While messing around on the internet in one of my uni classes I happened to be looking for different types of cool animals and I happened to be just randomly searching for anything slightly out of the ordinary and then I came across this amazing creature called the Northern Bald Ibis!
I mean just look at this magnificent creature, don’t you think it looks amazing?
I mean I have come across some pretty badass-looking birds in my time but when I came across this bird today while looking through Wikipedia and I have to say its one of the coolest-looking birds I have ever seen! There just happens to be a dark, mysterious, yet truly awesome thing about this type of bird that I cannot describe. It gives of the same sort of aura you would expect from a crow, but obviously this bird is of the larger kind. Seriously the Northern Bald Ibis has a very creepy, yet distinctive look and I believe it really should have a place in the media in the shape of a film or in a graphic novel/comic because there is some awesome art techniques you could use for it. Looking at it I really want to draw one of these birds and I would probably try to incorporate it into one of my comics and I already have one in mind. While I already have a horse in that particular comic, I’m sure I can find a place for this amazing bird. I want one of these Northern Bald Ibis birds, I’m not gonna lie. They look too cool for me not to own one. Even though they’re an endangered species I have to get one. If not that then I’d really like to meet one, I think this bird may become one of my new favourite animals next to koalas, red pandas, normal pandas and eagles.
Jazz, it’s one of the best genres of music in the world, I just feel so content with the world when the sound of jazz hits my ears. It’s so calming, so soothing and you could listen to it for hours on end without it ever getting boring. I’ve noticed in my more recent years that for some reason I can never take jazz in small dosages, I need to listen to it for long periods of time.
The man who started it all off… Ray Charles you rule!
I really do believe jazz to be one of the most/if not the most addictive form of music in existence. It has varied tempos and can change, it can be super quick or nice and slow, it can also be unpredictable and make you wanna dance or it can be a slow melody that can touch the soul and take you on a journey while you’re just chilling in your chair with your eyes closed. Jazz music really is food for the soul. I mean I’ve always had an appreciation for it since I was young listening to my parents playing a lot of it. But it’s only in recent times where I have gone searching for it on my own that I have found some incredible results.
The obsession continues with the awesomeness that’s Joe Henderson!
I think it was while I was in college on my media course when jazz started to take hold of me. When I watched the film Ray and heard how amazing Ray Charles’ music was, that was when I decided to venture forth and see what else I could dig up and it was near the end of 2008 when I went into a shop and heard the sound of Joe Henderson that really shifted my interest into the world of jazz. His sound is truly beautiful, powerful and captures my soul every time. Mr. Henderson is that good! And in time I’ve come across a lot of great artists, though I can’t recall them all by name. I’ve continued to listen to the sounds of Ray Charles and in my time in college Otis Redding has come up a good few times, I’ve also heard some good things from Miles Davis and after I saw the film Bird I was listening to a bit of Charlie Parker too. Also in very recent times I have found and revisited some childhood memories through the amazing sounds of the Yellowjackets who are truly magnificent.
My earliest memories of good music Jazz-related or not, the Yellowjackets are amazing.
I don’t know whether it’s just the sound of a saxophone or the use of any other jazz-related instruments that sets me off or whether it’s the beautiful vocals of amazing artists like Noah Jones, Ray Charles or Melody Gardot that make me feel so content with life and gives me a great listening experience. Either way jazz music has gotten a hold of me and I doubt it will let go, chances are I will dive deeper into this genre and see what I find because I am still fairly new to this genre of music and am always curious to see what is out there. Thanks to Last.fm I’m discovering new artists nearly everyday by listening to radio stations of my favourite jazz artists and picking things up as I go along.
Well that’s it for another blog post ladies and gentlemen hopefully you have found this informative, enlightening and hopefully I may have swayed you into listening to some jazz music like I am right now! Laterdays! 😀
It’s totally amazing how something as simple a game of Quasar (Laser Tag) can become so much more, and then turn into something out of this world… Given the right circumstances. And luckily enough we were under some of those “circumstances” yesterday when me and several other people ventured through the streets of Sheffield to the local Quasar place for some good old fun. There was so many of us, but we all got in with a game of 17 people versus 17 other people on the red and blue teams. We got the suits on, picked our sides and were told the rules of the game. Most it was obvious and standard procedure, though there was a funny rule that was mentioned was when we were told that “This isn’t Call of Duty, so don’t take it too seriously.” And everybody just laughed and roared in excitement, so you could already tell that the atmosphere had changed to ‘First Person Shooter mode’. We then proceeded upstairs and while heading up someone said exactly what I was thinking, that we all looked like people from Tron: Legacy and that we were heading to “The Grid”. At that point I was totally thinking “Sweet!”
To be honest going into Quasar I felt our battles were going to be as brutal as the disc wars from Tron: Legacy.
So we loaded our guns, walked into the dark, low lit room and started getting into position with a mix of excitement and fear in our minds. That’s the impression that I got personally and what I could see in eyes of my comrades (the red team). So then around 5 minutes later the other team (blue team) came in and the shooting began and I lost a life almost immediately after it started and I was like “What the hell!?!” So then most our team defended our forte from enemy fire while taking out any enemy who ran into our side. We defended pretty well, but the blue team had mad tactics and were pretty crazy and moved around the area in a kamikaze-like fashion, so it was hard to read their movements. Sometimes they just came running in groups and shot down our base with only 3 people. It was mental! And there I was running around like a nutcase trying to avoid enemy fire, but also just going crazy at the same time. I went over-the-top with the acting, yelling all over the place and telling my teammate that I got hit and I was injured. It was hilarious. And all the time there was Daft Punk playing in the background from the Tron: Legacy Soundtrack, it felt so good and felt like it fit into our scenario so well.
Daft Punk you saved my life again! 😀
And so the battle continued and at one point I went corrupt with power and went on a shooting streak and actually shot down a few people and I felt incredible, but then got hit soon after 😦 Eventually the battle ended and the blue team won, much to my dismay; however I felt obliged to do well for the next round. So feeling lonely on the red team I converted to the blue team with the rest of my mates and hoped to bring a new type of pain on a different team.
And so… Round 2 Began!!
With faster shooting ammo and much swifter settings put in place we went in and strangely enough the Daft Punk sounds had left the stereo, but what was playing at the time was even more incredible, it was a heavy metal cover of the Lance Theme from Pokémon Red & Blue. It sounded amazing and I was freaking out. However amidst all of this nerdy freaking out I was getting destroyed, I was losing lives even faster than I before which bugged me immensely. I was even getting hit while behind walls, I was like “What is happening!?” So after around 3 minutes I just gave up and became even more corrupt than the last round and ran out to shoot anyone on the red team, I even ran into their base area and got a few hits in here and there. But unfortunately I was still getting owned and losing lives fast. While this was going on the music that was playing via the stereos was awesome! Firstly I could hear the song “Encounter” from the first Metal Gear Solid and people were getting well happy and then there was the classic battle music from Final Fantasy VII, when that came on I was totally living in memories and felt totally energized to defend our base.
But then the unimaginable came happened… They played the main song from the first live-action Mortal Kombat film. And everybody on the blue team went mad! Me included.
Mortal Kombat FTW again, it’s totally invincible!
We all just started dancing and raving out to the music! Regardless of whether the enemy was firing at us or not we danced away. Obviously we did our job and got shooting, but we were mainly dancing the entire time. Whether we were on our own or in small group, we just ran to where the party was and just started dancing and giving high fives. It even came to the point where there was a massive group of us dancing and then we lead a charge into enemy territory dancing the whole way, it was just incredible. And not long after the battle ended. And when the our team (blue team) saw the score we thought we’d won by a landslide score, however it was misleading scoreboard as we found out that the red team had acquired around 400 more points than we had, hell even my score was worse than the last time. Even though I had a ridiculous amount of fun bouncing along to the sounds of Mortal Kombat, the fact that I lost twice on both teams lead me to believe that I shall never succeed in any form Quasar lol. Oh well at least I still have gaming and sketching 😀
Well that’s it for a another blog post, hope you enjoyed reading it ladies and gents. Peace out! 🙂
Howdy ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another installment in my blogging rants and today’s subject will be on how terrible the pizza service was when I ordered it and it never even showed up.
Now I don’t know about you ladies and gents but I love pizza, it’s like my favourite food, when someone mentions pizza it makes me smile with happiness and when I know I’m gonna obtain some I can’t control my hunger for it (sounds strange but it’s all too true haha). So imagine my pain, suffering and frustration when I ordered a pizza, waited almost around hour for it just for me to find that it never made it to my address.
Look at how happy that kid is, that should have been me!
So check it out people, my mate called the pizza company on the phone and it took ages. Since the volume on the phone was fairly high I would hear the conversation from both ends and I swear the guy couldn’t understand anything, he asked my mate to repeat the order like 3 times! What the hell!?! He couldn’t even spell the name of the place we were staying at and it’s only 5 bloody letters long! Come on now! So eventually we got the order sorted and waited 30 minutes for the confirmation call to tell us they were outside. So me, my mate and his girlfriend came outside in the cold night air to obtain out pizza, only to find no one out there, we walked up and down the road several times and found nothing. The pizza guy called my mate and asked us where we were twice and we said we were outside on-location waiting and yet I still couldn’t see him. So when the delivery man called the third time round I took the phone and asked him in a fairly frustrated tone where he was and what kind of car he was in. He said he was in a green Vauxhall Corsa. Now I know it was dark, but hell I know my cars and there was no bloody Corsas in the area at all. So after standing outside for nearly an hour I was like forget this, let’s go to the take away place around the corner.
That’s what I looked like during this whole ordeal, no person should have to go through this foolishness!
So after all that effort I got nothing, it was totally frustrating, especially since we were all bloody hungry as hell. So the lesson here ladies and gentlemen is if your pizza man doesn’t understand what you are saying, can’t take an order properly and claims to be at your address when they clearly aren’t there, then give up and go somewhere else.
After doing a mini university project which required me to create a screencast I’m totally thinking about revisiting the world of YouTube once again. The reason I was interested in doing a screencast was because it felt like I was doing a review again and I love reviewing things, whether it’s in a written or verbal format and this just felt like something I had done before just with a more specific purpose.
Doing reviews and editing audio and video projects makes me feel at ease with the world, it’s something I know how to do and I love it. I’ve still got a long way to go before going professional or getting proper good at it and it has been a while since my last upload over a month ago when I did a review on Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was one of my favourite films of the summer. But these days I just haven’t found a film that I really want to do a review for yet. Though Johnny English Reborn has come out, so if I do get the chance to check that out things may change 🙂
If you wanna check my YouTube work you are more than welcome to have a look. I provided the link below. My channel is filled with reviews of films, games, TV shows and a few other bits and bobs: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHypersonic55
Today in uni we had to bring in our version of a screencast (a sort of visual video with audio narration.) to show off to our classmates. To be honest I was dreading it purely because I felt intimidated by the rest of the people looking on, but I decided to be the third person up to show off me work and get if over and done with. Surprisingly enough the response I got back was pretty good and I was very pleased. It didn’t go nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The tutor and some students gave me some good feedback, so besides some slightly questionable editing I think my first screencast was a success.
Besides my own work I have witnessed screencasts by other students which are fairly impressive, a lot of them featured previous animation work, photography, fine art and construction-based work. I do feel like I have some competition and I have to step up if I want to stay ahead of the game. Hopefully this short session showing off our work will spark off some new interests and possibly make some connections in terms of friendships, who knows? It’s still early days yet but here’s hoping XD
If wish to see my video in action I provided the link below for you to view at your leisure, please enjoy:
At this point in time I chill within the confines of my flat as I think back on my day. And to be honest it’s been alright to be honest considering all of the rain that’s been falling. Technically speaking it’s not raining now because the sun has finally come out, though I wonder for how long. The weather up here in Sheffield has been pretty crazy, constantly shifting from normal dry weather to patchy and continuous downpours, when I left to go to uni it was patchy, but still sunny and I happened to catch a rainbow on the way down too. Alas I didn’t have my camera to take a picture, it was a really nice big one too.
I love a good rainbow!
So when I went to do life drawing today it actually turned out again to be a good lesson, though not as good as last week. The lesson was long in a good few areas simply because there was nothing to do after drawing the same skeleton like 5 times, but again it was a good lesson and the only coherent and consistent lesson I’ve had all week. I think this is gonna become my favourite module. Even though I’m by no means a great sketcher when it comes to life drawing and it frustrates me to no end when things aren’t going my way, in the end I can’t fault life drawing because without it I wouldn’t be where I am now.
So other than falling rain and my uni class today I’ve just been chilling listening to Daft Punk’s Discovery album via the anime film called Interstella: 5555 which is totally sweet. The anime on its own is alright, but it’s really a lot of things in terms of character and story that I’ve seen before. That’s not to say it isn’t without its merits, but it’s really the music that makes this awesome.
Daft Punk we salute you!!!
The film is like an hour-long music video just moving from scene to scene filling your ears with the awesome sounds of Daft Punk’s Discovery album which is known by many as their most famous and best work (Well next to the Tron: Legacy Soundtrack.) It reminds me of how much love I have for Daft Punk and how much I’ve listened to their music over the years and it doesn’t seem to ever get old or boring.
Well that’s it for another blog, laterdays people!
Yesterday by chance we had the opportunity to own a spider as a pet in our uni accommodation and so after my flat mate transferred him from underneath a glass cup to a plastic container, we named him Roger. And after a fairly lengthy conversation with my best friend on MSN he recommended me a full name for Roger and boy was it a name; Roger Aragog Jr. Alexander. A name with nice references to Harry Potter and the last name of one of my good friends lol.
Well, our spider is not quite as big or as cool-looking as this, but Roger is still pretty amazing!
As for our spider, he’s a fairly big lad, with long legs and he’s always crawling around the container or just chilling on the sides just waiting until someone shakes the container. One of me flatmates isn’t too kind on Roger and is actually afraid of him, so Roger has his supporters and his non-supporter so we’ll see how long this lasts. But heck we welcome Roger Aragog Jr. Alexander into our flat as our new pet with open arms 😀
Good day to all who may be reading this blog post. Basically as you can see from the title of this post I’m just here to rant on about how I can’t use 3D animation software and how it frustrates me. Dont get me wrong, I am willing to learn how to use something if it’s supposed to be useful to me in the future, but heck Autodesk 3DS Max, the program in question, is what I have to use at university on my course and it just levels and levels of work that requires a lot of committment and for me I’m just not down for it yo.
Look at that, looks awesome doesn’t it? However unless you commit to the software and give it your all then you suffer…
Before I came to uni I already wasn’t keen on the idea of doing 3D animation purely because it looks complicated and I’m more into 2D animation, so that already was not a good thing, but then there’s the fact that I am trying and already not comprehending the information, it just makes me feel so defeated. And why not? That program is bloody difficult! There is so many layers of things to do, if you miss something in the lesson or can cannot interpret the information in a tutorial you can get even more lost than a person in an endless maze!
Even though I just about understand the fundamental aspects about how the 3D animation software works, in the end there was several points where I needed the tutor’s help for the simplest of things. I felt like such a fool. I guess these are the days I wish I had tried out or mastered 3D programs like this and Maya prior to my uni course, but even back in college I took one look at those programs and would go “Ha! forget that!” So either way I wouldn’t have been prepared for this. And the funny thing was around this time last year I was learning how to use Adobe Illustrator and I thought back then that Illustrator was hard. HA! Illustrator is breeze compared to this monster of a program, sure they are not comparable in terms of the way in which each program works, but heck at least Illustrator was likeable and useful. 3DS Max on the other hand, is in no way user-friendly or simple to use. Bah! Humbug!
So to conclude I’m gonna give the program a chance but I highly doubt I’ll get any better at it, I’m really just waiting to learn Flash and get back into photography, so here’s hoping that this 3DS Max thing will see its end soon enough!
Blogging and obtaining information, some times it can be easy and some times it can be such a task. And for the last few days things have been fairly complicated. Looking for certain blogs with a specific subject matter say like animation can be difficult because of tagging. Since tags are used as a means of linking you to a specific blog, it can be easy to write in a simple word and get like a thousands links to blogs that probably aren’t that relevant to you. I guess what I have learnt recently about checking for specific information that you are interested in is that one has to be very careful, using keywords in order to find what you are looking for.
The look on this man’s face is exactly how I feel on this matter.
I don’t mean to moan on about this, but the fact of the matter is when you are set a task and it is part of a university project and you can’t present the goods when they are required of you then you are in trouble. But since I’ve just about got the hang of things on WordPress next time I’ll be prepared!
My earliest memories of good music Jazz-related or not, the Yellowjackets are amazing.
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