Ni hao!

Hi everyone!

I came back from my trip to China two days ago, and wanted to share with you guys some of my snapshots and tell you a little bit about the experience.

Amazingly, I've managed to beat the jet lag this time, which was a nightmare once I got to China...

My trip was amazing, a great experience that confirmed me they are so many little worlds in the world we live in. Also, it was great to live with a traditional Chinese family (my friend's) because I got to discover so many things about this interesting, yet peculiar culture. Unfortunately, I couldn't communicate with her family, which was sometimes a little bit hard and uncomfortable.

The town my friend lives in is really far from the big city called Shenzhen, therefore probably the 80% of the population who lives there has never seen a foreigner before, so when my friend and I went out to the market or to do some shopping EVERYONE STARED at me, as if I was some kind of weird animal, or a celebrity?...Anyway, I couldn't feel more uncomfortable!!

But then, we went to Hong Kong for the last four days of my journey. And that was beyond amazing! Finally, I felt like I wasn't the only foreigner on earth, it was a relief!

Hong Kong is stunning, the streets are filled with colours, lights, millions of banners and thousands of people from everywhere!

I witnessed the most beautiful night spectacle called 'the light show' which consists of lighting

up all the buildings of the Hong Kong bay accompanied with music (see the picture below). It was breathtaking!!

The weather was boiling and sticky, we couldn't sleep without the air con on, which caused me 3 days of a nose cold...

Anyway, I'm back to Manchester now, yesterday I went out and the weather was just Perfect! I'm finally going home tomorrow and I really can't wait!

Okay then, I think that was pretty much all, I could keep writing for another ten pages but I gotta go, I need to pack (AGAIN!!!) and get everything ready for the Majorcan Summer!!

It was very nice to talk to you guys. I wish you a lovely (and hopefully sunny and warm) summer! See you in September! Xxx

I leave you a small selection of my pictures!

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hidden snaps

hi folks.

great night last night.  the boys [and girls] done well.   here's some snaps i took last night, just in case anyone's having difficulty remembering:

some more. hot off the presses, from helen's iphone:

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Work experience

Those of you who follow my random amusements on facebrick or twatter might have noticed that I was ever so slightly crapping myself about my interview yesterday regarding some work experience. It went alright....I didn't crap myself.

It's a studio in one of the old 'Cottonopolis' renovated mills in Ancoats going by the name of 'Studio Distract', they seem to focus mostly on 3D animated projects but claim not to specialise in any one medium and they also do film production and interactive work.
When I arrived the team were sat together on a sofa watching TV and the studio owner pulled up a bean bag for me to sit on, in fact they were actually in a production meeting watching back their footage to date (a 3D animation for kids) and he asked if I could just wait and watch until they had finished. It was a good 30-40 minutes that I was sat there but the experience of observing this process was good to see, they were playing through the sequence shot-by-shot and picking out elements that needed to be reworked or tweaked....right down to the very finest of details.
It was just like the presentation days really....

Once they'd finished this and made a list of things that needed to be done, the various tasks were distributed amongst the team members and then they were off. At which point I had my meeting with the owner, we basically talked about where i'm at and he decided that instead of just spending a week in the studio shadowing people on their current project it would be better for me to be on-call as I explained that i'll be free for most of the time until the 2nd year begins. So what they're going to do is let me know when there is something specific happening on particular days (such as video production, motion capture, animating, etc.) so that I can come in and get involved.....this way I can get a more varied experience into the different areas.
I'm particularly looking forward to seeing the process of motion capturing as this is something i've been trying to find out about recently with little luck, he was telling me about this new kind of sensory suit they use which means that you don't have to mess around with those blobs on all the joints.

I had picked up all my work from college before heading to the studio so he noticed the big folder that I was carrying and asked me if I wanted him to have a look at some stuff, I just showed him one of my work books and some mood boards telling him the process in which we've been working and I asked a few questions in relation to it to see how they as professionals do things....this was pretty interesting and he gave me some pointers which made a lot of sense to me.

So it went pretty well initially and i'm looking forward to getting involved.

Not so sure if i'll be much use with any of the 3D aspects although I think they use After Effects to animate so that could be interesting as i'm quite confident with this now. I am at the moment trying to learn the very basics of 3D though so it could be worthwhile seeing some of the process in action....hopefully if I can get my head around the basics then I may incorporate this into my 2nd year work....where appropriate.

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FOXY ZERO BINGO ADVERT

Has anyone seen the new Foxy Zero Bingo Advert that's been on over the past week or so?

I really like the idea of an animated mindmap.I'm sure I've seen something similar posted on here before?Maybe they got the idea from Youtube because I think that's where I've seen something simlar too.

Good idea with the way they've animated it though.Very creative!

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REVIEW: SOCCER AID 2010,ENGLAND vs REST OF THE WORLD (2-2,6-7 PENS)

Last week I was 1 of the many 65,000 people lucky enough to attend Soccer Aid 2010.The atmosphere was fantastic.They said the atmosphere would be similar to that of the World Cup.I've been watching the World Cup this week and they are indeed correct.The atmosphere was very similar considering we left the match deaf due to the ear wrecking noise of those Vuvuzelas.

We got there and it was heaving inside and outside the stadium.Everyone was jumping about cheering and there was this 'Buzzing' feel to the whole event.Luckily when we went to get our tickets it wasn't too bad as we were one of the first there and had to wait about 15 minutes for the tickets to print.2 minutes after we started queuing though,the queue was outside the door.Good timing some would say.

There was plenty of food to go round with those burger and hotdog vans all over the show outside the stadium and inside the stadium there was the take away 'McDonalds' look-a-like bars which sold alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and plenty of food.You weren't stuck in the department anyway although the prices were steep which was to be expected in somewhere like Old Trafford so bringing your own food was probably advisable.

Leading out England was Tottenham Hotspurs manager Harry Redknapp followed by the legends that are Bryan Robson and James Corden (both legends in their own right...1 a comedian and the other a former United footballer) and captained by Robbie Williams.Rest of the World was lead by Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush and captained by the great actor that is Michael Sheen.

ENGLAND SQUAD: Robbie Williams (CPT) David Seaman (GK), Ben Shephard, Nicky Butt, Bradley Walsh, Alan Shearer, Damian Lewis, Jamie Redknapp, Dominic Cooper, Martin Keown, Jonathan Wilkes, Teddy Sheringham, Jamie Theakston (GK), Ricky Hatton, Paddy McGuiness, Olly Murs, Ralf Little

REST OF WORLD SQUAD: Michael Sheen (CPT), Henrik Larsson, Brian Lara, Jens Lehmann (GK), Gethin Jones, Ryan Giggs, Gordon Ramsay, Zinedine Zidane, James Kyson-Lee, Sami Hyypia, Joe Calzaghe, Luis Figo, Mike Myers, Nicky Byrne, Patrick Kielty (GK), Shane Filan, Woody Harrelson, Simon Baker

The match itself was brilliant.To see the likes of Figo and Zidane play the way they do on the pitch was a feeling in itself if you've never seen them play before.You have to hand it to GMTV presenter Ben Shephard,who was on the England squad,after those amazing tackles on Figo and Zidane.I think anyone would love to boast about tackling 2 world class footballers.I know I would.Another classic moment was comedian Patrick Kielty,the Rest of the World goalkeeper,dribbling round Teddy Sheringham and then Sheringham giving him a kick up the arse for it.

Not only was the match entertaining but they also had half time entertainment from some of the top football freestylers of the world juggling the ball and dancing away to music.

I'd say the highlight of the match was the penalty shootout.I lost count of how many penalties were taken...20-25 maybe?My star player would have to be Jamie Theakston who was in Goal from the second half for England.The guy was unstoppable,stopping attempts from the likes of Henrik Larsson and saving about 5 penalties in the shootout with some world class saves.I think Capello might want to re-evaluate his goalkeepers?!

Even though Theakston was a star in goal...England still lost 7-6 on penalties.Woody Harrelson scored the winner for the Rest of the World which in itself was a little bit surreal.

The biggest winner was,however,how the event of Soccer Aid raised over £2 million for Unicef.

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apropos of nuffink...

my mate andy's latest video.  pretty funny i reckon:

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collecting your work

calling all first and second years!

2ND YEARS: can you all make an effort to come in and collect your work ASAP [ie. previous projects, sketchbooks etc. - obviously not the stuff you're using for your end of year shows]. as you know, we'll be moving house to fielden park campus during the summer, so any second year work left behind will most likely get binned. 

1ST YEARS: we will strive to make sure any 1st year work left behind is taken to fielden with us.  but you know how things tend to get lost when you move house. so, for your own piece of mind, it's probably best if you come in and collect it - just to be on the safe side.

cheers!

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websites??

I was thinking that I should go into the real world with my own website but as I don't know anything about this process...where to get one...which one is best....but looking for something I can add flash animation. If anyone got idea where to purchase a site all ideas welcome...thank you.

Also does anyone know if we are in any other days this week or next :?

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Top-up failage

I've been having a little shufty around the video games courses offered by MMU and Salford University over the last few days, and i'm a bit concerned at this stage to be honest. I've e-mailed the course leader of the MMU course to ask for some general advice and offered a little bit of information regarding my situation that he might be able to comment on, the concern is regarding a top-up year.

Based on the information provided on both university's websites, it seems that whilst the first year of the 3 year course covers the general principles of design they also teach a basic grounding in programming. So i'm assuming that they wouldn't accept any foundation students bypassing this and going straight onto the 2nd year.....but i'm not sure which is why i've enquired about it.

I've been looking at some profiles of people on LinkedIn who work in games though and quite a few seem to have come through via other pathways, so it's still all out in the open.

The main concern is that the media courses seem to be focused more towards television broadcasting....a bit too detached from where i'm wanting to be.

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Website

So tonight I have been working super hard on editing my website. I felt that having pages for all the separate parts of my portfolio wasn't working. It didn't look very professional and the images were very small. The resolution therefore was to create a PDF file to download, I think its much more effective and shows off the work a lot better! I also created a media CV - I have been meaning to do this for ages because my other one is loaded with sporting achievements etc. When applying for media jobs, they aren't interested in all that.

I also intend to add a section for 'sketchbook'. However its getting late and if I dont turn my mac off soon, I will never catch any sleep.

So take a look, see if you like the improvements... www.kittypp.tk

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Dear everyone...

Nice to meet you all, hope you all go on to do great things! Kitty and Rob, you'll probably take over the world some day. Sara I'll miss your spanish lovelyness! Carl, you were really cool, I'm gutted I didn't get to talk to you more! And to everyone else, thanks for all being nice people. Teachers too. I hope this course i'm going on is everything I hope it is! Ta raa!!! Sarah-Jayne. X

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The lone nut

Recently I setup a facebook group for Kung Fu film fans in my area of Greater Manchester, it's something that i've been planning on doing for a few years now. The aim is to get a proper group website organised but I am using facebook to rally numbers initially, if it takes off and quite a number of people join then i'm hoping that people will be encouraged to start up screenings and events. But at the moment the numbers aren't growing and no one is passing on the word.

It is quite de-motivating when you don't see the numbers change at all, and also when fans who do join the group don't tell others about it....i've started putting up adverts for it on places like Gumtree and i'm going to hit some of the martial arts film forums and plug it there also. Hopefully that will generate some numbers for it.

However, my brother showed me this video earlier on of why I should persist with it even if the numbers don't grow for a while.....because they will grow eventually.

Watch it, it's quite amazing how the trend catches on after the third person joins in.




oh, and if you know any peeps in the area who are into martial arts movies....do us a favour and tell 'em to join the group. ;)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128924747134055&ref=nf

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end of year shows

hi folks.

just to remind you; the second year's show are coming up pretty soon now.  please go along if you can and give them a bit of support.  remember, this time next year, it'll be you lot!


12 JUNE - "PUSH" @ the CONTACT THEATRE, OXFORD ROAD.

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Is Anyone Out There?

Peoples have seemingly forgotten its presentation day thingy today. Its 11.25 and its only me and Rob in. I payed £6 to get here today,ON TIME and I really CANT AFFORD IT. So do I wait and waste another hour of my life I wont get back or do I go? I don't even know if we have to come in anymore after today. I'm pretty gutted about this, but as the teachers arnt even saying anything maybe no one cares so maybe i'll just be going then. Bye.

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SOCCER AID 2010

Tomorrow is Soccer Aid 2010 which is held at Old Trafford,THEATRE OF DREAMS!It is going to be rather amazing to see the likes of Zidane,Larsson and Sheringham playing. Hatton and Calzaghe are also playing which should be interesting.What a good day that's going to be.Can't wait! I shall post a review early next week.

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REVIEW - IRON MAN 2

What an amazing film!I'm into my Marvel films at the moment but the Iron Man series is without a doubt my favourite.


Usually in the comics and annuals that you read,Tony Stark is portrayed as this cocky arrogant over confident guy.This is what Robert Downey Jr acts as in the film,but in Iron Man 2 there is a different side to Tony Stark that is revealed.Basically,he is shown to care about things including the world and the very few people that are in his life which is a moralistic thing that people can look up to.


I don't think there are many other actors that could have executed the role of Tony Stark like Robert Downy Jr does.He has this 'cool' look about him with his swagger and attitude and it makes people think "I want to be Robert Downey Jr/Tony Stark!".Well,if it didn't with you,it did with me and a few other people I know.Even girls are saying they want to be 'Iron Woman'.


On another note,if you like your fast paced chases,bullets flying everywhere and explosions like there is no tomorrow with a hint of beautiful women then you're in the right place for that recipe.


In Iron Man 2 Tony Stark feels the pressures of the government,press and the public to hand over his armour for military application.He then embarrasses Justin Hammer for failing to replicate the technology Tony Stark has produced.While all this is happening,the arc reactor that is keeping Tony's heart beating is poisoning his body at the same time with the palladium and slowly killing him.Believing that he is going to die,Tony then goes off the rails and hires Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) as the new CEO of Stark Industries and replaces her with Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson).Tony Stark is then attacked by Ivan Vanko,son of a disgraced scientist who collaborated with Tony Stark's father with the first arc reactor,while racing in Monaco.In a vengeful way Justin Hammer hires Ivan Vanko to help him create an army of 'Iron Drones' to get revenge on Tony Stark at his own 'Stark Expo' where people can show off their new inventions.The 'Stark Expo' idea came from Tony Stark's father.


Tony Stark then decides to get drunk and throw a party in his Iron Man suit where Lt. Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) puts on the Iron Man Mark II suit and subdues him.Rhodes then takes the Mark II suit to the military where they customise and arm it with heavy weaponary.Disgraced, Stark is approached by Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Samuel L Jackson) who hands him a chest of his father's items to find the cure for his polladium poisoning.In the chest he finds a clue and cures himself by creating a new element.With this new element Stark creates a new arc reactor for his chest.


As this is happening Hammer is showing off his new army of 'Iron Drones' at the Stark Expo captained by Rhodes in the Mark II armour.It is later realised that Ivan Vanko has control of the drones and the Mark II armour.Stark arrives in time to fight off the Drones while Natalie Rushman,actually Natasha Ramanoff of S.H.I.E.L.D. go to find Vanko and take control of the Drones and Rhodes' armour.Rhodes and Stark then destroy all the Drones and take out Vanko.Afterwards S.H.I.E.L.D. tell Stark that they don't want him and don't think he is suitable for them but want him as a consultant.


After the credits it is seen that agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. is driving to a crater in the middle of New Mexico Desert, and then on the phone to Nick Fury saying "Found it!" meaning they've found the hammer of Thor.


Overall I thought it was a good storyline with a beginning,middle and end which is obviously leading to the release of 'Thor',one of the next installments of Marvel films.

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Hello

I'm still ickypoo, and I was wondering what's going on next week?

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Heyooo

Ok, so for a while now, my blogger has been playing silly and not letting me upload files but I am back in business and boy I've been busy....

My friend is turning 21 this year, and has asked me to design her invites. First of all she wants a 'save the date' card to send out. Her theme was 'Forever Young', and as she was born in 1989, I decided to go with a retro theme and create imagery from the 90's. Here is the final piece which will be turned into Fridge Magnets...

A guy I know has a friend who is getting married and he wanted to make their card extra special. He asked if I could draw him the bride and groom if he gave me some specifications, for e.g. trainers and fencing sword etc. He also stated that he wanted them in the style of my Death Becomes Her characters. Here are the final little guys...

Finally, I've got myself back onto the world wide web and got my website up and running. Go have a look and let me know what you think;

www.kittypp.tk

Well its been sweet speaking to you guys again, I've missed you. Xxx

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Just a heads up...

I have a stinking cold!! My throat has been so sore today, and that means for the next two days I'm going to have a horrid cold, if by some miracle my body breaks a habit of a lifetime and I'm wrong, I'll be in tomorrow as good as new! If I'm a no show, I'm bed bound =( S-J

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Luther Title Sequence

Evening blog rats.

I don't know if any of you lot have been watching the excellent new BBC show Luther but it's very good and you should. The last episode is on right now so you're probably too late though. It's a psychological crime thriller and stars as the main character Idris Elba who played Stringer Bell from The Wire, and if you're haven't seen that there's really nothing i can do for you. This is the title sequence. Pretty nice innit.

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league tables

OK - this is a bit belated, as i forgot to do a league table at the end of may. but hopefully with a bit of judicious editing of the post-date, i can shoehorn it neatly into place:

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Manufactured Landscapes

I watched this docu-film yesterday called 'Manufactured Landscapes', it was basically a display of the work by a photographer called Edward Burtynsky who captures scenes affected by technology. Mainly in China.

It's quite an interesting to watch if you get the chance, but if you can't be bothered then i'll just post the intro to the film which is what I found amazing. It's just one continuous shot from one end of a factory to the other showing people working, but it goes on forever....it's like that factory from Indiana Jones which goes on for miles.

I wonder how long it'd take to get to know everyone working here?!




....I realise now why everything has 'Made in China' written on it. WOW.


I just looked this up and it turns out it won a few awards, if you have access to the SKY Arts channel then it's currently doing the rounds on there....so have a ganders.

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