Süp

I wouldn't exactly call it practicing photography, but i did try a few different ISO speeds...
and it was good soup.

The resulting photos were pretty average, so i just did a lousy tint on one and worked on the levels a bit... but bad lighting to begin with can't be fully rectified.

Ahhhhh ahhh ahhhhh

In this one I played with saturation in a strange way... for example, the shadows of the bodies used a lighter and very desaturated color instead of the usual darker/more saturated. I don't think it's a thing i could use mostly, but interesting, and worth playing with.

I think this would have worked well with a handdrawing scanned in to get a nicer quality for the lines.

Things

First, a photo I took quite a while ago... just some sticky tape stuck into a little shape which I liked. I started working on removing the warm cast and stuff but then decided I liked it (but now that i look at it as I upload I wonder if i should have...). I need to learn some photography technique so that my shots are a bit nicer... never pro, but at least more competent.

And then a very photoshoppy thing I just did using old resources I already had. A bit of fun I guess. Sometimes I don't want to avoid typical photoshop looks (blend modes, pixelly, etc) although i still don't quite have it in me to go the lens flare.

I was thinking about OK Computer (by Radiohead) a while ago and how its cover art is very obviously digital... i have heard people say that the packaging is amazing, but i don't really like it. Looks cheap and low-budget tacky now. Maybe because i wasn't "there" when it first came out I just won't get it. Meh.

Just thought as well, i haven't done much drawing for a long time. Must get back into that.

Muckaround

A few little things for you today.

the colored stripy ones use a secret technique I have developed over years and years which i'm not going to tell you. I like its potential though, and i thought these stripes were nice.

And I scanned in the crest from a letter I got... it's so small that it automatically went jagged when i scanned it big. Looks a bit like a Photoshop filter unfortunately but it's not (though the color halftone over the top is).

Now, off to get a sour apple slurpee.

Test frames

I am (probably) doing a little animation segment for a short film... it's an experimental piece that will be mostly video and stills, with a few animated scenes. The whole thing is pretty bizarre and the narrative will be have to be interpreted a lot by the viewer.
Anyway, they want me to do a 15 second scene where the two characters are sitting in a coffee shop and having tea. That's all... they just sit there. They will do stuff like take a drink, look around, whatever, but no specific actions or dialogue.

Pretty open, pretty fun :)

They gave me the background and a mockup of a frame to show kind of what they had in mind. I worked off that but also just did what i wanted to, because that's most likely to work when i try and do the full animation! I don't know how it will look with this much detail and sketchiness, whether it will just get really jumpy, because i usually keep the lines a bit cleaner - not straight or fluid, but not scribbly with the construction lines like in this one. One of my two images is a little cleaner and that takes longer, because i have to go back and get rid of some of the extra rubbish, but i suspect it will be a bit easier on the eyes.

Anyway, I've sent it to them to check what they think, and if I get the go-ahead I will do a second or two to see how that works...

A thing.

There wasn't any inspiration, goal or meaning to this... just opened photoshop, chose colors based on what i liked, and put them down and started layering some things on top.
I have a temptation now to vignette everything i do in some way, whether it be the traditional soft dark corners or through more blatant methods... things often look good with some kind of framing. But I don't want to always do it, so i didn't today (well actually i did, but i blended it pretty low so it wasn't very prominent). I sortof wanted to do bold, dark strokes around the left and right. but no.

self portrait of sorts

I was reading last night before I went to bed, and as I got up I realised that my reflection was very visible in the window, which for some reason made me want to draw myself. I've done it once before and actually got a pretty good likeness, but i wasn't in that mood tonight, and the lighting was also not conducive to that... when i sat close enough to the window to see it well, i was almost directly under the light so lots of my face was in shadow.
Nevertheless, i grabbed a piece of cardboard I had looted (i like drawing on cardboard for some reason) and chose to work in black biro, and got to work.
Because of all the shadows, i didn't really know how to work but i jumped in and started plotting out some lines, and built up lots of form through directional lines and layering. In the end, I don't think it's very "me" (particularly if you ignore the hair which is a bit more of a giveaway) but it was fun and good practice I think, as i really imagined the forms of my face and where lines might go. I made a fair bit up, and didn't do the shadows quite consistently but it wasn't meant to be a 'study' as such.

Then i photographed it today and found a cool effect where the light was gleaming under my curtains, so i used that, heh.