It's Only Science If You Write It Down

This blog is a Partner-In-Crime to my project work in Uni - whatever doesn't make it into my sketchbook makes it here, whether it be research or photoshop exploration. You may also find Artists of Interest by clicking on the link in the drop-down menu (top left), which leads to a tag on my personal blog where I keep track of intriguing art styles.

[sketchbookassociate]

I am feeling p. Cute today Off to the shops we go

[sketchbookassociate]

My final animations for the #Regenerate project!

I’m really proud of how they came out - they’re way smoother than I thought they would be! Especially with the colouring. It was a damn near finish too - had to stay up far too late to get it all working before the exhibition, but it was super successful and I’m really glad everything worked out.

I feel like maybe I should have done an introductory animation and a conclusion animation of text as well to explain the idea of the possibilities of a solar powered future, but animating so many words would take so long and I just don’t have the time now.

[sketchbookassociate]

Showing off my mad colouring skills AW YE

[sketchbookassociate]

The more recent animations!! Still with no colour or text!! And the exhibition is in 2 days!!! But it’s okay!!!!!!!!

Really happy with how the umbrella one came out C: The solar roadway one is a little janky but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without using so much time so I cheated a little but hey WHATEVER THIS ALL TOOK TOO LONG BYE

[unconsumption]

The first commercially-successful solar oven we saw was the SolSource, developed in the Himalayas and successfully Kickstarted in 2013 by One Earth Designs. That same year, inventor Patrick Sherwin had his solar-powered, camping-sized GoSun Stove Kickstarted.

Like the Groundfridge, both of these devices work with nature to eliminate the need for electricity or fuel. Where they differ is in size: The SolSource has a large satellite-dish form factor whereas the camping-minded GoSun Stove is roughly the size of a rolled-up yoga mat.

Now Sherwin has split the difference, refining his initial design and scaling it up to create the GoSun Grill. 

[unconsumption]

More: This Solar-Powered Grill Can Continue to Cook at Night - Core77

— rw

[sketchbookassociate]

More animations! Or alterations of the same one, whatever

One has more frames, the other is aligned better, and, ah, to be fair they’re missing a bit of detail that I SHOULD add buuut, eh. It makes sense as is for now.

It’s meant to be a brief explanation of the makeup of a solar roadway panel - it may be included in another animation or it might be a standalone gif.

[sketchbookassociate]

Two versions of the same animation - not sure which one I’m gonna use though! Looking at the second one it actually looks like I’m missing a few clips, but I can sort that out if that’s the one I end up using. 

Will hopefully add some colour and probably some text in the future if I have time - for now this gets left.

(It’s a transition for the possibilities for transparent solar panels if anyone was wondering! Extra battery power from your phone screen, energy producing sky scrapers... wow!) 

[sketchbookassociate]

I like the look of this animation, but as I’m going to be doing my animation on photoshop I doubt it’ll look as smooth.

This is more of an example of how my animation may look like (without the inverted black/white look), but due to time constraints I won’t know what it will look like until closer to the deadline - it all depends on how much time I have once I’ve done the basics!

[sketchbookassociate]

Some animation tests from the other day!

I wanted to figure out what my animations might look like if they were done digitally - the storyboard will be done in pencil in my sketchbook and the initial drawings for the animation will probably be done by hand, but I may go further with it afterwards and put it all through photoshop. We’ll see how the time goes I guess!

(Based on a solar/wind powered plane design by Oscar Viñals.)

((OH NO I DIDN’T MEAN TO SAVE THE FIRST ONE AS TRANSPARENT. OH WELL THAT’S. Gone forever oh well))

[ifeelbetterer]

A word about fandom

I really do think the biggest problem about show runners, authors, and suchlike responding to fandom—online or otherwise—is that they’ve fundamentally misunderstood what fandom is.

They see a group of fans and they assume that they, the author, is like unto a god for these fans and that they can send decrees down to them from on high.

That’s not what fandom is at all.

No one is more critical of art than fandom. No one is more capable of investigating the nuances of expression than fandom—because it’s a vast multitude pooling resources and ideas. Fandom is about correcting the flaws and vices of the original. It’s about protest and rebellion, essentially. Fandom is the voice of a mob that can do better than the original, that often flies in the face of the original, that will accept nothing less than the best the medium (and the human at the helm) is capable of. Fandom is about putting debate and conversation back into an artistic process—-especially if the artist or author in question has become so vain that all criticism is ignored, distrusted, thrown back in the criticizer’s face. (Moffat, I’m looking at you.) Fandom is about mutual creative expression—-there are no gods in fandom and every time someone thinks they’ve become a god of fandom, fandom corrects them again. (Cassandra Clare, I’m looking at you.) Fandom doesn’t need permission and it’s certainly not waiting for it. (Robin Hobb, I’m looking at you.) And fandom doesn’t actually want your attention; often, they’d rather you left them alone to get back to what they’re doing better than you anyway. (Supernatural, I’m looking at you.)

I would bet dollars to donuts that most of the people who run into this post could name five fics off the top of their head that could go head-to-head with canon any day of the week. I could name five fanvids with more biting commentary than a NYTimes review of the same film. I’ve definitely—and this is the easy one—seen hundreds of thousands of better fanart than the promotion materials for a lot of mainstream films and television shows.

Fandom is not worshipping at the altar of canon. Fandom is re-building it because they can do better.

[sketchbookassociate]

relevant to my essay on participatory culture!

[captainlordauditor]

I think someone mentioned something about solarpunk in cold climates.

i doon’t know about you, but I’m imagining igloo-like structures covered in solar panels, because there is a LOT of sun in the arctic for greenhouses and if you can make it opaque, for public and private buildings as well. I think solarpunk would also be big on preserving cultures.

[sketchbookassociate]

The photos from the Persona costume photoshoot!

I, uh, couldn’t see at all through my cardboard mask, so I couldn’t correct my costume at all and annoyingly nobody said anything or fixed me up, but, hey, still some pretty good images.

I look beefy as hell with the fake armour, holla

[sketchbookassociate]

Forgot to upload these “final” images of my clay sculpture!!

I’ve gotta say, it went really damn well. Plasticine clay is actually the best thing.

Shoutout to the sculpture teacher Chris, who was awesome and is still teaching us how to use the 3D modelling software Zbrush (or will be, once IT solutions stops it from crashing on us so often!). He is still awesome in the present tense, too.

[sketchbookassociate]

Magazine mood board!!! More page spreads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!??!!!

Yeah. This is just going to be a whole project of mood boards and nobody can stop me.

[sketchbookassociate]

I told myself that i would make no more mood boards, that I would draw the images I was looking at instead. And then when trying to draw them I instead began trying modern interpretations immediately, and realised that in order to record everything properly I was going to need to make another mood board.

Again.

Alas, hopefully at some point all of this researching will bear fruition - at least now I’m drawing.

[sketchbookassociate]

ANOTHER MOODBOARD ABOUT CLOTHING, this time looking at the actual clothing of the time. Wikipedia puts the era of Art Nouveau at around 1890-1910 so that's where I looked at. As usual, there were very few options for the male fashion, so I'd like to have a go at tackling that when making the catalogue.

While I am doing a lot of research into what was around at the time, and what style is used in the typical Art Nouveau images (trying to remember also that I should try to include the wear from the nouveau of other cultures, as it was not a purely UK movement and effected much of Europe, but under different titles, hence my surprise at the difference between Designer's styles when researching into artists), I need to also make sure I can try and incorporate the more modern clothing styles.

After all, this isn't steampunk - I want to create something that could fluidly transform from what we are today into what could be tomorrow, so nowadays fashion - and ease of clothing, I mean jeez, petticoats - MUST intertwine with the style associated with nouveau. Plus, everything associated with Nouveau is just so damn fancy, and so bloody upperclass.

People aren't that. This isn't a rich society I'm trying to envision - it's one that everyone can fit into, fancy dresses or no.

[sketchbookassociate]

A complation of my research today into perhaps what a Solarpunk lifestyle would look like. Hopefully making it a long image will allow for side scrolling, as I'm aware tumblr as issues with long images sometimes.

Hopefully it comes across that I've tried to document as I go - it should represent from left to right where I went while researching. If that doesn't come through, this is still a pretty cool mood board - surprisingly, pinterest is an utter Aladdin's cave of art nouveau, and tumblr is incredibly interested in the solar panels and architectural side, so I've found a good few things today that should help me out.