Milo’s College Blog!

I’m going to be posting all my college work here!

[poemiloallen]

COMIC STRIP

Over this time we were tasked to make a comic strip about a can we had previously made in college. My can consists of patchwork tails poking out of the can.

I decided to make a comic strip about how the cat (with the 9 tails) ended up in the can.

I did a brain storm of ideas with my Mum, as I was struggling a little at the time. We came up with the idea of how he was sleeping on a shelf in the pantry, got scared by a door opening and fell into the open can.

I read a lot of comics and we looked mainly at the Junji Ito comic books to see how they made good use of the panels on the comic page.

I noticed how he would use lots of panels when trying to show a fast paced bit of the story, and then a large panel for a reveal.

We decided to use a combination of small panels and a long panel to show movement of the fall.

The design of the cat is quite colourful so I have tried to make the background less colourful to show a distinction.

I have only done the layout and one panel so far but I am hoping to finish it soon.

[poemiloallen]

Weekend Show - 07.12.24

At the weekend I had a stall at the village craft fair. There I had my colour dolls on sale and my favourite dolls on display as examples of commission possibliities.

Before the show I designed some business cards to hand out.

I took inspiration from V-tuber logos such as IronMouse. I like the way their logos were super colourful and fun.

The day went really well. Lots of people asked me about my art but not many people bought anything. I did sell my purple doll though.

I enjoyed it but I found it quite loud with lots of people around. I had to leave about half way through as I was getting a little overwhelmed. I wish I could have stayed longer but I didn't want to push myself too hard as I was getting a cold.

[poemiloallen]

[poemiloallen]

On Thursday and Friday last week I have been working on my Christmas present for my Nan. This is her and her sister and five brothers.

I have also been sewing clothes for my colour dolls that I am exhibiting at a craft show next weekend, in the hope that I can sell some.

I made the blue cloak, the doll and dress I did a while ago

I like the hat best, tiny hats on dolls are so cute.

I love how orange's face turned out and I will post photos of the finished dolls all together (10 in total)

[poemiloallen]

05.11.24 - Over the Garden Wall TV show review

I liked the show. It was really kind of creepy and kookie but it also had a comforting vibe.

I think this vibe comes from the picture book backgrounds. They looked like images you might see in a Fairy Tale book.

I love the watercolour and oil painting style backgrounds. They look like something that jumped straight out of a story book.

I love how it creates a sense of fantasy but also how realistic the nature looks. It creates a sense of comfort in familiarity.

I think the character or Wirt is a bit pretentious at the beginning, but as the story progresses you come to realise that he is just an insecure boy trying to be noticed by the girl he likes.

Greg is a bit stupid and naive, but he is really endearing with his cute voice and silly mannerisms. I also like that the frog never got a proper name.

I like how simple the characters are. They allow the backgrounds and the story to pop. They also lend to that nostalgic fairy tale feeling while not looking too odd in the locations around them.

You wouldn't expect this to be a bit of a musical but it really works when the music pops up and there is always a reason for the characters to sing. I love it when the show gets a bit scary as it is a good contract to the comforting aesthetic of the rest of the show.

I like how the beast only ever 'attacks' if the characters give up and I like how it is constantly tricking them with the lantern.

I would recommend and am watching it again at home with my family.

[poemiloallen]

Cats (1998 cast version vs the 2019 movie)

WARNING! This could end up as a bit of a rant, TLDR: I love the musical I hate the film!)

For clarity, in this post I will be referring to the filmed 1998 cast version as 'the musical' and the 2019 movie as 'the movie'.

Cats is a musical that struggles to work as a movie. The decision of the musical, to just film the stage production, was a good idea. You can't really make it into a real movie as there is only 5 minutes of plot and 2 hours of spectacle. Plus there is no main character that we follow through the whole production. It flips between several different characters, presumably to allow live actors to rest between music numbers as it is a music and dance heavy show (see below).

credit: Mr Mistoffelees doing a series of high jumps from the 1998 musical recording

The Movie's decision to add a main protagonist in the form of 'Victoria' was the first of (in my opinion) many mistakes. However the main and most obvious flaw with the film is the animation.

The picture above is Mungojerry, Rumpleteezer and Victoria from the movie and the picture below is Taylor Swift.

First of all, the cats appear naked. I know the are showing some fur but they appear to be bald and I think the lack of human ears actually causes confusion. They look too human to be cats and too human to be cats and thus 'uncanny valley' comes into the picture. Everything is just slightly wrong.

The only cats in the film, that don't appear to be naked are Mistofelees (above) and Skimbleshanks (below), and this is because they are wearing clothes.

You can compare this to the stylised cats from the musical, where the artificial style of the clothes, hair and set allows you to step out of reality and use your imagination in a way that is prevented by the realistic nature of the cgi fur and sets.

Another issue is with the cockroaches in the Jenny Anydots song. The cgi tracking that they used for their exoskeletons doesn't line up with the actors very well and so they look really wrong. Also, they are not even tap dancing in time to the music! It makes the film look really cheap and nasty, despite the large budget.

The picture below is a clip from the film and you can see the hand is clipping through the leg which again jolts you up against the cgi and pulls you from the imagination.

I think that the movie would have been better if they had fully animated the movie along the lines of Puss in Boots or Aristocats, because then it helps you to suspend your belief and enjoy the spectacle. Or, they should have lent fully into the musical theatre with real sets and costumes on the actors and limited the post production cgi to a twitching tail or ear. Again, allowing the viewer to use their imagination and not be constantly butting up against the not quite right nature of the cgi.

Lastly, the least forgivable part is that they utterly messed up the music in a musical!! There is a fabulous YouTube video that gives full details of this (see below) so I won't go into detail here. It is enough to say that the music grates on the ear in many songs. In fact the only passable song in my opinion is Skimbleshanks, as the orchestra played the music and the singer used this to record his version. In many other songs the singer was given free rein with the tempo and the orchestra had to try to record their music to fit. Also, there were very few random pauses which broke up the songs and jarred the ear.

In conclusion, if you enjoy the musical cats, watch the 1998 recording of the stage show and not the 2019 movie adaptation.

[poemiloallen]

8/10/24 - I forgot to write about this so I’m doing it here. Fake fast food posters.

This afternoon bed I did my card we used a fast food poster to practice composition.

I used a fun font I found. I also tried to not overlap to many things I wanted everything to be seen as separate. I don’t want things to meld together. I also tried my best to not add bad visual tangents in my compositions.

this poster for examples is rather simple however the dark version is the main draw. these posters are for a stranger things crossover so i like how the show was incorporated into the posters.

i really like this poster. i like the way the poster shows the new flavour of jelly beans without just writing it on the poster. by shaping the beans into a watermelon is a clever way to show the jelly beans and the watermelon.

[poemiloallen]

10/10/24 - painting and dressing my island.

Today I painted my island and added grass and such.

I painted the whole thing a dark grey then I dry brushed light grey all over, white on one side and a green colour at the bottom

After I used a variety of materials provided by Kirsty to add grass, bushes, trees and moss to the island.

I think it turned out alright for my first ever attempt at this. If I could change anything I would find a better grass and moss texture as they don’t look too good. I do really like the bushes and trees they look like it’s autumn.

Finally we all added the islands to a big canvas to show then all off (mine is circled)

I didn’t have a had in painting this as I was busy with my island. I still think it looks great though.

[poemiloallen]

9/10/24 - labelling the keys and putting them on a bored.

Today we aged a label to add to our key. I sanded the edges and a fold to thin the paper. Then I added coffee and graphite to make it look old. I then used stamps to add text to it. I wrote “Not a booby trap” and on the back “I promise”. I thought this was funny as it’s obvious it’s a booby trap.

Somehow just like my test paper my label ripped 😭. So we had to tape it back together. It looks alright.

We then got the keys ready for display by organising them on a bored. (See below) my key is circled (I forgot to take other pictures of the label).

[poemiloallen]

8/10/24 - finishing the trading card.

In the afternoon I got to finish my trading card. I blocked in the colours added shadows and highlights and painted a background. I also painted the back of the card.

This is the card front. I’m really proud of the drawing. I think the shading is some of the best I’ve ever done. The background is inspired by another draw I did for an art competition over the summer (see below)

The back of the card was rather rushed admittedly. I wasn’t there when we did patterns so I kind of winged it. I think it turned out alright for a on the spot thing

I added a puddle of blood, Lilith sword and my signature. I definitely prefer the front of the card.

I think this card is really good. I hope I win a prize in the competition for these cards. 🤞

[poemiloallen]

8/10/24 - movie review - Scott pilgrim vs the world.

This is an Edgar wright movie so it’s got a high bar from the start. I had never seen this movie before but it’s rather good.

It’s not my favourite Edgar wright movie but it’s good (I’d be serprise if it wasn’t). The plot is rather stupid but I love the editing. It really looks like a video game especially in the action. The comedy is amazing. And the transitions are amazing. I like the wipe across transitions and the quick cuts. There is one scene where quick cuts are interrupted by a long slow shot of Scott tying his laces which reminds me of hot fuzz a lot.

All in all not bad. It has very good editing and acting 8.5/10

[poemiloallen]

2-7/10/24 - I was sick on Wednesday and Thursday so I did some work at home.

I continued working on my monochrome dolls while I was sick. I rooted a lot of hair, painted some faces and made a dress.

These are pink and yellows hair. I used yarn to give it a wavy/curly texture. Yellows is much shorter because I wanted to give them an Afro look.

After cutting the hair this is what it looks like. I love it. It’s so cute.

I made this dress for blue. I used the asymmetrical dress pattern but dollightfull on Etsy. I love some bits of this dress but there are other parts I would change. The dress is rather tight in the shoulders and chest. I actually added the heart to cover the pulling stitches although if you lift the arms you can also see pulling stitches.

I’m really proud of the ruffles. I had to gather and sew everything my hand as my sewing machine has a habit of eating fabric this tiny. I also didn’t have enough fabric to make all the ruffles one colour. So on the petticoat I used 3 different shades of blue to make a gradient. I’m debating painting the same gradient into the heart decal. 

This is pinks dress and face. I unintentionally gave her a mischievous expression. Because of that I think she would play pranks on the others and likes to tell jokes. It’s funny how the dolls end up with personality’s of their own. She wasn’t intended to be like that but hay, I like it.



Here is yellows face. She had rather down turned lips so I tried to make them into more of a smile. She looks kinda shy. She has the same situation as pink. Where she got a personality by accident.

[poemiloallen]

1/10/24 - texture overlays, halftones and colour bleeding.

Before we started on the trading cards we took a jaws poster and messed around with textures. Our goal was to make it look like an old poster.

I think I made the poster look like it had been handed and moved a lot.

After that we learned how to do halftones. I personally don’t like this look but that’s just my opinion.

And finally we learned how to make the colours look unaligned. I like how this makes it look like it’s glitching.

[poemiloallen]

1/10/24 - starting the trading card.

In the afternoon we started making the trading card. We got given a photoshop canvas with the right dimensions and were set to work.

Since o had the sketch from this morning I scanned it in and traced over it using a dark red colour for the line art.

Of course I forgot to take a picture so I don’t have the digital version.

Imagine this drawing but on photoshop and neater.

I managed to finish the line art today but I still need to do colours, shadows, highlights and the background. I can’t wait to see what it looks like in the end.

My card is inspired by Pokemon league card from Pokemon sword and shield and Pokemon trainer gallery cards. The league cards inspired me because they are unique to each character. They are designed to look like the character made them themselves so they have a lot of personality. 

I like this one because the character obviously photoshopped themselves to look thinner. (See the slowbrow in the background lol)

The trainer gallery cards inspire me because of there amazing use of colours and the poses are always amazing.

I like these two because the dedenne card had amazing bright colours and really energetic posing. The other one is super cute and has much more subtle and neutral colours but that works for the calmer vibe of the card.

[poemiloallen]

1/10/24 - drawing I did during the movie.

As I had already seen this movie I decided to doodle during it. I decided to draw my pirate Lilith lakerider. I used a reference by azizla swiftwind (I don’t know what platform they are located on I just found this reference on google). I used the middle one as reference.

I thought this drawing would be just a fun doodle but as I drew I realised how much I loved this drawing.

I sent this picture to my mum to get some options. She said that the hair should have more texture. My doll of Lilith has wavy hair and in the drawing it looks more like thick straight hair right now.

After I textured the hair it looks much better. After editing the line weight I showed it to my friend Owen and he said to change the sword a bit to make it look more like a pirate sword.

This is the final sketch and I love it. I’m gonna use it to make my trading card.

[poemiloallen]

1/10/24 - movie review - the goonies.

I had already seen this movie before I had to watch it today and it’s good I did because we had some technical problems and the movie was buffering a lot and the audio quality want very good. See my review below

I honestly don’t know how to feel about this movie. It’s definitely not my favourite but it’s not bad.

It’s very 80’s. And is definitely a product of the time.

I love the sets. Because green screen technology wasn’t very good at the time they had to utilise physical sets and I think this adds a charm and realism that I think this movie needs.

It’s got a lot of screaming and that does drag the movie down a bit for me but there are other parts that make up for it. I like the joke where chunk starts telling his entire life story and the gremlins reference.

All in all it’s an alright movie 7/10

[poemiloallen]

29/9/24 - reverse casting an island.

Since I was sick last Thursday I had to catch up today. We used clay and plater to reverse cast an island.

I made a hole in clay and sculpted a negative of my island using a knife and actual rocks to make the texture.

Afterwards I had to mix up the plaster with my hands. It was very gross. It felt like dirty washing up water. After I mixed it to the right consistency I poured it into my cast. I was very scared it would leak from what Kirsty told me about the others attempts. But it didn’t leak and went well.

After it dried I took it out of the clay and got to see it for the first time.

This is when lunch started and Kirsty left for the day so I had to finish it next week.

I think the sculpting turned out alright. I like the stalactites at the bottom. It does have a rather small base but hopefully that won’t cause any problems.