Cheese.

Cheese 0005 - But you ARE a pet.

David Gilmour Marooned

The Bled - Antarctica

gently slipknot live in london

Brand New - Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis

Their album cover is coooool.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Can you see what it is?

It'd help if I drew the Frechman getting stabbed a bit better. Which I will do.

Also for the record this film idea isn't about fighting or being cool for cools sake. This only happens in climax at the near end of the film. I'm structuring it like Taxi Driver and French Connection where the suspense and the story builds and builds in one big slow crescendo and there is little or no significant action sequence until the end.

Some face ideas for Cossacks. Viva la Beard.

I've been playing about with making music to fit this, I'm thinking about buying a cakewalk program but it's on hold until the summer because all my instruments are back at my mum's and I won't know what my project is for a few weeks so there's no sense forking out for it just yet. I used to do Music Technology at school so it should all come back to me. But thinking about it got me re discovering my musical side, which has been on hiatus for about 2-3 years because the shit they churn out these days is depressing, I just lost touch. I've come back to a bit of a gap though as almost all the bands I used to be into have split up, had members die, or just vanished in the last 3 or so years. Some off the top of my head are Slipknot (founder and bassist Paul Grey died last year), The Bled, Thursday, Killswitch Engage, Hondo McClane and The Deftones. I'm sure some of them are still making music but it's shame they don't tour the UK or anything.

If I was going with this 1812 idea then I'd create a track that was along the lines of;

Gently (Iowa) - Slipknot

Danger - Keep Away (Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses) - Slipknot

Me vs. Maradona vs. Elivs (Deja Entendu) - Brand New

Antarctica (Found in the Flood) - The Bled

World Ablaze (End of Heartache) - Killswitch Engage

Destroy the Map (A Snow Capped Romance) - 36 Crazyfists.

I also thought maybe going down the blues road with something like Flyby Nights by Seasick Steve or something like Marooned by Pink Floyd. And Obviously I've been listening to the Overture 1812 by Tchaikovsky.

I'll post up these songs in another post though it's not letting me put them on this one. ho hum.

Anyway, Yes I used to be, well still am, a metalhead and prog rocker. I thought I'd stick a couple of images up because I like them.

I don't know why but I love this photograph...I think it's his hand that does it.

Photoshop

I dunno. I think I still suck. I tried though. That was about 4-5 hours working. I found doing the sea the hardest.

Stuff

I'm not sure how my graphic design is. Not great I suspect. I've changed the colours slightly, I prefer the lighter blue.

Read this bottom up, I uploaded it the wrong way around. I'm not sold on my choice of font yet.

This ones giving me trouble at the minute - in terms of what to write here.

There's 2 before this that I haven't done yet.

It's just;

1. There was once a wonky little Island.

2. And on this wonky little Island was a wonky little town.

If you've been paying attention...

I've photoshopped stuff! A bit. Sort of. I'm still slowly re-making my bible more bibley. I think that blue is too harsh now. I might go for a very pale blue. (the one for the page backgrounds see an earlier blog entry) These are some of my concept bits, I had to fiddle with the brightness and contrast because they didn't scan brilliantly.

Anyway just proof that I am still doing things...when the suns not out anyway. I have tried do take my laptop outside with the tablet but it does get very sticky very quickly.

These are some cossack idea for my other plan. I've drawn lots of faces for them but I shan't upload them now because my book is all the way over there (the other side of the room).

The research into Cossacks is very interesting. It's Slavic for 'free man' and there's lots of distinctions between Russian, Hungarian, Ukrainian cossacks and how they were used. Typically dressed lightly, no armour, the recognizable cossack hat, some kind of sash or belt and a lance and saddlebags and pouches. In all the pictures I've seen they all have beards. When Napoleon invaded the Russians used them mainly as boarder guards and light cavalry (although before the Napoleonic Wars the Cossacks weren't formal cavalry) to harass the French during their retreat.

So I've tried to sort of characterize their fearsomeness and ruggedness whilst trying to keep some air of toughness to them as well. If I go with this 1812 idea, the cossacks are the bad guys, there'd be 4 of them, and 2 Frenchmen. I wouldn't portray them as baby killing evil Nazi types, they'd be a metaphor for Russia's ruthless willingness to survive (see scorched earth tactics - they burnt nearly all their food supplies and most of their towns just to disrupt the French something which almost no other country is willing to do. Russia then used the same tactic against Hitler) and their relentless pursuit of the enemy and the fact that they just don't quit.

You weren't supposed to get all that from just these two though don't worry :-)

I did a little illustration. Maybe you want it on your t-shirt?

Cheese.

Number 4 - all about poo.

3!!

Graphic Design here I am.

The 2nd comming of 'Cheese'! I've re-designed the characters. I like the more simplier (I know this isn't a real word) versions. In my next one I've re-designed it further, mainly with the border size and layout. And I've also found the speech bubble tool on photoshop. Anyway major improvements as this one only took me 1 and a half hours to draw, the last one took me 4 and half, although I did some backgrounds in the last one. But I'm thinking that my third one will actually be my 'first' one. Like Star Wars.

It took OOTS 5 years (started in 2003) to get anywhere. Maybe I'll be a good webcomic-ist by the time I get to my 400th. I need to make a website first though. In the meantime....

I've just been having a quick muck around with making my design bible with some 'design'

Obviously it's better... I'm not sure if it's good though.

Cheese-0001

You saw it here first.

Another Idea I'm having for the 3rd year major project. It's about a Grenadier and a Voltigeur (see note) walking back from Moscow during Napoleon's Grande Armee retreat from Russia in 1812. Or, It might just be the Grenadier.

Grenadier (left - Red); Elite shock troops, Napoleon assigned the tallest and strongest and most imposing men into these regiments and dictated they all had to grow mustaches. These are the guys that usually wore the bearskins/ bonnet a poil (although they were officially replaced with Shakos in 1807 many still wore their bearskins anyway)

Voltigeur (right - yellow); Literal translation is 'Vaulter' because their first assignment was to vault onto horses and knock off the riders during a cavalry charge (it didn't work surprisingly). They were then turned into light skirmish type troops and Napoleon assigned the smallest and most agile men into these regiments.

Anyway from that they have a nice sort of character contrast, big and strong, small and agile. But really I was thinking it was just about 2 guys walking home, being very cold. It's a variation on an idea I had in my foundation year called 'Big' about a spaceman who walked around an empty planet. But I thought I needed a deeper idea than that so hence this.

The bad guys are the Cossacks which will be portrayed like the Vikings in the Film Pathfinder, or the Samurai Cavalry in The Last Samurai. And the film would be about their slowly building bond between the Grenadier and the Voltigeur whilst tackling the extreme weather and the Cossacks. I might feature in a slowly declining Napoleon appearing in visions. Not sure. Anyways. I'm just messing about with it all.

I haven't finished this.

Or this.

Comic based on my two dogs. I'm gonna do this to keep up my illustration.