Expanding the Paper Horizon

I finished a drawing last Tuesday.

Normally, finishing a drawing isn't such a big deal, as I do quite a few of them.  But this one was different: for starters, it was a whole year (a year plus four days, in fact) in the making.  It's impractically large, at nearly 1.2 metres (4') long.  The scariest statistic - which I only just finished calculating tonight, a week later - is that it contains 150 people.  Although when I say 'people', I don't mean fully-detailed humans, I mean little box people in the same vein as the cast of Papercuts.

I drew a bunch of pictures when I was about 9 to 11, showing various small towns populated by fictional creatures of my own design.  I enjoyed them at the time (all 15 of them!), but in retrospect there are all sorts of problems, such as there being far too many doctors' surgeries despite very few people appearing to be sick or injured, or such as a depressing lack of architectural variation from village to village or from building to building.  But somehow, despite the numerous flaws, I still have a bit of a soft spot for these creakingly awful doodles - but I'm still not publishing them.  I bring this up because in some ways, my new work is essentially the same project, just being tackled again 16 years later by an older and wiser version of me.  Okay, so I've transferred the whole thing into a different fictional world, re-populated it with a different species, and generally shaken everything up, but the basic idea of drawing a portrait of a fictional high street remains unchanged, and the new picture contains all sorts of (usually inconspicuous) little nods back to what I was drawing in the late 1990s.

But despite the fact that it radically reboots my "Let's sit down and draw a town off the top of my head" project, Papertowns: Desmonton isn't a whole new world coming into being from scratch, but is actually an expansion of another world which I began a couple of years ago and which I'm very fond of irrespective of its relatively small size: the world of Papercuts.

The seven Papercuts episodes released so far collectively form what I've started referring to as 'Phase I', and they're pretty self-contained, with few or no hints at what the surrounding world might be like.  I'm planning a few changes for 'Phase II' (Episode 8 onwards), such as making an alteration or two to the title-sequence visuals and letting Tim remix the theme tune; another change which has been less consciously planned, but which I suspect will happen anyway, is an increasing awareness of the bigger universe.  Tim's written a script for Phase II which name-drops Desmonton, for example - in the context that Desmonton, as you see it in the new drawing, is the nearest town of any significance to the Papercuts characters' residence.  I've started thinking through details such as how their currency works, which is briefly hinted at in Episode 7 Debt of Gravy-tude and might become more significant in future instalments.  I haven't yet decided which story will lead the charge on Phase II, but I'm very much looking forward to seeing how the new material develops, hopefully later this year.

Meanwhile, their world is growing in other directions, the first and most significant of which you can see here:

  
That's Desmonton, sorta - I don't know why Blogger has darkened and dirtied the image so badly.  I'd very much recommend that you go and look at the higher-quality version I've uploaded to DeviantArt, and click the picture there for full resolution.

And I've already started sketching another town... but more on that later.


- The Colclough

What the Wacom Can Do

After a minor case of unsubtle hinting, I was given a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet for Christmas.  I hadn't really used graphics tablets much before, and my last attempt (borrowing Tim's tablet, which is also a Wacom) produced this rather unimpressive bit of scribble:

A concept sketch for Fort Paradox 115: my first graphics-tablet drawing.  Srsly.

However, I was pretty sure that my initial failures were just teething trouble.  After all, I spent my first two or three weeks in The GIMP being hopelessly confused and (whisper it!) almost missing Photoshop, of all things - before it suddenly clicked one day, and I've been using the program for all sorts of things ever since.  I expected a similar thing would happen with the tablet, if I had one of my own and was able to get some practice.

It looks like I expected right.  This morning, I finished this (a rather better piece of scribble, if I say so myself):

Blue in the Firelight, January 2013

I almost crashed GIMP during the production process, as the image had so many layers; in the end I fixed the problem by separating the thing out into three different files - one with the initial compositional layers, a second to tidy up the line art, and a third to add the colour.  You can see a higher-resolution version of the finished picture on my DeviantArt page, and you might notice it cropping up as my new avatar on DeviantArt and on Steam.

Where next?   Well - here's a bit of good news for the Root Hill attendees among you - I'm very nearly finished the Root Hill On Camera 2012 DVD: the video segments are rendered, the disc menus are authored, and the print components have been designed.  All that remains is to produce the physical copies and get them in the post.  And once that little project (little... haha, right) is off my slate, I'm planning to try and get back to animating something.  So many ideas drifting around right now, including Papercuts episodes 5 onwards (waiting on script delivery from a guest writer or two), Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2 (waiting on... um... me getting round to it), The Murkum Show (working title, waiting on me figuring out what it's actually about apart from having lots of Doctor Murkum in it), and the long-planned Fishy Business remake Empire of the Pond (which has recently seen some movement on the test-illustrations front).  But more recently, the idea occurred to me that I should try doing a quick-and-dirty (that fatal phrase...) graphics-tablet cel animation featuring my little-known character Elbows Dude in a variety of improbable scrapes, which he solves with his elbow powers.  Right now, I honestly don't know which route I'll be going down next, but all five of them have some appeal, so I'll hopefully be picking one and getting down to business before too long.  Watch this space!


- The Colclough

Happy days...

The last 48 hours or so have been pretty good ones.  Barring the ones I spent failing to get to sleep, that is 8p


The artwork is going well.  I finished Stained Glass V on Saturday, started SG VI on Monday, and am very pleased with both.  River III and untitled variations no. IV are also coming along more or less as planned.  Piccies follow:

Stained Glass V (complete) & VI (WIP)

River III (WIP)

untitled variations no. IV (WIP)

Tim's been writing some music for one of my in-development animation projects, and it's very cool.  Not ready to be shown off yet, but it's one more reason I'm chirpy at the moment.


My new Lego arrived last night.  Made my evening, needless to say.  And before you all start saying "but I thought you were almost 24..." - there's no such thing as "too much Lego" or "too old for Lego"; those are myths invented by boring people.  I haven't had any new Lego in years, and I've tended to put Christmas and birthday money in savings, but this time round I decided I'd actually use some of the cash to buy something I wanted, so I ordered a custom-designed Lego set, with new equipment for Doctor Murkum's private militia.

Some of Murkum's men with their new uniforms, blasters and aircraft - the one in the blue fighter craft is Atkun, the chief engineer, and the one with the white top is Gonce, the cook.

The guinea pigs are gone.  I always said they were a bad idea, and eventually everyone else (except Sophie, of course) has come round to my view on the topic.  This morning, Ben and I were handed the offending rodents in a box and asked to take them for one last trip, in the general direction of an animal shelter on the far side of Wokingham.

I did get there in the end, no thanks to our satnav which spent the whole journey claiming it couldn't find a GPS signal, while I navigated using memory, road signs, and the odd atlas check by Ben.  I decided I don't like driving in Wokingham.  Too many confusing one-way streets and stuff.  But that's not the point - the point is, it might have looked for about four months like I'd lost the debate, but as of today I have absolutely definitely won.  No more pets bigger than a hamster in this house, I don't think.


Speaking of rodents: Dusty is quickly turning out to be a much better critter than the guinea pigs ever were.  He's followed Scribbles' footsteps, quite literally, taking his first evening stroll around my desk on Monday.  He tried nibbling all sorts of things (including the curtain), but fortunately seemed to decide he didn't like the taste of any of them.  I did get a bit worried when he started showing an interest in some coins I'd left lying around, and it looked for a moment as if he was about to stuff a 20p in his cheek and never give it back, but then he changed his mind and waddled off to taste the speaker cable instead.  He's incredibly similar to his predecessor, including having big tufts of hair growing out of his hips and making him look like some sort of overgrown fluffy earwig, and including a tendency to jump off the side of the desk and perform dusting services on the way down.


Statistics:

• First 12 for '12 status: 10 down, 2 to go
• Latest book read: part of 1 Kings from the KJV
• Latest film/TV watched: Michael Palin's Sahara, part 2
• Latest music listened to: Golden Cube OST (WIP) by Timothy Johnston
• Latest edible item eaten: beefburger
• Predominant colour of clothes: blue and grey on the outside; red t-shirt underneath
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook and Excel 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1), Windows Media Player 11, Skype
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

Been Busy With the Ink Again

I've been drawing and painting a bit more over the last few days.  I finished Stained Glass IV on Friday; yesterday saw the production of another 19 episodes of Cylinder and Miserable Series 3, and today I started work on two new paintings (River III and Stained Glass V) and completed the third in my ongoing series of untitled circle-centric Sharpie-on-cartridge-pad super-doodles.  I've got an idea for a possible name for the series, but I'm not saying anything until I've made up my mind whether I think it's a good one.  And I drew a mexican in a spacesuit, which I'll leave Josh to explain.

Photos follow, at the usual exchange rate of 1 photo = 1k words.

Stained Glass IV (18" x 24", completed 6th January)

To be honest, that didn't really come out how I intended, which is part of the reason I'm doing an SG V, this time using my new tube of Process Cyan.  But the relatives seemed to like it, as it disappeared off the kitchen table as soon as it was dry, and turned up again hanging off a nail in the stairwell, like so:

Stained Glass IV, A Dive in Blue and Open to Interpretation in situ on our staircase

untitled variations nos. I, II and III (all A2, completed circa October, 1 December and 11 January)

I already showed you variation I, but I re-posted the photo as a reminder of what came before.  And I should point out that the different colouration is due to the light conditions when I took the photos - the papers and inks are actually identical.  To some degree I see these three as a sort of trilogy, and although I have plans for a fourth instalment I suspect it'll be somewhat different to its predecessors.

SG V and River III aren't developed enough yet to be worth taking any photos of, so you'll just have to wait and see.


Statistics:

• First 12 for '12 status: 8 down, 4 to go - I could try claiming I'm on 9, what with having written yesterday's Fort Paradox Backstage, but that wasn't on my main blog so it probably doesn't count, and I can't be bothered to quibble.
• Latest book read: part of 2 Samuel from the KJV
• Latest film/TV watched: Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2011: Meet Your Brain, part 1
• Latest music listened to: How to Train Your Dragon OST by John Powell, I think
• Latest edible item eaten: jambolaya followed by coffee
• Predominant colour of clothes: shabby blue-greys
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook, Word and Excel 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post), Skype
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

513044

The starting gun has fired!  Registration is closed, and at least half of the four contestants have already hit the ground running.  I suspected in advance that Hannah would be writing in the small hours of this morning, which she did, but I didn't expect the same from Tim - who did anyway.  Sam hasn't posted anything for the challenge yet, but something tells me he probably will do very soon.

So I'd better catch up on this "First 12 for '12" thing, hadn't I...


I thought I'd have a bit of a ramble about Christmas while it's still relatively early in the year (just had a conversation with Mum about what we did on the evening of the 25th, and we're already struggling to remember).  That's where the cryptic blog title comes in.

For a large chunk of Advent, we had a cardboard box, about 3' x 2'1" x 3", stood on the middle landing half-way up our stairs, with no markings except the number "513044" hand-written on it in red ink.  It was taken for granted that it was a Christmas present, and no more questions were asked (at least not openly), but it exercised my curiosity for a good couple of weeks before disappearing shortly before Christmas Eve.

For assorted reasons, we ended up having our 'family Christmas' on Tuesday the 27th, so that was when 513044 came out of the woodwork.  Turned out it was for me, and it contained two 24"-square canvases, two 14" x 10" ones, and three new paints: process cyan, process magenta, and process black - yes, I do have other, non-process colours.  So later on in the morning I beetled off into the kitchen, put one of the 14x10s on the table, and started slathering it with the cyan and a titanium white (which my grandparents had given me on Christmas Day along with three 16x12 canvases), with the odd streak of the magenta.  The result isn't exactly a realist masterpiece, but I was mainly interested in seeing how the new pigments would behave, and the answer to that question is that they did exactly what I wanted them to do, which was a pleasant change after the odd behaviour of some of my other acrylics (I'm looking at you, mars black).  Here's a piccy:

Pick a Day, Any Day - 14" x 10", Tuesday 27 December 2011

The title came about partly because of the resemblance between this canvas and one of its predecessors, Another Day, combined with its similarity to the 'water vortex' in the promotional material which preceded the release of Doctor Who Series 5 with the accopmanying tagline "All of time and space - where do you want to start?".  Somehow, all those notions found their way into my brain at once, and got conflated into a title for the painting.

I have plans for how to use at least one each of the 24x24s and the 16x12s, plus Stained Glass IV and a third untitled variations drawing already in progress, so hopefully you can look forward to (or dread, I guess) being exposed to some more photos of my artistic output over the next few weeks, as 513044 comes into its own.


Stats:

• First 12 for '12 status: 1 down, 11 to go - the same as almost everybody else in the running
• Latest book read: A Brit Different: A Guide to the Eccentric Events and Curious Contests of Britain
• Latest film/TV watched: The Gathering Storm
• Latest music listened to: Diamond Music by Karl Jenkins, preceded by his Requiem and In These Stones Horizons Sing
• Latest edible item eaten: I had a shortbread cookie for breakfast
• Predominant colour of clothes: blue/grey (the old story)
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Fort Paradox offline archive; Blogspot Create Post; MatNav 6.1)
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

Gallery of the Analogue

Okay, sorry about the wait - here's the aforementioned gallery of photos of my recent drawing and painting work.

First up, two attempts at a stylised depiction of a river.  Both of these missed the stylistic mark I was aiming for, with the first veering off in one direction and the other then overcompensating.  I'm planning to do a River III sometime, but I'll need to get my grubby mitts on another canvas first.

River I (10" x 10", completed 8th September)

River II (16" x 12", completed 19th October)

This one was done in a hurry, mainly to use up some watercolour which I'd mixed for Open to Interpretation (see below), only to find out that it wouldn't work on canvas and I'd have to go back to acrylics.  Didn't want to waste all that paint though.

Yellow Morning (A2, completed 25th October)

This one is the first of multiple variations - although the only one completed so far - on the theme of the giant Sharpie doodle that forms the basis of my current wallpaper on A White Horizon.  The big differences this time are the fact that the drawing developed in a slightly less haphazard way, and I did it on an A2 sheet of relatively pricey (and rather nice) 220gsm cartridge paper, instead of leftover wallpaper backing sheet as used last time.

untitled variations no. I (A2, completed sometime in October, I think)

I painted the background for this one back in May, and then it got buried and forgotten for months before I finally rediscovered and finished it the other day.  The whole thing was more of a technical experiment than an attempt at expressing anything; in particular, I put the gold pen details in the corners to check that it would work on top of acrylics, as a precursor to using the pens on Open to Interpretation.

Coffee, Maybe? (~ 12" x 16", completed 7th November)

The big one!  Not my largest painting by surface area (only my third-biggest canvas, if you count the square inches), but by far my most ambitious and detailed painting ever, and I think one of my most accomplished pieces of visual art in any medium.  My kingfisher impression took nine days to paint, but that isn't counting the time spent sketching the composition in pencil, wandering up and down the River Blackwater absorbing the atmosphere and analysing the colours, and generally sitting around staring at the canvas and mentally plotting next moves.  Not to mention that those nine days were spread out across a period of five-and-a-half months, during which several other, smaller projects came and went.

A Dive in Blue (32" x 12", completed 7th November, after almost half a year in the making)

Details from A Dive in Blue, L-R: tree trunk, background vegetation, kingfisher, oak branch

The latest completed piece: a re-interpretation of a pen-and-watercolour-on-wallpaper-backing abstract I created circa June 2009, this time with pen and acrylics on canvas.  Possibly my smelliest work, as the gold and silver inks really pong when they're wet, but fortunately it's stopped smelling now that they're dry.  Also my largest canvas to date, at 24 inches squared.  The painting takes its name from the fact that every other person who looks at it seems to interpret it differently - is it something on fire?  Is it a flower?  Is it supposed to be an optical illusion?  I don't know myself; I just painted it, and I'm happy for people to make of it what they will.

Open to Interpretation (24" x 24", completed this morning - 15th November)

And finally, a couple of things that I've made a start on in the last couple of weeks, but not got very far with.  I've also sanded down the second of my four ex-cupboard-door boards ready for sketching or painting on, but I haven't decided yet what to do with it, and I didn't think it was worth showing you a bare board with some scuff marks on it, hence the lack of photo.

untitled variations no. II (A2, work in progress, begun 1st November)

Stained Glass IV (18" x 24", work in progress, begun 7th November)

I'll try not to let such a big backlog build up next time 8p


- The Colclough

Stuff I Made: September 2011

Been a while since I did one of those several-different-paragraphs-on-unrelated-subjects blogs...


1) Arbitrary Stopframe: I mentioned the other week that I was working on an idea for Episode 11.  Here it is.





2) Painting: did a little painting the other day, experimenting with paint surface effects and trying to make it look like running water, but I forgot to photograph it yet.  Also did more to the kingfisher - new photo follows.

Untitled Kingfisher Painting - now with some paint on the kingfisher!

3) Root Hill on Camera 2011: pretty much finished editing the Concert reel (runtime circa 70 minutes).  Might go back in and add some video filters on one little segment, but otherwise I think the Concert's all done and dusted.


4) Writing Megastropulodon: now nearly 2/3 of the way through the third draft for the opening episode.  Haven't decided yet whether my next move will be the third draft for Episode 5, or starting work on a first draft for Episode 2.


- The Colclough

The Whole Neurological Disorder Thing

Yeah, that thing in the 'About Me' box where I mentioned having some sort of autistic-spectrum condition... it's been a little over three years since the idea was first put to me that I might have Asperger's Syndrome, and what with the 'anniversary' having just gone past, I've been doodling again.

That was how I decided to deal with the idea back in July 2008 - I started drawing a picture for each day which summarised how I'd felt about it.  It lasted two weeks, dropped off as my feelings on the subject started to stabilise, then a couple more drawings snuck in a week later.  And then July 2009 came around, and when other things combined with the one-year mark, it gave rise to a new clutch of drawings.  And so on, re: July 2010 and July 2011.

As a project, I'm not really sure how to categorise it.  Does it come under 'diary-keeping'?  Does it come under 'comic strips', in the sense that it's serialised graphical storytelling (sorta)?  Does it come under 'self-imposed therapy'?  I don't really know.  The funny thing is that despite the heavy stylisation and the extensive use of strange metaphors, it's more truthful, or more documentary in nature, if you like, than pretty much any other creative undertaking I've ever done.

I had previously posted the first 3 years' drawings on Tailcast, but as Tailcast had lost its soul by the end of last year, I gave up and terminated my account, which meant the drawings went offline.  But I have now re-uploaded them all to a new DeviantArt account, along with the latest additions to the series.  You can see all 36 pictures here.  Some of you may have seen some of the pictures before.  Some of you won't.  And none of you will have seen the last 8 yet.

Something a bit more serious, to contrast Cylinder and Miserable, I suppose...


- The Colclough

More Paint

Just because I like showing off photos of my paintings in progress...

(No, the water isn't going to stay all black and depressing like that.  There's some reeds and a load of light-blue reflections still to add)

And here's the really good bit: I've finished some of them!

#011: Stained Glass II (doesn't necessarily go this way up)

#012: Stained Glass III (yep, an unimaginative title, perhaps, but an accurate one)

You might notice the serial numbers have stopped being in hexadecimal. That's not because I've gone off hex or anything, it's just that I've decided I should probably save the ABCs to designate the constituent panels in multi-part works. Method in the madness, see?


- The Colclough

Unrelated Bits

* Not sure whether to be really excited or scared stiff about this bit of news: Benedict Cumberbatch being cast as Smaug in The Hobbit - not only doing the voice, but (apparently) some motion-capture performance as well.  Now, don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Cumberbatch.  I loved his turn as Sherlock last year, and am looking forward to Series 2.  But I always thought Smaug would be voiced by someone a bit... older?  And the burning question of the day is: how the heck do you motion-capture a dragon?  But what with the whole production being so darned secretive about the character, it looks like I'll just have to wait and see 8p


* Hedge-trimming hurts.  That was Monday, and I'm still aching on Wednesday.


* I miss programming.  I recently revisited a breakout-type game I wrote back in 2006, and got really nostalgic. I spent two blissfully happy years (I'm sure there's some rose-tinted-spectacles-ness going on there, but never mind) dabbling in Visual Basic 6 on the college computers while I was at sixth form, but since then I've been largely unable to do any programming, due to my lack of access VB6, the fact that VB7 onwards is incompatible with all my old VB6 code, and the fact that every other language I've come across is far more difficult to work with.  I miss the feeling of power when you bend the computer to your will.

So I decided to go programming again.  I had a look at C++ yesterday.  It's supposed to be the world's favourite language, but I can't see how to get started - the Microsoft C++ compiler is hideously over-complicated, and the GNU Compiler Collection has got a really neat trick up its sleeve: they only distribute it as un-compiled source code, which means you have to use another compiler to compile the GNU compiler before you can use the GNU compiler to compile anything else... which defeats the point of having the GNU compiler in the first place.  The open-source community has done many wonderful things, but an uncompiled compiler just reeks of stupidity, IMHO.

So instead, I looked into Java.  The Java developer kit installed fine on my PC... and then refused to run, point blank.  I tell it to start the program, and it just gives me this blank stare.  I hate it when computers do that.

I wish they hadn't destroyed Visual Basic with all those stupid changes in version 7.  It may share some similar syntax with version 6, but it basically isn't the same language any more.

I might not be going programming again after all.


* More painting:

Untitled Kingfisher Painting (the main difference this time is the added branch and leaf detail on the right, plus a few other, subtler touches)

Stained Glass II (no, you're right, it was the other way up in the last photo)

Told you the geometry would get clearer!

- The Colclough

A Microcosm of Extremities

I went for another of my walks by the River Blackwater this morning, and I came across a rather paradoxical little scene: some sort of bird lying dead in some grass (I'd guess a magpie, but there was enough missing that I couldn't really tell) - fairly unpleasant, but then again, things die. Fact of life. And then, sitting on the corpse, there was an immaculate red admiral butterfly, apparently unfazed by its mouldering perch.  I got within two feet of it, and it just sat there.

Ironic, I thought, that the closest I've ever got to a live butterfly in the wild was when it had decided to take a sunbath on top of a headless bird corpse.

I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to read some significance into the event, but then decided not to bother.  These things happen, I guess.

Then I thought about painting it.  The jury is still out on whether or not that's a good idea.

Speaking of painting stuff from the Blackwater, here's some more development on my kingfisher:

Untitled Kingfisher Painting (work in progress++)

I did some more work on it today, but I haven't got a photo of the latest increment yet.


- The Colclough

Mixed Stuff

Yay for anthology blogs!  At least this time I've got a keyword that conveniently helps describe all of my points...


Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again.  This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online.  I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.



Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.

As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.


Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back?  I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation.  It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green.  But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:

Untitled Kingfisher Painting (still a work in progress... but this time with more progress!)

Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it.  I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.

The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure.  It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness.  And that Sontaran was hilarious.  But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode.  Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time.  Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.

Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church.  Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing.  Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.

Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary.  Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all.  I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage.  I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.

So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about.  And finally: anatomy.  Yes, you read that right.  The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures.  I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense.  As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology.  You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well.  The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches.  You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see?  Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties.  Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant.  My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads?  Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.

Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.

And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.

Have a biscuit.


- The Colclough

Fresh Air and Canvases

I mentioned back at the end of March that I had decided to alter my morning routine to include a walk.

Well, yesterday, as I was pootling along the bank of the River Blackwater on my self-imposed programme of perambulations, I was faced with a fork in the path.  The main path went off to the left, while the smaller one followed a meandering bit of the river off to the right.  More Direct vs. More Interesting?

I chose More Interesting, and shuffled off down the smaller path.

Turns out that was a good choice.

About half-way along More Interesting, there was a splosh noise, followed by a vivid-blue streak leaving the water and heading for a nearby branch.  The kingfisher was even decent enough to spend a couple of minutes just sitting on the branch, right where I could see him, before he headed off again.

So I decided to paint it.  Not a photographically-accurate, taxonomist-pleasing portrait, mind you, more an impressionist rendition of the moment of the dive.  I've had a 32" x 12" canvas under my bed since Christmas, when I was given it along with my brushes, acrylics and canvas 'doodle pad', and I've kept wondering which way up it should go, and what on earth to put on it - after all, 2.66666 : 1 is a pretty extreme aspect ratio.  But now I have a plan.  Rather than bothering to explain the plan in words, I'll just show you a photo of the canvas with the planned image sketched onto it:

Untitled Kingfisher Painting (work in progress)

I might even post a photo of the finished product eventually, if you're lucky B]


- The Colclough

Living in Analogue

So... another anthology blog thing.

1) Arbitrary Stopframe - I scraped my self-imposed deadline pretty darn close on Saturday, but did manage (just about) to get Episode 7 uploaded before going to bed.  My supply of desktop objects and episode ideas is starting to run a bit dry, hence the fact that Tim guest-wrote this instalment, and I'm not too sure how much longer this thing's going to last.  But I don't plan on making #7 the last episode.  Not yet...



Anybody else got ideas for future episodes?  I can't promise that all suggestions made will be automatically accepted, but they will at least be duly analysed for animatability.

2) Painting.  Took my paints outside on Sunday afternoon and ran off this little sketch alla prima (apparently that's Italian, and basically means doing the whole painting in one go, without waiting for one bit to dry before applying the next).  It's a strange one in that it looks absolutely rubbish from some angles - especially upside-down and from a few yards' distance, but I quite like it so long as you look at it the right way up and at fairly close range.

#009: Impressionist Glade

3) Routines.  It's been bothering me of late how much of my life has been tied up in electronically-mediated activities, be they work or leisure.  So I decided last week to do something about it: I rearranged my morning routine from something like this:

• wake up
• find and apply socks
• read Bible while still in bed
• start computer
• find breakfast
• return to computer
• update webcomics
• eat breakfast while watching TV / DVD / YouTube
• get dressed
• ...and onwards

to something like this:

• wake up
• socks
• find breakfast and armchair
• eat breakfast while reading Bible
• get dressed
• walk (yes, really!)
• and only then fire up the electronics, update the webcomics, and resume business proper

Not sure how much difference it's making so far - I've only been at it a week - but I'll keep at it and see what happens.  This would also explain why my webcomics have been updating a bit later in the morning for the last few days.

4) Alien President.  I finished another batch of episodes yesterday (numbers 29, 31, 32 and 33 in terms of their positions in the story, but they bring the total to 37 as I've illustrated some episodes out of narrative order for technical reasons).  Number 29 in particular was a real pain to draw and colour - you'll probably see why when I publish it in a few weeks - but I was happy with the final result, which is the main thing.  Only 8 more left to illustrate now...

5) The fitful progress of Megastropulodon: a week or two ago, I managed to plug the last major hole in my character profiles, and started work on the second drafts of Episodes 1, 5 and 6, and for a few days it really felt like progress was being made.  But then I sort of dried up again.  I sometimes (read: often) doubt that I could actually make a living from creative expression, what with the way my ideas come in fits and starts, with productive patches separated by significantly longer dry ones.

6) Lack of blogging.  This is the first post on A White Horizon in 10 days.  Most of my recent posts have been triggered by having an episode of Arbitrary Stopframe to embed.  Is the lack of blogs indicative of a lack of life?  I wonder sometimes.  It might seem a bit ironic to make this connection, but: see point 3 above...

7) Firefox 4!  Mozilla have finally released the new, shinier version of my web browser of choice.  It's supposed to be several times faster than its predecessor.  Well, sometimes it is (smoother scrolling is noticeable), but it still takes a long time to load.  Version 4 has most of the same old good points (stability, for example), and several of the same old flaws, including the fact that whenever I open a new tab it comes up blank instead of going to my homepage.  The new interface is much prettier though, and the speed has improved a bit, so I'm generally happy with it.

8)


- The Colclough

Another Lack of Horror Stories

Once again, Arbitrary Stopframe has slunk into existence without any protest or complications.  I have no horror stories to inflict on you.  I have only the finished product, hot off the press:



One thing worth noting is that I took Sam's point about not having used enough sound FX in Episode 5.  There are a lot more sound FX in number 6.

On the topic of "stuff I finished making recently", here's another painting:

#008: Stained Glass I

Yes, the 'I' signals the intent to produce a 'II', and maybe even a 'III' and beyond...


*****


I've just realised: I spoke too soon.  There may not be a horror story in this blog post, but the post itself is arguably part of one: this is my 57th post on A White Horizon.  That darn number again!


- The Colclough

A Rediscovery

This afternoon, I decided to go on a little archeological dig.  Sort of.

Translation: I unpacked the bottom shelf of my wardrobe, which contains all my papers from sixth form, more or less undisturbed since I put them there two-and-a-half or maybe even three years ago.  But I wasn't really after the papers - I was more interested in what they were sitting on: my first-year final coursework sculpture from my A-level in "Fine Art (Ceramics)", as I think the course was officially called.

It looks like this:

And it also looks like this:

Yes, those two photos really are the same object.  The second one shows the view you see if you get down on the floor and look through the small viewing port in the front panel.  That was the point: the brief was to create a sculpture which would force the viewer to change their position in order to fully appreciate the artwork.  There's also some cunning forced-perspective stuff going on: the plasterwork is built onto some slanting inner walls, and both back corners of the box are hollow, which conveniently leaves room to store the plug and cable when the sculpture is packed away.  The outer side walls come off (at least in theory - they were ridiculously stiff last time I tried moving them) to allow access to the four light bulbs for replacement when necessary, without disturbing the aesthetically-important parts of the box.

I think this piece would rank joint second as one of the biggest and most impractical artworks I've ever created, and solo second in terms of the ones that still exist.  But despite the bulk, the weight, and the unimpressive exterior, I'm rather fond of the thing.

I got it wrong the first time round.  Version 1 was made with all the sides in place, and the ceiling missing, which was all very well and good in terms of getting the plaster and paint onto the floors and walls but not so good in terms of making the ceiling fit.  You could always see a load of nasty gaps where the separately-fabricated ceiling piece didn't really fit the rest of the cave.

And then, it went a bit mouldy.

So sometime during my A2 year, I revisited the cave, partially dismantled it (ie. removed the ceiling, front panel and outer side walls, and after killing off the fungus I then reattached the outer lid, flipped the whole thing upside-down, and remade the cave ceiling from scratch, this time plastering straight onto the insides of the box as I had done for the walls and floor.  I seem to remember the original back-wall plasterwork fell off during the deconstruction, so what you see now is a new back which was made at the same time as the ceiling.  That funny little flat-topped stalagmite thing at the back-left is a second-generation addition too.

Since then, all I've done with it was to bring it home, look inside it again, and then shove it in the wardrobe for posterity, underneath a heap of paperwork.  So it was a bit of a blast from the past looking at it again today - and I was delighted to find, upon revisiting the cave, that it hasn't gone mouldy again in the last three years.

I should try doing something huge and impractical like that again sometime...


- The Colclough