I want my book back! Also a Uni break update.

If you have read the posts before this, you would know I had to hand in my little baby to my University for marking - it has been 4 months and I still haven't gotten it back! Somehow the tutors all decided to leave the country/take a break from we tedious students and lock away everybody's hard work in a place that we can't get to. I've turned up to Uni several times to collect The Kraken but every time I have been stuck waiting and searching for someone to help me for HOURS. Literally hours. Thank golly they're not allowed to throw the books out, or I would be furious. I can try again before the new semester starts (I have most of a month left now) or I can wait until the tutors are back properly, but I really want The Kraken back, sooner rather than later. I feel like having it back in my possession will remind me of what I can achieve, and what I can do better, and push me to finish my projects more efficiently and quickly. I just want my baby back! :'(

But over the past few months I have been focusing my creative energies on a youtube channel called Random Encounters, who create fun videogame-related musicals that put me in a fun, creative mood, and I've been pushing my digital illustration skills (and soon animation) to try and create with them. I'm using their energy, basically, the further my skills. It's something I like to do. I just find a creative force I like and put all my energy behind it, pushing it forward as much as I can. I'll have to stop creating for them soon, though, and get back to 'real art' for a few months, so there will be progress updates on my research shortly.

For the new semester, I really want to continue my research on dead languages and language trees, which I didn't have enough time for last semester. I finished it all on a very low note, and I'm not proud of how I did it. I want to use this new semester to further the study I've been doing to create the art I want. And now I'm third year, I'm not going to hold back! My biggest idea, which I should get started on ASAP is to literally fill a room with a tree. A tree covered with scriptures and symbols from dead cultures, formed sort of like a Weeping Willow, so the audience is forced to walk through it, and have 'leaves' from the scripts trailing around them, sweeping it off their shoulders, etc.

Also a set of sculptures of 3D forms of demotic and merotic script, and if that works well, I might go even further with Arabic script, which I think is gorgeous. I should really call it Aramaic, or more precisely Nabatean monumental script. If that's even correct. But I have plans! That's the point of this update. And I want to have an amazing body of work to show off at the end of this semester's review! Unlike last semester, which was disappointing... I will do better!

R.I.P. Monty Oum, 2 Feb 2015, the one person in the world who knew how to do what he wanted to get done. This semester, I want to be like him. Thank you for you, Monty, I'm sorry I never got to see you in person to tell you how much you inspired me to create.

The Kraken - Finished

60 pages and 3 months later - complete! :D

Now, to start all the other books I thought up while making this one...

I've only placed one page...

...and the rage is already building. I really need to master InDesign, I really do...

It's strange to have been toting around this A3 book full of images, hastily trying to finish everything in time for the deadline, and now I have to rip out almost every page to scan them in. I never take pages out, this is like ripping out little chunks of my heart. Especially in this circumstance, seeing as I have spent every waking moment for a couple of months now, making, thinking and breathing this project. Is this what it feels like to be an illustrator? A book-maker? My stress migraines are telling me not to make this a career... I hope the resolution is okay, I hope all the images are big enough for what I want, I hope I hope I hope... I really hope I don't have to redo any of the pages. I really really hope this project finishes without a fatal hiccup.

This book is my BABY. I don't want ANYTHING to go wrong. Especially seeing as I'm almost done with it. I'd be the worst mum haha.

Back on track with The Kraken

Just revised the script so I could finish it in time - provided I keep up with the much more manageable regime of daily deadlines. I could probably lop off a few more pages, technically I have 40 to spare, but I do like this story and I'd like to see it through to the end. It'll be good practise for me. For my future desired practice. Never taking illustration deadlines for granted ever again...

The Kraken - Maybe a bad idea...

Considering the deadline I have and the work output I've managed to make in the time I've actually had time to put my head around this project, I don't think I'll be able to finish this book for this unit. I'll have to change to a photography style if I want to keep the deadline and my hair, because this project is not giving me any room to move and do my other 3 units-worth of homework. I hope I'll be able to change, seeing as I don't have much time to finish this, but I really, really need to change this. I'm just falling behind because I'm concentrating on one thing and spending the rest of the time stressing and procrastinating because of the work load. But here's the work I've done, which isn't much.

I just felt I needed to change once I realised I had spent 4 hours on a Big Ben drawing for a book set in 1840...

I hate InDesign

Enough said.

Finalised cover art - The Kraken & The Angel

Now imagine a massive brown stripe down the middle, and all the pencil in sepia tones.

I don't even know if this is good or not, I don't want to be judged by the printing company or my tutor ;_; The clouds look more pencil than clouds, but I have no idea how to draw them properly still. I'll probably end up redoing this in a week or two.