Oh, my computer finally works again. Recently I thought it was a good idea to reformat the whole thing, but then I forgot to get all my drivers ready and then my computer didn't work very well for ages, and because I didn't have the LAN networking one the drivers all downloaded stupidly slowly. The whole thing was rather embarrassing. And now I installed World of Warcraft ( there's a fully justified reason for this, don't worry guys) and the game decided to rape the shit out of my video card drivers, which I spent all of yesterday fixing. Yeah, fuck you Intel and your obscure download file names. But now everything's all right and I can blog again. Hooray.

There's this module next year that is about virtual worlds, but apparently is just gonna be everyone playing World of Warcraft, and seeing I never have played it and everyone else seems to be an expert in it, I figure I could start now and do a bit of catch up so I'm not a total retard come the new year.

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I went and saw Alice in Wonderland the other day which was surprisingly good. I wrote a review for it here. As good as it was, it kind of fucked up this little Alice in Wonderland-esque poem I was planning for some time. So I might put it away for a bit and go over it next year or something. In the meanwhile these three pages here is the complete Dial M For Mephistopheles. I really wanted to have it done in PDF format but I can't, or have no idea how to, do that on bloody blogger, so it's in shitty text format. Enjoy folks. 

I'm going to retire and play some more Final Fantasy XIII, which I bought today very early on because it's the sort of thing that I've been waiting for for frickin ages and can totally justify playing endless hours of it because I'm studying animation. Animation rocks. So does this game in fact. They never said anything about the story, and most of the hype went towards the graphics and fight sequences but it's got a pretty good plot. Check it out if you can. Or buy a PS3 cos it's totally worth it.

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I forgot how awesome Monsters Inc. is. It's funny as hell. And Hell is totally hilarious, dont' you know.    Today my friend had his birthday party. He was turning 21 and hired out some of the ol' Common Room bar for the frivolities. People dressed up as animated characters. Others did not. Ironically enough those people were the ones who did the animation course. I dressed up as "animated me" which involved painting big cartoon eyes on myself. I looked a total tit. It was soon rubbed off

God, look at all those snow particles interacting with that fur. That must have taken ages to render.    Oh wow. I wasn't wrong: "It normally took 11 to 12 hours to render a single frame of Sulley because of his 2.3 million individually animated hair strands (Total number of hairs: 2,320,413)."    That's right fellow animators, eleven to twelve hours for one fucking frame. I can't even begin to imagine that. Jesus Christ it took half an hour for my thing to render today and I thought it took a long time.

I'm really tempted to stay up all night and write or something, but we all know that would be silly. For those of you who follow my Twitter you'd have seen this, a picture I drew of Amanda Palmer. 

I also did this.

Eleven to twelve hours. One frame. It still boggles the mind

Christmas countdown: 3 weeks!

I should be in bed now, but I'm staying up and reading this stupid article on the Simpsons and commodity culture and this bloke who's called Mr Bennett, I was disappointed to find out wasn't Noah from Heroes, nor Elizabeth's father off Pride and Prejudice. Who knew the Simpsons could be so boring? Maybe if the author actually spoke of them once in a while instead of gavotting on about this obscure author no one gives a shit about. It's from a book about the Simpsons, with more articles on people studying the Simpsons. Sigh. Because it's so boring I'm trying to make the presentation I have to do on it interesting by adding funny pictures and all, but that's much harder than I thought. Maybe I should figure out what I'm gonna present before I start making up the slides. Spent the last two hours tweeting non stop, mainly cos I have nothing else to do, and the only person who's tweeting at the same rate I am is Amanda Palmer talking about her LOFNOTC (Losers of Friday night on the computer) hashtag topic which is turning into something off Fight Club, making my last few tweets a bit like a stupid one-sided conversation with myself. Oh well. I think I might head back to bed, if I can be bothered. Or watch Antichrist. Apparently it makes for very uncomfortable viewing. I'll have to wait and see.

In a week and a half, I'm going home for Summer. This is good news. But before all that I have to hand in a lot of work. This is not good news. I need 1,600 more words on this essay which I'm actually having trouble with. It's one of those essays where nothing in the questions gets me so every word I write seems forced, unnatural and boring. Also have to write all the stuff you're likely to find on the webstie of an energy drink, for another project. This one's due in Thursday and it doesn't seem likely that it'll happen. In the FAQ we have questions like HOW MUCH CAFFEINE IS IN RAPTURE? To ensure that Rapture complies with the caffeine limits set out by the Food Standards Code, our forumulation includes 78mg of caffeine per 250ml can. This is the same as in an average cup of coffee Which is perfectly normal. Then it dwells into the weird and the "I-don't-give-a-shit-anymore" WHY IS RAPTURE DIFFERENT To be honest, it sort of isn't. It's your average run of the mill energy drink. With added Uranium and Colin Mochrie ISN'T THAT DANGEROUS? Why, because he's Canadian? NO THE URANIUM Oh, no. To comply with the Food Standards Association we put in only a small amount of uranium, for that added green glow. It alters your DNA ever so slightly to give you extra energy AREN'T THERE SIDE EFFECTS? You may become sterile and infertile, but that's OK because your children would grow up with 6 toes SHOULDN'T YOU BE SHUT DOWN FOR THAT? The sad part is I'm writing both the questions and the answers --------------- And so on. That last answer was taken completely and unshamefully from the Dr McNinja FAQ (see here, it's the bottom question). --------- I'm not getting anything done, then, aside from work, cos I don't have the time. No drawing or anything, and when I do I can never seem to get into it. I tried drawing Gambit last night, after having seen the Wolverine film (which is, despite the bad reviews, a pretty kick-ass film with some really good effects and acting and not-so-much with the character development but that's not really important with a film like that) and I couldn't do it. Mainly cos I'm rubbish at drawing anything in the style that artists such as Jeph Loeb or Chris Bachalo, but also because I have no time to think about this. Also: Gambit is the shiz

Amazing. How technology does advance, doesn't it? I spied some new options on blogger, just as I was clicking on "add post", and now I can text a blog entry and email one in. It's probably an option that's been there for some time but I never seem to notice these things first off. I'm watching 1408 this very minute and it's actually a very good film, and the first half is surprisingly scary. Shame it's dragging on a bit though. John Cusack is a very silly man. This is a room that scares Samuel L Jackson. This must be indication enough that this room is the most evil and terrifying place on Earth. ... Anyway I can't quite remember what I was supposed to be blogging about today. But anyway, I started a graphic novel yesterday, which is pretty cool, cos I've never done one before. I know exactly how this will go though; I've tried doing comics before, nothing serious or anything, but they always start great with me one page into it, thinking it's awesome, and then forgetting all about it the next day. But then again I thought about that for this blog and it's been going for 2 months, which is a big surprise and I am quite happy with that. As soon as something interesting actually happens I will be sure to blog incessively about it. Now I'm wondering if I used the word 'incessively' right, or if it's a real word at all, or if it is a real word but I just can't spell it. But anyway, upon walking home on Easter Sunday at six in the morning after a very good night out (and forgetting there are no buses or anything really at 6 on Easter Sunday), I started taking photos of buildings and roads and such. I'm trying to compile a set of photos of anything, mainly scenery, so that I can use them for reference when I'm drawing (such as for this graphic novel. I find I give up when I realise there are things I still can't draw to save my life) or to photoshop or something. Lord knows I have dozens of photos of graveyards already, which I used for a set of poster which are up at deviantart here and here Basically I figure the more images I take, the more stuff I can do without having to rip off any one else's photo (like I did for my friend Chris's blog banner - a blog which looks forgotten and sad, much like the twitter feed- ... there used to be text on that banner, too. Oh well). I don't have a photo of Earth from space though and I doubt I will any time soon, so I think I can be forgiven for that. I've photoshopped it enough now it could be any photo of our planet. Film just finished. It wasn't too bad. Alternate ending better than theatrical? I will never know, as I haven't seen the theatrical ending. This one had another shot of Sammy L J, so it's probably better.

Photoshop is annoying. Gragh. Or maybe it's my drawing skill. Nah. It's definitely photoshop, and my mate for not supplying high def pictures of the character I'm doing the poster of. Also, I need to buy a new computer mouse, not cos I threw it across the room (as it was broken before. honest). At least I'm getting a few hundred words written a day (an amazing 1,000 done yesterday) so hopefully I'll be getting Dial M 2 and Maze done before summer, although that's probably wishful thinking A second rant for the day: why is Coraline taking so long to come out over the UK? May? I mean, come on, it's an English book ... well, English author anyway. That and Dragonball are the two movies I'm looking forward to this year