Day 4 - Mosquitoes and Me

It wasn't all sunshine and swimming in Rottnest.

In fact I didn't get to swim at all due to the shark-beach ban, and then it thunderstormed and rained heavily two of the nights, and was chilly and overcast on another day.

Now, I know I chose to stay in a bungalow. And I know that the bungalows at Rottnest have these slats as walls for the front and side decking/rooms. Although there are thick, canvas covers that fully zip-seal up from the bottom right up to the ceiling, to keep out the wind and rain, there are a few small holes and gaps around the door where insects can get in.

The first night, there was nothing, apart from some moths, which are my friends, so that was fine.

However, maybe due to the heavy rains the next two nights, mozzies came into the room. Even after we hunted for them for an hour before we slept, and seemed to get them all, the moment the lights were out, the evil, high, buzzing hum of another mosquito would start again. They would just hone in on me and circle round my ears and face. I put on this strong smelling citrus repellent, that unfortunately faded away too quickly and didn't protect me at all.

And you know what? It wasn't the fault that I chose to stay in a bungalow.

It's just me. I had mozzies following me EVERYWHERE. They bit  me when I was out in the sun, when I was with Tim at a cafe for breakfast (and he got no bites at all), and at dinner at a restaurant (and again Tim got no bites at all) and they bit me through my long sleeved cardigan, and through my cotton shorts even! They bit me through my clothes!! and why didn't they go bother Tim?!

The last night I got barely any sleep at all. And I had a total of 18 mozzie bites. Tim finally got one on his arm.

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Alice and Alice in Roseyland

Thankyou to everyone who looked at my above animation loop and clicked to rate it five stars. You are all shining stars to me :). I was more excited to just show anyone I knew because I haven't animated my own stuff in yonks....and ok, the rating and votes was a little exciting too and easy to get caught up in.

Alice my rabbit, steps through a hole in Wonderland and becomes Alice the girl.

Or it's Alice in wonderland, who steps through a hole and becomes the white rabbit Alice.

Who is the real Alice?

I forced out this loop on Sunday night til the wee hours of the morning to get it submitted onto Loopdeloop (scroll further down now to see mine) in time for viewing. It will be screened tonight in public at Loop bar, anyone over there when it screens, do a holler or a wolf-whistle for me will you?

This month's theme was "Down the rabbit hole". Jeeze, how could I not submit an animation for this?!! Alice my Rabbit, and Wonderland, my head had a thousand ideas. But I settled on the first one I thought of.

And then in true Rose style I left it 'til the last hour. I was still feeling lazy about animating, so Timothy Merks actually roughed out the key animation for me and did it so perfectly I had to complete it. Tim also gave me the beautiful background he was going to use for his own loop, but didnt get time to do, (because he's actually busy animating for two paid projects at the moment). 

So I dressed and cleaned up the animation with 40 drawings of Alice and Alice with my tablet in flash. Throughout the seven hours I worked on it, I realised I have never actually animated my rabbit kid characters before. And I 'm really excited and happy seeing them move around as real living cartoon kids now. I think Cat and Rabbit or Olive need the same treament for the next loopdeloop. 

A bit of info about "Loop de loop", it's run by a group of Melbourne industry peers, born out of the idea to do animation for the fun of it for oneself with friendlies, a break from work. There is a changing theme each month and all submitted/accepted loops can be viewed and rated from 1 to 5 stars. All the loops get screened at the Loop Bar in Melbourne and the highest voted loop is declared, and a new theme is chosen.

It's been going for a few months now, and I keep missing out, mostly through my own procrastination.  I mean, i looooove animating loops. I've done 'rotating rabbit jellybaby' and 'jiving orange girl' which I should add to my blog some time.

Bring on the fashion Cape

I spend most of my time inside the house in front of the computer, checking the share market, selling stuff on ebay, email/networking, scanning drawings, sketching and painting (I have no other table).

The point is, it's 10 degrees colder inside the house than it is outside, and in Winter wearing three layers topped with a bomber jacket and a scarf doesn't cut it when I'm trying to work. My clothes are that bulky, the circulation to my arms are cut off every time I bend at the elbow to hold the mouse. I have worn less layers and try to power through the cold, drinking hot tea, and end up sneezing, sniffling and verging on catching a cold.

I need something thick that covers my neck, back and chest, but keeps my arms free...a poncho!!! A quick look on ebay, I found some very modern, cool looking ponchos from fashion labels like Sportsgirl, Country Road, FCUK, so modern that they are called capes, because they are kind of like a fusion of the poncho and cape with extra bits like pockets and hoods.  When I told Tim capes were in fashion, before I could explain, his expression was an interested "Really?!" and I knew he was thinking like Cat in the above comic. I had to disappoint by explaining, 'fashionable' capes.

This solves the other downside of working as a creative at home. I was chatting to friends recently and there's something about working at home or in a studio as an artist in Winter without a heater, we end up feeling like a bum. Grubby and miserable, even after a hot shower and a change of clothes. Maybe it's because wearing tailored, sharp clothes is counter productive when sitting at an easel or desk, animating scenes all day. These capes on the other hand are casual, but pretty chic and cool me thinks.

So I am caping it up at the moment and ended up getting the Country Road "Hooded Sweat Cape" off ebay for only $26, a quarter of the retail price! Check out the Ralph Lauren one that retails at $1,298!!!! (jaw drop) although you can get it for a mere $230usd on ebay, it IS cashmere I guess and it must be made in France instead of China. All these capes I priced off ebay by the way, are second hand, but in totally brand new condition, only worn once or twice. Don't add to landfill, buy and sell on ebay folks!

So I am wearing my cape right now as I type this. In fact I've been wearing this cape everywhere, everyday since it came in the mail last week. Coldness diverted and I can happily do my work now without feeling like a grumpy, cold grub. The cape saves the day.

Planking the stupidest trend ever?!

POLICING OF THE STUPID


Lately there's been report after report about people planking and trouble with the police etc etc. Doesn't the news have anything more important to show? And I'm sure the police would rather be policing other stuff. What a waste of time and effort when resources are used to protect stupid people from hurting themselves through their own choice, sheesh!






THE END.

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Ducks and burgers in Kings Park

Last weekend Tim and I went for a little picnic lunch at Kings Park with Mum, Rol & Waan, and Sophie. We were all too busy with our own projects to put together a nice home-made picnic lunch, so I organised to take everyone's order and pick up a burger each for us all from the newly opened 'Jus' burgers in Northbridge (next to 'Kakulas' on William Street).

Now, know that burgers are one of my favourite meals. No, not the fast food kind with fluffy bread and iceberg lettuce. But the good, home-made gourmet type. I'm so glad Perth is starting to catch up with other cities, and now there's more than the odd place to get a gourmet burger takeway.

Jus Burgers are one of my favourite and I was looking forward to this picnic lunch since mid-week.

We found a nice shady spot in the more quiet and greener location where Ben Folds had a symphony concert a few years back, where there are rolling green slopes that meet at a large lake with many free ducks wandering around, and one of the ducks laughed at Ben Folds telling a joke before the punch line came, and another duck did a sudden low fly over the whole seated crowd, giving everyone a poo dropping fright.

Oh those funny ducks.

The afternoon was lovely, the first bite of my burger was delicious, and I had a nice hot mocha too. One duck hung around us and kept circling, waiting for a food scrap, and even nibbled our shoes now and then.

Sophie is now at the stage of grabbing things that are crinkly, shiny, colourful, small, anything within hands reach really. My jumper had a metallic thread through it so it was slightly sparkly, and Sophie stared intently at it before pulling my jumper in grabs with her tiny little fists.

And then suddenly something struck at my blind side and in an instant my burger was knocked out of my hand. Before I knew what had happened, I saw the back of duck, tail waddling left to right, already ten metres away, the whole top piece of my burger, the wonderful thick, turkish bread, in it's duck bill, and it's fat duck bottom running at top speed as it made off with more than half my burger! I had only taken two bites!

Tomatoe and avocado went all over my jumper and jeans and the organic beef was on the grass along with the duck poop. And in my surprise I had knocked over my coffee. The duck had totally stole my burger! Out of my hand! My awesome burger I had looked forward to all week!!!! MY BURGER!!!!

I was staring open mouth, shocked, but mostly dismayed, as we watched the duck FLYING off and away in the distance still with the whole big piece of bread in it's mouth

The duck even had the nerve to come back 20mins later! I could still see the pieces of bread crumbs and possibly wasabi mayo on the side of it's face >:(

post note you know an interesting development has come about from this incident. I used to love chinese crispy skin roast duck. It's a delicacy of sorts because of all the tastey duck fat and flavour (and expense)...but after being mad at the duck for stealing my burger, at a Chinese restuarant a few weeks later, staring a plate of roast duck wheeling around on the lazy-susan, I suddenly felt that losing my burger was nothing compared to the duck that lost it's poor life to get roasted and end up on a restaurant table. So I didn't touch the roast duck that night. A bit too over-analytical? haha maybe and maybe I'll never eat duck again, they're totally skin (fat) and bone anyway.

Blythe factory second import

I was hunting around on ebay and found some factory second Blythe dolls that had random combinations of hair type, eye colours, and skin tone, and maybe a small fault. Two things appealed to me, 1. Something that I could take and fix up 2.They were about one third of the price of mint Blythe dolls. So now I own a few new Blythe dolls. They lie in their brown cardboard boxes waiting 'til I have some irresponsible time to start primping them.

I decided to wash the hair of one of them as her flaw seemed to be uneven, pink hairdye. She also had another flaw, a crack in the side of her scalp plate. It was like she'd been hit on the head and bagged to be sold on the black market as spare parts. Or in this case, sold with no name and shipped off to another country.

Belated Halloween jellybaby cheer

OH DARN IT!
About two years ago when I was in Hobart, I started writing a few jellybaby four panel cartoon strip, you know like the "funnies" comics you get in the newspaper. These were mostly in draft lead pencil form. When I started doing my post grad studies at the beginning of this year, I got more snippets of comic strip ideas for the jellybabies while I was sitting in my lectures listening about Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The jellybabies were such a great voice for my more serious, political/environmental pondering. I was so inspired that I began finishing some of the comic strips to 'publish', and one of the first ones I wanted to put up for show, happend to be this Halloween themed one. But it was for Halloween.

So I have been hanging onto it for so long, waiting ALL YEAR for Halloween to come round so I could post it up.

And then Halloween came, and it is now a few days later, and I realised I have totally forgotten about my Halloween four panel comic!!!
But I'll be damned if I have to wait a whole 'nother year to roll round, so here it is. Hope everyone had a spectacularly spooky and quirky Halloween.
And I hope everyone reads this comic strip!

* thanks to those who gave me the feedback. I've left the version that had the better timing :) 

Maybe the world needs a crazy vampire government

       

I just watched last week's episode (nine) of True Blood. *spoiler alert if you haven't watched it yet, don't read on*

Did everyone else crack up at the end like I did? I watched the end five times and I still laugh uncontrollably. 'WE WILL EAT YOU. AFTER WE EAT YOUR CHILDREN....Now for the weather. Tiffany.' The actor who plays King Vampire Russell Edgington should win an award for the delivery of his lines. So good. 

On a more serious note, I love his speech so much about all the wrongs of the human civilization. Apart from eating us and our children, it'd be great if we could have a scary, rightious government that will right the wrongs of the world.

Being a Post Grad student in Environmental Management

I have another version of the comic that ends with one acronym: WTF? This is what I've been doing since coming back to Perth in January.

Learning a whole new discipline is pretty daunting. My core units of Impact Assessment are both very cool, but very difficult at the same time. It's a real struggle to make myself focus! And that's so frustrating because it's such a great unit! If only I can get my focus on.

Beatnik Chicks snippet

I attempted to do a new comic for a competition that occurred over the weekend. Although I registered, I knew this weekend was really a free time for me and I don't really have a good creative space at the mo. Lost of transition and decisions happening, life feels a bit tangly right now, so this is all I could muster. Better than nothing and I love these new characters that have perchanced into my story world. I'll definately revisit them one day again with a proper story.

Harry Potter & Noodle soup

Space Ace Me

Here's a treat. A special present from an awesome artist.
A personal digital comic given to me by Timothy merks.

24 hr Comic Stall

The 24 hour comics had their debut sale in the Northbridge festival. In was a circus style atmosphere with curious and cool things to buy, set up in sea-crates up and down the street with pink heart shaped balloons and lights lining the way. And here is Rosey unicorn. I am a unicorn!



My comic sold quite well, but the best was seeing a little girl come along, and choose my comic out of them all, and ask her mum if she could buy it, she then proceeded to count the change in her little purse to pay for it. and then later, a mother came along and picked out my comic and after flipping through, she bought it, and turned around and gave it also to her young daughter. I am definately going to make some childrens' book in the near future.

I volunteered myself and Timothy to help man the stall for three hours in the evening. Geez what was i thinking? After trying to work the stall for an hour maybe, I spent the rest of the time standing in the back corner, sketching people.

Youtube viewers!

WOAH!

ok, so I released Spooky Doll Kids in time for Halloween, and expected to get some new people seeing my film, you know, a few hundred....
Just then on last check 3,111 hits!!!!
that's right, over 3000 viewers!!!! just over a night and barely two days!