See ya soon!

Hiya folks!!

No time for a doodle for today or yesterday unfortunately!

I'm off and about for a couple of weeks, not going to say where because that'd ruin the fun! Who knows, if I get any time I might actually be able to upload something new over Christmas (but don't get your hopes up, it is Christmas, and the spiced alcoholic drinks will be flowing freely).

It's been an incredible start to my blogging experience, you've all been wonderful and given me so much support! 2013 will not disappoint!

Just saying a quick Merry Christmas to you all, if I don't get the chance to do so between today and the big 25th!

Hope you all have a great time!!! And I'll see you soon!

Merry 16-Bitmas!

Hello and good afternoon to you all!!!

I'm not really sure why people consider the 13th to be an unlucky date, or indeed why 13 is supposedly an unlucky number. I'll put it down to the fact that most people are scared of maths and therefore odd numbers can be intimidating!

AAANYWAY....
One of the first things I saw ont'interwebs this morning on was Mike Matei's review of the rather wonderful indie game 'FEZ', (clicky here to watch it). This put me in a reminiscent mood, so I decided to make today's doodle in a 16-bit style to reflect the air of nostalgic glee I experienced as a result of watching the review, and playing the game afterwards!

A lot of us grew up staring at this art style for hours on end until it gave us a headache. Whilst the billion dollar HD games of today to provide an amazing source of A-Class entertainment. There will always be a large place in my heart for The Sega Megadrive/ SNES era of video games! If you are down with this too, blow the dust of your cartridges, stick em into the game slot and flick that power switch, then leave me some comments in the section below this post on what your favourite games were from that time! All in the name of fun!

I'm tired now so I'm going to sleep, makes sense dunnit!

Have a super night everyone!!!

Dim

Eh? Wednesday already???

You bet your baked beans it is!!! And also to make things feel just that little bit more special, the date is...

  12/12/12 

Why is that special I hear you ask? Ok so nobody asked, but really there's nothing special about it unless you think that numbers have magical lucky powers (spoiler alert...they don't).

Today I bring you a wee doodle that started life as a depth drawing exercise. I like drawing 2D things, but I also like to give them an appearance of depth by adding a few touches of shading or reflection. I drew this little fella around that exercise and he turned into a cute little bulb character. His simplicity and lack of a glowing filament inspired the text above his dome.

I need to go and make some Toad int' ole (for those of you who aren't English, that's sausages surrounded by Yorkshire pudding, if you don't know what Yorkshire pudding is then click here).

Goodbye until tomorrow you gorgeous intelligent people!

Good day to you!

Tuesday...aaaAAAARGH!!!
No I'm not spouting noises for any particular reason, just didn't know how else to describe today!

I suppose if I had to use one word it would be... wrapping!!!

Yup, with the big Chrimbolio just around the corner things are starting to get AWESOME! It keeps snowing in Yorkshire! And how can that be a bad thing? (I guess it's not too good for the roads and or road users), but it sure does look purty!!!

Right, today I decided to play with some type effects, this is my first attempt at anything even remotely like this so don't judge too harshly! Lord Escargot just came along to say hi for the heck of it, and why not?

Got a lot of things to do, including cooking a mighty tasty spag-bol, so I will skedaddle for now and let you get on with your evenings!

Take care everyone!!!

 

The less you know...

Happy Monday...if err such a thing is possible... I like to think it is!

As per usual I will be off to college tonight to learn more brain enhancing web CSS and JavaScript goodness! So not much time for anything particularly complex!

Instead I decided to create a visual representation of what happened to me this morning. Make of it what you will! All I can say is, "Lesson learned, don't ever trash-talk a spider, it always has bigger mates just around the corner."

So goodnight to you all, from a slightly less brave me!

Oh and one more thing, it may have made me jump higher than a cat on a trampoline, but I removed said large arachnid and it's smaller friend humanely. Though the little (not always) sods make me panic like a petrified guppy in a piranha pond, it is no reason to go around stomping em'!

Something festive tomorrow! Woo!!

Anyone fancy a cuppa?

I really hate Sundays, 

I hate Mondays even more. 

But Sunday's looming Monday feeling makes the day a bore!

That aside! Tis the end of the weekend (damn these short weeks) once more! Back to normality and reality for everyone once again tomorrow! Chrimbo is just around the corner and I am starting to feel very festive indeed!!!

I said I'd try to get the completed image (including rudolf) posted up yesterday, however I've been busy packing, wrapping, and generally preparing for spending the 25th in sunny wee Cyprus with my marvelous girlfriend and her family!

I just made a brew, and it made me feel slightly sad for our old forgotten friends the sugar lumps/cubes. So I decided to create a graphical homage to our humble beverage enhancing friends! They may be partly responsible for our famous British teeth (mine are absolutely perfect by the way). but they sure are cute!

Anyway, thanks once again for coming to read my daily nonsense! I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekends! And please also take a moment to raise your cuppa in respect to Sir Patrick Moore, the man who taught us there's much more to the sky than twinkle twinkle little star.

Rudy!

F, F, F, FRIDAY!!!!

Hope you are all having a fantastic time at the end of another week! I must say I feel positively superino (woohoo new word!)

I'm only popping in fer a quick one, but here is a sample of something larger that I am working on, as you may have already guessed, it might have a Christmas theme, and also might have something to do with a certain famous red nosed reindeer!

It's been fun and has also taught me some new techniques with the software I'm learning! I hope you like the finished pic (will try to get it online tomorrow).

Between then and now, enjoy your Friday night! I'm off to make a brew and mentally prepare myself for the mid-season finale of     'THE WALKING DEAD'    (shows with zombies deserve uppercase green lettering, it's true).

Until tomorrow! G'nite everone!!!

Feathery!

Another Thursday, 6 days into December, 21. 18 days, 6 hours until Santa brings us all tonnes of presents! AAARGH all too exciting!!!

I decided to go for something a bit more challenging today, and rather than doing my usual bright solid blocks of colour technique, instead opted to do a feathery soft looking illustration of a wee birdy. The feathering effect is one that I learned from this rather amazing tutorial <--(click it go on!), so if you use Adobe Illustrator definitely give this one a go!

My inspiration was the small female blackbird that landed in my snowy garden this morning looking for food, I always wish that I could invite the garden birds in for a brew and a couple of bourbons, sadly they usually fly away when I suggest it, hmph, never mind!

Anyway! It is   STILL SNOWING   out there! It is freezing cold! I helped a feller this morning who fell off  of his bike because of the ice in our street, so please folks be bloomin' careful out there!!!

Wrap up warm, and make sure you are feeding the birdies at this time of year!

See you tomorrow? Yeah probably ;-)

IT SNOWED (slightly)

Good morning folks! I guess it snowed a tiny bit last night :-D

Just a quick one to say, thanks to all of you wonderful WONDERFUL people, the blog has now surpassed 1000 page views! You have all made me so very happy! So happy in fact that I decided to go outside early in the morning a draw a face in the dusting that was left on my bonnet!

I'll continue to draw silly pictures every day (when I can), and thank you all once again for your support!

Enjoy your day! Drive/walk/cycle/horse ride/land your space ship safely!

I bleedin' love my Aussie Soaps!

Crikey blokes n' Shielas! How are ya didgeridooin'?

You know, after a long and cold winters day, there's nothing quite like switching the telly on, switching your brain off, and winding down to some of Australia's finest (debatable) exported televisual drama.

There is something about those perpetually sunny skies, and equally jolly accents which keeps them entertaining despite the shockingly short life expectancy of the characters within them. *aaah*

Anyhoo! I'd better be goin', got a million and one things to get done, and also Neighbours is on!

Gooday for now!

Woohoo!!!

WOOHOO!!!

Well, Classic FM had a competition running on their website last week. One of those where you had to answer a pretty simple question. If you won then you would receive 50 free downloads from the iTunes store...

I ONLY WENT AND WON IT DIDN'T I!!!

Well I have to leg it out the door to go to college in a moment, but I thought I'd quickly throw together something featuring BlueFish to show how happy I am! I know it's not quite winning the lottery, but still, awesometown!

Have a nice Monday evening folks! Tonight I'm going to add some quorn to my dried rice meal to celebrate, like the party animal that I am!

(Oh also if you have any suggestions as to what songs I should download, please feel free to drop them in the comments section below! Ta!)

Monday Mer-Nana Mayhem!

Merry Monday Mrs, Mrs, Misses and Masters!

After a busy weekend with my parents and my wonderful girlfriend, its time to settle back into the normal order of things. Remembering various bits of code for web design and javascript, searching for a job, and generally finding things to give me inspiration! College tonight, looking forward to diving into more Dreamweaver action!

So I woke up and had a banana for breakfast, this got me thinking...why do people always seem to recycle ideas when it comes to fancy dress??? As you may know by now, my train of thought is not as linear as the phrase which describes such things, so I won't try to explain how I got to that idea.

Anyway, presenting to you daft hybrid costume idea number 1, the Mer-Nana! TA DA!!!

Take care on those icy roads out there everyone!!!

Goodbye to an old friend

As human beings we all have to experience loss at certain points throughout our long lives. And today I am sad to say my farewells to an old friend.

Goodbye to my old Breville kettle, he made possible the brewing of many tasty beverages, his ability to boil 1.7 litres of water in under 5 minutes provided the main ingredient for all of my lunchtime quickie instant meals, he steamed up my kitchen windows during the winter months. We spent hours nursing him better when he suffered from a furry bottom. And finally he leaked and ruined my worktop... yet he will be sadly missed.

Oh well, NEW KETTLE TIME WOOHOO!!!

Purple Planet

After drinking some coffee and a hardcore old skool split screen gaming session with my good mate Ross, I decided to have a little play with Adobe Photoshop and create something off the top of my head. Since I'm feeling fairly spaced out, what you see above is the result of said mood.

This was really just a visual experiment with filters and Photoshop CS6's rather amazing 3D effects!

I don't know why purple, I just thought that green & blue are so over-used when it comes to planets. And red is always considered to be the colour of planets where evil things come from. So purple it is!

Anyway! Have a good weekend everyone!

Good morning...sort of

Morning folks!

I wasn't this enthusiastic when I woke up and realised it was minus infinity degrees outside, and therefore inside owing to the archaic double glazing in my house.

Since I fobbed you off yesterday by not adding anything new to the blog, I decided to get up and draw something a little different. I've always been fairly terrible at drawing people, so I did a bit of searching and followed some tutorials... and drew a reflection of how I felt this morning, which is to say..."fnuh".

On a funny note, if you haven't bought your sandwich for lunch today, I'd avoid Tesco's Christmas Sandwich having seen this brilliant review on The Poke: http://youtu.be/DI8wFkth8bg

Also I'll post another doodle up later, it's only fair!

Here's to coffee! The unsung fuel of the human race!

Lost in Translation

It's not just humans that have to deal with call centre based language barriers ya know!

Wednesday! Some call it hump-day (but that sounds a bit rude so lets not). Finally Blue Fish has returned! And as promised, the as of yet nameless whale has accompanied him in this mis-adventure.

This took me quite a while to put together, I've experimented with all sorts of styles to get it done, and I'm glad to tell you that it was a whole load of fun!

May I also add that Coral is really difficult to draw, but I'll be trying again in the future I'm sure! I've also got some work to do on perspectives, but that will come later!

Enjoy your erm...hump evenings everyone!

A star is born!

Tuesday once again! And I'm having home made fish n' chips for tea! Woohoo!

This little guy is part of something else much MUCH bigger!
I wouldn't try to guess since it's unlikely you'll get it right, but if you are anticipating the final result, don't worry I'll post it up tomorrow!

I've got a load of new projects currently on the go but will make sure I keep updating the blog with a daily doodle!

Have a good night everyone!

28 Days to go!

Ho Ho Ho!!!

'Tis the month before Christmas!

Things are starting to get exciting now! As we all know, its not long before the big guy sets out on his journey to deliver gifts to all the good boys (me) and girls of the world!

I really enjoyed drawing this one, I've always had a thing for images that have that magical quality to them, and I hope that I have managed to put a sparkle of excitement into your day by showing you this latest illustration!

Have a fantastic evening! Think merry thoughts, and if you haven't started your Christmas Shopping yet...WHY NOT???

Festive greetings to you all!

Sunday Sillyness!

Hello to you all!!!

I wasn't able to post anything up yesterday since I was out and about enjoying Christkindelmarkt in Leeds City centre. After much consumption of various spiced alcoholic beverages I was in no state to attempt the interfaces of Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, or probably even pick up a pencil!

I looked at some images online and decided to attempt drawing a cylinder with the weird shading techniques that would entail, and after much experimentation created a couple of batteries. However, you know me by now, and I think that things aren't worth drawing unless they have a personality. So meet the buzz bros!

Now go enjoy Sunday evening, I'm going to watch some naffy Christmas movies and fall asleep in my slippers!

Guten Abend dudelsackpfeifers!

Weekend time!

Friday!!!

I've been experimenting with all sorts of techniques today, and as of yet haven't managed to get any of them right, so in the mean-time, 'ave a cheerful brew on the house!

I hope you have all had good weeks! Now its time to kick back and do all the thousands of things that you are too tired to do during the week...hmph.

Enjoy your evening, how ever crazy or lazy you choose to be (I'm going with the latter)!

Ta ta!

Tweet Tweet! (But not the hashtag kind)

She needs a name!

It's Thursday! My favourite day of the working week!
Friday has its highs, but what can be better than that near end of week "it's Friday tomorrow" feeling!

I decided to do something a little different today, so using a combination of vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator, and the amazing layer effects available in Photoshop, I made this here wee birdy!

She is an experiment of styles, and if anyone can think of a good name for her please let me know in the comments section below or on my facebook wall, or if you are feeling like doing it the most ironic way, go for twitter. Please be nice though, she won't suit names like Snotbeak or Poo-wings!

Enjoy your Thursday evening everyone!
And remember...FRIDAY TOMORROW!!!

Whale Hello!

I designed a logo for Calderdale College's Moodle site a couple of weeks ago, and today they have posted him up on the header of the site.

I don't know why I decided to draw a whale , but I think he looks fairly happy there. Very proud indeed!

I have a feeling that this guy might be meeting Blue Fish at some point in the near future ;-)

Onions always know how to make you cry...

It's Tuesday! It's cloudy, and it's FREEZING COLD!

Last night I was chopping an onion for my pasta sauce, and as is usual I started to cry when my eyes began to sting. It got me thinking, and now I'm fairly certain that onions do that to you as an emotional response mechanism. It just doesn't work very well because they taste gorgeous!

Don't be fooled by the woodgrain effect here, I made it entirely in Adobe Photoshop, didn't nick it from anywhere!

Have a fun Tuesday everyone!
Thanks for popping by!

Looks nice on a mobile too! Who'd ave thunk?

Courtesy of my good friend Sam Lawton here is an image of the bokeh effect I made (see previous blog post), as it looks as his mobile phone wallpaper!

Yeah! I was impressed too! Many thanks for the image Sam!

Bokeh! And goodnight!

I just looked at the clock and realised it is no longer sunday, and is in fact 41 minutes into Monday.
Yikes! Time for bed!

Anyway, here is a nice little image I put together on Photoshop just now, it looks rather nice as a desktop background so feel free to give it a try on your computer!

Gnite folks!

Elementary!

It's...Sunday   SUNDAY   SUNDAY!!!!

Good day to you all! The weather is gorgeous, I can tell because all my neighbours are out washing their cars and listening to different genres of dance music from their individual car stereos. The resulting noise seems to be creating dubstep!

I've always been into science, and I love reading. So that is how this image was born.
I remember being in chemistry lessons at school and thinking "Hmm, why has nobody come up with a better way to get kids to remember the elements of the periodic table", so why not something like the above! I might even work on creating a representative character for every element! Makes sense, and hey, maybe the scools will even like it too!

Sherlock just showed up for hi-jinks and the free booze!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend folks!

Feeling Festive? Now you are!

HAPPY SATURDAY EVERONE!

Yep, the weekend has landed, so time to relax, or play xbox, or go shopping or do something active (maybe tomorrow)!

I just couldn't contain myself any longer! Chrimbo is just around the corner, and if you aren't excited you should be!

This guy actully began as an attempt to draw some snowflakes, something I've never been particularly good at! After studying a few images on't net I drew a couple of small flakes and they looked alright, but I thought they seemed a little lonely!

Enjoy the weekend folks!

Cor what a nice pear!!

So this little legend came to be when me and my wonderful girlfriend were waiting for some food at Wagamama in York. They always put those great big paper sheets on the table, presumably to stop messy gits like me making a mess of their furniture when we eat (it works since most of the spilled food naturally gravitates towards my clothes). It also provides a handy canvas to draw stupid pictures on, and for some reason I decided to draw a smiling pear.

Here he is, digitally recreated in all his fruity glory!

(By the way I'm aware of the odd behavior of the background image on the blog. I'm working on fixing that, but after dinner, because its Gammon and Gammon is awesome).

Hello and welcome! (Rush Hour Blues)

Hello World!

Rush Hour Blues

Hi folks! First blog post for me, and I'm fairly new to this whole thing so please forgive me if I make any blogging newbie mistakes (if such a thing exists).

Blue Fish was the first character I drew using Adobe Illustrator, he went through a fair bit of development before reaching this stage, and now the poor lad seems to end up being used as a representation of those daily frustrating situations everyone finds themselves in.

Regardless of what a particular famous song says, life isn't always better "under da sea"!