Finished Anima, Iceland 2009

As you can see by the title, I finished the drawing of Anima today. Quite pleased with the outcome and added it to Flickr but for some reason it doesn't appear to update the photo stream on the left so I shall have to look in to that.

This pictuer is of Anima, a summon from FF10. It's not the most attractive thing in the world and is actually a girl but it was a pretty fun picture to do. I like the look of the rags that seem be covering her face, held in place by the arms which seem really small in comparison. What some people might now is that in the game all your see is about the top third of Anima. The rest of her was actually hidden below ground. You can probably find this picture on the internet somewhere. I can't remember who showed me but it's out there somewhere.

I thought I would visit a school memory today in the form of a school trip to Iceland - the country, not the shop (although their mini pizzas are to die for). I took geography at GCSE and a trip they did was a 5 day visit to Iceland. I didn't think I would be able to go because it cost about £700 but my parents and nan decided to send me off in a plane to a foreign country! I shared a room with three of my friends but for some reason we shared our toilet with all 20 boys in the trip. That may sound strange but let me explain - the rooms were filled on a first come first serve basis when we got to the hotel. We were at the back of the bus so when we got there the only room left was the one opposite the door to the dining area as no one wanted it. Turns out it was the best room with 4 single beds so no sharing, and the biggest toilet of them all! Unfortunately that meant that everyone wished to christen it themselves but we shall leave that there.

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Now I can't remember the exact order things went in or everything that happened so I will just type it as I remember it.

The most memorable day for me was the day when we went to see the geysers. Geysers throw hot water up into the air. I remember thinking it would be dangerous as the barriers were only a couple of meters away from each one. Luckily the environment is so cold that buy the time the water hits you its warm and quite nice. The tallest geyser we saw was called Strokkur and launched water into the air about 20 meters high. There is another geyser called the Great Geyser of Iceland which for most the time is dormant only erupting every 8-10 hours. When it does, the water has been known to go as high as 60 meters. We went in February so there was a lot of ice around, I managed to stay upright for the entire trip and ended up ferrying people across the ice so they didn't fall over. I got an award at the end of the trip which they named the 'gentleman' award for helping everyone across.

On one of the days we were supposed to get into a very small plane and fly over to a volcanic island but due to the weather, this was cancelled. I was kind of relieved as apparently it only held 5 people at a time and was held together with masking tape! Not my type of thing to be honest. So the teachers had to find something else to do with the day and what they came up with seemed interesting at first but turned out to be a bit strange! It was a museum about Iceland's hidden people, a local myth. We started off in the gift shop where you could buy the usual stuff like shiny rocks and post cards. For some reason they were trying to sell tins of Icelandic air for about 1000 krona which translates to about £10 - bit of a rip off. The easy thing for the museum is that hidden people couldn't be soon - so the place was filled with empty exhibits with little stories. They also had a cold room which was filled with ice and kept at a constant -4. Ironically, it was warmer than outside which on the day was -7. Outside the hotel was a large clock with a temperature reading for the day as well which we always found handy to know how many layers to put on. On our way back, there was a car pushed off the side of the road so the bus pulled over to help. The couple were clearly not ready for Iceland as they were just wearing jeans a shirt and some flat soled trainers and were getting moved around all over the place! One of the boys who got off to help was pushed down the full length of the bus by the wind but all we could see was his afro - quite comical to say the least.

The last day we went to the Blue Lagoon before catching the plane home. It was a really nice experience - but at the same time really awkward. Please note that if you go there - old Icelandic man like to walk around naked. They really didn't seem to care that everything was on show to a load of complete strangers! The water was really warm but your face was always cold as it was out of the water. There was one area where the water went up to about 60 degrees. There was one man sitting in there looking like a very ripe tomato, needless to say I didn't dare go near. It was a very relaxing experience until we decided to leave. The mad dash from the hot waters in the freezing cold to the dressing rooms basically guarantees you a cold.

The worst day for me had to be the day we visited the geothermal plant. I am really interested in the whole idea of geothermal energy, but I got a migraine. A bad one. There were recordings of the noises of earthquakes that had occurred over the past 50 or so years and for some reason, they just set a migraine off. I was gutted to loose my appetite and then discover that lunch was all you could eat pizza for 900 krona. I was fed steady rations of rich tea biscuits on the coach while everyone else was stuffed full of pizza. Luckily my migraine wore off before we reached the next place we visited in the afternoon. Iceland is atop the boundary of two tectonic plates which you can walk between. The gap has been filled by magma from the Earth's crust. The walk was a downward hill covered in ice. Once again, I managed to walk down whereas everyone else decided sliding on their bums was the way to go. It was a really nice place to visit and felt really odd knowing that I was technically standing between to giant moving rocks.

I'm not sure which day it was but we also visited a couple of waterfalls. They are breathe taking, the size of them blew my mind. It was crazy to see so much water in one place and so picturesque. We had to climb up some pretty icy steps to get to the top and have a look but it was well worth it. The largest one we saw was called Gullfoss and is the largest waterfall in the south of Iceland. We must of stood and looked at it for a good half hour If you ever get to go to Iceland, I would definitely recommend going to see the waterfalls. The most powerful waterfall in Europe is located in the north of Iceland so there's no excuse to not see at least one on your trip!

The bus driver was crazy. The roads are covered in about an inch of ice during the Winter months yet he was driving with one hand and reading a book as if it was no big deal. Our guide was amazing as was the hotel. There was not a lot wrong with the trip apart from the fact we had to leave! The snow doesn't stick around for long either. At the beginning of the trip it was up around our knees, a few days later - all gone!

Our room had a scary toilet and mini fridge, each making horrible noises every 15-20 minutes which would wake you up during the night. The light switches were so noisy in our room that everyone on our side of the hotel could hear them if we turned them on!

One of my room mates who I shall not name was given an award for being forgetful. First he lost his ticket on the way to the airport. Then he left his hiking shoes on the plane once we landed in Iceland. He forgot to set an alarm the first night. He forgot pens basically everyday. The best part was he lost his award because he forgot he had been given one! He knows who he is.

The last thing I will mention is our rooms nickname. We became to be known as the granddads because we all had a travel mug full of hot chocolate with us. At first everyone laughed but when we had a nice warm drink to warm us up - it wasn't so funny any more!

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As for today, I had a Maccy D's for lunch. Sweet chili wrap of the day! Tasty stuff but I have found myself being addicted to sweet chilli recently. It started off by me cooking valentines dinner - since then I have been using sweet chilli on everything. I think I might have a chat about that recipe tomorrow because it's not too hard - because I can do it - and its really tasty. Plus the amounts of ingredients available to buy should give you enough to make two lots!

Thanks for reading!

For anyone who is reading this, could they leave a comment saying where the found my page! If you found me through Facebook or Twitter and don't have a Google+ account could you let me know on there? Thanks!

Thanks to technorati.com dailymail.co.uk fopnews.wordpress.com and wikipedia.org for the images used in this post.

About My Art

As you can hopefully see on the left of the page, I decided to include a slideshow of my art work sourced from Flickr. If you would like to follow me there, clicking on the image should take you to my profile - if not hit this hyperlink

I decided to include this on both my blogs because most of the work I do relates to games but it is still my main hobby other than gaming. I also decided to post this alongside adding this to my page with a little bit of background on each of the pieces shown, and if I can remember, they will be in chronological order so you can see my progression over time. The images I have posted range over about 5 years and I know it doesn't seem a lot but doing GCSE art killed my passion as it removed the enjoyment for me. I am also trying to find a lot of my GCSE work so when I find that - I'll add them to the album and probably do a post about them as well.

The Dragon
This was the first piece of work that I did in the second year in my GCSEs. We had to pick a subject area and do work based on it. I decided to choose a dragon theme as they were always one of my favourite mythical creatures. This piece took me well over 20 hours to complete. We had two hour of lesson time a week and any other opportunity I got to draw was spent on this. This was back when I preferred pencil drawings, as you can see by my other pictures I now prefer pen drawings. The source of this picture was a printed image from a friend. He felt he wasn't up to drawing it so I decided to give it a try and this was the outcome. I was very pleased with the outcome and I've always wondered what it would look like in pen. Its just a shame that I lost the original image to show you a comparison.

The Spaceman
I drew this image after my GCSEs in sixth form. At my school we had 2 weeks in the summer which were activity weeks where instead of normal work, students would participate in many different activities. When you reached sixth form, you instead acted as a TA role to help with activities. I volunteered for the science activity group as I love science and they asked me to draw something to go alongside the display that the students would create. The students had decided on a space theme so I thought that a spaceman would be appropriate. This image didn't take too long as I had other responsibilities helping the students so I spent about 3 hours on this. I did it straight in pen and if you can see by the right foot, there are 3 signatures. That's because I let the other two helpers do a line each so we we're all included. One of which is now my other half, AKA pixelamy! I was happy with the outcome and didn't make many mistakes luckily as it was straight in pen. This is when I first started drawing in pen, and I'm glad I did. I found the picture on a google search which I'm afraid I couldn't find, I can't remember what exactly I googled at the time.

Sephiroth
This drawing was somewhat of an experiment. My friend asked me to draw Sephiroth as it was his favourite character from the Final Fantasy series. I decided to first draw in pencil and then define with pen. Although I was happy with the overall finish, I didn't like the look of the pencil lines underneath. This is what made me decide only to draw in pen. This picture took about 5 hours overall and my friend was pleased with the outcome which in this situation - was all that I cared about! This picture I'm pretty sure was sourced from creative uncut which I will link to at the bottom. The website is a gold mine of gaming art work and concept art, I would advise you to check it out.

Tidus
Tidus was the main character from Final Fantasy 10, my favourite Final Fantasy game. I really wish that they would create an up to date version with achievements that I could horde! This idea was also suggested to me by the friend you asked me to draw Sephiroth and this image just captured my attention. I finished it in two days spending about 7 hours on it in total. There is a slight error on the left hand side of the image on the arm where I thought the arm would be too big in comparison to the rest of the image. Not many people have noticed it and to be honest it doesn't seem to effect the picture. I was very happy with this picture and it ended up being hung from my wall and still is to this day.

Khimari
If you can't already tell, at this point in time I was really into all the Final Fantasy images. The sources provided really good studies to work from. Khimari is my personal favourite character from FF10 so I decided to draw him next. He was a great thing to draw with the small details on the cloth and wrist guards. I very much enjoyed drawing him, the only shame was that I managed to cut out the end of the lance with where I positioned him on the page. In all, Khimari took 7 hours to draw. It took me about a week to finish as if I remember correctly at the time, I had a lot of school work.

Ifrit
The next image I drew was of Ifrit. The version shown is the FF7 version which I found on Google images as I didn't like the one shown on Creative Uncut. I remember the day I drew this because my brother was celebrating and had all of his friends downstairs. At this point in time I didn't know them very well and ended up being shut in my room with my mum and dad so I did this image in a single day. It took me 4 hours and a pizza to myself. That day my dad spent about £150 on pizza - that's how big an occasion it was. They had to bring the pizzas in 2 cars and we got lots of free goodies to go with them. I was very happy with this drawing because it turned out so well in a small amount of time. I'm most proud of the details around the chest area.

Snow
Snow was my favourite character from FF13. I loved his style and his attitude that his love was the most important feeling he had. This drawing was done with a different pen if you can't tell. It created a softer look with less definition I felt. I was very pleased as it captured his energy and the clothes flowed very well as they did in the image I studied. Snow took 9 hours to draw as I couldn't get used to the pen but overall I was happy. I was especially pleased with the details to the threading which I drew onto the coat.

Squall Leonhart
Squall from FF8 took 8 hours. This image was suggested to me by my friend and colleague. Squall was his favourite character from the FF series and I decided to draw him as the picture on the website was perfect. Even though the jacket and trousers were black leather, using different shading patterns I managed to create the depth thrown by the shadows in the image. I was particularly happy with the white shirts shadow, my not including an outline to the area I wished to shade it blended with the shirt and made it look like the ruffles were casting the shadows. The gunblade was the hardest part to position to make sure it was parallel from left to right. The small lion emblem on the hilt was quite fun to draw adding such small detail.

Death's Scythe
The scythe is a weapon from Dante's Inferno, one of my favourite games. The image only took 3 hours and isn't as big as it seems. It began as a doodle and when it looked similar to the scythe on the box's art work, I decided to turn it into that. I bought the collectors edition which had a box covered in art work which was amazing and grotesque. It also included a link to the full poem of Dante's Inferno which is not available to view on the internet which I enjoyed reading. I like the shading on the blade, it gives it a real metallic feel. The game then inspired me to draw my next image.

Dante
Dante is the main character in the game Dante's Inferno, a man who travels to centre of hell to rescue his wife and hopefully redeem her soul and also his. I chose to draw this after completing the game. I very much wish I had drawn this on a much larger scale so that I could get all the detail on the cloth sewn into his chest which had pictures of his past, like a tapestry. My favourite part to this image is the arm with the bandage wrapped around it. I felt it worked very well and was very pleased with the outcome. If I was to revisit this image, I might just focus on the chest piece.

Emile
I drew Emile around the time of Halo: Reach's release. I spent a good 12 hours on this picture due to the large amount of black areas on the image. They took a lot of time to block in. At first I had to outline all the areas which needed blacking out so I could include as much detail as possible. The study image was also from Creative Uncut but was quite different to the usual images I choose. The image was very stylized hence all the black areas. The helmet turned out a bit bulb like in comparison the body but I was never much good at drawing free hand when it came to curves.

Kakashi
This character is from Naruto, an animated cartoon. My brother loved to watch Naruto and I ended up watching some episodes myself. Kakashi was always my favourite character so when I watched some episodes I decided to have a go at drawing him. I really enjoyed doing this image because it was so simple yet detailed at the same time. I couldn't help but admire the artists who create the animated series. The main shading on this image was done using strokes of the pen in different directions. I found strokes from right to left appeared brighter than the opposite. If I wanted to darken the area more, I cross hatched to make it even darker. I felt like the finished image captured his casual attitude but his obvious confidence in his abilities.

Bahamut
This is my personal favourite image out of all the work I have done. I went back to the Final Fantasy 10 page on Creative Uncut looking for inspiration and this one really caught my attention. I thought it would be interesting to draw a summon rather than another character. Everything in this image seemed to come together just right without too much planning, just pen to paper for about 8 hours. I really like the definition between each segment or his armour plates and I was very proud to say that I had drawn this.

War
This is my latest image which took me 15 hours. I chose this picture around the release time of Darksiders 2. I haven't played either game even though I wish I had, maybe I can pick them up second hand somewhere. I chose this image for the challenge, the amount of detail in the image at first seemed a bit daunting but with my perseverance I managed to finish the image in about a week. I'm not going to lie but this was a very challenging picture to complete. The details in his armour was more surprising that I thought. Just above the left knee, you can see there is like an ogres head as part of the armour. The arm on the left hand side was made up of many plates. The arm on the right was a lot of guess work as in the image it was mainly blurred out. I could see where the main detail was but a lot of the shading was generalised to make it fit the rest of the image. I had to go over that arm twice as at first it was far too bright for the rest of the image. He also has a tiny head - or maybe he just has a really big body.. Who knows?

Thanks to anyone who took the time out to read the detail about any of the images. I just thought some of you might be interested in the stories behind the pictures. I was very happy create this post, about 3 hours worth of typing. I watched the first Ghostbusters at the same time which probably didn't help me but I love the films! I will also be doing a post about the game on my other blog at some point so if you are interested - get following! That way you can keep up to date with all of my posts. If you want to know anything else about any of the images I have drawn, will draw or want to suggest something to me - leave a comment! I should have another picture to post soon as I mentioned in my last post of Anima, another summon from FF7. I think it may take another couple of hours or so.

Here is the link to the website where I get most of my images from:
www.creativeuncut.com
If you go to the top of the page and press on 'Video Game Concept Art' all of the galleries they have are there and available for free. There are also a lot of other peoples drawings on there as well.

One last thing - in case anyone wonders what type of pen I use - I use a standard black ballpoint pen. Any works but I prefer Bic as usually the flow of ink never gets stuck on the ball so there are no scratchy sections on the image.

Quickie Post

Thought I should chuck something up on here before I go to work and don't get a chance to because I want to try and at least do this once a day if not more.

So what have I done today? Well first things first I picked up my girlfriend (www.pixelamy.blogspot.co.uk check her blog out) and we went to my place of work to by a newspaper. I work in a medium sized co-op store and that's where I'm going to be from 4-10pm today, exciting stuff. 

Once I got home my mum had been clearing out her room and found some of my old art stuff from when I was doing my GCSEs including an origami book with paper. I thought I would see if I could still do it and as you can see.. I am a tiny bit rusty but I'm sure with more practice the crane won't look so spazzy. The one on the left is supposed to be a tortoise if you can make it out! Then I played a couple of hours of Dead Space 3 for more to add to my other blog just for gaming - www.matttalksgaming.blogspot.co.uk - and then spent a couple of hours typing and researching my latest post on there. While I was playing, pixelamy wrote a post about Wreck It Ralph which we went to see for our two year anniversary - you should check it out and leave her some love because she is awesome.

After that we decided to grab some lunch and our tradition on a Wednesday lunch time is to have pasta bake which is yummy and watch a film alongside. Recently we have been rewatching the entire Harry Potter series and are currently on the 7th film - Deathly Hallows Part 1 - and its still as good as the first time I saw it. I still find it strange how J K Rowling had to send the books to about 3-4 different publishers before someone accepted it! Bet the other companies are biting themselves now..

After that it was time for Amy to go to work and then I have ended up back here doing this before I head off to work! On the way home from dropping her off I noticed how people who live down my road always drive in the middle of the road until there is another car. I've only noticed it today because I have somewhere to right down and share my thoughts with whoever is currently on the other end of a computer screen/mobile phone hopefully enjoying this! It makes no sense as my road is easily big enough to fit two cars down it and I always stick to my side. Maybe its a habit I will grow into as I get more driving experience but for.. One side is enough for me.

Something to look out for later, I am going to be adding pictures of all of my art work onto here somehow or my Google+. I currently have the pictures on my flickr which are being played as a slideshow on my other blog. I may do the same on here unless I find a more interesting way to share it. I am planning to get back into my drawing as I have had some time off from it but have found new inspiration from playing some games I've had for a while such as Max Payne 3. I am currently working on Anima from Final Fantasy 10, you can see my progress with this image so far. This shouldn't take a couple more hours to finish and then it'll be up for you guys to see. Fun fact - turns out Anima is a girl. Quite the looker if you ask me.

For my post tomorrow I think I shall talk about my school trip in year 11 to Iceland which was amazing. Let me know in a comment down below where the best place is that you have visited. Thanks for reading!

First Post and my birthday

On this blog, I'm just going to talk about my everyday life, what I've been up to and if anything interesting has gone on.

Today for example, I decided to join Blogger.

At the moment I've decided to get two blogs on the go, one about my gaming and this one for every day life. I am also thinking of starting another for random bits like films and days out to tourist attractions. For now, I just need an idea for a name.

At the moment I am also hoping to start a YouTube channel in which I film my gaming experiences. I just need to get hold of some recording equipment and maybe something to run it.

The main topic for this post is going to be about my birthday. I turned 20 on the 19th February and then on the 21st I headed up to London with my girlfriend who had planned out a packed day. We had tickets for Madame Tussauds, the London Aquarium and the London Eye. Unfortunately it cost £17.40 to get to London and have a pass onto all of the tubes even though we were travelling no further than zone 1. First we headed to the ticket office at the London eye to collect the tickets but crossing the bridge, we had flowers wrapped in foil thrusted in our faces. The slightly crazy lady then demanded money to help the children, I'm all one for charity but I would rather have the choice to donate than being guilt tripped into it.

We decided to go to Madame Tussauds first. The queue was luckily not too long when we got there so it was only a 30 minute wait. For those of you who don't know what Madame Tussauds is, it is a collection of very accurate wax works of famous people. I was quite impressed with the likeness' of a lot of the models but for some reason I mainly wanted to see which celebrities I was taller than being just under 6 foot tall. We chose a rather busy day to go so it was hard to get clear photos of the models, looking back through them there are many random faces scattered throughout. There was also a horror section which we decided to skip as there was another queue for that and we wanted to make sure that we fitted everything in to one day. There was also a taxi section which was like a sit on ride with a history of London. The only problem with that was that the seats were very slippery and you ended up bundled in one corner after each slope. The best part was the 4D Marvel screening which was about 10 minutes long and showed off the new ideas for cinema. The experience included very high definition 3D and extras such as vibrating seats, jets of air, sprays of water and the chair poked you.. On the whole I would advise a visit, the staff said the best time of year is just after Christmas where they only get a couple of thousand people through a day (only?). The only hole I picked in the 4D experience is that the fourth dimension is technically time (I think) so really it was a 3D+ experience!

Next we headed to the aquarium which is right next to the London eye which had an empty priority ticket queue which we decided to make use of and head straight in! I was really looking forward to the aquarium as I really enjoyed the one in Portsmouth. Unfortunately the experience was ruined slightly by parents using their children as ploughs to the front of viewing areas. I know this may sound a little bit ranty but teaching children to push and shove to the front rather than waiting their turn seems like a bad idea - but what do I know? I'm not a Dad! Anyway, the aquarium was amazing, in particular I liked the terrapins and penguins. Terrapins are just awesome and the signs around the penguin exhibits were funny instructing you not to confront or move if you see a penguin on the loose! Biggest downer was the gift shop - there were no guides to take away as souvenirs.

This time on the London eye was number 3 for me, I'd been already with my parents and with the scouts when I was a member. The view from the top never lets you down. There are now Galaxy Tabs in the pods with electronic guides of the views. There was also a Dad trying to launch his child out the door but he seemed to enjoy it. We stood in the photo zone to get our picture taken but so did everyone else so we ended up being squashed against a pole with about a dozen other people so we left that picture for them.

The last thing we did for the day out was Pizza Hut, which we got the train home and then drove to Maidstone to get to. Just because we didn't want to get lost in London trying to find one! 14" cheesy bite BBQ meatfeast with unlimited salad, unlimited Pepsi Max and a warm cookie with ice cream. All for less than £25, so what's not to like?

Thanks for reading!