website to get in touch, so you’ll always be facing my artwork even when you’re writing to me. Perfect!
Don’t you hate it when you’re scouring a website searching desperately for that elusive contact section? It really should be listed with the other menu items (obviously this is dependent on the business of the site). If you need people to get in touch with you, make it easy for them.
Weeks go by
06, 06, 2011Being self employed has it’s pros and cons. Being my own boss is a fantastic feeling, and having freedom to take on projects and see them through from start to finish also gives me a lot of satisfaction.
Book keeping on the other hand is rubbish. I suck at it. I do my best, but it’s always the last thing I want to spend my time doing.
Recently I’ve been snowed under doing work on some interesting projects. I can’t really say what they are just yet, not until they’re signed off and being used anyway. Some slightly more corporate work, but it’s been great fun and the people have been lovely to work with.
Another problem with being self employed is the unavoidable loneliness. How do you deal with that? I try my best to take regular breaks, and listen to podcasts, music and radio. I sometimes call clients to talk through whatever project we’re working on. The ironic thing is I don’t know if I’d be able to cope with the other end of the spectrum – being surrounded by people all the time could overwhelm my silly little brain.
You have to remain optimistic, and be proud of your accomplishments. Try and build on everything you’ve done. It can be tough when you’re main critique is yourself. Artistic brains never really like their own artworks do they?
Also I should note – I’m planning some website updates that will be undertaken on this here website as soon as I can fit it in. Watch this space…
Springtimes
21, 04, 2011For the first time in months I’m sitting with my windows wide open and shutters wound up. The breeze is gently cooling my big daft face.
Lately things have been a little lonely – housemates not returning back from work until between 7 and 10pm, so there’s just me spending hours alone, going a little bit crazy at my desk with no human contact.
It’s not always like this, though.
So I’m still splitting my time up between Graphic Design work and illustration work. I love both equally, but feel like they use almost opposites sides of my brain.
My methods to fight off this loneliness involve: tea; podcasts; music; snacks; comic books.
For a while now I’ve been forcing my way through a book called ‘Handling the Undead’ which was written by the chap who wrote ‘Let the Right One In’. I’ve heard the latter is incredible, but the Undead book is just a bit boring. I thought I was being slow and stupid for not being able to get into it, but recently my friend confirmed that he too found it dull.
I’m not quite sure how he took a concept such as this and made it so bland and uneventful. I’m just hoping for a big finish now.
Wacom Shortcuts
22, 03, 2011So this was something I’ve struggled to get my head around in the past, and as it turns out it’s something really very simple!
I wanted to add two new functions to the express keys on my Wacom tablet – flip canvas, and undo.
I opened up the Wacom utility program, added Photoshop to the list of programs, then changed the appropriate express keys to ‘program defined’ but this turned out to be wrong!
All I had to do was select ‘keystroke’ and then enter the appropriate keyboard shortcut, et voila!!!
Let’s see how this helps my work…
In other news, I’d like to give thanks to David Roach for all of his fantastic and invaluable advice and tips on artwork. Also to Dylan Teague. They are both fantastic artists and I only hope I can absorb some of their knowledge through these life drawing classes.
You are experience technical difficulties
21, 03, 2011Working in this industry a good working computer is absolutely vital, and about a year ago I earned some nerd points and built myself a really good workstation. So you can imagine my panic and upset as I started to experience repeated random crashes and BSOD (Blue screens of death). Unfortunately I did not have an automated backup system in place, so when the failings began I tried to rescue all of my data only to have the PC completely die on me.
This lead to a few days of panic, and running around trying to get components to resolve the issue.
A broken Hard Drive caddie, and a good number of hours backing up files, time spent replacing the motherboard and reformatting the Hard Drive, updating the drivers and finally reinstalling all of my design software and here I am! Very nearly through the horrible stress-inducing days of last week.
Though it has left me with some damaged tendons in my right elbow (the stress made me play drums that much harder!).
It was a nightmare few days, and it’s inspired me to set up an automated backup system, so in such an event in the future I will be able to continue with minimal down time. That’s the lesson folks.
At least all was not lost!
The black hole of work!
10, 03, 2011So my words have been absent from my blog for some time now – this is simply due to the sheer amount of work I’ve been doing.
Quite a few bits of album artwork, t-shirt design, poster design, web design, even a bit of 3D rendering! Exciting stuff!
Though it has made me more than a little exhausted on a few occassions.
I just have to ask my clients to extend their patience for me as being a sole-trader my time can so quickly get eaten up. Even with good day and time management, projects overrun, short requests set things back as minutes add up to hours. And I love to help people wherever I can, it can just get very hard to meet self imposed deadlines sometimes.
So here’s my advice (although I’m still far from perfect – I’m improving with these little practices lately) – Lists. I write so many lists trying to remember everything I’ve agreed to do.
I have an overarching list of work to do, and then I write a daily list of what I should be able to achieve. The tough thing is to know how much to put on your daily list.
And on top of this, too much screen time can be very detrimental to your work-speed. If you can, you should always get out of the house or office, even if for only half an hour. A small walk, or sit in a coffee shop to read a magazine. Anything to give your mind a break and the chance to think about something totally different.
Next comes a case of prioritising – sometimes it’s dependant on who the client is, what they’re time restrictions are, what the budget is, and how long the work will take. Sometimes a client will offer to pay more than the quote if their work can get done sooner. While in theory this is sound, and is akin to working overtime in an office, in practice it can throw all of my planning and lists out of the window for the following number of days and weeks. Sometimes the money is necessary to be able to keep working on the artwork projects that I really love doing.
Incidentally more artwork samples will be posted very soon!
Joe
Blwyddwyn Newydd Dda!
02, 01, 2011Happy New Year comrades!
It’s been a wonderful week or so off from work, time to eat lots of food and drink lots of ale! I even got to see in the new year with some wonderful friends and too much homebrew!
Can’t fault that at all!
I’m not in the mood to reflect on 2010 just yet – I think the time for that will be when my birthday creeps up on me in a few days!
I’d just like to say that it’s been a fantastic year, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with some amazing people, some kickass bands and musicians, and some awesome friends. I wish everyone I’ve worked with good luck with their endeavours! Here’s hoping 2011 will just keep things building!
As Rimmer in Red Dwarf would say; Up, up the ziggurat lickety split!
Stress and tribulations of Self employment
29, 11, 2010I just want to post a few words about the struggles of being self employed.
One the one hand it has many benefits – I get to work from home (so I don’t spend money on commuting, or buying sandwiches and snacks). I’m in charge of my own hours, and my own money. And I get to see every project I work on right from the initial brief through to the final outcome. It can be incredibly satisfying, and I love working with the many awesomely nice and talented people that I’ve been lucky enough to work with.
But on the other hand it can be so stressful – being in charge of your own hours means more often than not you end up working ridiculously long hours and late nights. Time management can just be referred to as ‘Time fuck-ups’. And looking after all of my income is also terribly daunting – my income fluctuates drastically from month to month so I just have to be as sensible as possible.
But I really love my work. I’m really happy doing what I do. And 99% of the people I work with are just fantastic to work with. I’d say only about 1 single person each year really causes me genuine stress.
This happened not too long ago, and I found it quite upsetting. I felt like I got on well with the band, and for them to just use me like that was hurtful – especially from people who also work in a creative industry, they must surely appreciate how hard it can be to make it. Their manager ended up being unnecessarily rude to me, and really made me appreciate how bloody nice nearly all of my clients are and have been over the last few years.
For small budget projects like that it’s hard to protect yourself – small claims court would cost me more than the final invoice was to them. And persistent emails dragging the situation out doesn’t help anything at all either. It’s just people like that make me so much closer to taking 50% payment upfront before any work starts, like I know a lot of my peers do already.
Onwards and upwards though…
Animated shorts
22, 11, 2010If you have a few minutes to spare, I highly recommend checking out some of these short animations. They’re amazing, and quite a varied collection of techniques.
Ryan
Fallen Art
Jojo and the Stars
Killer Bean 2.1
Our Wonderful Nature
Chicory ‘n’ Coffee
Nuit Blanche
Pixels
Iron Baby
Tetra Vaal
9
Meet Meline
Codehunters
Azureus Rising
The Passenger
Alma
Sushi Express
Gaming
06, 11, 2010So the latest news from my gaming HQ is:
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare – is awesome.
The new 2D Sonic game – not bad.
Microsoft Kinect – Megalolz – Epic fail!
Sony Move – Slight lolz – fail but has more nerd potential I guess. Not for me thanks.
H00t!
Work and games
31, 10, 2010This is very often the pattern that occurs with my workloads – I get lots of work requests at the same time, and start ploughing through things, then we I start to come to the end of a mad rush – trying to meet all deadlines and requirements, I think to myself “awesome! once I’ve finished these bits I can get a few self driven projects sorted and underway”.
And then all of a sudden a load more quote requests come in and I’m busy again.
It’s quite funny really.
It’s all good though – as I love working with people, and I love meeting people.
Also this weekend I pulled out all of the stops to have an epic gaming marathon on Red Dead Redemption. I completed the One player game, and I downloaded the Undead Nightmare story. It’s epic. I highly recommend!
Sickness
11, 10, 2010It’s that time of year again. Students return to the city to start some fun times, so the streets and gigs get busier and colds get passed around.
I lost three days last week due to the ‘snots’. Which has left me tired and playing catch-up this monday morning.
It happens to everyone though. And my wonderfully awesome girlfriend came over and made me food when I was at my worst. How awesome!
Coding
28, 09, 2010Sometimes I have to do a lot of coding, and sometimes I just have to tidy up other people’s code.
There’s just so much you can do with web development nowadays and the guys over at Digital Morphosis are so talented. I must say it’s a pleasure to work with them!
Business Cards
24, 09, 2010Woo! A whole bunch of new business cards arrived the other day! And they look all sexy when clean and freshly printed, it almost seems a shame to give them out!