Great news for Open Source, the radio show

It couldn’t happen to a better program…

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As promised. On to page 2.

Post-op post

I’m recovering from what I’d anticipated would be minor surgery on my arm last Tuesday. I was all prepared to spend one day in hospital, and hoped I could get away with local anaesthetic. When general anaesthetic was required, and it did not agree with me (vocal cords apparently lodged a vigorous protest - twice) it became something of a Big Deal, at least in my worry-prone mind. I may have over-egged the description when I related events to my mother afterwards, as she has taken to calling it my Near Death Experience.

One day became an overnight stay on the ward with my own personal Dalek monitoring blood pressure and oxygenation all night, squeezing my arm with the inflatable cuff at intervals. (It’s still sore - yes, I am The Weakest Link). Geoffrey negotiated the hospital phone system to find out what was going on, and visited in the evening. We fiddled unsuccessfully with the bizarre television system which seemed to play audio through a metal power strip. Despite copious relaxation and lounging at home since being discharged the next morning, I still feel pretty awful, and a friendly GP has today prescribed medicine and more rest. Geoffrey is getting used to this kind of event with me, in Boston another “minor” operation resulted in my being admitted briefly - he claims that when he first saw me that time my eyes were rotating in oposite directions. There must be something about being a control freak that strenuously resists being rendered unconscious.

This is all rather frustrating as I’m trying to prepare for the upcoming Artweeks in Oxford at the end of May. I’m opening up our front room to visitors and displaying prints of illustrations from the online Tate stories. I went to a meeting of East Oxford Artweeks participants the other night which was well-attended, and it seemed like a varied and interesting mix of artists… the trick will be to find time to visit all their studios in between manning mine. Our host served excellent tea made in a proper teapot, and I was inspired to pull our Brown Betty-style pot off the top shelf when I got home and start doing the whole traditional brewing regime.

Yes, still here

Ah, the curse of the blogger, the long periods without an entry because you are too busy just doing Stuff. If I had time I would wax poetic on my recent inspirational employee tour of the Old Bodleian Library and the amazing underground book conveyor system, but that will have to wait for another day. I was doubly fortunate in that this tour was on World Book Day and the Bodleian’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio was on display in the Divinity School (which is actually an ornate room with a breathtaking ceiling). Anyway, on a more mundane note I have assembled two flatpack filing cabinets and feel that I must now qualify for some sort of metalworking certificate. This in aid of getting every single stack of paperwork out of my sight and into a folder. This leads to some rather fussy folder titles like Menus, solely for all those takeaway menus that arrive in the mailbox, but if it is printed and in this house, it is now going in a folder.

Looking for stories

I’ve been busy getting the new office/studio space set up. One trip to Ikea later, I have a large desk that can hold monitor, speakers, scanner and printer. Directly behind me is a table for drawing, with drawing board. In the afternoon, the room is very sunny. In short, excuses for not working are few and far between.

In addition to the drawing, I’m starting to write some new stories. On Sunday I came across a “real life” cat tale in the Observer newspaper magazine, in a profile of Patrick Fitzgerald, prosecutor in the Plamegate affair in the US. The author, Paul Harris, explains how Fitzgerald is an infamous batchelor, then tells the story of The Cat:

“In Brooklyn, Fitzgerald once had a cat that was so neglected by its master’s work habits his colleagues kidnapped it. The sent him photos of his pet in various New York locations: dangled off the Brooklyn Bridge, with a toy gun to its head, ousitd a dodgy-looking Chinese restaurant. Fitzgerald got the message: you look after the cat, or we do. He sent it to live on a farm.”

This is a great “story” already - we have the character of the hard-working law man, up all night fighting crime and bad guys. We have have his poor solitary cat. We have the concerned friends, who obviously care about both him and the cat. In the meantime, we get great images of said cat in various NYC scenes - high Sopranos-esque drama. I can see the illustrations already (maybe lose the toy gun, but clearly there is mock peril involved). I’m not going to do this particular story, but somehow thinking about its appeal seems to have jump-started my imagination.

My new South Park-ish icon is courtesy of Geoffrey, and that’s a coffee cup in my hand. I’m back to drinking the stuff in significant quantities after trying tea for a couple weeks. I like these lines from Bach’s Coffee Cantata:

“A cat won’t stop from catching mice,
and maidens remain faithful to their coffee.”

 

Drawing progresses, slowly

I mentioned at the beginning of my blog that I planned to focus on drawing and animation in 2006, but realize I have yet to mention much about those topics, apart from my short trial of the Moho software. Since then, I’ve decided to go right back to basics with my drawing, and start at the beginning. Of course, I then got side-tracked with moving my computer to a new location so that drawing on paper and on the PC can take place in the same room. Finally, I am set up and have started to work on some basic compositions (teapot, mug, sugarbowl etc.) to improve my technique and, I hope, build up confidence. I’ve also started a small sketchbook - so far I’m using it to record things I see on my way to and from work that might be useful in future illustrations. These are naturally from memory so are not observed drawings, but I like the idea of accumulating a store of ideas that I can call upon in the future.

 

New Tactic

I’ve decided to give Moho, the animation program, a rest for a while and go back to Flash. At the moment, there are too many technical hurdles to get over in using a new unfamiliar application, and what I really want to do is concentrate on the drawing. For better or worse, I’m used to Flash and its quirks. Today I’ve been working on a simple animation in Flash of a woman walking and carrying a shopping bag - tackling the problem of the moon-walking effect if you let the feet slide around. I’ve also been rereading my two books on comics by Scott McCloud. His discussion of how comics “work” - visually and using text - is excellent. Looking up the link just now reminds me that I should check out his site.

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Hot Stuff - A Favorite Recipe…

This has nothing to do with animation, storytelling or drawing, but I must document somewhere how great this recipe is. Near the back of Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible is an unassuming recipe for a South African “green chutney”. Apparently it is normally made with soured milk, but this version uses plain yogurt. The other ingredients are coriander leaves (cilantro), chili peppers, garlic, lemon juice, water and salt. Everything but the yogurt is pureed in a food processor, then this mixture is blended into the yogurt. We adjust the quantity of chilies, and use a couple “bird’s eye” variety as well, so our current product is pleasantly, lethally hot. We find it gets even better after a day or so in the fridge, and it’s excellent on Indian breads like naan or chapati. Who knows if it is good for you, but it certainly gives you that impression. We have been known to eat it out of the bowl with a spoon. The entire Curry Bible is worth checking out if you like curries, it covers variations from many regions of the world and has interesting background information.

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Wet Weekend in Oxford

I’m still working through the Moho animation tutorials. Today I played around with drawing freehand lines of variable widths - I use a pressure-sensitive tablet, and Moho responds very well and makes irregular, organic-looking marks. I’m looking forward to developing more dexterity with the tools so that I can think about what I’m drawing and animating, and less about which tool does what.

Last night, watched some of the Firefly DVD’s Geoffrey gave me for Christmas. This exceptional sci-fi series only survived one season on Fox in the US. It was shown on the Sci-Fi channel here in the UK which is how I first saw it. It was created by Joss Wheedon of Buffy fame, and his genius is plainly evident. The premise is wierd but interesting, a friend of ours in the States describes it as “Space Waltons” which I love. Approximately 500 years in the future, events have moved on but certain elements usually associated with classic Westerns have remained. “Country” language (for lack of a better description - think “thee” etc.) is interspersed with Chinese, which has become a dominant language. The captain is like John Wayne (or maybe John Boy?) with chopsticks. We watched the 2-hour pilot, which sets up the situation and introduces the main characters, then watched it again with audio commentary from Joss Wheedon and actor Nathan Fillion, who plays the ship captain. What struck me most listening to Joss Wheedon is the commitment he clearly has to the characters, the story, and the world he’s created. There is no sense that he is self-consciously creating “entertainment”. I think this is the state of mind to aim for if you want to tell a really good story.

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It’s a Start

A quick post this morning before work - yesterday I managed to download and install the demo of Moho, an animation program that Geoffrey came across. It is different from Flash in that it has the concept of “bones” that you can move, and attached body parts follow accordingly. It produces some very impressive effects, but as I found out when working through some of the tutorials, the interface is quite unusual and hard get used to. These days I always expect to find applications using the Photoshop tool conventions - if they don’t, it seems akward. I’m going to keep going with it though, maybe I’ll have a sample to post in the next few days. This afternoon, however, will be taken up with a visit from a heating engineer - our ancient “micro-bore” system has started to make wheezing noises, and apparently we may have air in the system. Yes, ideally I would have had it serviced in the summer, not in mid-winter…

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