LLIW DESIGN

BONFIRE NIGHT…

Will — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:56:43 +0000

Well….what can I say?…..the evening began by me and Marcus going on a mission to get fireworks, lighters, paper plates, a barbeque and burgers. Getting back, Rhys decides he wants to burn his bed….PLAN!!! After carefully assembling the fire in a pyramid shape and stuffing the cavities with paper, we lit it up. Surprisingly it burnt amazingly with the wind feeding it perfectly. After some barbequed quarter-pounders and the fire burning down a little, i had the amazing idea to throw a bottle of hairspray on it…YES!! After about a minute and nothing we where forced to go prod it with a stick…this seemed to do the trick perfectly! a few seconds later and the patio erupted in a ball of flame. After the success of the first explosion, Marcus emerges with a bottle twice the size of the first and full…this put doubts in my mind! After repeating the first sequence and intensely waiting, the whole of the garden erupted in a mushroom cloud of flame, destroying a saucepan, a plastic bowl and setting fire to the tree and bushes…ALL CAPTURED ON FILM! We then moved onto the fireworks. Letting the rockets off under the tree and watching them Rica shade off and into the next door neighbours garden and blowing the remains of the computer monitor up were particularly memorable!

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NOV 5th (AM)

Will — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:01:22 +0000

Pierce defined 3 categories of signs:

Icon

Index

Symbol

Sausurre. defined 2 categories of signs ( as a linguist he was not interested in index signs)

1.Iconic. A physical Resemblance

2.Arbitrary. No logical Connection ( E.G all word)

First ness: The sense of a distinctive quality. A sign can possess the properties of sound, colour or taste, (e.g. car horn, traffic lights, peppermint)
Second ness (the object) The fact of the sign existing in the world to manifest form in relation to something or someone.
Third ness (The interpret ant) The general (conventional) rules of interpretation as to the meaning of the above.

SEVEN DAYS OF INSOMNIA…

Will — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:54:18 +0000

Monday
- rubbing the ESC’s face in it
- being quoted the “golden boys of graphics”
- Home, and straight away a mission to Summerfields to get booze
- getting a bit tipsy whilst getting ready for another manic Monday in Cardiff
- getting to Cardiff and straight away to burger king, to line our gut with angry whopper machines
- getting shitted up by Marcus jumping out on me
- a walk to weatherspoons, a pint and a few American sales phone calls to rock and roll superstars
- arriving at jacks at 9.30, it was shut so we rode the white knuckle ride, the escalators, managing to piss the security guards off
- getting into jacks, getting off our gut on buy one get two free
- dancing like mentalists
- dancing on the stage
- Marcus going off on his “Willy D” dance
- LOLing at some kid forward rolling off the stage, kicking a machine in the head and getting mullered
- Me and Marcus raving away after everyone had left and the music had finished
- more Olympic sliding
- LOLing at Marcus falling on his ass
- getting on the train and ripping into some Brizzle girl on advertising with a load of pirates.
- Almost getting into a fight, Marcus even took his shirt off…WELL HARD!
- getting home, finding a slug, placing it in a new comfortable home
- Marcus trying to balance an egg on the telly and breaking it all over the living room floor

Tuesday
- recovering from the night before
- receiving a phone call from the main man stating that Escapade wanted us to do some flyering in return for some free drinks
- a mission into town
- LOLing at the woman in McDonalds
- wondering around town “researching” into marcuses phone contract
- getting dragged into phones 4 u, and sitting witnessing corporate robbery
- LOLing at the guys mood changes and bright red face
- picking the flyers up and goin on a mission to the uni, handing ten flyers through every door

Wednesday
- A nine to six shift at Gamestation….Death Mode
- LOLing at random Newport tramps
- getting home and having a lengthy evening study session
- Egg throwing….one direct hit!
- not a very eventful day really

Thursday
- the day began as normal with lectures until the afternoon
- an average afternoon of uni work and rave music
- Marcus leaving for work and leaving me to my studies
- Rhys knocking on my door and asking me to join him in the living room with his mates for some cider drinking games…involving a glass, a pack of top trumps and a lot of blowing
- getting mullered in 2o minutes
- a legendary can fight
- a crazy mission to the shop for more booze
- our house getting mullered
- Egg throwing…Another direct hit!
- harassing Marcus once he’d got in from work
- falling down the stairs and knocking myself out, getting up and smacking my head again on the coat hangers.
- sitting in the living room LOLing
- Marcus getting a blow job off the telly
- Playing hang time at 3am
- Passing out

Friday
- Three hours sleep
- tidying the house after the night before
- Going into uni
- Falling asleep all the way through the flash lecture
- Fuelling up on some relentless
- Practising our hip hop moves
- going home and deciding to hit the Pade
- loling at Marcus because his hair wouldn’t go right
- getting to the pade at about 10ish
- loling at the hardcore porn on the screens (Marcus almost died of a heart attack)
- being harassed by the girls gone wild crew
- getting free porn and using it as a beer mat
- pulling our new hip hop moves off with style lol
- LMAO at marcus buying like twenty drinks before the offer ended and getting destroyed
- getting TWO free drinks for all our hard work flyering
- raving upstairs
- going back downstairs
- being rapped into getting on the stage and getting naked
- getting a free gay shirt
- Marcus disappearing
- finding Marcus outside meze
- wondering home whilst Marcus screamed Chelsea songs
- passing out

Satarday
- 2-6 shift at Gamestation
- LOLing at the pinball guy
- busting out at six
- walking to the train station to meet Deb
- LOLing a chav tramp with shoes that were waaaay too small for him
- sitting in the luggage rack on the train
- Flyering the train
- Flyering Bristol
- LMAO AT THE WILLMOT DIXON SIGN
- More flyering
- Getting into pendulum and standing in ore at the MEGA rave that was going on
- standing on the side raving and waiting for Pendulum to come on
- RAVING
- Creaming when pendulum came on
- Going down onto the dance floor and getting completely mullered, dehydrated and sweating my life out.
- going to get water and getting topless
- LOLing at all the women in their bras
- raving HARD on the side
- kicking out and walking through Bristol topless
- talking to random people whilst waiting for the bus
- Getting back into Newport after sleeping on the bus
- Feeling drunk on tiredness
- LOLing at the drunks in McDonalds
- Dying

Sunday
- 2-6 Shift at Gamestation
- MEGA fry up!
- DEATH MODE

Defiantly wont be forgetting that week anytime soon!

INTRO…

Will — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:34:12 +0000

I look at drawing not only as an art form, but also a way of life. Drawings been part of my life from a very young age, my mother, a practising sign writer and water colour painter, always use to encourage me to draw and be creative, from potatoes stamps to crayons. I remember sitting and watching my mum draw and wishing I could do the same at a similar level. This inspired me. At the age of 13 I discovered graphic novels and comics, this was the beginning. I can recall opening Eminem’s “Slim Shady LP” and staring at the image on the CD depicting a pill, as a living entity with a mouth and eyes, at this point my confidence within drawing was non existent. This image just MADE me want to draw it…so I did and unleashed my love for the arts. From here all I did was draw…I became fascinated with graphic art and comics to the point all I did was draw creatures, characters and anything with a dark touch.
Once my passion had been established, I can remember my mother confronting me with a large tattered book, H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon. This book gave me nightmares for weeks after, but still ii couldn’t put it down, I was lost amongst machinery, creatures only depicted in nightmares and darkness. My first opinion on the artist was that of a negative one, but as I matured and began to read the books instead of staring at the pictures, I realised that there was such depth and soul behind his work; this is what drove me to start producing my own material.
AS and A levels began a new “era” for me. This was the first time academically I was able to express myself freely and fully. Over the two years I was exposed to a wide range of artists, movements and exhibitions. A handful of which stay vivid in my mind; Banksy, Edward Lee, Todd McFarlane and Chris Cunningham. These two years were probably the most productive to date, I developed a method of working and a “style”.
Today in my free time I try to practise as much as possible. I’m mainly interested in illustration and character design at the moment, I also have a burning urge to start practising tattoo, I feel this may be the next step after university.

My Work>

OCT 29th (AM)

Will — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:11:01 +0000

29.10.07

Q. The relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary and therefore implicitly meaningless?

Agreed rules govern the signifier/signified relationships.

Signifiers are different from each other that what makes them work in a system of differences e.g. the alphabet has 26 unique characters (phonemes)

But the alphabet is not a language. It is a system of sounds (phonemes)

Our ability to choose from the system of differences between linguistic signs as words (language) and utter individual acts of speech (parole) are what we understand by the social phenomenon of fluency in English, Latin and French etc

It is not enough to know all the words in a vocabulary. We have to also learn how to combine them according to the rules of grammar so that we can COMMUNICATE.

Linguistic signs when used in social interaction link the minds of two or more individuals – they create a link, which allows information (and possibly meaning) to be transferred through a code.

The SYNTAGM
A logically ordered collection of signs as in a sentence or phrase

The cat sat on the rat
The rat sat on the cat
The cat sat on the mat

The PARADIGM
Relationship of sustainability

The end.

Understanding pictures – Dominic Lopez

Homework

One and two equals three

Five different ways of expressing that idea using codes.

A DAY OF SKETCHBOOK…

Will — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:02:48 +0000

Overall quite a productive day…The day began with destruction. Josh decided his computer monitor didn’t work anymore and it was time to dispose of it….a key opportunity to drop a brick out of the second floor window. The photographic outcome from this mindless destruction was quite outstanding. We then progressed to a walk into town to retrieve a magazine for sketchbook purposes. After trawling through endless amounts of mind numbing media drivel, “Wonderland” became apparent. After an arduous walk home…the task of shredding £4 worth of magazine began. This continued until around six in the evening and resulted in around 26 pages of completed sketchbook.

MY FIRST WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN…

Will — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:32:52 +0000

I decided to stay in this week, first time in a while. Mainly to save money and develop my work a little more. Had quite a productive evening to be honest, maybee i should take Rob’s advice more often? meh, roll on MONDAY!!

RAW PHOTOGRAPHY

Will — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:19:24 +0000

RAW Defined
RAW file format is the uncompressed, unprocessed data file captured by the camera’s image sensor, before any in-camera processing has been applied . In this sense, an image saved in the RAW file format is the digital equivalent to the (exposed but as yet unprocessed) film negative.
In fact, the camera will ignore your white balance, sharpening, contrast and saturation settings. Instead of applying them to the RAW data, it will save those settings in a separate header associated with the RAW data.

I use a Nikon D70s digital SLR with a 18-135mm 5.6 lens. I’ve recently discovered RAW photography. At first i found it a little confusing and advanced but after realising it was an equivilant to 35mm film it became a little clearer. In order to view or “develop” a RAW image i needed to download a RAW image converter program from the Apple website, once id done this i switched the camera to RAW format and took a few snaps. On first inspection i noticed the amount of detail and crispness there was in the images. On futher studying i noticed that they had the wounderful “35mm film” look. I found this very interesting, and the fact that i now had even more variation within my photography inspired me to continue shooting. My skills within this field are still in their early stages, but i hope to eventually learn and develop to the point where i virtually only use the RAW format. This was the Result:

STORYBOARDING

Will — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:30:45 +0000

Origins
The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.
In the biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney (Henry Holt, 1956), Diane Disney Miller explains that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs. According to John Canemaker, in Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards (1999, Hyperion Press), the first storyboards at Disney evolved from comic-book like “story sketches” created in the 1920s to illustrate concepts for animated cartoon short subjects such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie.
According to Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney (Abrams, 1973), Disney credited animator Webb Smith with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them up on a bulletin board to tell a story in sequence, thus creating the first storyboard.
One of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded was Gone with the Wind. William Cameron Menzies, the film’s production designer, was hired by David Selznik to design every shot of the film. Many large budget silent films were also storyboarded but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the 1970′s.
Storyboarding became popular in live-action film production during the early 1940s, and grew into a standard medium for previsualization of films: “We can see the last half century…as the period in which production design was largely characterized by adoption of the storyboard,” wrote curator Annette Michelson in a 1993 catalog for the Pace Gallery exhibit Drawing into Film: Director’s Drawings, which featured storyboards of popular films.
Storyboarding’s most recent use is outlining websites and other interactive media projects during the design phase.

USAGE

Film
A film storyboard is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help film directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.
In creating a motion picture with any degree of fidelity to a script, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera lens. And in the case of interactive media, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information. In the storyboarding process, most technical details involved in crafting a film or interactive media project can be efficiently described either in picture, or in additional text.
Some live-action film directors, such as Joel and Ethan Coen, used storyboard extensively before taking the pitch to their funders, stating that it helps them get the figure they are looking for since they can show exactly where the money will be used. Other directors storyboard only certain scenes, or not at all. Animation directors are usually required to storyboard extensively, sometimes in place of doing a script.

Animatics
In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called “animatics” to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.
This allows the animators and directors to work out any screenplay, camera positioning, shot list and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage can avoid animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film. Animation is usually an expensive process, so there should be a minimum “deleted scenes” if the film is to be completed within budget.
Often storyboards are animated with simple zooms and pans to simulate camera movement (using non-linear editing software). These animations can be combined with available animatics, sound effects and dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together. Some feature film DVD special features include production animatics.

Advantages
- An understanable method of recording ideas for a flash/film project
- Creates a visualisation of what the finished item will look like
- helps determine the amount of frames/time the project will last for
- helpful when trying to describe your ideas to a client
- can help extend existing ideas further

MY FIRST DAY AT WORK…

Will — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:35:49 +0000

Gamestation Newport. Walking in and immediately I hear my manager Steve (a complete legend) shout; “Billy” and I knew it was going to be a great place to work. After meeting the rest of the staff, work began. A very simple process really, “processing” as they call it, involving taking the games, removing the CD and manual, inserting then into a plastic bag, sealing with a sticker and filing it alphabetically. At first I was a little shocked at the simplicity of the job, I mean I’m getting paid £5.62 an hour to organise games….PERFECT! Working there is such a laugh, nothing is really taken seriously and the people couldn’t be easier to talk to, I hate to admit this but I’m actually looking forward to working my next shift there!