Post hand-in blues

That's what I get for sleeping twelve hours.

Surreality and anxiety.

And I'm still trying to work...?

Last, but not least

It's strange to think that this is the last entry I'll add before I hand in all of my final work, for my final assessment, for my final year of uni. Wow. So what's been happenin'?

Welp, Sunny (Queen of Hip Hop) came with me to the dentist, so I got that cavity sorted! I am the proud new owner of yet another filling, yay me. Thank you wonderful Sunny for coming with me to the dentists, we'll play WoW together soon, man! I can already hear Shadow Fang Keep calling us!

What else have I been up to? Uuuh. I printed my comic a few days ago - less than satisfactory results due to printers and guillotines and stuff, I had planned on getting about twenty five printed for the MCM Expo next weekend but at £1.60 each, not including the cost of paper, screw that! So I'm in the middle of ordering them at the moment from a printers named 'Inky Little Fingers', they're charging me about £38 for 50, which is sweeeeet! They'll take four days to print and send it to me, and the postage and packaging is free. Fucking YES, I will have these done. I've paid for them already, I just need to send the file over again because the proof had some dodgy edges, but man, two outta' sixteen 'ain't bad. I'll be borrowing Max's computer for that this evening, because he has InDesign, and I do not.

I also managed to add some tones to the comic, though I didn't get to fully colour it like I'd hoped, but B+W saves on printing costs so that's fiiiiiiiiiine. I sorted the layouts for my final comic covers, too, and all of the extra work that I've done, and I'm just now finishing up my P.D.Ps (that is, all of my back-up work). I've been doing it as I went along which really helps, hahah, but seriously, there was still a lot to print, and Glyn asked us to print all of the work that supported our dissertations today, too. I tried really hard not to just... break down and cry when he said that, hah, I have about 20-30 blogs and around 200 images that I referenced/talked about/quoted/stared and got angry at. I can't print it all, but I'll print some of it. I bought new ink today and it's already starting to run out, another £34 gone bye bye.

In better news, I went to see Woodkid a few days ago with Max and Lizzie and it. Was. AWESOME. It was honest to God epic, stunning and downright cool. The visuals in the background were beautiful, there was a guy on keyboards, three guys on drums and three guys playing trumpets, and then Woodkid singing and getting us all to stand up and clap our hands and jump up and down, and they played Run Boy Run as an encore and I bloody knew they would! So good. And when he sang Baltimore, the line 'Here in Paris the rain is falling', he sang instead 'Here in Norwich the rain is falling', and everyone cheered, hahah. What a legend. So yes, that was so totally and unbelievably worth it.

Also I reckon I've got a job interview sometime next week, with any luck. I've applied for a sales assistant job at the TV and Movie Store opposite the Forum which is, well it's gotta' be, one of the best places to work in Norwich! It's SO cool! I really hope I get the job, because if I do, not only do I get to work in one of the coolest places around, with a bunch of really awesome and geeky people, but my anxieties about trying to find a job after I graduate will be nill, which would be brilliant. We'll see though, wish me luck. I have all of the relative work experience, and I know about a lot of the things that they sell in there, and I am so friendly to people (no, really). So yeah, woo.

Man the idea of graduating is scary, isn't it? As soon as I graduate I need to apply for illustration and writing jobs, I need to re-write my book and write a Doctor Who script, and an application for the MA in Screenwriting at the U.E.A, make sure that I have enough money for rent and council tax, think about getting a pet... Sort my love life out... See if I can get a table all of my own at the MCM Expo in October... Fuck me I'm going to be busy.

Fuck yes, let's do this!

I am so prepared to do all of the things I love for the rest of my life, you don't even know. Now all I need is a husband/wife and BABIES, WOOO. And a dog. And maybe a house.

Oh man.

I think I need to sit down.

Except I'm already sitting.

Welp.

This entry brought to you by the soundtrack Tron: Legacy by Daft Punk. I feel like a hero!

So...

I've noticed a cavity in one of my teeth black as pitch, and it's starting to ache, so I'm going to call up the emergency dentists tomorrow to try to get an appointment.

Last time I had a cavity in one of my teeth I needed a tooth extraction.

Last time I had a tooth extraction I couldn't do any work for a week because of the pain.

 It's almost exactly a week till my hand-in.

Going to the dentists makes my anxiety bad at the best of times.

And this is not the best of times.

Fuck.

Brightness/contrast issues

These are the final layouts for my portfolio regarding comic covers,

Although since making these I've lightened numbers 3 and 5, because they always print so dark!

And lastly, some more comic pages,

They don't have any hands in page 9 because I didn't have a reference, but I aquired one yesterday so I'll finish this page later.

Okay, now I need to go shower, and then go to my crit >__<

Variations x 100

Glyn kind've put the fear of God into me today with his 'Deadline is in two weeks time' and 'Degree show...' and 'Graduation day...' Nope. Nope. Sssshh. Anyway, let's focus, shall we?

I don't even- like two of these don't have a blue gradient for whatever reason and I don't even know how that happened so let's pretend it's there and it's allllllllllllll fine. I just need to pick one of these and then I can move the fuck along. Oh, and,

The darker gray makes 'Pink Bunny Presents' a lot more obvious, but the chapter number and title kind've disapear in Lucifer's coat : /

ALL I CAN SMELL IS COFFEE AND IT IS GRIM.

On an unrelated note, I found out that a family member went into hospital yesterday, and it's got me worried. Hope they're okay.

Harder Better Faster Stronger

In full colour, finished and in their proper numerical order, read them and weep mother suckaaaas.

I am so proud.

It would have been ultra cool if my printer had printed these pristinely.

Alas.

It is a little shit.

Right, time to chill out before bed, or it'll be hours before I can get to sleep. Time to do some writing! Yeeeaaah!

Also Daft Punk.

WOOO.

Acheron makes hot chocolate

This turned out looking a lot nicer, and a lot more art nouvaeu than I thought it would.

Yep.

Okay, back to work, I need to finally finish editing those comic covers, and then I am officially calling them done!

Roses and shinies and cakes, oh my~

My favourite page so far! LOOK AT ALL OF THE ROSES and the shinies, oh man.

I'm going to try and get page eight done tonight, it's a fairly simple one, and I'll be two pages ahead if I can manage it. Yeeeaaaah! :D I'm a bit worried that those roses look like cabbages, but if Chris doesn't bring it up then I'm not changing 'em. Also I'm not too happy with Acheron's pose, but I didn't have a reference soooo. Might fix it up later.

LIZZIE HAS MADE WHITE CHOCOLATE SOMETHING OR OTHERS AND SHE WON'T TELL ME WHAT THEY ARE BUT THEY'RE FOR DESSERT.

Oh man. I can't wait.

Okay, time for dinner!

 I didn't finish it today T__T Boo.

BUT LIZZIE MADE STRAWBERRIES DIPPED IN WHITE CHOCOLATE.

They were good o 3o

Oh, pixels

I think I've used the wrong sized brush to ink these : / I think I used a 9 for the other pages, and I used a 5 on these. Auuuh. I might have to go over them again. Auuuuh.

Auuuh.

Still, they're done for now.

On track! And good karma

Yesssssssssssssssssss. Here, have some comic pages,

Four pages down, eight to go.

I'm about to try to make those last minor edits to my comic covers, too, and then I am honestly right on track. Two pages a week is turning out easier than I'd imagined, I think what was slowing me down was drawing the backgrounds/architecture in the first two pages, but with that out of the way I just have Ach and Seth to draw, which is a lot more fun!

I've been intermingling work with writing a page here and there of stuff, I have a couple of stories on the go at the moment, nothing serious, just for fun : )

In other news, I found a wallet on the pavement a few days ago, I found out that the guy was a member of staff at the U.E.A so I called them up and got through to their security, and asked them if they could tell the guy that I'd be taking it to the police station the following day. I would have taken it to his house, but it was a bit of a treck and it was already getting dark.

So, I took it into the police station the following day, gave them some details, got a receipt and went on my way! I think the good karma led to me getting my dissertation all done and handed in, which was really handy : D Welp, the guy emailed me today saying thank you, he got his wallet back! : D Awesome news.

This is totally going in my P.D.P.

Oh, and I played Lazer Quest with my friends last friday after handing in my dissertation (I also bought a new dress to celebrate, and tights!). There's no better way to celebrate handing in a ton of work than running around in a dark room shooting your friends ; D It was fun but I cut my fingertip- boo.

Right, time to get back to work!

UPDATE: 12:40am, time for bed.

No.1 is finished so pretend like it's here and you like it and it's fine. Okay, moving on then,

Ignore the fact that this still says no.1, it's actually no.2, ahahah... and I can't decide which one I prefer, auuh. I liked it the first time T__T I'll ask Chris which one he prefers. I changed the colour of the text in one of them, re-sized the canvas, added a gradient in the background, added another layer over the top and rubbed it out over his eyes/added a gadient layer and changed the colour of the lineart. This one is the toughest, seriously.

 I EDITED THIS ONE WITH MY TOUCHPAD! BOOYAH! SUCK IT BITCHES. Changed the number, removed some leaves, rubbed the text out so it was behind Varis's antlers and gave Acheron's hair pink tips!

Still need to try to re-paint the ice daggers, but otherwise this one is done- I just darkened the background with some more blue, changed the number and changed the arrows a bit.

I think this is my favourite one now *__* Changed the number, changed the text colour, added a gradient in the background, moved and re-drew part of the rossary, added blood spatters.

"Flurburbur Hobbit"

I have some piss easy edits to make on these comic covers before I can call them done, but I'm so mentally wiped from working madly on my dissertation earlier that I can't figure out the simplest of Photoshop magic, so I'm giving up for tonight. As well as not being able to show the edits that I'd promised Chris last week, I've also only done a page and a half of inking, and that's mainly because page two was already 80% done. This is not good.

What is good is that my sleeping schedule is almost back to normal, and what would be considered a good sleep pattern! My councellor will be pleased. I'm pleased. Apart from the horrific nightmares on friday night, it's going pretty good. I weighed myself last sunday and found that I'd worked so hard over Easter that I'd actually lost about 5lbs. Pff. No wonder I fit into those size 10 shorts.

My dissertation is almost all done, too. I had a crit with Catrin today wherein I found out that the dissertation deadline is not on the 29th, as Glyn so kindly told me on Thursday, but it is in fact the 19th, which is this friday. I think I might have finally calmed down, but I did come home and freak out a bit.

I've got just about everything written that I wanted to, now I just need to put it all into Word on a comp at uni, add the rest of the quote sources into the text, add all of the pictures into the chapters, reference all of the pictures in the bibliography, write up a table of illustrations, find out the final word count and write in the page numbers on the contents page. Then I just need to print it, get it ring bound and hand it in, hopefully. I'll try to get that done tomorrow after the crit and the meeting with Richard Peat, and if I don't finish it then I'll go in again on wednesday.

This kind've puts a stop to working on the inks for the comic, but there's not much I can really do about that. I hope Chris understands. I'll try to get some work done tomorrow morning to show to him (those comic cover edits), but we'll see eh?

This was supposed to be a short entry.

I had such a good day - I bought a dress and everything, I have no reason to be unhappy

I happened to check just recently how often my page is viewed, and got a surprise. It's a lot. Which is odd, because I've never recieved a comment on any of my posts, and I've never had a family member or friend comment, in life, on anything put up here.

It made me re-think what I post, but only momentarily.

So, forgetting that...

I haven't worked much at all these last three days because of various reasons, good ones, and one or two bad ones, I think. But I know what I'm doing now, I know what it is, and I know it's achievable, and I know more than anything that I need to make sure I don't become complacent.

I started reading 'The Beauty Myth' by Naomi Wolf which Fiona suggested to me for my dissertation, it's really good. She suggested something else, too, a website named The Everyday Sexism Project, I urge you to check it out. It is sad, and surprising, and horrendous and amazing, and I have a morbid fascination with it, it's addictive.

I would work tonight, but I can't shake the feeling of wanting to cry, for whatever reason. I would say I have nothing in particular to cry about, nothing current anyway, but a lot in the past. So I'm going to sit here and write something that I've had in my head for about a month now, it's been sitting there waiting, it's time to put it down into words.

This morose blog entry was brought to you by,

Woodkid - I Love You

 Regina Spektor - The Call

 

Florence And The Machine - Cosmic Love (Seven Lions Remix) 

 

Yer

This is pretty, let's just keep it like this, yeah?

Yeeeaaaah.

I need sleep.

Just watched the latest Spider Man

Fucking awesome.

I AM MENTALLY TIRED

I would really like to sleep, but I'm not tired enough physically, so I'm just going to sit here and keep. working. Auuuuuuuuuuuh.

So, okay, I finished this yesterday, after which I started inking the comic page that I told Faye I'd do for the Comic Society anthology, but I was so tired, and it was so late, and by the time I relented I was knackered, and so I didn't put anything up here yesterday. I worked like... eleven, twelve hours yesterday, with breaks? Fff... Lizzie said to me earlier, 'I'm jealous of your work ethic' or somesuch, I just... It doesn't feel like I've done much at all.

Mark asked me a few days ago, 'How do you switch off after working?' I replied simply, 'I sleep'. which, in retrospect, would explain why I haven't been sleeping properly recently.

Anyway, that comic,

I finished inking this at about sixish, sevenish? Had dinner at some point, then edited all of the comic covers, changed the size of the font of the title (bigger) and messed with some colours to make them all a bit more uniform. Now working on inking my twelve page comic.

Hahah I just wrote out a 'to do' list, but found it too depressing so deleted it. That's a thought, if that hits me again I may have to ask Glyn for a late extension... Let's hope not.

Auuuuh there's so much work to dooooooooooooooooooooooo.

UPDATE: Page one second sketch,

 

Blaaaaaaaaaaaargle

Lord of The Rings, Return of The King extended edition feels like one of the longest movies in the WORLD, especially past 12am. But it is worth it.

Mainly for Legolas.

Aah... Elves.

Wow I'm tired.

I spent some of today helping Lizzie paste up artwork in the underpass near St. Stephens street, as she had permission from the council, it was like volunteer work to brighten the place up. It was interesting! And fucking cold. Now have extra chillblains on my fingers- but nonetheless fun.

I don't have much to say about the WIP, apart from the fact that I really like it so far, I think. Hoping to finish it tomorrow, make all of the changes that I need to, to the others, and then ink the short one page comic for the Comic Society anthology.

And then get some sleep before Monday!

Phew.

It is 1:58am, and it is time for bed.

Chugging along

 or...

Yeah, so so far so good today, inked and colouring now. Getting there...

I tried watching all three extended editions of Lord of The Rings today. Only got as far as The Two Towers, Return of The King tomorrow! Yep.

Exciting times!

Progress? Uhm.

Not much, I'm afraid. I've been working on my dissertation so I don't have much to show! :0 My dissertation is almost done, I just need to do a little bit more research and writing about feminism history/theory and re-write my introduction. I wrote my bibliography yesterday, five pages! Anyway...

I've been home alone these last THREE WEEKS, which means finding someone to take a picture of for a reference is HARD, and finding one can sometimes be really difficult, so I asked a friend of mine for a ref for this one! : D He's so cool, and nice and funny and generally awesome.

Okay right, I should probably go to bed as it's 2:50am. I need to go to the library tomorrow to get out some books that Fiona suggested, and while I'm there I'll take these four back. Now I hope when I get up and stretch my chest pops again, because when it doesn't it's achey. Boo achey chest. Boo.

UPDATE: I just realised, I feel un-productive some days when I wake up late and don't start working till five, sixish, but then I'll work till 3am. Huhn.

Fuck you, fear

Oh boy.

I sometimes wonder how people without anxiety disorders deal with stress and deadlines, people on our course for example. When it's deadline time, Max and Lizzie get so stressed, they disapear in their rooms for days on end, or they get really mad at a drop of a hat, and upset. But do they get anxious, like me? I don't know, I guess. Maybe that's why I'm so laid back, or atleast, why I appear so laid back, because when it comes down to it I'm too anxious to get as stressed as they do. But I am still stressed (the white hair is a testament to that).

I'm really worried about getting my projects finished on time, I still have one more comic cover to do, I need to finish my dissertation during Easter, and once those are done I need to ink this 12 page comic before our deadline. I think it's the 12 page comic that's freaking me out so much, but now it's the dissertation too. I was doing fine- was on a roll in-fact, till Catrin asked me to write about feminist history. Now I'm all discombobulated.

But I'm not going to start feeling better till I DO something about it.

One thing I learned during that panic attack a few years ago is that fear can paralyze you. I'd never known how powerful it could be till that moment.

Well, time to overcome fear, then.

I'm going to add up all that I've written so far, see how much I have left to write, finish up the bits I already have, write my conclusion, and then anything left can go on feminist history. Thinking that, makes me feel so much better and less afraid.

So let's get to it!

UPDATE: Well fuck me, I've already got 9121 words. I guess I'll just write my conclusion then, tidy up what I have, and then write some stuff about feminists... Huhn. Wow.

Opacity failings

I can't decide on the opacity on the daggers @___@ Which looks like like ice...? I don't- aaaah. I re-worked them a bit in the hopes of making them look mor elike they're made of ice, but it's so difficult. Who's bright idea was this, anyway?!

Okay, I think this just needs a little bit of tweaking concerning colours and text placement, but other than that... I think I'm calling this done. At least for tonight, I need to get to bed!