I havn't updated as often as I did a few months ago simply because I am bogged down with an incredible workload. Second year is so much more intense than first year. I've found myself improving in my art like it's nobodies buiness after stagnating in the summer. I feel like I've been on drawing steroids. I try to take time for myself to do the art that I want to do but its few and far between (the first man on mars drawing I featured in my last post being the most recent example of drawing for pleasure.)
I've got an incredibly heavy week this week, probably the most difficult so far. I have untill 10pm on monday to finish editing a video that his been in production for weeks. Its a puppet sow parody of Bill and Ted's Excellant Adventure in which Bill and Ted go around collecting examples of different illustrators interpretaions of fairy tale charecters. That has to be ready to be screened on Tuesday in front of the whole class. It'll either be hilarious and one for the histroy books or fall completly on its low-production value face. When it's finished I'll post it up here. Then on wednesday I'm taking the train to Exeter to chair a debate on Scientific Scepticism between two teams of 16-18 year old students for the qualifying round of the National Debate Competition of which I am an alumni. I havn't had a chance to swot up on the subject properly though I sense Helen the Alumni Organiser put me chairing that debate because I have an interest science already (she watched me two years ago blow away the opposition in my first ever debate when I convinced a room full of apollo era children that robotic space exploration was the way to go even though I felt differently at the time.)
Thursday I'm chairing the same debate again plus the age old Monarchy debate in someplace-I've-never heard of in Somerset, I'm looking at about 6 hours travel spread over the day. I hate chairing too, but I'm assured its something I'll get used to.
Then friday. My first evening off this week. I don't know what I'll do with it. Perhaps the negotiations I've been holding with a certain someone might come to head and we might actually have our first (re)-date. :D
In the meantime a series "photographs" which "I took". (They're actually a screen caps I took from live streaming Nasa satelite feed from florida.) This is image was taken in the final day of what I like call "the week of FOR-FUCK-SAKE!" in which I had revved myself up to watch the final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery and the penultimate shuttle launch in history. Monday it was cancelled due to a fuel leak. Tuesday it was cancelled due to electrical problems. Wednesday and Thursday it was called off due to rain. Finally on Friday they progressed to the stage of adding the beanie cap (big orange cap on top of the big orange rocket in which the liquid ocygen fuel is pumped into the external tank prior to launch) which was promising. I watched the sun rise over the orbiter via live streaming satelite. I went off to a tutorial with professional illustrator Viviane Schwarz and 45 minutes when I came back I heard the voice of the public relations guy saying "Well thats it the launch is scrapped untill November 29th." And I let out an almighty roar of frustration. It turned out that as they were fueling the tank there was another leak. They went in for a closer look and discovered a crack in the foam insulation. If they had gone ahead with the launch then that piece of foam would have broken off from the tank and hit the wing of the Shuttle, leading to the distruction of the orbiter and the death of the entire crew. If that leak hadn't occured they never would have noticed and history may have been very different. It boggles the imagination.
