Making a Production

 

I have been working on a lot of 3D projects recently but this is one I made for myself.  Making a model and running a simulation in Blender is sometimes challenging but creating a scene with multiple animations and effects requires that I have to plan it all out. 

If its multiple shots its easier as you can set up seperate scenes and buid to purpose but if all has to live in one shot it is a bigger challenge.  So I deliberately set up a large scene with alot going on to get a better workflow.  I ended up building all the elements and placing them in the final scene.  All the animations were decided then each element was duplicated in a seperate file and animated.  When the animations and effects were finalised they were baked or keyframed and  all moved back into the final scene.   Video is here.  

A Lobster

 

I had this painting knocking around for quite a while.  It was almost complete and other things got prioritised and it got left behind.  I needed a short break from the computer this week so worked on it a little more.  If I remember it was just going to be watercolour but I added some ink.  

This kind pattern of work symbolizes how things have gone this past year.  Balancing working on projects to get more profficient versus making a living .  Some stuff will enevitably get left behind as priorities shift. Some will get picked up again as a sort of normal arises out of the eventual control of pandemic.  Some will be left behind. 

For now I am budgeting on this year not being normal and not planning too far ahead.  Controlling what I can and trying to keep moving forward.  

Tree with friends

 

Tree with friends

A recent commission from before Christmas.  This was painted in watercolour.  I had not painted in watercolour for a while and I mapped everything in Photoshop and got client approval before I painted it. There were a few smaller watercolour practice runs.   I liked the Photoshop take alot.  This was painted on very heavy paper Waterford 300 lb cold press.  I think the better you are in this medium the easier it is to paint on lighter paper.  

Photoshop preliminary sketch

Stay Safe

 

Stay Safe

I worked on a commission a while back for https://beeganassociates.com/ and created an animation for it.  The brief was to prompt people to think about their health and safety at work in broader terms.    For time reasons I ended up using a protion of it. I worked on it afterwards to round it out.  

The hazzard signs were in illustrator.  I imported them as .svg files and then animated the camera. They were the last addition. 

The stick man animation was done first.  The timing on it was slowed  for this version though it still moves along at a fair lick.  I used the lights to change scene colours.  

Music was CC 4.0  "Wants to know" by Soulsurfer.  

 

Off limit chips

 

Off limit chips 

Jumped back into illustration as a switch up from a lot of 3D I was creating.  Worked on these on and off for a month and then eventually called time.  They are chips, chips with garlic sauce, curry chips and curry chips and cheese.  They are off limits during lockdown (outside permitted travel zone) so this is all I have until restrictions are lifted.  

Clouds and rocks

 

Clouds and Rocks ( 9.5"x 7")

Oil painting.  Havent done one in a while.  

This was a practice piece to warm up after such a long break before I launched into a larger commission piece.  It was based on photo reference but I changed up the sky a bit.  I streamed some of the painting on Twitch but the VOD is gone now I think.   The more I paint these the more relaisation that 80% of the work is done before the brush touches the surface.  With composition, paint mixing and stroke placement all decided.  The only thing that happens at the actual painting stage is the brush mark. Important too but not everything.  

This painting is for sale on Etsy. 

Covid cases in Ireland 01 October 20

 

Covid cases in Ireland to 01 October 20

https://youtu.be/jM4WH20Y_o0

Something a little different this time.  The  impact of Covid-19  on every facet of life has meant that alot of data has been recorded and collected.  Correspondingly there has been a lot of information made available to the public.  In Ireland we as in most of Europe have been experiencing the start of a second wave.  Lockdowns have been reintroduced and their perimeters have been defined by county boundries.  

Here the data was expressed in 2 ways one the total number of confirmed cases per county but also of the proportion of population affected in each county corrects for different population densities. The whole thing was then examined per day.  It is easy to see the first wave peaking in April, every county holds steady in July and cases increase everywhere in September. Data released lags realtime by 2-3 days.  The next week look critical to gain control of numbers again.  

All the data from this source   

https://data.gov.ie/dataset/covid19countystatisticshpscireland