I'm such a Photoshop n00b!

I still feel pretty new to Photoshop and Digital drawing and painting.

I have always drawn since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I had a fixation with drawing things "broke" when I was little. From "draw car broke" to the slightly more worrying "draw man broke", I always wanted things opened up. I think I just had the same curiosity I still do for the inner workings of things.
It progressed to copying pictures of Superman out of the comics my mum used to buy me, to developing my own stories for Superman to be involved with.
I did some oil paintings are a pre-teen and moved on to watercolours as a teenager.
I doodled through boring lessons at school and had exercise books and exams returned with scores of red pen telling me that these were not the appropriate places for my drawings.
At uni, I doodled some more, and did drawings for some of my friends as they asked for them.
When I left uni, and got a job in Theatre in Education, I produced more drawings for my friends while I was sat backstage waiting to go on.
While in Thailand in 2006, I picked up a copy of Photoshop CS3 because I thought it would be useful and it was cheaper over there. My laptop was in no way up to running it though so it lay dormant until 2008 when I coloured an old drawing I'd done about 4 years prior.

Click here to see it full-sized

At this point, I didn't have a drawing tablet so was colouring entirely using a mouse which wasn't ideal. Doing the hair in the above picture was a pain. A couple of colouring jobs done with a mouse led to me getting a Wacom drawing tablet and working with this since.
Since then, everything I've learnt to do has been self-taught. I've read bits of books on using Photoshop, and when I know there's something specific I want to do, I turn to the internet and helpful tutorials. I have a Pinterest board of tutorials that I want to started incorporating bits of into my future work.
I do, however, still work in quite a traditional way. I hand draw my drawings, either with pencils on paper and scanning them to Photoshop, or drawing them directly into Photoshop. Then I physically or digitally ink it as appropriate, apply colours, usually as flat washes then building up details to a finished piece.

I'm getting better at this and I've recently started using more and more photomanipulation to drop objects into pieces, and to create textures from photos. With the new steampunk Christmas card I've just completed, I decided to take the photo elements from being small items in the background or used as an ethereal overlay, to very much an essential part of the main picture.

Click here to see it full-sized

I still often struggle to get my pieces to look the way I want them to. I think I'm still a little locked into using traditional media and not thinking Photoshop enough. I also think I need to be more imaginative and more abstract with my concepts. I don't think I'm thinking of interesting enough concepts to need half the stuff Photoshop can do for me.

Firstly, I still haven't quite figured out Brushes. While I know the basics of how to create and use them, I haven't quite figured out the why. I tried using a brush I'd created from a photo of a fir branch little bit on the new Coggingtons card, to turn areas of black shadow on the Christmas tree into areas of textured green fir branches. You'll have to tell me how successful I was. Again though, this is very much using the brush as a peripheral feature whereas I know they can be used very much to create essential parts of a piece.

I keep seeing mention of using custom brushes, and I spoke briefly to my friend Adam Ford who extolled their virtues.

So, the next time I get time to do a bit of experimenting on a project, that's what I shall be doing.

-Curt-

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No sex please... we're Steampunks!

I got drawn into a discussion on Facebook the other day about the place of sex in steampunk.

As can be seen, it was a popular discussion that is currently discussing the merits of different types of cake!
Steampunks, it would seem, are nothing if not distractable. But for quite some time, the conversation stayed on topic, before wandering on and off it..

Sex pops up in all aspects of life - why not steampunk? Personally, I don't see that there's a problem. Steampunk is fun and so is sex. That, the way of the world, and Rule #34 say that sex is always going to pop up in steampunk, particularly where many gents are going for the dapper look (or even the rugged engineer look), and many women are donning corsets, specifically designed to emphasise traditionally sexy physical attributes.

I can understand wanting to go to an event or gathering where it wasn't overtly sexual and plenty of family-friendly, non-sexualised events and steampunk related things do occur.

But if people want to go more back-alley with their steampunk and explore the back-room bar, sky pirate, kinky victoriana and burlesque aspect of it, I don't see why not! As long as it's appropriately advertised and billed as such so that people don't end up somewhere, or taking their children to something they'd rather they didn't see. This can all be incorporated into the fun and eccentric world of steampunk. I'd hate to think that steampunk was such heavily regulated fun that there was no room for sex in it.

Sex is something I've yet to explore in any of my drawings or designs but I'd sure like to at some point in the future. 

(Check out www.facebook.com/CurtisAllenIllustrator to see what I do get up to...)

I like fancy dress. I don't think it has to be sexualised. It can be fun when it is. Kids can get involved in fancy dress, but I wouldn't take them to a 'whores and vicars' party.
Same goes here.

What are anyone else's thought on this?

-Curt-

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Students who shine and students who blend

I read this article in Teach First magazine first, and found it online so I could share it here. It's from a teacher, writing about dealing with the students who stand out and the students who blend in.

I like Starkey's honesty.

Click here for the original blog post: http://stackofmarking.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/special/

What do you think?

-Curt-

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Splat!!!

My first ever Stop-Motion film!

I've been wanting to do this for ages so I've been checking out guides and stuff online, and a book I have, and so on. Click here for a Pinterest board of some of them!

Today, I discovered there's a phone app to compose a series of photos into a basic film. My housemate did actually tell me about this app ages ago, but in my usual way I filed it somewhere until I was ready to discover it myself like some intrepid explorer uprooting all the signposts and flags pointing me at something, until I get there and stick my own flag in.


Having found this app, did I wait until I was home and could take my time over it? Did I script it? Did I plan it? Did I wait until I could control the lighting and environment? Did I wait until I had proper props and things to support my phone camera and puppet? Did I wait until I even had the tools or know-how to make a proper puppet?
Did I hell!
I did it excitedly with Blu-Tac at my desk at work in the 20 minutes I had left of my lunch break with my phone proped up on a weighted sellotape dispenser and getting odd looks from my colleagues as I made numerous squelchy noises and thumped the desk repeatedly until I had the right sounds for the audio track!

The very end, from where my fist comes in, was all animated in about a 2 minutes because that was literally all I had left of my lunch-break! 

(I knew all that time spent making Blu-Tac models in French lessons at school would come in handy for something, no matter how many of the Mr. Mason confiscated and squished!)

Seriously, though; I do plan on creating some proper articulated puppets, sculpting and/or moulding bodies for them, painting them and doing this properly soon.

Watch this space!

-Curt-

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"The Fappening"

Who are these people?!

Do they have TVs? Why, when they know that criminals dedicate their lives to breaking into houses and taking them?!

Do these people have sex ever? If they would have a problem with everybody in the world having sex with them then they shouldn't allow anyone to have sex with them ever.

This is akin to those kind of arguments.

It is up to the celebrities to make sure their data is secure?
What, by maybe storing it with a global company with tomes written and millions spent on how they secure data?!

It's freedom of expression and action and yes, this is an invasion of privacy. The images have been stolen from private storage and put in the public domain.

How can anyone seriously argue otherwise and that it is the fault of these women for daring to have a private sexual life?!

What I don't like about Christmas.

It's the middle of September. This is fine. I like this time of year. What I don't like is the countdown to Christmas. People who know me will know this.

But this is going to cause me a problem soon. I'll come to that in a moment.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Christmas. Far from it! I love Christmas! But the Christmas I like is just one day. The Christmas period I like is the short run-up to it and the continuation into New Year's Day.

The Christmas I don't like is the one that dominates a full third of a year.

Christmas seems to get earlier and earlier with each passing year. Earlier this year, I went for some food at The Harvester in Star City in Birmingham. On the entrance was a sign informing us that Christmas bookings were now being taken. I don't remember when this was but I know it was around a couple of weeks before my birthday because we decided to go somewhere else to eat for my birthday because we'd been here recently.
My birthday is 18th August!!

Someone, somewhere decided that Christmas promotion needed to start over 4 and a half months, and probably nearer or over 5 months before Christmas. Christmas is but one day.

It's a one day religious event in the UK, actually - a Christian-appropriated pagan celebration. I've no problems with it being an appropriation. Jesus' birthday is unknown so why not stick the celebration on a date where people are already celebrating. I've no problem with non-religious people getting involved. Religious celebration passes into tradition and each celebrates in their own way. Those who want to be religious about it do, those who don't don't. The tradition of gift giving is lovely. But it has become such a feeding frenzy for anyone with any product, service, or message to sell and the sheer force of consumerism that rears up like a tidal wave before December 25th is just nasty.

Can you imagine if I started getting excited about my birthday, another event that is so common as to happen every year, 4 and a half months before it happened? If halfway through March I started telling people on a daily basis what I wanted for my birthday. If I started demanding that they buy me cards 4 and a half months before my birthday. If every single day for 4 and a half months, I reminded people that my birthday was only a few weeks away.

Pretty obnoxious isn't it? Pretty obnoxious to be demanding people buy me stuff in the first place, let alone to constantly bring it up for months. Which is how I feel about Christmas. It's gotten obnoxious.

I know Christmas exists and I know it's coming. Cripes, I know it's coming! I don't need constant telling. I know that the tradition is to give gifts and celebrate. I'm hardly going to forget. So I would love for marketers and businesses everywhere to just STOP! Stop harassing me into buying things. Stop taking what should feel like a special annual occasion, and diluting its specialness by spreading it out over more than a full third of a year until it is everyday and tired come December 25th.
We are told for 4 months solid that we have to BUY ALL THE THINGS or we've ruined the magic and killed Santa and made children cry and broken family values and kicked puppies and we're mean old miserly killjoys and I don't like it.

Which puts me in an interesting predicament now. I'm on the other side. No - it's not working for Cadbury World. That their Christmas produce stocks in September, and that it makes up something like 5% of total sales in September annoys me enough already but that is as big companies do.

No, I'm talking about selling cards. I have a small greetings card business now.
Here it is: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CapnDred . Please - go and have a look. It's only small so I'll wait here until you get back.

It's a little bit steampunk, isn't it? In theory, I'll be selling other illustration based products there but at the moment, it's greetings cards that I'm focusing on.
I started with a Valentines Card this year, and to date also have a birthday card, Father and Mothers' Day cards, a graduation card for sale. The next big greeting card day is Christmas Day (no-one buys Halloween cards, do they?) so I've got a nice long stretch to work on this one or maybe even produce a couple of designs, and not feel pressured by an imminent deadline like I have with the others.
So here I am, thinking about my Christmas produce. In September.
Also, I want to have the card available earlier rather than later because I personally know people who have started buying Christmas stuff already and as it is something I want to make a bit of money at, sense says I should catch all the early buyers I can. What's the point of me bringing the card out in time for those early-birds if I then don't advertise it to them so they know it's there? But if I do that, I become the bit of Christmas I hate.

Earlier advertising leads to people buying earlier which in turn leads to earlier advertising the following year to catch the early shoppers and so on. It self-perpetuates.

I think I'll produce the card. I'll put it in my store. But I won't shout about it throughout the end of summer and all of autumn and the start of winter.
It can be how I feel about Christmas: It's there and if you want to get involved with it in September, you can. But I'm happy with it not being waved and shouted about and pointed at for the next quarter of the year.

It hadn't occurred to me until now that I need to think about how I want to manage this one so I don't hate myself.

-Curt-


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A Review of China Mieville's book, "Perdido Street Station".

This review initially reveals some ideas contained in the book, but no plot points other than the initial set-up. However, after another warning, it will reveal some plot points.

This book is certainly longer than I'd expected when I ordered it - it's built like a house brick! - but I soldiered on.It is a story of an ex-univeristy science lecturer, Isaac, who has some frowned upon ideas, largely relating to a theory of self-perpetuating energy called Crisis Theory. He is approached by Yagharek, from a humanoid-birdrace called the Garuda (in a nod to Hindu mythology) to find a way to let him fly again, after his wings have been amputated for reasons undislosed.

At the same time, Isacc's lover, Lin, is of the Khepri race (in a nod to ancient-Egyptian mythology that Mieville doubtless picked up when he lived in Egypt) who has a beetle for a head is approached by a mob boss to make some art for him in the way the Khepri do, by chewing up substances and excreting it through a gland on the back of their scarab head.

When I read the section describing Lin, I was sure I'd mis-imagined it somehow because that idea just seemed to ridiculous. But on re-reading it, and descriptions that followed she does indeed have a scarab for a head. The book does this a few times - introduces ideas that seem absurd, and to recommend the book to others while mentioning these ideas, seem laughable. But somehow, they hang together off each other well and just gel so that while individual ideas may seem to jump the shark, the created world is grounded in itself.

First off, I noticed the richness of the language. Mieville has been accused of writing with a thesaurus open beside him, of being smugly wordy, needlessly verbose. I didn't feel that he was. Yes - he uses a lot of big words, many unfamiliar to me, but I never felt that he was bludgeoning me with them. Simply revelling in his command of English. And it challenged me to expand mine. While that was occasionally frustrating as I had to READ the book with a dictionary beside me, I like learning.

That language is used to great effect in describing a city that felt, to me, very Dickensian. It's a grubby world that focuses on the everymen. A city that does have its gilded towers and sparkling streets, but where this story focuses is the junkies, the outcasts, the hidden revolutionaries, the outcasts, the slums, the squalid, sexual deviants, the people clinging onto the breadline, the mob bosses and the channels of their power, the mercenaries, stoolies, and fences. And the language used in describing this is rich, and imagery-laden, and very sensual. Often borderline sexual in describing it's squalour.

There are corrupt politicians, morally ambiguous scientists and a brutal and paranoid militia. The city feels quite Dickensian with a spot of steampunk in the form of steam and cog driven computing engines that receive instruction on punched cards interacting with cogs in their input slots, governmental airships, message tubes around the council buildings. It's steampunk influenced, but without all the Victoriana surrounding it. Add to that, very small amounts of magic - think less wizards and elves, and more a branch of physics that happily exists in this world and is never really bombastic and you have an idea.

Many different races co-exist in the city of New Croubzon, all physically and societally clearly delineated. The city has its ghettos and slums, where xenophobia is rife, and it's more affluent areas where integration, while not complete, is more realised. The wider world, while sketched, is largely irrelevant to this story, but is pencilled in clearly enough that this city doesn't seem to exist in a vacuum.

An idea that really appealed to me was The Remade. It is a literal remaking of the body using a little science, a little technology, and a little magic and used on the desperate: Poor rickshaw drivers paying for extra legs so that they may be a more efficient cabbie, mercenaries paying to be weaponised for more efficient killing, prostitutes paying for extra... you get the idea. Or they are the punished disfigured - for example,murderers having body parts of their victims grafted on to their faces reflecting the nature of their crimes.The characters feel well rounded and many issues are touched up on. The story and characters seem to have some very dark threads running through them. And though quite obviously so, they somehow seem more subdued.

Rape, disfigurement, self harm, sexual deviancy, drug addiction, isolation, loss of self, addiction, experimentation, transformation all written in language that teeters on erotic fascination.

I suspect the author has had his demons to wrestle.Yet none of these issues is THE issue. They rather form a backdrop to the story.


FOLLOWING MAY BE MORE PLOT SPOILERS THAN YOU WANT IF YOU PLAN ON READING THE BOOK!


The book, after spending nearly half its length setting in motion the various threads of the story, then changes rather abruptly to a monster hunt after one of the grubs Isaac is studying regarding flight mutates into a giant moth that sucks minds dry, and frees it's siblings that are being experimented on in a government facility. I'll be honest I didn't like the shift at first.

It interrupted the delicate relationship Isaac and Yagharek had, and his discoveries on crisis theory.

It interrupted the delicate and dangerous relationship Lin had with Motley, the gang boss.

And it interrupted the tender yet unlikely relationship between Lin and Isaac.

And you never really got to revisit them again. They were all rent by the moths. I felt a little let down that after setting up some nice and delicate ideas and relationships, the book shifted to being something a bit more blunt and simple.

But once I'd accepted it, I really liked the story that followed. And it does come with a couple of moral dilemmas that really made me, as a reader, question where my morality and judgement sat on the issues.

It's exciting, tense, and while quite a straightforward hunt by a group of wanted vagabonds, it has room for invention and some really quite extreme ideas at times. But again without jumping its own shark.

The story is brutal at times and don't expect all the characters to walk away unscathed (both physically and your parting impressions of them). This left a bitter taste in my mouth at times but that's just something I have to swallow. These are plausible and initially I thought sometimes they seemed unnecessary and manipulative, but reflecting, I think that's just my distaste for loss.


In summary, I'd say it's a book of two halves, both of which have some great ideas! The first is a slower, more ideas and concept driven half, and the second is a much more action driven half, reiterating and incorporating the themes established in the first half.It does have some outlandish concepts such as cactus-people, and I'm sure they'll turn some people off. but if you accept them in the context of the book, they are largely incidental and add a far-away exoticness to a story permeated with a claustrophobic fear of loss of self.

While it straddles sci-fi and fantasy, it's not a high version of either of these and is a fairly simple story that simply has fantastical elements.

Recommended!

-Curt-

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