^{Listening to: Animals within Animals
Watching: Random videos on YouTube and Google Video
Doing: Glitching/data bending photos}


Journal

Sometimes it's good to get feedback that makes you step back and question what you're doing and why you're doing it. I had such feedback a few days ago and it forced me to have a bit of a think about my work.

Here's what happened:

~mystical-creature

^{Your art's Ok ... I guess. Not really my thing. I mean, not to be rude or anything - just good critisism - but I could do better than that and I'm only 13! But I guess it's Ok if you like that kinda thing. It's good for what it's meant to look like - if you get what I mean; it's just not really ... traditional, is it?}

~lukeroberts

<sup>Haha, well, thanks for the honest feedback. I know that most of my work won't appeal to a wide audience, but I know there are some people who like it. And I'm one of them

I don't think my work is traditional either, in any sense of the word. Unless you go back to minimalist artists like Mondrian, or abstract expressionist artsts like Rothko or Pollock, then I guess my work is in their tradition. I think it's a mix between that and the "found" art of Duchamp, because really, I don't personally paint, graffiti, scratch or do anything to the surfaces – I just find them and photograph them. But even though I haven't made the work with my own hands, I have chosen it, seen the beauty in it and to me, it is 'art'.

I see the beauty in the ageing of the surface, the cracking of the old, faded paint, the brightly coloured graffiti someone has sprayed on it, the rust that has formed on the edges, the scratches and marks that give it character. Then I try to capture that beauty through the lens of the camera, so I can continue to appreciate it and perhaps share it with a few other people who might enjoy it as much as I do.

But if you personally don't like it, then I don't mind. I don't expect many people to. I guess art is in the eye of the beholder. And if you're still not convinced, here's something I drew when I was about your age: [link]

Also, if you want to go and try taking photos like mine, then I would genuinely be interested to see what you come up with I love see the textures from all over the world. Anyway, good luck with your drawing!</sup>

~mystical-creature

^{Oh . . . I get what your art's about now! I'll have a go . . . not promising anything much. Might not even remember to! Oh well. If I don't it's not the end of the world, is it?! I kinda see what your on about now you've explained it. By the way, that pic you drew when you where my age is good.}

(~mystical-creature is 13 and draws anime type people... in case you were wondering, because she seems to have left dA and deleted all her stuff)

Resources

<sup>My Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

My Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns updated
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding
Custom Shapes: Birds
Custom Shapes: deviantART
Custom Shapes: Aircraft</sup>

Features

No real connection here. I just liked them and think they deserve a bit more attention.

:thumb35472979:

Journal

Hello to all,

Been a while since I updated this, as it always is, but I have something to write now.

Got to meet my very good friend, the famous Collette, better known here as ~etc-etc-etc. I suppose "meet" isn't the right word, since I was staying with her and her family for almost 4 days It was really great to finally meet her after only knowing her through text, photos and her ridiculously long journals. She doesn't get to go out very much because of her illness, and so i'm very grateful she made the extra effort for me. I hope she didn't over exert herself too much

It was the first time I had been to Sydney too, so I was given a guided tour and got the obligatory Sydney Harbour panorama photo:

I think Collette and I both got quite a few good photos from the weekend. Particularly from one alley which was like a goldmine for great textures and graffiti.

It was good having someone to take photos with too. Especially since we have similar style and could point things out that the other could have missed or look at things in a different way, or see what the other person is taking a photo of and then steal their idea So it was good. Usually I'm just walking around by myself, lost in my own thoughts. Which is good too, really.

On a related note, flying is pretty awesome It had been a couple of years since I'd been on a plane and I had almost forgotten how much fun it is. Well, take off and landing anyway. The bit in the middle is only really interesting if there's a good view out the window. On my flights to and from Sydney it was just darkness outside.

And on a completely unrelated note, this has been entertaining me this week: Museum of Techno. And particularly this video of theirs: Recording Drum Loops Pt 1.

Resources

<sup>My Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

My Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns updated
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding
Custom Shapes: Birds
Custom Shapes: deviantART
Custom Shapes: Aircraft</sup>

Features

See if you can find the connection. And let me know if there are more.

:thumb29422305:

<blockquote>

Journal

Flickr update

In spite of my last journal, I'm still using flickr and even enjoying it. I still don't think it has the community that dA does, but now that I know some people on there and have some contacts so I can use the features, it's a more enjoyable experience. I like being able to upload any old rubbish on there and not expect to get any feedback.

On here I have a larger audience who will look at my work, so I don't like to waste their (your) time on things that I only half-like. When I put stuff on here, I want it to be my best quality work. So it's nice to have an avenue to put the other stuff that I kind of like where it can still be commented on.

[link] if you really want to see.

Drawball

I think Drawball is the best use of the internet I've seen It's basically like a giant wall where anyone can graffiti or draw what ever they want. Each person gets to draw on a tiny piece and you only get a small amount of ink to draw with (it slowly replenishes over time).

If you want to know more about its short history and about what it is, the Wikipedia has an interesting article on it. I'd like to see deviantART do something on there – we're suppose to be the biggest online art community after all.

In other news, my uni graduation ceremony is in 9 days

Resources

<sup>My Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

My Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns updated
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding
Custom Shapes: Birds
Custom Shapes: deviantART
Custom Shapes: Aircraft</sup>

Journal

Flickr vs dA

I decided to try out Flickr the other day. I'd used it a bit before, for searching for photos and had read about it in some news articles, so I finally decided to try it for myself.

If you don't know what Flickr is, the Wikipedia defines it as,

^{"a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs ... widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by innovative community tools, allowing photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means".[1]}

The site itself is well put together and quite intuitive and easy to use considering the number of pages and features. Being able to upload multiple images at once, then title, comment and tag them, is good and tagging in general is an interesting idea. The results from a search are overwhelming though. Just about anything you search for has 5000+ results, sometimes into the hundreds of thousands. To me, this is why proper categories (like here on dA) are better than tags.

Probably my favourite feature is the ability to add notes. You can draw a little square around part of the photo, and write some text as a little note about that particular part. The square shows up when someone mouse-overs the photo, then when they mouse-over the square, they can read the note.

That's all well and good, but by default, only your contacts can add notes to your photos. Which is a shame, because it would be a lot more useful if you could add notes to anyone's photos. The best application would be to help people to learn how to take better photos (and they really need that on Flickr, seriously). For example, you could draw a little square around a bit of dust or something and say, "Clone that out", or draw a box around the interesting part and say, "Crop to this area", or point out things like the horizon not being horizontal and so on.

I guess if anyone could add notes, people would just spam photos with stupid notes. But they could have different note 'layers' or something - notes by contacts and notes by anyone.

But while the site itself is quite good, it doesn't seem to have as strong a feeling of community as dA and the quality of the photos is just terrible. Maybe it's because people just use the site as a host for their blog photos? I suppose it's more for personal photos and snapshots, than for 'art' photos that dA is for.

I remember when I first joined dA in 2003, I thought, "This is pretty cool". Then I forgot about it for five months. But then I joined again with a new name and thought, "This is pretty cool, I might submit some of my photos". My photos weren't very good, but at the time, I was happy with them. I remember I submitted this, as my first photo and within a few minutes, I had two comments on it. Two whole comments! One of them even had something interesting to say! I was very pleased and knew I'd be submitting more. As I looked around at the great photography on the site, I was (and still am) able to be inspired with new ideas. As I submitted more and got useful feedback, I was able to improve my photography.

I've submitted about 20 photos on Flickr now and none have received any comments. The most viewed photo has been seen twice.

Perhaps Flickr has more insular communities where they only comment on each others work and not on anything else. Perhaps they've overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos on the site. Perhaps their spirits have been broken by the sheer number of terrible photos that they don't even bother looking at others. I'm not sure. But that's why I prefer dA.

Flock

In shorter news, I've started using the web browser, Flock. It's really a lot better than I was expecting. Especially since it's only version 0.5pre. It's a lot like Firefox in appearance and basic functionality, but it seems faster than Firefox, a lot prettier* (based on the default themes) and has more features (like del.icio.us, Flickr and blog intergration).

It's the little things that make a difference too. Like having crosses to close a tab ON the tab (Opera style) unlike Firefox where there's only one close tab button on the far right.

Anyway, I really like it. Hasn't even crashed once on me

Resources

<sup>My Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

My Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns updated
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding
Custom Shapes: Birds
Custom Shapes: deviantART
Custom Shapes: Aircraft</sup>

Journal

I'm thinking of getting a new camera. I'm due for a new one. In about January 2003 I got my Olympus OM-1n, in December 2003 I bought my DiMAGE Z1, and in December 2004 I bought my 300D.

The OM-1n was an old film camera from the 70s that I inherited. It's a good camera and I learnt a lot by using it, experimenting with it and even developing my own photos with it.

The Minolta DiMAGE Z1 was a great camera. It's half-way between DSLR and compact. One of the first ultra-zoom cameras. It served me well and just about every photo from pre-2005 in my gallery was taken with it. The 3.2mp was enough for me when I got it, but as I got more into photography, I needed better quality.

The 300D is a great camera. I bought it with just the standard EFS 18-55mm lens but I was still very pleased with the quality. I had to get use to not having much zoom though (compared to the Z1 which had 10x optical). Shooting in RAW and being able to resample up to 25mp without too much loss in quality is also great.

About half way through the year I was missing the zoom, so I bought a 300mm lens thinking I'd use it quite often, and, just because it was cheap and I've always liked shallow DOF photos, I got a 50mm f1.8 lens too. As it turns out, I love the 50mm and hardly ever use the 300mm.

While I love the 300D, it's not exactly pocket sized. I also miss video. I use to often take videos of things and make short films with my Z1. I'd like to have a small camera that I can just put in my pocket and not have to think about, rather than having this great lump hanging around my neck.

At the moment I'm looking at the Canon IXUS 50 (or 55 which is basically identical), also known as the PowerShot SD400. Seems to have everything I want and isn't too expensive. I've used the IXUS 40 and was impressed with that. Feels very solid compared with other similar cameras. But at the moment I'm still just looking and open to suggestions

Resources

<sup>Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding</sup>

Journal

I'm feeling a bit melancholy. What are some of your favourite sad songs?

Some of mine:

^{Snow Patrol - Run
Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah
2 Heads - Out Of The City
Gary Jules - Mad World
Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna}

Resources

<sup>Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Lomo Light Leaks

Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map
Custom Shapes: Skateboarding</sup>

Journal

Finally got broadband yesterday. Surfing in style now. Plus we've networked the computers. In our house before, we were sharing a dial-up connection between four people (only one person on at a time). So it's great having the computers networked so everyone can be on at the same time.

In other news, I found this design magazine called Before&After. It has some great ideas, tutorials and stuff. There are a few PDF articles you can download from their site and others you have to subscribe to read. One of the best things about it is, because it's subscriber only, there are no ads in it at all (which is kind of ironic, since a lot of it is about making ads).

And finally, Space Tree the Space Tree in Space is a brilliant series of flash animations by Ed Atlin. He's made quite a lot too (33 so far). I think it's hilarious, but maybe it's an acquired taste. I think you have to watch a few just to understand it properly. It's about Space Tree who is a 'Space Tree' and he's in space. What more could you want? I recommend watching episode 32 first, since it sort of gives a background to what's going on.

Resources

<sup>Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes

Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map</sup>

Sorry I don't update this more often. I just don't have anything particularly interesting to talk about on here

That said, I did find this recently and thought it was rather nifty: For All Seasons. It's interactive typography. 3D too. Made by Andreas Muller, it received the 2005 Tokyo TDC</a> Grand Prix. Download it or look at his site for other interesting stuff.

<sup>Tutorials
Digital Polariser
B&W Colour Overlay
Quick Tips: Auto Levels & Auto Contrast
Quick Tips: Graduated Filter
Quick Tips: Textured Text
Quick Tips: Loading Custom Shapes
Quick Tips: Creating Custom Shapes

Photoshop Custom Shapes
Custom Shapes: Guns
Custom Shapes: Heraldry
Custom Shapes: Graffiti
Custom Shapes: World Map</sup>

Walk Cycle
Animating a walk-cycle from the front is pretty hard Just thought I'd share that. I'm animating a character for a game I'm making as part of a group at uni. A walk cycle from the side is fine, but took me a while to get my head around doing one from the front. I guess it's the foreshortening that makes it hard. I'm also attempting to model a car in 3D with Maya and have a bunch of other stuff due within the next few weeks so I haven't uploaded anything for a while (that's my excuse anyway).

I have some cool ideas for things but I won't be able to do anything with them until I get through this other work. So hopefully by mid-June I'll be able to start working on them

1000
Other stuff... my iPod advertisement has over 1000 favourites Thankyou to ~JadeHawk for being the 1000^th person to click the little +fav button.

Revelation
I've come to the end of the Bible now. Read through the whole thing (well, I have the last chapter to read tonight, but I don't think there's a twist at the end). I'm going to miss reading it. Maybe I'll start again from the beginning.

The Revelation was very strange though. I don't think i understood a lot of it so i might have to try and find a guide or something, so I can understand it more clearly. I did find where all the imagery of flying angels and people on clouds with harps came from, though. Rev chapter 14 seems to contain all the cartoon cliches.

One thing that has been bothering me lately is the 'discovery' that the sign of the Beast is 616 and not 666. This is hardly new. Scholars have known for a long time that the number could be 616 rather than 666. But the media seems to be hyping it up and implying that the Bible is wrong and there's a mistake and therefore all Christians are stupid... Okay, maybe they didn't go that far, but it's still annoying.

The number isn't important anyway - it's just the numerical value of the letters in 'the Creatures' name:

And no one could get a job or even buy in any shop without the permit of that mark, which was either the name of the Creature or the code number of his name. Here is a puzzle that calls for careful thought to solve it. Let those who are able, interpret this code: the numerical values of the letters in his ['the Creatures'] name add to 666 [or 616].

Revelations 13:17-18

Favourites
Anyway, how about some random images from my favourites with the theme of colour:

It's humbling to think that 20 thousand people have looked at my little page here. And in less than a year too. I remember in November last year thinking it would be cool to get 10 thousand pageviews by my first year of being on here. At that time, I had about 3,000 pageviews, so it's even more humbling to think that I've received 17 thousand pageviews since December

I appreciate them all and I thank everyone for all the feedback on my work that I have received during my time on dA. Looking back at my work I can see that just from being on this site and receiving feedback and getting inspiration from others that my photos have improved immensely.

A special thankyou to ~reuisu and ~unknown-entity who were the first people to ever comment on anything of mine on dA and made me think that it might be worth submitting more of my photos here

In other news, my birthday is coming up on the 24^th of April, so you can all buy one of my prints as a gift to me hahaha ... no I'm serious

Also, if you're from Adelaide, ~adelaidedeviants are holding a devMeet on the 30^th of April at the Botanic Gardens. Go to their page for more info

^{*Man, I love this song. Well, I guess it's not a song, since it has no words, but it's great music. From Oceans 12 (but not on the soundtrack for some reason), but you can visit the site (it's in French) or download the song from that site. If you know French, can you tell me what the song is called in English? Google said it was "Mint Tea"}

It's humbling to think that 20 thousand people have looked at my little page here. And in less than a year too. I remember in November last year thinking it would be cool to get 10 thousand pageviews by my first year of being on here. At that time, I had about 3,000 pageviews, so it's even more humbling to think that I've received 17 thousand pageviews since December

I appreciate them all and I thank everyone for all the feedback on my work that I have received during my time on dA. Looking back at my work I can see that just from being on this site and receiving feedback and getting inspiration from others that my photos have improved immensely.

A special thankyou to ~reuisu and ~unknown-entity who were the first people to ever comment on anything of mine on dA and made me think that it might be worth submitting more of my photos here

In other news, my birthday is coming up on the 24^th of April, so you can all buy one of my prints as a gift to me hahaha ... no I'm serious

Also, if you're from Adelaide, ~adelaidedeviants are holding a devMeet on the 30^th of April at the Botanic Gardens. Go to their page for more info

^{*Man, I love this song. Well, I guess it's not a song, since it has no words, but it's great music. From Oceans 12 (but not on the soundtrack for some reason), but you can visit the site (it's in French) or download the song from that site. If you know French, can you tell me what the song is called in English? Google said it was "Mint Tea"}

I changed my Featured Deviation It's been the Underdog for so long, I can't remember having it as anything else. So it was time for a change. I think I'll feature more of my older photos there, since most people don't have time to look through an entire gallery. I might update them and make them prints as I go.

I would have made this hug one a print but the computer it's on isn't available. It got a virus or something on it and was running pretty bad anyway, so we're clearing everything not needed off it and reinstalling Windows. My brother is doing it so hopefully all my photos and junk will still be there

Realisation
Also, ~etc-etc-etc has lead me to realise that I'm too much of a perfectionist with my art. I seem to only submit the photos that I'm completely happy with. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that, but I also only submit things that I think people will like. And I'm particularly bad at knowing what people will like (I almost didn't submit the Mr Blank Stare animation), so I stick mostly to what I know people will like - my photography.

So I guess I should be less inhibited (or more uninhibited ) in what I submit. Not that I'll start submitting terrible photos or random oekaki stuff, but I just need to stop worring if people will like it or not - as long as I'm happy with it.

Does that make sense?

I finally decided to update my avatar (although it doesn't seem to have updated for me on the site yet). I wanted to do something animated but this will do for now. Maybe i'll add some animation to it... somehow

Uni started back this week, so i'll be busy working on animations, websites and stuff. Hopefully i won't be too busy to keep up appearances here

I've sold some prints too, so i guess i'm officially a professional photographer now

I finally got around to purchasing a print account (and got another 3 month subscription with it ). I'm just getting the hang of making everything the right size and resolution so that they print well

Since i had a number of people wanting a print of the underdog I've made that printable and I'm just going through my files and seeing what else I can find.

I'll also take requests If you want one of my photos as a print then just comment here or note me and I'll see what I can do

As many of those who have been watching me since before december know... what a terrible sentence. I'll start again.

If you've been watching me since before December you'd know that recently I've been having my 15 minutes of dA fame. Before I submitted that Mr Blank Stare animation I had a bit over 4000 pageviews and if you look now there are well over 8000. So you can see that my message centre has had quite a workout over the past few weeks! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has visited my page and given me feedback on my work and for all the favourites

The day after submitted Mr Blank Stare I was getting about 3-4 favourites every minute for a while (it's now dropped off to about 3-4 every day) and while thanking those who favourited it I had the chance to visit many great galleries and make lots of new friends here.

It was kinda strange considering I've been here submitting photos for months then I submit one animation and it becomes the 21st most popular flash thing ever on dA within a few days

Then a couple of weeks later my message centre again had a big influx when I got a Daily Deviation (thankyou ~djana and `cafezero !). I think that was even better because I was being recognised for my photography and got the opportunity to see a lot of great photographic galleries. Many of these galleries were hardly getting any attention but I didn't have much time to comment on things so I ended up having to just watch a lot of people.

Seeing all these underrated galleries I felt like I wanted to help others gain some recognition. It just so happened that ~timtam and ~UniPT were starting a group called ~da-unreleased whose aim is to do just that. So I've signed on as an admin there

Thankyou again everyone who has visited my page and has appreciated my work!

Well, i logged on today to find that i am now a subscriber Thanks to ~JVANDER who suggested to `Lady-Blue that i should have one Now all i need is a print account (soon hopefully )

Did a little collaboration with ~jackroberts and we made up this movie/game advertisement thing. See here:



Anywho... *goes off to see all the other new things he can do*