Huh?Posted by Martin Wed, June 02, 2010 21:47Starting this, I'm not quite sure how this will pan out. We'll see.
>The effect of Facebook and social networking on voicing opinionIt starts with something I have come to 'realise' over the last couple of years - and that is, that as time has passed by I've begun to 'lose my edge', for lack of a better term. I've moved on and forwards in some ways (in the places I have been striving to reach for a long time), but genericised myself in other areas.
I guess in retrospect it started with the rise to (or fall to?) Facebook. I also had fewer people I knew locally who would be likely to see it. No employers, and an anonymous internet name to fall back on.
Back when i liked saying/writing what was on my mind I felt I had more of a personality. Not because I now think any less critically, or get any less empassioned by matters, but maybe because I'm constantly aware of possible ramifications - that anything I say may be called into question by someone close to me. It blunts my teeth, to the same as everyone else who is too scared to have a voice.
Do I like Facebook? Sure, I think it has some great features - being able to keep up to date with people's trivial stuff, see their photos and to stay in touch. Great stuff, and I dare say the world will never be the same again. Twitter? I see its benefits, but for me its plagued by a lack of
point. Not that I'm saying everything has to have a design and a reason (in fact, quite the opposite), but the way people
use it has no point. It's an obligatory social pressure which often precedes logic, much like fashion. It is used because it is used. Odd ...
>On Travelling the World
One thing that I have had reinforced of late is that I am not a consumer. Thats not to say I dont consume things and enjoy them, but I am always analysing and trying to get my mind around things I interact with. This is a good and a bad thing - it means I rarely purely relax, but I guess it means I try and get as much as I can from the world.
But in saying 'the world', I am always only ever talking about the world as I know it. In fact, we all are. I guess I'm at an age (26) whereby it would be easy to think I have it all figured out. I know a lot of people who do. It would be easier(?) if I did, but I certainly don't. In fact, Ive barely even seen anything of Earth, other than in books and in documentaries. Sure, if I were to see it all now I would hardly be going in blind, but theres a long way to go.
And I know that one thing I want to do with my life is see the world. And I don't mean lightly - I mean, it has over the last 2 years reached a point whereby I would classify it as being one of the highest goals in my life. I know now I'll not get to do it the way I envision it, but I must come to a compromise. I want a family (more on that another time), and a career (more on that another time), so I have to start planning for these things, but at the same time I want to plan for unpredictability. Maybe I wont live in England all my life - I cant say theres any one place that I would rather live at the moment, but theres a lot of reasons for that. But I do know I want to see the world, in whatever way possible - but mostly with friends, and mostly on motorcycle - in the wilderness, doing it properly.
>On Keeping things SimpleI've had, for a long time, an allergic reaction to detailed art. It kinda makes me feel nautious. As the years go on, I come to understand that I actually like simple art - something that is communicated on a primal level - just like music. If my artistic tastes were comparable to music, I suppose it would be the equivalent of tribal drums.
And this also comes back to a lot of stuff in life - my life in general I try and make simple.
This has always seemed a contradiction - I consider myself someone who does not sit idly on thoughts - but I admire and search for simplicity.
The only real translation I can make on this is that I aspire to
wisdom. Much like 2001: Space Odyssey, it is a simple film about complex matters - a film with infinite depth and thought provoking subject matter, yet never tries to be flashy.
And a few months back, I dashed to my livingroom from my sleep to grab a pen and paper and write down the words 'make simple observations of the complex, and complex observations of the simple' - which for me summarises my day to day life. I often cant actually be bothered with things that try and be complex (probably why i could never be a programmer), and whenever I'm presented with something simple, I try and analyse in detail why it is so effective.
Odd ...
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Fri, March 19, 2010 15:53Whenever I've gotten depressed in life, its been about things I cant help. The idea of dying of cancer scares me a lot more than dying because of a choice I made.
And so here we are - the crux of it. Presented with an awareness of my own mortality, and the tricks, twists and turns of our funny little individually experienced existences on this planet, I find a lot of strenth in the prospect of choice. More precisely, our ability to choose what we do with our life, and our ability to choose how we sign out.
What happens when you become accutely aware that you are inevitably going to die? I suppose it can have a lot of different manifestations and effects on a person. One way of looking at it, is that there is no point in doing anything. Which is right. If there is truly no point in doing anything, then there is no point in living. But conversely, if there is no point in living, then there is nothing to fear from death - how can you can scared of something that ends that which there is no point to?
It can be a liberating thing too. If you cannot avoid death, you may as well do EXACTLY what you want. In fact, if there is a point to death, just as there is a point to a timer, a day, a moment, it is to force you to get off your arse and do what you want. We've all sat around on a day off, not knowing what to do cos we've got loads of time to decide. Then, before you know it, its 3 in the afternoon, and youve only got an hour left to do something worthwhile, so you try and cram, but its futile.
There is no point in denying yourself what you want from life - death doesnt care. Death doesnt say "hey, well, you avoided me for a pretty long time so I guess theres a reward or something". Theres no more use to a longer life than a short one, only in relation to what you want to achieve. If you die doing what you want to achieve, that is far, far better than either dying doing something you dont want to achieve, or never achieving that goal at all.
It is a totally natural, gut reaction to want to stay alive. Its in our genes, its how life got to where it is. But the thing is, at no point has life as a concept ever planned it. Its natural selection, our genes trying to hang around for as long as possible so we can reproduce. That isnt a purpose to life. That's survival's purpose. Thats existence's purpose. Its in our blood that we want to stay alive, and thankfully it was in our ancestors blood for billions of years too, otherwise we wouldnt be here.
But unfortunately for natural selection, we were embued with a brain that could and would become aware of its own design.
The reason for this blog is to hopefully, over time develop a picture of why I am the way I am and why I make certain choices, both to serve of the purpose of helping people who know me know me a little better (somethings are better written, with time and thought applied), and in the event of the unthinkable happening to me randomly, that some things are at least written somewhere, for posterity.
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Tue, March 24, 2009 16:46Well ... so far it's not been going THAT great, but its not been going terrible anyway - reality of the situation is that this may spread over two weeks, or even just be postponed.
What i DO know is that I have a rough idea of what I want in the picture - i've doodled up some ideas, and once I get a proper stretch of time i'll start working on it. I must admit I don't really like staring at a monitor for so long in this house (wasnt so bad at work but i just dont like it when its a laptop/tv for some reason).
The main subject will be a naked body in a stone bowl in the centre of the picture. The head of the figure is deformed (something i do often?) and is a little like naturally occuring strange rocks - spiking out in different directions. The body is meant to evoke something of an elephant man reaction - there are a lot of people stood around looking and pointing at the disabled person.
However the twist is that the figure is reaching out to heaven, and in a way similar to Michaelangelo's "creation of Adam", a similar figure is reaching down and connecting. The arms have become cubed and lost all the dexterity - but the clincher is that its not clear who has affected who. On the "cloud"'s side, there are cherubs all around the central "god" figure. The disease seems to have gone two ways but it is not clear, and could easily be interpreted different ways.
Generally i'm very excited about this pic, and even if it ends up being that i postpone until the time is right, i'm looking forward to doing it - especially if I can pull it off with all the renaissance tricks n treats intact. Very exciting!
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Sun, March 22, 2009 20:50Well, i'm not gonna kid myself - theres every chance I won't stick to this and it might not even last for a week, but i'm gonna try it anyway - a picture a week, on a different, concentrated theme that should (hopefully) explore either a style, theme or artist that i'm not that familiar with. The twist being that in every picture I will add an element that is "me", to make it my own. Tricky? Sure! But it's a learning thing, and will allow me to get better (hopefully), whilst making a good portfolio in the process. Cool =)
So this week is "italian renaissance". Mostly i'll be looking at composition, palette, architecture and subject matter. I'll be working in my own surreal concept-y twist though. And i dare say, seeing as they used to spend years on pictures and i'm only spending a week, it won't actually be to the standard of renaissance at all but hopefully i'll learn something in the process! =) And it gives me some milestone goals to aim towards ...
So at the moment, I don't particularly have anything to report on this week's project. I'm pretty sure it will involve some kind of cathedral-esque column work, architecture heavy, multiple female figures draped in see through robes but ... with weird heads or something.
Only real thought is that i'll be wrapping up my FYP this week so it might not get as much attention as i'd like. We'll see!
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Thu, February 05, 2009 12:47Ok. I'm never normally like this but i am FUCKING stressed. Stressed stressed stressed! NARGH! To the point where I might actually explode.
Whats been causing this? No idea - a number of factors I would imagine. An impending cloud of doom over my life where I cannot move for treading on uni work is probably a big factor of it. Stagnation too. Realising what I want (and dont want) to do with my life and still having to waste my time doing it anyway.
OLC will have to be canned. That's just a science. Not the project perhaps, but certainly the graphic novel. Why? I am just not enjoying the process at all. I am not really satisfied with the results thats I'm doing, and its taking up nearly all of my time to do it. Therefore I hate it.
I would much rather spend the time doing 1 hour speed paints etc that give me much more satisfaction - At the moment, I'm spending anything up to 5 hours on a page, and it still looks crap. So therefore, I hate it. The simple idea of spending that amount of time doing upwards of 1000 pages just boggles my mind, to the point where I just have to say NO.
I actually love doing little pictures for it. The iconic pics - the scene setters - the characterisation images. I love all that. But when it comes to actually drawing it, panel by panel? Nope, hate it. I just wish I knew i'd hate it so much when I said i'd do it for my damn uni project because I would have just said it would be a concept art project and dropped the whole graphic novel side of it altogether.
The same, i'm afraid, will have to go for everything else too - Fantasy Fighters, and the Realm of Crude. I just ... do not want to do them anymore.
Sure, I want the end product. Sure, I'd love to be a part of a team that makes these things. But it is just WAY too much work for me to enjoy doing by myself. I just cannot, and dont want to do it. I would much rather just go back to concepting ... drawing whatever I feel like at the time, drawing still life in front of me ... learning and improving. Having an exciting little sketchbook of ideas and concepts ... I think thats what floats my boat much more and it's taken all this time to realise that unfortunately.
So ... back to uni. I really want to quit. I mean, seriously. If it werent for the fact I'm almost guaranteed a 1:1, and that I only have 3 months left I'd ditch that bastard right now. But I can't it's simply too close to not finish it. How do I get to the end though? I just dont FUCKING know. Im going stark raving mad here ... locked up in this flat all day. Heck, the locked up all day but I dont mind, its the fact that I'm locked up doing shit work I dont want to.
I thought I was made of stronger stuff than this, I really did.
I need to start setting daily milestones and hitting them. It's the only way I'm going to get this shit-ass work done and out the way. SHDKJSJDFKJSDKFJKSDFJ
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Sun, November 09, 2008 18:11So I will think what I've been up to for the last week ...
Well of the things I can think, I got my laptop back! Which is nice to have, especially as everything remains as it was. Didn't have to be formatted, w007! Been playing GRID lately ... getting back into my driving games. Speaking of Codemasters, they're still messing Nel about getting back to her about the job. They said they'd get back to her on Friday but they didn't ... so Monday I guess? Obviously I've been drawing a lot - stuff which i haven't *quite* finished yet, and so can't link to them for prosperity's purpose. However it's involved character design sheets.
Character Design sheets for the script for OLC, which is on its way to being finalised. I need to make another pass through it to tidy it up and clarify some bits, and once the designs have gone through I can go onto storyboarding.
Got a copy of Risk in the post on Wednesday! (what a nerd). Never played the game, but i really enjoyed it when me and Nel played. It can get very competitive but I like that. I think it's definately a game I can see myself wanting to play a lot of.
Ian came round on Thursday - for the midnight opening of Gears of War 2. Really cool to see him as we haven't met for about 10 months, and it's the first time he's been to Leamington since I moved here. Turns out its really close to where he's living now so hopefully we'll be able hang out more once everyone gets a bit more settled.
GOW2 was cool - insane (intimidating) amount of detail, and nicely action packed. Where I would probably rate the first one as somewhere of a high 8, the second definately secures a 9, and if it weren't for the slight lack of diversity (although better than the first), i'd give it a 10. I think it achieves everything you could reasonably expect from it. And did I say it looks awesome?
Apart from that, much merry drinking was done. Probably a bit much for my tastes so I held back. I don't mind having a drink, but when it becomes "drinking" I tend to step back a bit.
Uhm - thats about it! So 4 days have been taken up with fun visiting, so I gotta get back to work as its my birthday on Saturday! 25. Quite a big one for me. Bigger than 21 or something, cos 21 is just literally a number. But 25? Thats a quarter of a century! Argh!
OLC Project DiaryPosted by Martin Tue, October 28, 2008 19:00First small entry. I will try and keep these small and concise ... although I will probably end up using this as a place to think too!
So this week I reconsidered designing all the characters. You know things are getting confused when you start having dramatic sweeping thoughts like that.
More to the point was the approach in drawing of the characters. I made this image:
http://opticneuralinterface.deviantart.com/art/Inno-Study-101903855
And despite being happy about certain parts of the painting method, the character design just stood out as being catastophically dumb looking. But really the fact of the matter was not the design itself, but the approach to which I gave the proportions. Later that evening, I made this picture:
http://opticneuralinterface.deviantart.com/art/Calm-Before-Storm-101937891
A much better representation of the visual style I want - although not QUITE there yet (as it looks a little too much like Tifa, right?)
So anyway, a bigger breakthrough was in writing the script for the first chapter. The first chapter has always been a little blurry for me - How do you actually start it? but i think after spending enough time thinking and deliberating, I have achieved something which says a lot very quickly - a must for any introduction to a story.
I made an exciting sketch of The Wander though - in a baseball cap and raincoat, and it gave him a certain character I had not see him in befor (think the end of Unbreakable). Though it's not quite there, I'm sure I could use the design somewhere for him ...
Oh, and I did some cutesified picture of all the characters - fun!
Anyway, thats yesterday. Today has been disrupted by events out of my control but normal service will hopefully resume tomorrow!
Personal DiaryPosted by Martin Tue, October 28, 2008 18:51So what have I been up to the last couple days?
Still reading "To Kill A Mocking Bird". Took me a while to get into it ... but 9 chapters in it's starting to really work its way into me. And as far as I can ascertain, it's not even started yet - cool! Not gonna review it too much yet ... but compared to recent readings Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men, it is certainly an easier, more comfy read.
Nel's been playing FFXII lately - nearly finished it. But the amount of time she's been spending on the last few dungeons just reminds me why I can't be bothered with those kind of games anymore. They're surely just no fun when its just grinding. And because of that I'll probably never get into an MMO (unless they dump grinding =P)
Shenmue 2 has been left untouched but ... that's ok cos i'd rather it got the full attention it deserved.
Nel's family brought back a load of food from Hungary/Bulgaria, some of which I've been trying. In the mix was some special Hungarian Salami! Despite having a slight after taste of cigarettes due to it being smoked, it was really quite nice! Also there was some "hafa" or something. I guess i'll get the correct spelling later! Anyway its very nice ... like candyfloss but looks like hay/rope!
Been blogging for my uni work recently - hopefully it will get me into it more.
Today I sorted out some stuff with regards to Tax returns, which should hopefully see me get a few extra hundred quid that I worked hard for! >8o. Also attempted to get Dell to sort both of our faulty laptops out ... with which they are replacing the keyboard with one, and I have to send off the other to be fixed. The problem will come if the keyboard they send of Nel's one doesnt work and I can't do any typing until mine is returned (the sounds has gone on mine, grrr!)
Nel's friend Kat is round at the moment.
It snowed today! Crazy, its not even the end of October and it came down for hours. Really cool though! Leamington looks amazing in the snow, although as good as Lincolnshire? hard to tell.
For my uni work I have been researching the Spanish Civil War (1820-1823), which has been educational to say the least. And for my first year project I have been working on OLC which amazingly, I have the basis of the script for the first chapter! It's only taken 5 years but ... I think things are really picking up now!
