Sculpting Gym | Week One

Utilizing Group Crit time with my MFA peers, I’ve started pumping iron through Sculpting Gym! It’s prep time for the upcoming Draw-In  Symposium, 31st August. Thanks Lisa for allowing us to use your house for the session! It was fun. Project one is a bust of Frankenstein, Boris Korloff more so… and he’s tricky!

My approach was to sculpt a bust of Frankenstein, I worked too big with the sculpey however. Wed-clay would have been better at this scale.  I’ll continue him further and see what happens.

We had a fun night overall, (thanks again for hosting this Lisa).

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Creature Design MFA

MFA Design Award 2014

Well, I officially received my MFA Design Award today. I felt we were all deserving of this. But in the words of the great Connor McCloud… “There can be, only one…”

My course co-coordinator, (also associate head of school) Debbie Fraser presented me with the award. Very chuffed! With this award, I’ll be shipping myself to Monster Palooza in California, Burbank.
I’ll be networking heavily and really look forward to it. Some of the top industry professionals in their field will be there, it’ll be daunting and exciting at the same time. Hopefully, I get to hook up with the likes of Casey Love and Jordu Schell.

Just have to say a BIG thank you to the (so called!) anonymous donor… this award wouldn’t have been possible without his support, so I’m very grateful and appreciative to have received this.

IMG_3235    MFADesignAward_PCooperDFraser

Had a good day overall, Myself and Ursula McCloy toured the Degree show following the awards event.  So much really great work showcased this year. I was a huge fan of T-Anderson’s sculpting work and Lyndsay-Erin Mercer’s sculpting work in ceramics.

http://www.lynsay-erinmercerarts.com
http://diannenmaz.wix.com/t-anderson

MFA

Draw-In Symposium | 25th August – 5th September 2014

LogoDRAWIN

Big Heads Up on this one !

My industry peer and friend Julie Douglas is hosting a Symposium to celebrate the value of drawing in all its various guises!

The event will consist of a weekend symposium and two 5 day workshops, bringing together world class artists (rock stars) and creative professionals to put the spotlight on drawing and painting.  There will be demonstrations,  discussions and various workshops, so there will be much to be learned and shared.

Artists attending the event and giving workshops will be: PJ Lynch, Colleen Barry, Paul Foxton, Julie DouglasMatt WeigleShevaun Doherty, Katharine Tyrell and last but not least, myself.

This is a huge event and promises to be  lots of fun. Please see the Draw-In website for additional information, tickets and booking information is available as of this week.

http://draw-in.co.uk/

 

MFA

Friday Night Mash Up @ the Titanic pump House

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Attended the Friday Night Mashup tonight, at the Titanic Pump House

We had Tech companies demoing their recent projects:  The Design Zoo, Big Motive and Freshly Baked Games

Stephen Houston, an angel investor at HaloNI and Tom Griffiths, Founder of Acorn Incubator gave great talks on their recent work and touched a little on their backgrounds.

Fun night all round, met lots of new folk on the scene.

 

… Felt abit subdued after it however, knowing Monster Polooza has started, west side. Another ball game entirely!

MFA

FACS Workshop – FACIAL ACTION CODING SYSTEM (09th-13th Sept)

Just completed a week long intensive workshop with Dr. Erika Rosenberg learning FACS coding.  It was hosted in the University of Ulster over the full five days and we had a great time. We had a great mix, we had guys from Germany, Denmark, Portugal and of course Ireland. I made lots of new friends. We were given our first formal exposure to facial measurement, anatomical musculature, movement and mechanical processes and exploring many different expressive states both emotional and physiological. We looked in great detail at the upper and lower parts of the face.

The practical work and daily ‘FUN’ exercises we did were extremely beneficial to learn this sort of coding. Since part of my research right now is pushing hard on anatomical processes in both human and animals, being part of this workshop has accelerated my learning of the human face. Dr Erika Rosenberg is a great teacher and her knowledge on facial coding, facial anatomy and expression through emotion is so much infinitely deeper than the five days we got exposed to during the workshop.  We managed to get through the whole of the FACS manual, so barring more coding practice, I’ll be looking to apply for my FACS test and hopefully gain a certificate in Facial coding.

The shear volume of information we learned in the five days, would most probably take much longer to understand and learn if studying on your own. I highly recommend this workshop to anyone looking to learn FACS !

For information on FACS and the availability of Erika’s FACS workshops you can check out Erika’s website:

http://erikarosenberg.com/

Additional Information:

http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/general/homepage.jsp

http://www.paulekman.com/facs/

FACS-ekmanAction Units in the upper face.

Animation Creature Design MFA

WETA Workshop in Concept Art and Design

I had the privilege of taking part in White Cloud Worlds / WETA concept art workshop this past weekend. (13-14th April)

The weekend workshop was hosted by Paul Tobin and Frank Victoris.

http://www.whitecloudworlds.com/

( An anthology of science fiction and fantasy artwork from Aotearoa New Zealand )

BIO:

Paul Tobin 

Frank Victoria

Weta_Workshop

If you look closely, you can see me !  🙂

Our brief was to design for a ‘pretend’ remake of Jason and the Argonauts and conceptualize in one of three areas, character, creature or environment  I chose creature and in this case the Hydra. It was an awesome weekend !

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Creature Design Exploration and Inquiry MFA