Rich's Blog Feed

IF: Poof!

Richard — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:04:21 +0100

My latest illustration Friday entry. I drew this at about 3 am this morning because I couldn't sleep.

Poor old Ernie the Magician he's really suffering from the credit crunch so he decides to save some money by making his own smoke bombs. Unfortunately things don't work out too well.

Jane's Brain

Richard — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:29:59 +0100

My entry to Adam and Joe's Video wars competition. It's a pretty literal interpretation of the song lyrics. Dealing with a young woman faced with the problems of living in a consumerist society. This video was originally done in Flash MX and drawn using a graphics tablet.

Wizard Card

Richard — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:56:12 +0100

I realise I have been a bit rubbish on the old blogging front so here's a birthday card I made for my uncle.

Singing Octopus

Richard — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:26:42 +0100

Angry Mushroom

Richard — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:40:23 +0100

Portraiture Class

Richard — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:19:12 +0100

Last weekend I took a portraiture workshop at the Richard Attenborough Centre and it felt like a bit of a paradigm shift for me I really felt that I started making the shift from drawing what's in my head to drawing what is actually there. Here's a quick charcoal sketch I drew from a photo, it's not 100% accurate but in terms of by ability to present real people it's a bit step forward. The original photo had very high contrast which made it ideal to render in charcoal - what's more it's doesn't resemble my other work remotely.

"Cognitive Surplus" - my new favourite phrase

Richard — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:22:12 +0100

I recently watched a talk my Clay Shirky on his new book "Here Comes Everybody". In his talk he argues that automation developed in the 20th century has led to more free time than ever before and this was highly traumatic for our culture. The initial result of this was complete confusion as to what to do with this time, people eventually turned toward television as a use for the massive 'cognitive surplus' that had been created. The development of interactive media now means that this immense human potential can be harnessed to create projects like Wikipedia.

He tells a particularly good anecdote about an interview he had with a television producer. The television producer sneers at people who contribute to projects like Wikipedia saying "where do people find the time?" and he replies...

"No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

I suppose this blog is a manifestation of my cognitive surplus, Clay's talk has made me find slightly better about this whole thing, hopefully it's worthwhile...

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5885

New Paper Toys

Richard — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:29:06 +0100

I designed these little guys on one lazy Sunday afternoon using Adobe Illustrator. You can download the flatpack design below if you'd like to make them at home.

Crazy Jim

592k PDF Document

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Colonel Tweed

528k PDF Document

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Norman Smith

548k PDF Document

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Fractal Fun

Richard — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:59:59 +0100

I saw some really cool Fractal desktop wallpapers online earlier, they were created using Astrophysis free fractal generator.

By default it isn't able to produce large images (java is set to give it only 60m of ram). The secret to getting big images is to open the program using the terminal and send it the commands...

java -Xmx200m -jar apophysis-j-22.jar

The results a really satisfying (click on the image to view a larger version on my Flickr account).

Lost World

Richard — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:35:24 +0100

This image started off as a doodle in my sketchbook. I've experimented a bit using the gradient map tool to give the line work a brown tint and added a slight fabric texture to the background too make it all look a little less 'computery'.

Click on the image to see a larger version on my flickr account.