#i was looking for an art piece of this gal with flat colours to use to colour a comic page

[pyomatic]

just a lil doodle of my oc

[isobel-thorm]

73 Questions

Tagged by: @returnofthepd3 Tagging: All y’all

On a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now? -10. I’ve got nothing to look forward to in life anymore and that’s finally starting to weigh on me.

Describe yourself in a hashtag? #CorgiMom

If you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be?  I’ll pass. 

If your life was a musical, what would the marquee say? “Come see the Human Afterthought.” 

What’s one thing people don’t know about you? I mean I’m lonely af and try to get friendship going with lots of people so I’m entirely open and will talk about anything, so nothing. 

What’s your wakeup ritual? Currently roll out of bed at 10am-11am, tune out whatever nonsense my dad is spewing that afternoon, pack more boxes, fruitlessly apply to jobs, and play RDR2.

What’s your favorite time of day? 7PM-1AM. Blessed alone/unbothered time in this house. 

Your go to for having a good laugh? Talking to my college friends and The One That Got Away

Dream country to visit? England

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had? My parents finally caving and letting me get a dog after we lost our first corgi two years prior/they didn’t want to “do all the doghair” again. 

Heels or flats/sneakers? Sneakers but not flats. I’m a toe-walker so flats are a nightmare. I have better luck in heels than flats, and I don’t mind heels, but they just feel too formal for me. 

Who do you want to write your obituary? The One That Got Away. He’ll do me justice and not get too preachy. He’ll have fun with it. 

Style icon? Becca in Pitch Perfect, Carrie Underwood when she/her stylist is pairing stuff with jeans

What are three things you can’t live without? My dog, creativity, art supplies

What’s one ingredient you put in everything? Lemon Pepper

What 3 people living or dead would you like to make dinner for? The One That Got Away, my first senior year roommate, and... my three college best friends. No, I won’t narrow it down to three. 

What’s your biggest fear in life? At this point it’s about to come true, so moving away and not being able to find a job/carry on the exact same way I’m going now, so... yeah. 

Window or aisle seat? Window

What’s your current TV obsession? I had to axe Hulu for a bit but when I still had it, it was Prodigal Son, Almost Family, Dollface, and Perfect Harmony (yeah the latter is fairly preachy and bad but it’s charming and funny in its own weird way). That reminds me I need to re-up Hulu. 

Favorite app? Spotify, Choices: Stories You Play

Secret talent? Interior Design, Giving My All to  Some People Who Just Won’t Bother to Do the Same For Me

Most adventurous thing you’ve done in your life? Digging in my heels when my parents were trying to deter me from going to a college seven hours away. I’m not adventurous and I hate it. 

How would you define yourself in three words? empathetic, creative, A Pleasure to Have in Class

Favourite piece of clothing you own? My college hoodie. It’s mostly black, has my college logo but the neck/pullstrings are modelled after a hockey uniform’s. I’ve only gone without it the last three days during this whole lockdown and I miss it. The print is also crackling so I need to find another close thing to it. 

Must have clothing item everyone should have? Slightly too-big hoodie.

Superpower you would want? Mind reading

What’s inspiring you in life right now? Nothing

Best piece of advice you’ve received? “Stop caving to your parents.” 

Best advice you’d give your teenage self? Same as the last question, cut out [Toxic Ex Best Friend], be more aggressive pursuing The Guy it Turned Out We Both Had a Crush on, also be more aggressive pursuing The One That Got Away.

A book that everyone should read? Austenland by Shannon Hale if romantic comedies and/or Jane Austen is your thing. 

What would you like to be remembered for? Loyalty. 

How do you define beauty? Selflessness, put-togetherness

What do you love most about your body? If eyes count, my eyes. If not, lmao I hate my body, nothing. 

Best way to take a rest/decompress? Mindlessly browse internet, play videogames. 

Favourite place to view art? On here, tbh. Like, I could say the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the city, but... idk everything but the Egyptian Exhbit drains me in that place for some reason. I’m more of a Natural History Museum gal. Gimme the fun taxidermy and that giant whale sculpture in the food court any day. 

If your life were a song, what would it be? Falling Apart - Matt Nathanson 

My Name is Thunder by Jet and The Bloody Beetroots.

If you could master one instrument, what would it be? Baritone. I used to play it and then got snubbed from band in 7th grade and my skill with it tanked to nothing. Picking it up again would be nice. 

If you had a tattoo, where would it be? Well, the plan before the lockdown was to get one in the middle of my inner forearm.

Dolphins or koalas? Dolphins

Best gift you’ve ever received? Our first corgi

Best gift you’ve ever given? When I was in college I made polymer clay ornaments for Christmas for my five housemates. They were all fairly terrible but I had fun and most of them apparently willingly enjoyed getting them/had a good laugh about it. One of them still sends me the photo of his whenever it’s on the tree. 

What’s your favourite board game? Stratego but the version from the 1960s, Battleship from the 1980s.  Yes the years are important, the modern ones are entirely different games and they’re Weird and I don't like ‘em. 

What’s your favourite colour? Peacock blue

Least favourite colour? Yellow

Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds

Drugstore makeup or designer? Drugstore

Blow-dry or air-dry? Air dry. Fuck blow drying, I have too much hair and it puffs out if I blow dry. I call it “Hermione Grangering.”

Pilates or yoga? Neither

Coffee or tea? Both

What’s the weirdest word in the English language? Moist. Why does everybody hate it, idgi. Is it really just a mind in the gutter thing?

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate? Yes. 

Stairs or elevator? Stylistically stairs, general preference: elevator. 

Summer or winter? WINTER!!!! Summer is evil. 

You are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat? Mac and Cheese

A dessert you don’t like? No Dessert.

A skill you’re working on mastering? Digital coloring, figuring out what I want to do with my life without caving to my parents trying to gaslight me because they want me to be something I don’t want to be. 

Best thing to happen to you today? lmao nothing. Since it’s been a rough few hours I’m waiting on The One That Got Away to sense my depression and text me because he’s just got that talent. 

Best compliment you’ve ever received? My high school bus driver ran into me at the grocery store I worked at and introduced me to his partner as “the girl I told you about, the one that if we ever adopt a kid and they don’t end up exactly like her, I’m gonna be disappointed.” Also, because I need to put this one into writing somewhere, when my classmates and I were out on a college trip, our professor/advisor was with us and was a few drinks in, so she gave us all superlatives. I was “the smartest person in this entire group... .... .... but [ I ] had to come out of the closet ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... of smartness.”  Cue everyone, including myself, looking from her, to each other, and then back to me, absolutely not sure how to process that.  It was wild and confusing but because of that it still ranks on one of my best moments in college. And it was arguably a compliment. 

Favourite smell? Vanilla, or baked goods. 

Hugs or kisses? Hugs

If you made a documentary, what would it be about? Documentaries are garbage, I’d do a drama- movie or show. 

Last piece of content you consumed that made you cry? RDR2 fic, post canon where John meets Albert and tells him A Thing and it killed me. 

Lipstick or lip gloss Lipstick

Sweet or savory? Sweet

Girl crush? Alicia Vikander

How you know you’re in love? Undying loyalty to the person, lots of laughs and smiles. 

Song you can listen to on repeat? Sinner - Andy Grammer

If you could switch lives with someone for a day who would it be? Anybody other than me lmao

What are you most excited about at this time in your life? Again, I’ve got nothing to look forward to in life anymore. So uuuhhhh... maybe having something to look forward to again? But there’s a minimal chance of that. 

[bsd-hq-writer]

I hEaRd U wRiTe BnHa... request for a gal that can invoque a Golem (made of whatever is surrounding her) that copies her movements. She's in 1-A, wanting to be a hero. But she's also an artist. Would fall for Hitoshi (cuz she's kind af, tho pretty smart and fun), Todoroki or Midoriya. Kissus! SZ

This is a great request, and I had a great time filling it! I went pure fluff with this one and I one-hundred percent did it with Hitoshi, cause this tired boy needs more love! ~Admin Ghost

Metal was great, there was never enough metal around and it always made your golems harder hitting as you directed them through the fight. Today’s one on one battles had you matched up against Sato, who had already taken down a couple of your golems, but you had kept them small enough that you still had the energy to make a couple more. The rubble of the battleground was great because you didn’t have to expend as much energy to break the materials up and assemble them into a golem, but finding good material was harder. Bricks were decent for structure, but not very durable, metal was much stronger but heavier to move, and concrete was plentiful, but again it wasn’t super durable either.

Sato rounded the corner of another building, already raging through another round of his sugar rush and despite the cuts he was covered with, from the glass fisted golem you used before this one, he was still going full steam. You got yourself into a fighting stance and your golem copied you. Every move you made was made by the golem, and it stayed at the exact distance from you that it was created at, like a puppet. You let Sato get closer before throwing your golem at him, the first punch was a write-off as he smashed right through it, but the second fist came immediately after, sending a swift uppercut into his jaw using a chunk of an I-beam you’d used some extra energy to detach. He bellowed and you let the broken arm batter him again in order to give you another opening to smash him with the metal fist. He was ready as he sent a flurry of punches directed at the shoulders of your golem and you instantly regretted not reinforcing those. You, however, didn’t regret putting another chunk of that beam into the golems foot as you smashed Sato right in the chest and knocked him flat.

In the end, you won due to the fact you could keep yourself relatively well hidden as not to get captured before you managed to score a knock out blow with a condensed Golem. Yet Aizawa still managed to find something to criticize.“With your position as hidden as it was, you could have held off on sending your golems out to fight, sometimes the best method of defense is to wait out your opponent, let them tire themselves looking for you, instead of wasting energy,” he lectured you tiredly, “but you still won, so you pass, you can leave now,”

Getting let out early was a relief since Aizawa was doing some personal matchups, he had agreed to let people go as they finished their fights. Honestly, some of them were clearly for one person’s benefit, but her’s had seemed rather mediocre, more of a battle of stamina between the two of them.

“If you think much harder, I wouldn’t be surprised if you started muttering,” a voice broke you from your train of thought.

“Oh geez, Shinsou, you startled me,” you let out the breath you had sucked in, “Want to got sit out on the lawn again? I got let out early,” you offered quickly. Shinsou had caught your eye in the sports festival, though he’d done it for a very different reason than anyone else. “What so I can lie around and let you drawn me some more?” he chuckled, “I’m not sure what to make of being your only model,” “You’re not-” you stopped mid-sentence as Shinsou’s quirk took hold and at his command, you spoke the truth, “You’re the only model in this sketchbook,- Geez, Shinsou!”

“Haha, it’s not like I didn’t already know, but hearing it from your mouth makes me feel somewhat better,” he chuckled as you punched his arm. He flinched but it was all show, he had been training lately, still making his bid for the hero course.

That had sparked a minor animosity between the both of you, a spot had been freed up in the hero course and you had been the general studies student picked to fill the hole. Not that you knew Shinsou much, other than from when the general studies classes got together, but he had really stood out in the sports festival, something you had missed due to an unfortunate bout of the flu. Even still you had been training hard and when the spot opened you didn’t hesitate to put your name forward. The day it was announced, and you earned a few glares, but none more spine-chilling than Shinsou’s.

A week after your transfer he caught you in the library watching footage from the sports festival and sketching him idly. He hadn’t actually told you that until you became friends, but by then you had filled half the sketchbook, he just accepted it. It took him a while to convince you he didn’t care, but after a while, you just started asking him when you wanted to draw.

“So how come I never see any of these drawings in the student gallery?” Shinsou asked idly as you drew him up in a tree that you insisted was perfect for some perspective sketches.

“Cause I mostly sculpt, you know with my quirk?” you said offhandedly, “I figured out I can half make my golems short of fusing their movements to mine,”

“Those are yours?!” Shinsou gasped.

You didn’t stop sketching, but there was a blush creeping up your face, “Yeah, I thought you knew,”

“No way!” He jumped out of the tree down to where you sat, “Which ones?!”

“The dragon and the swan are the two I have on display right now,” You fidget with your hands. You submitted your pieces anonymously and yet you found yourself telling Shinsou outright, you wondered if he was using his quirk again, but at the same time maybe you had just wanted to admit it to someone other than Midnight, who managed the art displays.

“I saw the swan go up and I was instantly taken by fascination and when I found it was anonymous it drove me crazy because…” he seemed to reign in his excitement at the last moment, “It’s fine, you have your reasons,”

“Shinsou…” you sighed. He looked really conflicted like he also wanted to admit something. He was a pretty private person after, and you seemed to realise just how close you two had grown in the past months.

“You can continue, I don’t mind, cause I know you,” You prompted him and he looked up into your eyes, slightly taken aback at your soft tone.

“I,” he cleared his throat nervously, “I thought it was so beautiful, but so deadly at the same time. The glass you used, the jagged edges, really made it meaningful. Swans are an icon of beauty, but at the same time are the most ill-tempered birds. Its such a powerful parallel, and glass reflects that, literally and figuratively. Glass shards are deadly, but at the same time they refract the light cast down on them into such wonderful patterns littered with tiny rainbows,” He began to ramble, “And the way the lights are set up its absolutely glittering, I couldn’t believe it was just broken glass,”

You couldn’t believe the way his eyes were basically shining, he genuinely loved it and you felt your heart swell, “I didn’t even think anyone would look that closely, the lighting is part of the sculpture, Midnight helped me set it up just right,”

“I had to spend a while looking at it from all angles, and I was amazed at just how much the perspective changes,” Shinsou took your hand in his and shook it, “I’m glad it was your art, because-”

You waited a moment for him to continue but he didn’t, “What is it? You can be honest,”

“Because it reminds me of you,” Shinsou said quietly, “Beautiful,”

That sent the blush that had been creeping up your face straight to your ears and your voice came out as a sputter of sounds. That drew a laugh from Shinsou that surprised you. He wasn’t the kind of guy to just burst out laughing, but here he was laughing at your nervousness so openly.

“I shouldn’t laugh, sorry,” He said after he regained composure.

“It’s fine,” you cut in before he could say more to embarrass you, “I like the sound of it, your laugh I mean,”

It was Shinsou’s turn to be surprised, and you didn’t miss the way his face changed colour before he put you under his quirk’s control.“Just stand still for a moment,” he told you as you froze in place obediently, even though you wanted to berate him for using his quirk now of all times, “Jeez, this isn’t exactly how I wanted to confess, but I can’t really see a way around it now,” You felt his control slip as he settled his hands lightly on your arms, squeezing them slightly before letting them slide down to link your hands.“I don’t really think I want a way out, do you?” You hummed looking up at him, sharing a moment of eye contact before his gaze fell again to your hands clasped together warmly.

“No, I like this,” he nodded slowly. It looked to you like he was waking up from a long sleep and you itched to be able to draw this moment so you could keep it forever, but you couldn’t bring yourself to scratch that itch, especially when he stepped closer, closing the space between you and slipping his hands around your waist, still holding you gently as if you were made of the same glass you used for your sculpture.

“I won’t break,” you let yourself press closer, your faces centimetres apart, “Will you?” you almost whispered as his head seemed to drift closer to yours.

You always imagined your first kiss would be explosive, full of sparks and fire. That had seemed like the perfect first kiss, the one all the girls at your middle school had raved about having behind the gym or in a supply closet, not that you’d really believe these girls really had liked the boys that much as the declarations came with a scoff and an inevitable denial.

This was different. This was perfect. You barely registered when your lips met, but suddenly he was so close and it was gentle and warm. This was a boy you genuinely liked, holding you and kissing you, somehow able to express himself so thoroughly with such a small gesture.

“Shinsou,” you sighed as you broke apart but when he shook his head, you had to smile and fix your error, “Hitoshi,”“F/N” he grinned, clearly satisfied with the situation at hand.

[flowers-in-your-dustbin]

All the numbers again (second tag reblog)

1: When you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? More milk than cereal cause I like to drink it!

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? Yeah, but when I can get into the warmth after that's even better!

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? I try to remember the page number instead so usually end on a multiple of 10 or 5.

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? Tea: Two sugars, milk, hopefully brewed by the gal. Coffee: I don’t!

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? Kinda!

6: do you keep plants? Nope!

7: do you name your plants? None to name!

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? Oils if I had the money for that so typically watercolours

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? I am right now.

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? Typically side, but back is fine. Not stomach really!

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends? Oh My Gouda.

12: what's your favorite planet? Uranus ;)

13: what's something that made you smile today? My gal surprised me with a beautiful orchid

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? Edgy expose brick aesthetic

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! Uranus’ blue glow is due to an abundance of methane which filters out red light.

16: what's your favorite pasta dish? Spaghetti carbonara probs! Especially cooked by the best.

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? I don’t! I did want pastel pink in August.

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. I had a paddy fit in primary school because I used to always sabotage my meals so I didn't eat them but I spilt milk on something I legitimately didn’t mind having... I cried over spilt milk.

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? I do! I write the days events and my feelings, I draw key points or little objects. Not all the time tho.

20: what's your favorite eye color? A nice hazel-y to chocolate amber brown woop

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. A grey Kanken Fjallraven, if Switzerland counts as hell, there you have it.

22: are you a morning person? Yeah! I’m straight too!

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? Exactly that, nothing. With a side of music.

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? Only the one.

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into? An abandoned slaughterhouse. Soz vegans

26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit? Black old skool vans hehe original

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor? Strawberry!

28: sunrise or sunset? Why not both in a day?

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? I’m not sure!

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? I’m not sure, close calls/

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. I like socks. Weird socks are fun. So are odd ones. I do not sleep with my socks, nor do I confine myself to white sock hell.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. We had deep convos for the time, we probs cried, then probs went to sleep.

33: what's your fave pastry? Uh choux just cause I can remember that is one. Hahahaha.

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? I had one called Baxter Bear which was the best, he was quite obviously a bear with a red scarf and his own passport. I threw up on him in the car and he was never the same again, he disappeared short after. Don’t ask about Scrubs the dog.

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? I do, I just don't use them often.

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now? The xx

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? A healthy middle.

38: tell us about your pet peeves! Couldn’t possibly. There’s a fair few.

39: what color do you wear the most? Probably black? Emo ik.

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you? I own a necklace I got for my 16th its very cute and only comes out when I have heterosexual days to masquerade it. It’s nice.

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving? The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, it’s my favourite ever. I don’t read as much as I used to, sigh.

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! There’s a cute local one. They do unreal Nutella pancakes and its quite central and very aesthetic-y. Yum!

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? My gal, typically on the way to my car where I point out Orion or The Dipper. It’d be nice to do it properly sometime.

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? Two days ago.

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? When I need to.

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. Someone mentions a dog, then I normally incorporate the word ‘ruff’ as a homophone for ‘rough’ and get death stares. But I like it.

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? Gherkins.

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? Abandonment/loneliness hahahah yes it is.

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? I do like buying records yeah! I can’t say until April the 23rd but I’ll have bought another by then.

50: what's an odd thing you collect? I don’t think I do have anything odd!

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? Uncomfortable by Wallows, as well as Fast Food by D.I.D and many many more.

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? The new Patrick one is doing pretty good.

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? Nope, nope, nope and nope!

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? My dog. I didn't walk him.

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point? Hahahah you wouldn’t want to know. 

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? Feeling secure with them, if you get me.

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? CAN YOU DO THE FANDANGO!?!?!

58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? K is probs the wine mom bc I'd say A but she’s not as sensible, thus A gets the Aunt role.

59: what's your favorite myth? Bulls hate red, they’re actually colour blind lmao.

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? I don’t mind a bit of poetry! Marking Time by Owen Sheers is noice.

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received? Me and mum put a fancy brooch in a pack of digestives for someone. I’ve received stupid spellings of my name on the birthday cards.

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? Nope

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? Rainbow order woop.

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? Black.

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with? Yep!

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? Cutesy and white and blue and stuff idk. But I wouldn't wear one haha.

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? Serene! Albeit Silent Hill-esque

68: what's winter like where you live? Fun! Cold! Disruptive!

69: what are your favorite board games? The Game of Life/Monopoly/Articulate!

70: have you ever used a ouija board? Nope!

71: what's your favorite kind of tea? English Breakfast, brewed by the girlfriend.

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it? I've been known to be.

73: what are some of your worst habits? Overthinking. Nail biting.

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. Ginger.

75: tell us about your pets! A doggo! A beagle! and a fish...

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't? Revising!

77: pink or yellow lemonade? Yellow

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? anyone in the fanclub needs natural selection to do its thing.

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? Surprised me at work with flowers.

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? White, because I’d like grey but we haven’t got there yet or painted the house since its still pretty new.

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. I don't have the time for that shit.

82: are/were you good in school? I was! I still think I am! Who knows.

83: what's some of your favorite album art? Smithsmithsmithsmithsmiths

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? Yeah! Quite a few. All tonal, but above all a Venus sign and more importantly the great wave off Kanazawa by Hokusai

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? I don't fun fact I used to read them start to feel sick.

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? I feel stupid for not knowing what they are.

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? Donnie Darko.

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? Not Gothic. Can’t go wrong with a bit of impressionism.

89: are you close to your parents? I think. Depends on the time of day.

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. Starts with E, ends in Dinburgh.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? Nowhere abroad really, just a couple of good cities.

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? Barely sprinkles, but I have a drowner with me to compensate.

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most? Down. Full stop. 

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? My girlfriend’s. mum!

95: what are your plans for this weekend? Work, a party, a Harry Potter film, a sad Sunday.

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? I leave them for as long as possible

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? ENFJ/Pisces/Ravenclaw

98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? Hah idk.

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Nude - Radiohead is the one I’m thinking at the mo’ and I can’t think past that.

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? Future. Don’t need to lament on the past when I hope I have a good one ahead of me. Then from there I'd click 5 back so I’m right back to where I am, cheers.

[calypxoart]

COMMISSIONS ARE: OPEN!

     Hey! I’m sure you’ve heard the spiel -- artist, looking for work, extra cash, blah blah. I don’t wanna bore you with the details. Point is, my commissions are open! If you’ve got something you want drawn, chances are, I’m your gal! Just send in a message, and we can work out the details.      My prices are as follows ~

PORTRAITS & ILLUSTRATIONS

     SKETCHES          Bust: $8          Half: $12          Fullbody: $16

     CLEAN LINES         Bust: $12         Half: $18         Fullbody: $35

     COLOURS         Flat: +$5         Full (Cel Shaded): +$10         Full (Soft Shaded): +$15

     EXTRAS         BG - Simple: FREE                includes a flat colour/pattern or a simple square/circle in the bg,         BG - Complex: from $35 to $50+       ��        can include additional props, a setting, etc. whatever you want.                i don’t love doing them & will not apologize for this price i’m sorry         Props: Varies                Props are extra items - furniture and decor, for example - that are not                included in your basic character design. What constitutes a prop can                 vary, & as such, the price does as well.         +Character: +50%               for example, an extra character on a clean line half body would be +$8

CHARACTER DESIGNS, REFS, & SHEETS

    OUTFIT REF - $15          Includes: 1 Chibi style base with 1 hair style and 1 outfit.                           Flat colours. Clean Lines. 

        +Hairstyle: $2          +Outfit (With reference): $3         +Outfit (Custom Design): $6

   CHARACTER SHEET - $65         Includes: 2 Fullbody portraits (3/4 front & back or right & left)                          1 hair style and 1 outfit.                           Up to 4 detail close ups (eyes, tattoos, props, etc)                          Colour Palette                          Flat colours. Clean Lines.

       +Fullbody Pose/Turn around Position: $16        +Expression(s): $5/per           +Outfit ref(s) & Chibi base: $8                     +$3/Outfit (Includes hairstyle)                    +$5/Outfit (Custom Design)       +Outfit ref(s) & full style base: varies                   +$16 if different pose than basic portrait                   +$5/Outfit (Includes hairstyle)                   +$10/Outfit (Custom Design)

THE DETAILS:

I reserve the right to refuse any commission, for any reason. Thank you for understanding. 

Prices can vary depending on the complexity of your request. I reserve the right to charge more based on how difficult a request will be to complete, as it will take me longer to do it for you. This will be communicated to you up front. I will never change a price after the fact.

These will be done in batches of 5, meaning that once I have 5 commissions lined up, you will be placed on a wait list! 

I do work two jobs in addition to these commissions, so it can take a couple weeks minimum, at times, to receive your work. If you would like a piece by a specific deadline, please discuss this with me before hand, so I can judge whether or not I can meet this deadline for you

Payment is accepted through Paypal only. You do not have to pay up front, however, you’ll receive only low quality, cropped, and perhaps watermarked screenshots of the work until the transaction has been completed. For orders over $25, I may request at least half up front.

I can work off of any combination of references, be they art of the character, descriptions, or compiled reference images. I may charge more for work based entirely off of descriptions, as it is more time consuming & difficult. 

You can contact me via IM, asks, or through my e-mail, calypxoart@gmail.com. I am also available through DeviantArt!

If you would like, I can upload your image to redbubble or teepublic, which would allow you to purchase t-shirts, bags, and stickers of the art! This cost would be in addition to the commission price, however, as I have no way of sending these physical items through any outlet other than these sites. 

I reserve the right to post your commission to my blog, and use it for promotional purposes as I deem fit. I will never claim ownership over a character’s design, should I not create it specifically for you, and I will not duplicate a design once it has been sold, or re-purpose it for use. I do, however, retain all rights to my art itself.

You may, of course, request to remain anonymous as the commissioner.

[ruthemerymedia]

Locations for Filming

Today we visited the three main locations we plan to shoot our music video: Stokes Croft in Bristol, Weston Super Mare beach and my brother’s bedroom. 

Stokes Croft

Here we were looking for some explosive and stimulating graffiti/street art that is also relevant to the narrative of our piece. The idea behind this location is to visually represent the chaotic nature of Lola’s internal battle with her identity, and so we set about looking for frantic and busy works of street art to look imposing and tower over our protagonist. 

This is the idea behind the ‘Blue Mountain’ location, as we plan to shoot our lead actor running passed the onslaught of colour when they realise how important it is for them to embrace who they are. 

The Cherry Lane street sign was something we stumbled across while we were out scouting for locations. We want it in our final piece because it relates to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of intertextuality in music videos, and how some music videos will reference other relevant pieces of media in order to widen the audience and appeal to the mainstream. Here, the reference is a little more self-involved, acting as a little nod to the alternate version of ‘Lola’ which has the lyrics “cherry cola” instead of “coca cola”.

We also came across the barbed wire one our way to a different location and thought we could incorporate it really fluidly into our piece. The barbed wire, like in many existing symbols, represents how Lola feels trapped by her lack of clarity on her own identity. Though I’m not a massive fan of the aesthetic of the Salvation Army sign in the background, the placement of the crucifix behind the barbed wire could represent the oppression imposed upon LGBTQ+ members by organised religion, Christianity in particular.

Guys and Gals hair salon is along Stokes Croft highstreet and is perfect for the themes of gender we are exploring in our coursework. We plan to have Josh (Lola) run past this, like in the Blue Mountain location, and sync it to the lyrics “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls” from the song. This is a form of amplifying a specific lyric. 

We knew we wanted to visit this location before we went to Stokes Croft after finding images of it online. Like much of the graffiti in Stokes Croft, the political edge to this piece is ideal of the tone and themes of our music video. However, we were a little disappointed when we got there to find that the bottom bit had been covered up by concert posters. It’s a shame that we missed out on the powerful statement “Justice Everywhere”, but the mis-en-scene of the peeling posters and random squiggly graffiti makes for an equally interesting and stimulating backdrop, especially because our target audience will consist of a lot of music nerds who would appreciate these posters as part of the shot.

We found this alleyway quite early on in our hunt for filming locations. I think it’s an ideal composition for showing how Lola is ‘walled in’ by ignorance and self-loathing, the towering red-brick walls creating a very narrow pathway on which to tread. Like the barbed wire, it symbolises how she feels trapped, the mess of graffiti either side reflecting the chaos in her mind.

In spite of the poor spelling in this piece, we all agreed it was still a good location to represent Lola as a victim and how she carries guilt just for struggling with who she is. The graffiti that accompanies this location is colourful to offset the bleakness of the focal sentence. Also, the biblical connotations of “Forgive Us Our Trespasses” acts as another jab at the church for their continued and historic abuse towards people of an “nontraditional” sexuality. 

Weston Super Mare

The purpose of this location is to contrast with Stokes Croft as it is meant to represent Lola reaching a resolution to her conflict. Therefore, we wanted a long stretch of empty beach but one that still maintained an element of griminess that’s present throughout our piece. Weston beach is plenty grimy. 

Though it’s famous for its pier, we intend to keep these shots as devoid of human settlement/activity as possible. This way, we can really push the idea of Lola finding a place she can truly be herself without the scrutiny of the outside world. The impressive size of the beach and flatness of the sea is perfect for creating a serene and open atmosphere that contrasts with our other two locations. To get the shots we want, we will have to monitor the tides and establish shooting days in accordance with that.

Finally, for our digipak, we plan to include a number of things written or drawn in sand. The cover is potentially going to be ‘Lola’ written in the sand (similar to picture below) or something of the sort. After completing the drawings for the storyboard under the guidance and direction of my group, I’m confident we’ll have the artistic skill and creativity to make the digipak fit our video perfectly.

Ned’s Room

For these shots, we wanted a bedroom that was a bit more chaotic and grimy than the generic bedroom location. We decided on my brothers room because its graffiti-strewn walls and overall aesthetic fits our tone and the rest of our locations. Like the sand drawings at Weston beach, I thought we could make draw our own graffiti on the walls and include it in our digipak.

There is also an equally grotesque area of decking just outside facing a field. This gives us the opportunity to incorporate some nice establishing shots of the countryside before we move indoors. We also plan to shoot here when it is relatively dark out and intend to set up some fairy lights to make it a little bit more visually pleasing.

[raimon-as]

CINE1102: Portfolio

Introduction:

This report analyses the research, design and development I have made and used to contribute to our Animation project. Our animation is about the impact that pollution has on our oceans and is meant to raise awareness about the damage plastic causes to ocean life.

This report features four parts; the ILP document, research, evaluation and finally, the portfolio.

The independent learning plan (ILP) contains my roles, learning outcomes, mark breakdown and milestone development.

The research section studies the secondary research, how I applied that research, reasons why I made the different design decisions and how it led to the final product.

The evaluation is a run-through of our ideas, how the animation production went, how the group worked, the problems that arose and how we solved them and finally, any improvements that I think I could’ve made in my work.

The portfolio showcases the post-processing volume and its components,  fluid dynamics/water physics, caustics, cinematics and the final animation.

Roles:

Raimon Wenz – Unreal Engine Developer/Cinematics

Maninderpal Rajbansh – Pre-Production Artist/Animation Director

Benedict Kpaku – Character Artist/Animator

Eduardo Gal – Secondary Character Artist/Story Designer

Maris Zaharevics – Environment Artist/Designer

Darren Pagado – FX Artist/Lighting

Samuel Fagboyegun – Sound Designer

Callum Watt – Prop Artist

Individual Learning Plan

[Updated: 19/05/19]  - I made a slight change in my mark breakdown scheme; the caustic lighting marks have been reduced to 10% and the cinematics were increased to 25%, but the rest of my ILP has stayed unchanged.

Overview

After I graduate, I mainly want to work on creating 3D models and since I started the course, it’s what I’ve always wanted/planned on doing. But after working on Unreal Engine last year in Games Design Principles, I was very interested in this software and am strongly considering working for a company (probably a studio that made games) that needed someone who knows how to use UE4, so the role that I have chosen for this project is to be the Unreal Engine Developer.

“Unreal Engine Developer” is too broad a term when talking about specific roles in the group, so I divided that into the primary roles and secondary roles; my primary roles are creating the fluid dynamics, post-processing volume and cinematics while my secondary roles are creating the caustic lighting and building the scene/combining projects into one project in UE4.

Since I am the UE developer, the main software I will be using is Unreal Engine 4 to create this underwater scene and probably won’t need to use any other software throughout this project. But I may need to create my own textures for the water plane and caustics materials instead of using the free ones provided by Epic Games on the Marketplace, so if I do that, then I will need to use either Photoshop or Substance Designer to create them.

All these roles require both a good understanding of Unreal Engine and oceans in real life, so I would need to study and do a lot of research on how all these different pieces work and fit together in order to create an accurate and realistic underwater scene, which will be done mostly through watching tutorials on YouTube or Pluralsight.  

Roles and Learning Outcomes

My primary roles are to work on the fluid dynamics (creating water planes that represent ocean waves and making use of Gerstner Waves to simulate a more realistic ocean), post-processing (volume box that gives the screen a blue hue to simulate water, as well as having other nice effects such as depth of field, specular bloom, ambient occlusion, lens flares and more)and the cinematics (camera movements and positioning using either the Matinee tool or the Sequencer tool in UE4), while my secondary roles include creating the caustics (light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface that appear on the sand/ocean floor) and finally, being the UE4 scene builder (combining everyone’s work and putting them all into one project in Unreal and ensuring that everything fits together and that there are no bugs once everything has been merged, as well as creating any needed blueprints).

CINE1102 Learning Outcomes:

1.      Relate disparate areas of practice together into a cognate form

2.      Manage the production of a short animation

3.      Experiment, using research, with advanced animation concepts

4.      Demonstrate skills in advanced animation techniques (motion capture, physical simulations, dynamics etc),  

5.      Evaluate their work based on professional industry standard outputs and expectations

My in-depth research into the other fields (especially the one about Gerstner Waves) meet LO1 because it applies Mathematics and Physics into my field, which is Art and it puts all these into a cognate form because the equations that were used in those other fields could be directly translated and applied into Unreal’s blueprints to create the Gerstner Waves.

LO2 is met through one of my secondary roles, which is the UE4 scene builder; this learning outcome is met because doing this role would requires me to manage the pipeline in Unreal Engine by asking and checking my peers for their separate work and then combining all those into one project seamlessly.

I have met the third and fourth learning outcomes by researching about fluid dynamics/water simulations and looking at how they move in real life and trying to recreate those movements through an animation in Unreal. I also applied that research into my projects by creating multiple prototypes (while documenting each one through screenshots/screen recordings) and adding improvements in each version as I learn more and expand my knowledge on the subject as time goes by.

LO5 will be met once the we have put all the pieces together and made any final touches to make it up to par with industry standards but overall, I am very happy with my progress and of course the whole group’s progress so far. At this rate, we would be able to create an amazing final animation with a more realistic underwater scene and characters and will be looking forward to the final piece.

Mark Breakdown

I want to be marked on all five of my roles and will specify exactly what part of that role I would like to be marked on to avoid any confusion. They all have different weightings and purposes towards the final piece, but I want all of them to be marked based on the accuracy and realism of their look and feel in creating an underwater scene and I want them to be as natural and as close to the real thing as possible.

Fluid Dynamics/Water Physics – 30%

The main factor that I want to contribute towards my work will be the water plane that represents ocean waves, which will be by creating Gerstner Waves, which I have shown and explained in depth in my research portfolio. I want to be marked on the waves’ movements and aesthetics; I want the waves to move like real waves and I want there to be variation (speed/height) depending on the scene i.e. calm waves during a sad scene and perhaps raging waves during a tense moment in the story.

Post-Processing Volume – 25%

I want to be marked on the different elements that are contained within the PP volume, which are the depth of field, specular bloom, ambient occlusion, lens flares, vignette blur, screen distortion and most importantly, the colour of the volume that gives it the blue hue to replicate the colour of the ocean when viewed from underwater.

Cinematics – 25%

For cinematics, I want to be marked based on the fluidity of the camera movements, positioning and any camera cuts from scene to scene.

Caustic Lighting – 10%

As mentioned previously, caustics are the light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface that appear on the sand/ocean floor, so I want to be marked on how they look as well as how they move and whether they look and feel natural compared to the real thing.

Combined Final Scene – 10%

This final part refers to the look of the final scene and how well and seamless I have combined everyone’s work together into one project in Unreal, therefore everything should look like they were all made together and be the same scale and not separate i.e. no piece stands out in a negative way/be out of place and they should all help contribute into creating the simulation of an underwater scene.

Milestone Development

For future work, my next step is to add the initial assets created by my group members, mainly the god rays/particle effects that Darren created as well as building the environment by adding corals/rocks that Maris created. We may also consider creating a GitHub repository in a couple of weeks as by then, my other group mates would’ve made much more content, which they may want to add into the project themselves but then be adjusted by me later on to make sure everything fits together perfectly. I plan on finishing this on December.

Aside from that, I will need to investigate perhaps adding a fisheye lens and whether this effect is achievable in Unreal Engine; a fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that creates this strong distortion that is intended to produce a panoramic image. I got this idea from the image above between my screenshot and the image I found online where the online image has this slight curvature whereas mine is flat and I think adding a fisheye lens would help further improve the illusion of having a camera underwater. I also plan on finishing this on December, since I expect this to be a quick addition.

I will also need to do more research on my own work to see if there are any other effects, I could add to improve my work and add more realism to create an even more convincing water simulation. The main thing I plan on doing research on is the Gerstner waves, which I discussed in depth earlier in the “Gerstner Waves” section. I plan on finishing this on January/February.

I also plan on adjusting the caustics and trying to achieve the same quality as Timothy Cole’s caustics, which I talked about earlier and will be looking around to see if there are better alternatives to what I have now. This should be finished on January too.

I will be paying close attention to the release of Unreal Engine v4.22 and for the addition of RTX support on Unreal Engine since its release is rumoured to be by the end of the year, although realistically, I wouldn’t expect it to be released until January/February next year. Once RTX support is released in 4.22, I will be installing the new version of UE4 and copy and transfer our underwater scene that we have now onto it and will be testing out the ray tracing and comparing it with our current scene in UE4 4.20 and see if there is any major difference between the two versions. If there no difference or only a small difference, then I will be keeping the current scene in version 4.20 since it won’t be worth it to spend time transferring and potentially fixing any possible bugs or incompatibility issues that may arise when using the new version of UE4 but if there is a big, noticeable difference, then I will be transferring everything onto the newer version of Unreal and fix any incompatibility issues that may come up due to them being made in an older version of Unreal. If I do go through with the transfers and the fixes for the new version, then I predict that this might take some time and may take 1-2 months to fix/finish, depending on the issues (if there are any), which will be February/March (assuming that RTX support is released in late December/early January). Although not as important as the other factors, it would still be nice to implement ray tracing into our animation for the added ‘eye candy’.

Once the animators and modellers have finished their models/animations and are ready to export as an .fbx, I will be working on implementing them into my project and putting everything together and once everything is in place, I will need to check for any errors such as missing textures or buggy animations and if I find any, I will need to try fix them and let my peers know as they may have exported it wrong or didn’t include textures, etc. Once everything is imported in Unreal and ready with no problems present, I will be ready to create the cinematics for our project and work on the camera placements/movements and ensure that we get the perfect angles for each shot of the scene and make sure that it’s appropriate for the emotions of the scene i.e. during the sad scene at the start, camera movements should be slow. I predict that these will be done by March/April, depending on the speed/workflow of the animators/modellers and any potential problems that may arise, such as the errors that I previously stated.

The deadline for this animation is on the 20th of May so I expect everything to be ready and for May, I plan on only doing the final touches to our animation, so I will be refining everything, like the values of parameters in nodes or adjusting the direction of a light slightly or fixing any last-minute problems that may come up. Once everything is finished and is of good quality and everyone is happy with how it looks, it will be time to render out the animation and export it, which shouldn’t take more than a few hours since it’s only a short animation and because Unreal renders out animations quick. After the animation has been rendered, the VFX guys (Paul, Darren, Ben) may plan on doing some final touches in Nuke for post-production and apply some minor, final changes to the animation and again, render and export it afterwards for submission.

Portfolio

Fluid Dynamics/Water Physics [30%]

Gerstner Waves

“In fluid dynamics, a trochoidal wave or Gerstner wave is an exact solution of the Euler equations for periodic surface gravity waves. It describes a progressive wave of permanent form on the surface of an incompressible fluid of infinite depth.”

Version 1

This is the basic water plane I had in the previous portfolio and it was just a Sine wave - its movements were just it going up and down as well as a panning texture.

Version 2

The water plane’s waves above moves from left to right, which means it moves more dynamically now and is starting to become a Gerstner wave.

Version 3

This is the blueprint for the Gersnter function and this material will be referenced by the Gerstner wave material throughout and it makes editing values easier as you only need to adjust the parameters (small green boxes) in the screenshot below instead of going through lots of nodes to make a small change above. The main benefit of referencing a material function (especially one that uses this many parameters) is to streamline the adjustments of values and to make this easier and quicker for me.

Sine Wave & Gerstner Wave Comparison

(Hailey Williams, 2017)

I created a comparison video to show the difference between a Sine wave and a Gerstner wave. The video clearly shows a big difference between the two waves and the motion of the waves from the Gerstner waves are closer to that of waves in real life, which is why I’ve been striving to achieve this effect since the beginning and didn’t want to settle with having a simple wave despite finishing the Sine wave ahead of schedule.

The Sine waves only have a simple up and down movement of the plane but the water itself looks very stiff as the plane never bends in any area, making it look very unrealistic whereas the Gerstner wave on the right has “bumps” and the plane isn’t just a flat and stiff model going up and down, but instead moves in all three axes, making it have more dynamic movements thus helping it look more believable and realistic.

The final version of the waves looks like the one on the right, except of course for the change in opacity as if I recorded the translucent plane, it wouldn’t be very visible here and will be hard to notice.

Mathematical Equation Breakdown

Since the Gerstner wave is the component that I spent most of my time on during this project, I will be going to extra detail about it, especially since there is a lot of Math and Blueprints involved and will be going through each section/node of the equation/Blueprints one by one.

(Finch and Worlds, 2007)

This is the complete equation shown in Blueprint form that shows the full blueprints in the Gerstner Wave Function (separate from the actual Material) which is referenced by the main Gerstner Wave material (later moved/combined to the Water Plane material). The nodes in the blueprint have been labelled according to their mathematical counterpart using the Comment node.

Key Terms

Dᵢ (Direction) – The Direction determines which way the waves are moving and is controlled by the values in the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) masks.

Wᵢ (Wavelength) – The Wavelength determines how big the gap between each wave is and how far apart each waves appear.

ഴᵢt (Speed) – The Speed determines how fast the waves move.

Qᵢ (Steepness) – The Steepness determines how steep the crests of the wave will be.

Aᵢ (Amplitude) – The Amplitude determines how high or low the waves will be.

This section is the inner function and is used to multiply to the rest of the equation in the X and Y axis. It contains the direction (which way the wave flows), the wavelength (size of the gap between each wave), speed (speed of the waves) and time (how often waves are made).

The steepness and amplitude control the steepness of the crests of the waves and the height of the waves respectively. and are combined together using the multiply node, to represent the X in the equation snippet above.

The X and Y were simply just mask nodes (R [red] for X and G [green] for Y) and both left sides are connected to the Direction node from the Inner Function above and the right nodes are multiplied together to make a float to be then connected to the final output.

Blueprint Breakdown

World Displacement (Gerstner Waves)

The World Displacement node is responsible for simulating Gerstner Waves; it uses multiple Gerstner Function and while they all look similar (except for the colours) from afar, if examined up close, each one actually has slight variations in the value of e.g. the number of waves or direction. This was duplicated and edited repeatedly four times (two functions for each wave group) because it gives the waves slight differences between each cycle. 

Real waves rarely behave the exact same way each time (slight variations between them such as different heights, speed, etc), so by creating multiple functions, I am recreating this “chaos” and giving the waves alterations.

World Position Offset

The World Position Offset node is what makes the plane go up and down - but not to be confused with the wave up and down movement as this is just a basic movement that makes the whole plane change in Z axis whereas the Gerstner waves affect all three axis. 

Its equivalent in real life would be the shoreline of e.g. a beach; water pulls and pushes towards the sand in a beach and the World Position Offset imitates this, just without the shore. 

Normal

The Normal node gives the water plane the actual wave pattern that you see in the scene - without it, the water plane would simply be a basic shade of whatever colour is set in the Base Colour node.. The pattern it displays would depend on what texture in set in the texture sample (purple boxes) and I added a panner node to these so that they wouldn’t just be stagnant as waves are constantly moving and having a pattern that doesn’t move in any way would look very unrealistic. 

Base Colour

This section gives the water plane its blue colour which is blended together in the Lerp node. Two hues of blue are used here, one being darker/lighter than the other and this was done to give variation between the wave colour and the lighter colour serves as a ‘highlight’ and provides colour to the darker hue. That same lighter colour is the one that appears at the “tip” of each wave peak, which is seen in some of the screenshots/videos present in this document. 

If you’ll notice, it has the same nodes in the left half of the screenshot as the nodes used in the Normal node. This is because they share the nodes from the Normal node; aside from being connected directly to the Normal slot in the parent node, it is also connected to the Normal slot in the Fresnel node of the Base Colour - its purpose is to provide the Lerp with an Alpha node.

Opacity

The Opacity node changes the transparency of the water plane and helps it blend more with the scene. Water in real life is transparent (varying transparencies depending on type, location, content, etc), so I made sure that I didn’t forget to make mine transparent too. This is a very important part of the water plane because if I left this left and set the water plane to opaque, the directional light from the sun would not be able to pass through and therefore cast a big shadow below the plane, therefore making the whole scene unlit.

I came back to this and added the RadialGradientExponential node towards the end of the project because I noticed that the wave horizon looked very flat once inside the scene and since planes are unaffected by the Depth of Field, the plane edges looked strong and had to be toned down a bit. This was my solution to that problem and aside from giving it a very slight blur, it also doubles by turning the rectangular plane into a circular one - this gave the plane horizon a slight curve when viewed from inside the scene.

Roughness

The Roughness node and its elements adds a subtle effect that makes the texture, which makes it move softly along the water plane and give it some variation and also blends patches of waveform together with the Lerp node at the end. Essentially, the Roughness node makes the water very slightly murkier.

Post-Processing [25%]

Depth of Field

Instead of binding the depth of field to the post process volume, I moved it to the cameras instead as they had the same option and seemed to work better after a few test runs.

This was one of the screenshots from the testing phase and although present, the depth of field strength was a bit weak and barely blurred the furthest coral on the right.

After playing around with different values, I was able to achieve the nice depth of field effect seen above, which the team was really wanted to have in place since we started the project as it helped build the atmosphere. 

You may notice that the newspaper on the right is too clear despite being fairly far away - this is because the depth of field doesn’t seem to affect planes whatsoever (occurred in both the camera and post process depth of field), so there wasn’t really anything I could do about it except lower the opacity of the water plane so that it isn’t as strong, but obviously could not repeat this same step for the newspaper as the newspaper is opaque whereas the waves/water plane is translucent/see-through.

Underwater Colour/Hue

This was the underwater scene that I had showcased and presented in class (which was also posted in the previous portfolio) and I really liked the scene so far and so did the group, but we thought that the scene was too blue - since the story was about pollution, the screenshot above shows a hue of blue that you would normally see in a healthy ocean environment, so the plan was to make the ocean murkier and reduce the saturation to make the blue greyer and thus seem more fitting to a dirtier environment. 

Another problem with this colour was that the hue was too strong, especially on the sand. Everything in the scene look blue and the sand should not be blue, but yellow/white-ish. The texture of the sand was of normal sand colour, so the issue was the post process volume colour, which had to be changed to make the sand pop out more and have its natural colour.

After some adjustments, I was able to import some assets from Maris and Darren to create a test scene as well as add depth of field and as seen above, the water hue is less powerful and the sand is now its normal colour instead of being blue and the water is also murkier and dirtier now, as an effect of the pollution and was made by adding atmospheric fog and exponential height fog into the scene.

It may not be noticeable, but in this scene, the water is much murkier and looks more green. This was a design choice for me as at the start of the animation, the characters are in an open, deeper space, so in real life, the ocean would be much bluer there but as the animation progresses and more pollution is seen on screen, the colour becomes less blue and headed towards green, which is an effect of the pollution (more pollution = dirtier water) and at the final scene (screenshot above), the water is dirtiest as this is the area where the largest concentration of pollution is present in the animation, so I wanted the water colour to reflect that.

Cinematics [25%]

The cinematics involve all the camera movements, transitions, blurs and any other camera effects used which were made using the Matinee tool in Unreal. 

The screenshot above shows all the different component in a single Matinee Actor in the scene - each bound to different assets and each having different purposes. For example; the very top of the Matinee shows the Director Group and what that does is control which camera in the scene the Matinee follows, so this tab is responsible for the camera jumps and the specific time it jumps and specific camera it jumps to were all set by me and they were used mainly as a transition tool to go from one scene in the story to the next.

Most of the Matinee tool was pretty straight forward. The movement tracks (e.g. camera moves from point A to point B) were easy to do as they simply required me to pick a time frame in the Matinee, add a keyframe and then set values on the XYZ axis or manually move the object in the scene to determine the next location of the component.

The hard part was working with the imported Alembic animations that the 3D artists made as they all have set times on when the animation plays and how long it plays for. Some animations didn’t loop seamlessly too (issues with the import to UE4), so I had to find a clever way to work around these issues. A good example of this being accomplished is in the two screenshots above where the turtle is swimming just above the ocean floor; the issue I had here was that for this specific animation, the loop wasn’t seamless and looked “jumpy”, towards the end/start, so my fix was to have two separate models playing the animation once which will have a clean motion instead of one model with a looped animation with a clunky loop. I swapped the two models by routing the turtle behind the large rock in the middle of the screen and once the turtle from the first screenshot gets behind it, its animation stops and its visibility also goes down to 0, preventing it from being seen sitting idly as the camera pans to the right. The second turtle model (same animation) then appears (visibility goes from 0 to 1) and swims normally to the next destination, which I tried to match the speed and trajectory of the first turtle by to make the swap unnoticeable.

Caustics [10%]

To create my caustics, I watched a few different tutorials; each one using different techniques. I have four iterations of caustics and each one has improvements and looks better as it progresses.

The first and second versions were created last December and was included in my research portfolio but will be adding them here (along with the blueprints and accompanying comments/text) as well to show my progression from those versions to my latest one.

Version 1

��As you can see, it doesn’t look natural due to its jumpy movements, which isn’t what I wanted at all since I was imagining something that was more flowy, so I looked around for more tutorials and continued watching more tutorials of Matt Taylor as I already watched his first tutorial of a 3-part tutorial for creating an underwater scene (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8u7GONZzoY).” 

Version 2

“This tutorial had a much simpler code, yet it was more effective than the previous one and it is a lot smoother and more natural, which I am happy with. I have been tweaking with the values of the caustics too just like I do with every other tutorial-based material I have created to suit my scene better and the main value that I’ve been changing is the contrast and disturbance since these two parameter nodes control how “bright” the caustics are and in the image above, I think it looks a bit too “faded” and slightly unnoticeable but I concluded that it may have been due to the texture of the landscape that was causing that look and I was right because the caustics look a lot better in the improved version, which you can see later in the “Version II” section, especially in the screenshot that’s zoomed in on the sand.” 

Version 3

I made a few improvements on the second version as the caustics there were too wide and felt like it could use a lot more improvement, so I tweaked some of the values of the parameters in the blueprint above to achieve the caustics present in the screenshot above.

Version 4

The caustics still felt like they were too thick to me despite the changes made, so I decided that instead of just playing around with the values and achieving a similar result, I would try a different approach and start fresh.

(Timothy Cole, 2017)

“While doing more research and looking for inspirations and tutorials for better caustics, I came across this beautiful setup made by Timothy Cole; he created this in UE4 using materials just like I did, but his looks much better and although he doesn’t provide a step-by-step tutorial on how he created this, I will strive to replicate caustics of this quality.”

“I cheated and broke this light up into 3 lights, slightly offset from each other. Each one has the same material function, but are coloured red green and blue.”  

(Timothy Cole, 2017)

“His article included a video showing the caustics in motion and the movements were pretty similar to mine, but what makes his the better than mine is that his includes the minor details such as the small rainbow coloured effects that are next to the white light and I would like to mimic that same spectrum breakup and his article says how he did this, so I will be doing that same method.”

I looked back to this example from my previous research portfolio and really wanted to achieve something similar, so I used the same method he did and used a spotlight (the previous version of caustics used a decal actor instead and worked similarly to a volume box).

These are the new blueprints that I have used for the fourth and final version of the caustics.

I successfully recreated the caustics that Cole showcased and also added the RGB colour into the mix to simulate the light spectrum/prism of the sunrays piercing the water, which greatly improved its appearance and again, helped with the realism of the scene.

Like Cole, I also duplicated the spotlights (three in each group) and changed the colour of each to blue/green/red (one per group) and moved them very slightly so that the effect is clearly shown on screen.

Animation

Evaluation

Ideas

The idea we have agreed on revolves around pollution in the ocean caused by plastic; we wanted to create something that had meaning is a serious topic because our goal in this project is to not only create a beautiful animation, but also to raise awareness on what plastic is doing to our oceans.

Production

Production during this project went quite smoothly most of the time. We did have some bumps during the early/middle stages of the project due to a conflict between members on which story fits better, how it should look, etc - mostly about the design choices but once everything has been settled, our workflow improved. 

Group Work

I worked closely with most of my group members while working on this project - mainly Paul for the storyboard/animation timing, Maris for the environment building and Darren for the lighting/FX blueprints/settings, but especially Darren because aside from me, he will also be working purely inside Unreal Engine, unlike the others who will be using external packages such as Blender, Maya, Photoshop, etc.

In all my group projects that I have participated in, this was probably the one where I needed to communicate the most with other group members since I am the person who is in charge of putting everything together in Unreal, because it is important for me to know how each of their components will look so that I will be able to determine whether they fit into my scene and if they don’t then I can adjust the settings values/scale/placement/etc to make them more suitable and more compatible/seamless with the rest of the UE4 project.

Someone suggested to use Github to improve our workflow and make uploading/downloading the files easier and quicker (compared to something like Basecamp) due to the large file sizes involved in Unreal Projects (final size at the end of the project was ~3.75 GB). I believe Ed set up the Github repository and during our group meeting via phone call on Discord, I suggested that we use Sourcetree to manage their gits because I have used it in another project this year and has worked really well for me. Some members tried it but most had issues getting it running, which I tried to help them with and even recorded a “How To” video and sent it to them showing a run-through of the basics but at the end, we decided not to continue using Github because some members wanted to try another method as they weren’t too keen on anything git related as they have never used it before.

We moved on to using Google Drive, which we were all familiar with (so no issues there about how it works) and managed our Unreal files there while using Basecamp for smaller files like individual .fbx files or images. Switching to Google Drive also allowed us to access the files in university straight away whereas Sourcetree wasn’t available in Room 2001 and required an admin login to be able to install it. This resulted in the group coming into uni regularly and working together as a group, discussing game ideas, issues, suggestions, etc. It improved our productivity and made us output more work compared to each of us using our own individual computers at home.

Problems and Solutions

We only encountered a few problems throughout the project, which I have discussed in the ‘Production’ section above above the idea conflicts but only had minor problems thereafter. This was the case until (mostly) everyone was ready to import their work into my project in Unreal; we encountered a lot of problems in this stage near the end of the project - them mainly being the lighting build and errors in the baked animations (alembic files).

Lighting: Problems

I am not too clear on this problem as the members who were working on it didn’t know what happened or how to fix it but towards the middle-end of our project, we had some lighting issues where if you build the lighting in Unreal, some shadows showed up as black squares on certain angles but normal on other angles too.This shouldn’t be present in our end product as that would stand out very quickly and take away the attention of the audience from watching and enjoying our animation and instead focus on the anomalies occurring. 

This problem confused me because last year when I built the project from scratch and showcased it in my previous post, I had no issues whatsoever with the lighting and was able to build the lights quickly without it causing any issues. This has also never happened to me before when I was using Unreal so my best guess is what happened is that a member accidentally changed a setting or parameter somewhere in one of the main lights in the scene or even the project settings and caused the build to not work as its supposed to.

Lighting: Solutions

As I was unsure of what caused the problem, I also was unsure of how to fix it. I consulted Darren on this as he was in charge of lighting but he was also unsure on how to fix it. We tried deleting all the lights and adding them one by one again but the issue persisted so we concluded that it must’ve been related to the project settings. 

Normally, if this were the case where my project had an “unfixable” problem, I would’ve just restarted the Unreal project by creating an empty new one and migrating everything from the buggy project to the newly made one and making the necessary adjustments when importing assets e.g. reselecting/readding textures to the texture samples in the Material Blueprint. I created a fresh new project last December in fact but however, I couldn’t do this again this time as it was far too late and deep into the project to do that.

Our “solution” to this problem was to just leave the lights unbuilt as we agreed that the scene still looked nice and didn’t really notice much of a difference. The quality of the lights were still high and Darren was still happy on how his lights and fog looked despite this, so we left it unbuilt. 

Baked Animations: Problems

Members who have exported baked animations in the Alembic file format have had issues when importing them into Unreal Engine; some animations/meshes were broken (e.g. missing turtle body parts) while some animations weren’t playing correctly. Ben was the main artist who had problems importing his assets because not only does it take a long time to import .abc files (~30 minutes-1 hour depending on the object), he encountered multiple problems with how his turtle looked and moved; in some of his uploads, the eye balls were misplaced and were now under his mouth, in another import, his turtle was missing its mouth.

Baked Animations: Solutions

Our solution was to first import the .abc file into a fresh, blank Unreal project and then once imported, copy the .uasset file from the folder and then drag it into the designated folder in the main project. This solved the time/waiting issue as while I was waiting for the Alembic file to import, I couldn’t work on the file at the same time as it might mess up the save file on the drive due to conflicts.

Ben later figured out how to import his meshes correctly and get their animations to play properly by doing a trial and error of importing his assets into a blank Unreal project and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Improvements

The main improvement that I want to make in this project is the water plane; although the Gerstner waves already look good at the moment, I still think that it could be improved greatly based on the other examples I have seen e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3D0Q5BlOs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xtcQgeyRcU. In the future, if I were to work on something similar to this again, I will be aiming to have more realistic features added to the waves such as seafoam like in the examples above.

Reference

Cole, T. (2017). Working with Underwater Caustics in Real-Time. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/working-with-underwater-caustics-in-real-time/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

DokipenTech (2016). Unreal Engine 4 Gerstner Waves Livestream. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y7Z0MbGOMw [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Finch, M. and Worlds, C. (2007). Effective Water Simulation from Physical Models. [online] NVIDIA Developer. Available at: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems/gpugems_ch01.html [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Williams, H. (2017). Tutorial: Ocean Shader with Gerstner Waves. [online] 80 Level. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/tutorial-ocean-shader-with-gerstner-waves/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

[delightfully-daisy]

CHARACTER SHEET: DAISY AUDREY ELOISE CANARD

And she's been living on the highest shelf... Oh, and they come unstuck Lady, running down to the riptide Taken away to the dark side

[TW: sexual assault mentions; eating disorder mentions]

STATS

Birthday: 14 January 1995

Hogwarts House (Primary): Ravenclaw

Hogwarts House (Secondary): Hufflepuff

Myers-Briggs: ESFJ

Enneagram: Type 3

Height:  5’4

BACKGROUND OVERVIEW

Mother: Lilian Ophelia Marie Harcourt Canard

Father: Jacques Didier Canard

Mother’s Occupation: lawyer—business law

Father’s Occupation: stockbrocker

Family Finances: quite wealthy—combination of old money on both ends, as well as parents’ own ambitions and finances

Birth Order: middle child

Siblings: Nicolas Etienne Jeannot Canard (24); Andre Leon Charles Canard (19)

Other Close Family: Aunt Cecile on her dad’s side (who has a girlfriend and is like super cool and a movie producer); she has another aunt on that side who has two kids her and Nic’s ages but I don’t have my notebook on hand so I cant look up their names oh well; Lilian is an only child

Best Friend: Clarke

Other Friends: Annette Grant, Hermes Petros, Toulouse Bonfamille, Stanley Schell, Abby and Tabitha

Enemies: Tito? Lol she thinks so :C

Pets: a cat named Sabrina! Her family also has two dogs named Gigi and Fifi

Home Life During Childhood: her parents were both very busy, but she and her siblings were very close and her dad made a huge insistence on family time when they were together; to this day they have a designated week in late July and winter where they go on vacations together; she’s very close with Nic and her dad; Andre can be a bit of a brat; she clashed with her mother a bit growing up but she’s starting to understand her more

Town or City Name(s): Paris, France

What Did Her Bedroom Look Like: very nice and spacious, big windows with a nice view, she has a canopy bed, everything is in pastel colors, lots of whites and pinks—nothing too loud, everything soft like a Rococo painting, a big walk-in closet, a nicely lit vanity, the artwork in there is carefully selected, everything has its place

Any Sports or Clubs: did newspaper also probably a creative writing club; used to fence and do ballet, but quite around 13/14 years old

Favorite Toy or Game: loved paper dolls

Schooling: one last semester at Pride U; probably did some pretty expensive private school in Paris

Favorite Subject: Composition, Art History

Popular or Loner: Popular!

Important Experiences or Events: was sexually assaulted at 17, her then-boyfriend lied about it and harassed her for months after

Health Problems: undiagnosed anxiety, lowkey makes herself throw up after eating sometimes also

Culture: French

Religion and beliefs: Raised Catholic, she wants to believe in a benevolent God but does not really like the Catholic church; she wants to believe in the goodness of people

 PERSONALITY

Bad Habits:  worries, limits her food intake a lot haha, has a tendency to keep her emotions inside before lashing out, cries a lot

Good Habits: uh, organized, keeps up with her fitness, ambitious, kind-hearted (in her own way), stylish

Best Characteristic: determined—once she sets her mind on something or someone, she will not quit

Worst Characteristic: scared—her number one limitation in life is that she is too scared to take chances/take risks/do anything without security

Worst Memory: the whole sexual assault thing and also the night she broke up with Tito

Best Memory: oh gosh, probably getting her bike back

Proud of: not much lol, uh maybe her fashion sense, she’s like really insecure though and attributes all her successes to other factors, poor bby

Embarrassed by: e v e r y t h I ng have you seen how much this girl blushes

Driving Style: she’s a fantastic driver—fast, daring, drives stick-shift in heels, cuts tight corners on her motorcycle, she’s fab, best driver of my characters (except maybe for Eva, but that’s cuz Eva has heightened reflexes lol); does have a tendency to speed, but doesn’t do it except on isolated roads

Strong Points: determined, hard working, kind-hearted, stylish

Temperament: gosh im not sure its like a mix of sanguine and melancholic

Attitude: outwardly, confident and determined; inwardly, really fuckin’ anxious and insecure about everything

Weakness: she’s so insecure and not good with criticism and she’s soft little flower it is easy to crush her

Fears: everything—not being good enough is the main one though

Phobias: see above lol

Secrets: not too open about the whole sexual assault thing for obvious reasons, also he like harassed her for months afterwards

Regrets: every romantic relationship she’s ever had because it makes her seem stupid and heartless and foolish

Feels Vulnerable When: uh always? When she’s being emotional, tbh, since she’s been told to restrict that

Pet Peeves: people who assume she’s dumb, people who assume she’s shallow

Conflicts: oh gosh where to begin—the fact that she wants the world to be this good, ideal place where she has the ability to help it, but the reality that class differences/prejudices in other areas are very real and very hard to overcome; her own desire to do more with her life, but knowing that rejecting her family’s values would not be good, and she really loves her family; navigating being a soft woman in a world that otherwise respects hard, sharp ones

Motivation: She wants to be successful and to make a change in the world.

Short Term Goals and Hopes: Graduate, get a good job somewhere in a big city.

Long Term Goals and Hopes: Rise to the top of her career, hopefully get married at one point.

Sexuality: bisexual

Exercise Routine: goes to spin class three times a week, does a barre class twice a week, weight training the other days, very committed exercise schedule

Day or Night Person — Day.

Introvert or Extrovert — Extrovert.

Optimist or Pessimist — Pessimist, though she tries to be optimistic to other people.

LIKES AND STYLES

Music: girly pop, MUSICALS—she’s a huge musical gal, sings in the shower all the time. Loves taylor swift, knows that its problematic to love taylor swift, but does so in that well #feminism way that’s also lowkey problematic ahaha. Her iTunes is mostly musicals and pop and some classical music too, she likes ballet music.

Books: classics and romance novels; also some trashy YA romance; went through a John Green phase in her high school years; her favourite book is The Bell Jar. She also reads those like “Oprah Book of the Month” club books and enjoys them. Gets most of her reading list from bestsellers lists.

Magazines: VOGUE aka the Bible; also Cosmo and Marie Claire and other high-fashion magazines; whatever the French equivalent of Time is, but also Time; started a subscription to the New Yorker whilst she was in NYC and keeps up with it

Foods: has a sweet tooth—loves chocolate. Chocolate-covered strawberries are her favorite. She thinks she can handle spicy, but she can’t really.

Drinks: Margaritas are her cocktail of choice; she loves champagne and lattes

Animals: cats! Also she loves swans and thinks its so romantic that they mate for life, but she won’t admit that lol

Sports: follows Formula One racing tbh and also fencing

Social Issues: Feminism! (she’s like lowkey a bit of a white feminist) Magick Rights! (lowkey also a bit of a problematic activist in everything; she’s trying though) Also involved in environmental issues!! (she works on a turtle fund thing with Stan)

Favorite Saying: “I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.” – Audrey Hepburn

Color: Pink!! Any and all shades! Also likes a nice rose-gold. Fond of pastel colors in decorating.

Clothing: Has a very classy, preppy style; lots of skirts and blazers; usually always in heels; most everything is designer and high-end; she takes pride in her style; she also dresses more on the conservative end, but does own a few sexier pieces

Jewelry: very classy, never overdoes herself with jewelry; simple pendants and studs

Games: played the Sims a lot, played racing games with her brothers, Mario Kart fan too

Websites: Instagram—also has a finsta bc she’s hip; tumblr; Pinterest

TV Shows: Downton Abbey, Sex and the City

Movies: The Devil Wears Prada!! (Also Titanic)

Greatest Want: To be successful and make a difference in the world

Greatest Need: To overcome her fears

CURRENTLY 

Home: lives in Castle Suites in a very luxurious one-bedroom flat

Household furnishings: everything is impeccably decorated, lots of pastels and golds, there’s a big window in the living room (which has like white furniture and soft lights everywhere, big white rug on the floor, lots of throw pillows), her room has a big bed with lots of pillows and her closet is organized by type of clothes and colour

Favorite Possession: her car

Most Cherished Possession: her motorcycle

Married Before: Nope.

Significant Other Before: Tito (rip); asshole French boyfriend, Michel

Children: n/a

Relationship with Family:  huge Daddy’s girl, but Daddy is also very busy and not super around all the time and she doesn’t really confide in him; very close to older brother, Nic, sometimes they feel like they are the only people in the world they can trust; younger brother has a strained relationship bc he can be kinda douche but they love each other; relationship with mother is---complicated, they are very similar and often butt heads because of their differences though and Lilian thinks she knows what’s best etc etc and Daisy is just starting to see her mom in a new light

Car: BMW, she also has a motorcycle

Career: journalism student, editor-in-chief of campus magazine: Social

Dream Career: editor in chief of a fashion magazine that also has like a huge philanthropy side

Dream Life: said career, has not given much thought to the like actual life part of it, but ideally she’d like to be married to the love of her life and have two kids as well

Love Life: uh imma get back to you on that

Hobbies : reading, dancing (she loves dancing), driving, sketching fashions, cleaning (lol), amateur baker, used to be a fencer, writing (she used to write short stories but has not in a while)

Guilty Pleasure : those trashy Harlequin romance novels….

Sports or Clubs: Social, PrideU’s premier campus lifestyle magazine; probably involved in like journalism clubs

Talents or Skills : she’s a great dancer and a fantastic driver; also a good writer

Intelligence Level : she is great auditory learner, very sharp and quick to pick up what she listens too; writes the best out of my characters; reads a lot too; not great at sciences or math, but she tries her best and the hard work pays off; a fan of history, but only as it relates to cultural stuff (wars bore her); the most emotionally aware of others of my characters, can read people well

Finances: wealthy—parents are wealthy each from their individual families and from their own careers, pay for their children

[khemi]

Fishbowl Punch

So this is a story I wrote for a Discord Secret Santa, and I’m going to finally post it here! It’s kind of... a mix, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

Slickpaint, and a Solfef/Eriara mash. Cw for alcohol.

You realise you’re boned the moment she slaps some shine on your shoes and hands you a brand new tie like it’s a pleasant surprise instead of a portent of coming doom, all bright pink and the sort of thing you’d laugh off the face of the earth before putting on if it was being presented in any hands other than those soft round ones of hers that could hand you your best friend’s head on a stick and still get an earnest, aw, thanks doll in reply.

Either she knows that and is playing you like a fiddle or she doesn’t and is sincere in everything she does, and one is hot and one is cute and both just make your traitorous heart beat a little faster as you take the tie and loop it under your shirt collar and lean forward just enough she can reach up to you and do it up in a neat knot you absolutely couldn’t have managed with two hands, let alone one. Lousy knots. The woman’s a wizard at them, weaving ties and bows in shapes you’re pretty sure are non-Euclidean in nature, but if an Elder God ever comes knocking looking for some help dolling up for their prom they can take a hike because those magical hands and the bustling body of joy they’re attached to are taken, and adored right the fuck where they already are.

Dolling up is something best left to her, anyway, and she paints her face pretty as she paints a canvas, all subtle colours in the right places that are barely noticeable but could make a sculptor weep jealousy over the perfect shapes they come together to form. You call up into the bathroom if she’s going to wear that one dress, she knows, the sparkly one with the green. She asks you if you’re going to wear your nice eyepatch if she does.

You do not want to wear an eyepatch that makes you look like you’re some anime-obsessed twelve year old’s character on some shitty online collection of art that you have too much pride in yourself to know the name of. There’s a silence while you consider how best to let her down.

She’ll wear the headscarf you like with all the pastels, she calls down into the pause.

Well then.

It’s time to find your nice eyepatch.

You know you’ll find it right where you left it, shoved underneath everything else you never wanted to see again, like the full ream of love notes Clover kept posting through your door before he caught sight of that new guy with all the shouting and the hair that defies at least three laws of physics. The collection of letters seeking your wife’s affection- and also, to your continued distaste, your own- are pushed to one side and reveal a poster with your own face on it, like a further descent through the circles of hell that will end with an eyepatch or with eternal damnation, both of which would suit you about the same. The reward above your leering mug is severely out of date. There’s been at least four major incidents since then, and at least two extra zeroes slapped on the end by the powers that be.

What will be the third level of hell? You lift the poster and- oh. Er. You lift a hand to shove the lens of some imaginary viewing device aside, leaving the purely hypothetical viewer staring at a picture of the finest breed of dog ever bred, sitting on a cushion with a little tartan hat at a jaunty angle upon its noble head. If said viewer were to have briefly caught glimpse of any pictures of you in any kind of canine-based outfit, say the kind used by platonic connoisseurs of all things furred, you would tell them that first of all, they’re seeing things and no such pictures have ever existed, kid, shut your dirty lying mouth.

Secondly you would tell them that mouth better stay shut, or else.

No one can know.

Especially Droog.

And- Look, it’s not your fault that that gal at the store with the fuzzy ears was so persuasive when she started talking about that convention thing and the need for extra guests and discount rates and getting to experience the carefree life of a perfect Scottie-

Oh thank fuck there’s your eyepatch you’ve never been so happy to see it in your life.

After a little business, you return to the stairs just in time to find the missus slipping down it with all the grace her stout body can pack, dress clasped gently in one hand to lift it high enough it doesn’t get in the way of each of her steady steps. She smiles at you, cheeks dark and eyes surrounded with a pastel rainbow that sets off the dark colour in them nicely, and you’re halfway to a goofy smile back before she stops and sniffs once, then again, her eyebrows dropping with her dress and her arms coming into a tight fold over her chest.

What’s that smell, she asks you.

What smell, you say.

The smell of burning, she replies without a minute of time for your shit. And why is there ash on your fingers?

Spring cleaning, you tell her with a very serious nod.

What did you do.

You didn’t do a damn thing.

She said, what did you do.

You squeak. Damn, she’s got that look in her eye that says if you want to make it to the diner in one piece you better buck that shit right the fuck now or she’ll be packing what’s left of you in her handbag. She’s a feisty little thing, really.

You adore her.

Alright, alright, maybe you burned something, obviously accidentally, like some kind of incriminating photo that definitely, one hundred percent does not exist any longer, if it ever did. A tragedy! A disaster. How will you live without that unproven photograph haunting your every-

Was it the dog photo, she asks.

What dog photo? There is no dog photo. Was there ever a dog photo? You doubt it.

She smiles and finishes her descent, bustling past you with a very gentle pat to your arm.

Don’t worry, she says, she has copies.

Your wife is the single worst thing to ever happen to you. You set your jaw and roll your eye into the patch as you turn and sulk your way out behind her, pouting as she settles in the driver’s seat and reminds you that if she’d been looking for a child to take care of, she’d have gone looking for an adoption, not a wedding.

The place is basically empty when you show up, except for two assholes in the corner who both look like the only reason they’re even here is to hide from the fashion police and the laws of decency that forbid the wearing of stupid shades everywhere but mostly indoors- oh, and a group of kids who apparently haven’t heard dress codes have updated a little since the middle ages, given there’s one more cape involved than is acceptable in a modern public place, meaning there’s exactly one cape.

Of fucking course the waiter takes you to the table right next to them, ignoring the many, many empty tables that are literally everywhere else.

“-I’m not saying you can’t wear a cape in your own space,” one of the guys behind you is saying, slow and steady but not escaping the flat hiss the attempt at each s makes when it hits his teeth, “but that’s in your own space, where no one else has to experience its- what did he say?”

“Majesty,” a girl replies, tone so dead you’d think she was if she wasn’t speaking.

“Right, right, its majesty, because that’s totally a thing it’s got in droves.”

“My cape is fine,” hisses back becaped asshole, showing a staggering lack of self-awareness you thought only Deuce was capable of. “In fact it’s more than fine. They asked us to dress smartly and you’re all fuckin’ underdressed and jealous, that’s what you are.”

“Oh yeah. That’s exactly what’s happening here. I’m not embarrassed, I’m devastated by my stupid clothing choices that led to me being caught in this part of town without a cape. I must look like a beggar, barely able to afford a napkin for a makeshift cloak-”

“Put that down,” Cape hisses, informing you along with the chorus of giggles that a napkin had in fact probably made its way across Lisp’s shoulders. “God you wanna talk about embarrassments? You’re an embarrassment.”

“How can I argue with that? You are a professional in the field of huge fuck-ups.”

“You little piece of-”

“Can I get you a drink?” The waiter interrupts, and you’re almost annoyed at him for distracting you from the possible soap-opera in the making over your shoulder until you see your doll giving you a look and hastily sweep up the menu so you can jab at something without looking at what it is. “Oh- An excellent choice, sir. And for the lady?”

“Scotch,” she hums, and you stare at her as she adds that she’d like it on the rocks, maintaining eye contact with you the whole time as your brain filters Scotch to Scot to Scottie and you get the joke being made at your expense. Absolutely hilarious, you mutter at her once the waiter is gone. Her wink tells you she agrees.

You give it a reasonable pause before you filter back into the conversation playing out behind you, irritated to have missed some of what might actually be passable entertainment.

“-not my fault Kanaya enables him,” the girl who didn’t speak before is protesting in the kind of voice that’s bright and loud even when it’s cramped into a whisper. “She says he’s very persuasive when he wants to be!”

“Yeesh, there’s a whole thing I don’t want to know about,” Lisp answers, and you know the affronted sniffle is Cape before he starts complaining.

“There is nothing between Kanaya and I and I don’t much appreciate you implyin’ anythin’ to the opposite effect! Ain’t my fault she’s got a sense of style you’re lacking, or that she’s the only one around who listens to my voice of reason- except you, Ara, obviously, you do plenty of listenin’ to me and I appreciate it constantly, sweetheart.”

“A noble sacrifice that won’t be forgotten by those of us getting our poor ears spared.” It sounds like Lisp just reached and pat her hand in sympathy, and as your glazed eyes roam the menu you gotta say you don’t think you blame him. “A terrible burden, the path you’re walking down…”

“Eridan is more interesting than you think,” Ara replies, revealing herself as the voice of death and still sounding just as excited as the crayfish you’re considering for a starter. “He has a lot of interesting stories about the socio-political imbalances that led to historical conflicts, and also wizards.”

“And also wizards. Fuck, I’m pissing over here.” Yeah, you too, Lisp. You too.

“Wizards are cool,” Cape protests, pout audible in his voice. “Better than fucking bees.”

“Hey the only thing fucking bees right now is other bees and also humanity’s disregard for the most important species on the planet.”

“There I was thinking humans were pretty fuckin’ important.”

“Get back to me when humans can function in perfect harmony with nature to keep the whole world alive and I’ll reconsider.”

This is sounding dangerously like a synopsis of that fucking film Deuce keeps sending you sped up versions of, and this time you’re grateful for the waiter interrupting it right up until you see the monstrosity of a drink sitting beside a small, sensible glass of ice and whiskey.

“One scotch on the rocks,” he explains, placing the glass down in front of your wife even as she continues to stare at the new focus of all your barely contained hatred, “and one fishbowl punch.”

Well you can’t pin them for false advertising because that is a fucking fishbowl in front of you, filled with punch, umbrellas and straws, turned luminescent pink by the flashing ice cubes inside that are pulsing to the beat of a rave being held all over the corpse of your dignity. You stare at it, the waiter stares at you, your missus stares at the waiter and he holds up his little pad like a shield and taps frantically at the scrawled note on it you couldn’t read if you were a code breaker.

“It’s what you ordered, sir!”

Of course it is.

Before you can get out a protest he’s absconded and you’re left gazing at the mesmerising jacuzzi of poor taste that only the sort of person who wears a cape unironically would find appealing, opening and closing your mouth a few times before your dear, darling wife takes pity on you and pushes her scotch into your hand.

You could both share it, she suggests as you down her drink in one, although that would involve consuming it, and you’re not sure what shit the colour of potpourri windex would do to your insides. Come on, she prompts. You can both have a straw each and drink together and it’ll be romantic.

And then you can both get food poisoning or- if it’s a drink it’s just straight-up poisoning, right? And you can have a romantic hospital stay together!

Exactly, your missus smiles, and waits patiently until you cave in and lean forward to take a tentative sip of what you can only assume is the milk of a mutant hybrid between a cow and a stick of fruity bubblegum. Ugh. You make a face that’s probably just a redraw of the same disgusted face everyone seems to make in this godforsaken town, but your doll looks happy and you guess in some deep-down secret part of the withered thing your doctor would hesitantly refer to as your heart, that’s what really matters.

“Oh man, that looks delicious, you think I can order that?” Cape is whispering on the table behind you, and look at that, who would’ve guessed it, who could possibly have foreseen he’d want to drink the atrocious insult to cocktail menus everywhere that is glittering obnoxiously between you and your lady.

A chair creaks, once as someone turns towards you and once again as they turn away.

“We could share,” Ara monotones, “but I want the umbrellas.”

“Of course, love, you can have every umbrella that you want.”

“Ugh,” Lisp starts, “you guys are-”

“I want one.” Bubbly interrupts him, and all of a sudden her sugary voice is like a candy-cane made of cyanide. “Please, Sollux? You said it was my treat today!”

“Fef, I said my willing participation in an event involving sitting next to Eridan for an hour was your treat.”

“No, you said dinner was my treat, and that I could’ve have whatever I wanted!” She’s whining like a kicked puppy and you can perfectly picture the sort of satisfied smirk that must be lighting up Cape’s- Eridan’s? Why do you even care what their names are- face right now. “I want one of those! It’s in a fishbowl, Sollux! It’s so cute!”

“It looks like poison.” A man after your own heart.

“It looks great! Stop being a wet fish and drink it with me! Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with a cherry on top? Pretty please with a cherry on top and-”

“Fine! Oh my God, fine. You can have that, I’m not going to stop you.”

“And you’ll drink it with me?” Her smile is so bright it’s making you cast a grouchy shadow.

“...I- guess. Sure.”

Fef squeals, and it’s the delighted nail in Sollux’s coffin. Maybe you’ll see him in the emergency room later, and you can both share a knowing nod about the dangers of flashing cocktails served in pet housing.

Another sip confirms it still tastes like bubblegum.

Sollux manages to bargain his way into ordering the food before the fancy drinks, which is a valiant attempt at escaping the pink-tinted death you’re currently bearing half the brunt of. Maybe he hoped they’d forget or fill up and no longer brave the sugary terror, but his zero hour arrives and you shake your head sadly as you listen to the now fully identified Aradia order two fishbowl punches, and on purpose, which is a whole new level of shame.

The waiter asks her to repeat the order, to make absolutely sure of what she wants. You can’t imagine why.

He passes you shortly after with a tray laden with not one, but two bowls of fuschia piss, and you hear an enthusiastic thank you from Eridan and Feferi and flat ones from Sollux and Aradia, although in the latter case God only knows, that’s probably cheerful for her. You watch the waiter’s reflection turn back towards you in your own fishbowl of death, and as he hurries past you pause and wonder… Maybe if you just.

Your wife quietly enquires after what you’re doing as you reach and start slowly adjusting the bowl sideways.

Upgrading your radio to a television, you explain patiently.

You aren’t spying on anyone, are you? She told you to stop doing that.

It’s not spying if it’s in a public place, you told her that before.

And she told you that as soon as it involves a reflective surface, it’s spying.

You wore the eyepatch, you plead in a muted hiss.

Her fingers tap against the side of the glass and she inclines her hand, her other hand lifting to gently adjust her scarf. Alright, she agrees, and you continue moving the bowl until she adds an ominous but-

But what?

But she gets to take one of the pictures of you in that adorable outfit, blow it up nice and big, and make a painting out of it for her gallery.

Your eyes narrow. She drives a hard bargain.

You know what, maybe you can live without-

“What do you mean it’s stuck?”

On second thought, that sounds lovely, you hope it brings in lots of discerning patrons.

The bowl slides the rest of the way and you finally get a view past yourself, back to the table you’ve been entertaining yourself with on-and-off all night. It isn’t perfect, and you can only see the thick tresses of the two girls, but you have a fair angle on the faces of their dates as Eridan attempts to reach past Sollux’s swatting hands and grab the umbrella that is somehow jammed between his two front teeth.

“‘O! ‘Eth ‘ethethi oo ih-!” Those are probably words but between the teeth and the blockage you’ve stopped being able to pick out much more than what you’re guessing is Feferi, though you’re more amused by how the umbrella is wiggling every time Sollux’s mouth opens and closes. Sollux continues to force Eridan back, turning and leaning across the table. “‘Ethehti!”

“Oh gosh oh goodness-” Feferi is on her feet and leaning over the table, as though walking around it isn’t the option. She leans forward, over the bowl that caused this misery, planting a hand on Sollux’s cheek and bracing the other against the table that they’d been sitting at, one of two pushed together to make a four. Her fingers are spread just in front of the drink, the whole thing tipping forward under her weight. “Okay, I’ve got this! You just hold still and I’ll get this right out-”

“Wait-” Eridan starts but Feferi has got her hand off the table and on the umbrella, and you see her realise her mistake just as the umbrella pops free and takes her balance with it, feet sliding on the ground looking for a purchase they don’t find. She yelps and drops, Aradia moving to catch her but not before Feferi’s legs have flung up and kicked the table hard enough the whole unbalanced thing is flying forward and the bowl of pink murder juice is gracefully arcing up through the air.

Sollux had fallen back into Eridan’s arms and jerked back up just as fast but you know he’s regretting it as his eyes widen behind his glasses the smallest fraction before the wall of pink that’s spraying from the soaring bowl has splashed into him, splattering him and the floor behind him with the punch it also packs. You cover your mouth as Sollux opens his and lets out a pained sound, and Eridan swoops to grab some serviettes for his face but his foot hits the punch dripping onto the floor from the still shaking table and there’s an instant between him being there and him being gone, sneakers up in the air.

One knocks that table, and the punch starts to slide but Aradia catches it and lifts it above her head, sighing and handing it to a frantic Feferi as Sollux gropes blindly forward to try to find the serviettes now accompanying Eridan all over the ground. What he manages to find instead is the punch bowl, which he shoves his hand into just as it’s finished rattling around and then flings his fingers back out of in disgust, the bowl ricocheting away towards Feferi and ending up barely caught in her hand as she balances the first against her shoulder before- in an astounding show of idiocy- lifting her knee to try to steady the table she isn’t even standing in front of.

For a moment, she looks like she’ll pull it off.

She does not.

Aradia has just grabbed Sollux’s glasses and started wiping them as Feferi’s balance gives way for the second time, and you see the glass go sailing up before it comes hurtling down. Feferi barely manages to tuck and roll out of the way in time to avoid the glass or the fresh torrent of punch but her skillful youth roll takes her straight into the path of the waiter rushing to help, knocking him off his feet and sending him crashing down on her as his glasses bounce off in what promises to be a further level of hilarity.

“Fuck!” There he goes, scrambling for them, as Feferi squawks under him and Sollux finally regains vision in time to let out his assumed girlfriend’s name in indignation. The waiter gets shoved off, the dame rescued, and the glasses sit in pooling punch and await their retrieval with growing, sticky impatience.

Eridan’s hand has regained ground on the table, and Aradia is attempting to help him up but from the choked wheezes about fucking cape fucking stuck fucking hell you’re guessing he’s a little wrapped up with a fashion disaster that you’re sure is soaking up its lovely new pink ombre wonderfully as he wiggles around on the ground trying to escape his own poor taste.

Your missus moves and you think she’s going to call you off until you glance her way and see her leaning to see over your shoulder, eyes wide and lips pursed. Hah! Even she can’t fault quality entertainment like this, and you know this is the best date both of you have had in years, not including that one time in France with the accidental diamond heist. You grin at her and she rolls her eyes, but her cheeks are tinted darker as she looks back to the action and so do you.

Eridan is up, but the cape has become the second tragic casualty of the punch war after the waiter’s nose, going by the way the kid’s clutching at it and cursing up a storm with words you don’t even recognise. The cape collar, however, has remained as a delightful reminder of what was, turning Eridan into a smart casual dracula who is clinging to Aradia like she’s the only stable thing nearby- which honestly, yeah, you can believe it. She pats his back gently, before picking him up bodily and tossing him into a chair outside of the punch disaster zone, ignoring his confused wheeze as she hops over the table with perfect balance and sweeps the second pair of glasses she cleaned recently up off the ground to wipe them on her dirtied skirt before dropping them onto the chest of the bemused but thankful waiter.

Feferi is still a little unsteady and Sollux appears to be figuring out how to help while also not touching her in anyway lest he dirty her pink-splattered body with the punch that covers his own, but Aradia sweeps her up instead, up onto her arm as she thrusts the serviettes she collected during her sumersault at Sollux and then hooks her second arm under Feferi’s legs.

With that she walks over to the waiter, who has barely sat up and clearly isn’t expecting the looming figure of Aradia with all her curls cascading down her back and a fish-out-of-water hugging her tightly with legs dangling over her arms and punch dripping down the both of them.

He stares up at them both, full of the stupid kind of awe that only shows its face during spectacular shit like this, and then carefully unbuttons his apron and draws out a little notepad, with a little printed label stuck to it, which he offers up with a few dazed blinks.

“Cash or check?”

You’re going to die laughing if you start so you shut yourself up by shoving a straw in your mouth and slurping down glorious, wonderful, life-saving fishbowl punch with the sort of gusto that might get an umbrella stuck between a distracted idiot’s teeth.

Your wife joins you, your eyes meet, and she finally lets her face crack into the sort of gorgeous smile that reminds you why you married her.

You’ll have to come here again, she tells you. She’s a big fan of the drinks.

Yeah, you agree. Yeah.

Turns out, so are you.

[whoistayla]

ART FAIR Q&A

 The galleries we visited the previous day (Thursday) before the art fair were Blank, Goodman and Stevenson. When I found those galleries booths at the art fair I did my utmost best to reflect on what I saw the day before & compare it to the galleries booths at the art fair. Blank Gallery had less sculpture work and more 2D visual art like paintings & collage or mixed media. They filled their space more than the actual gallery did and they also managed to use their space wisely & with consideration as to how the works flow into one another. The Stevenson space looked very much like the actual gallery does. Everything was spaced out & curated almost according to the way they do it in the real space. I felt like one could see it was the Stevenson booth as soon as they walked in & didn’t even have to read the booth name because it gave off the same professional yet fresh approach that the Stevenson space in Woodstock gives off. Goodman gallery was very different to the original space. In facet I thought that the Goodman booth had more space than that of the space in which you walk through when first entering the real gallery. It was very well put together and curated in a way that was not particular to Goodmans’ usual way of curating. 

Throughout the day the artworks I absolutely loved were from SMITH & Kalashnikov gallery and Bad Paper, being; “Wet Nurse” by Michaela Younge (SMITH) as her work has always fascinated me with the use of veldt & sewing – her very uncanny characters & scenes always grasp me into another world or narrative. From Kalashnikov gallery I just fell in love with the 3 Louie De Villiers (formerly known as Skullboy) works that were up, I struggled to find the title of the work but it was a triptych of figures in black, white and gold leaf. I love Louies’ way of using mixed mediums like paint, chalk, gold leaf and ink. His subject matter is very dark & he comments on pop culture topics as well as takes inspiration from the roads less travelled. The work I loved at Bad Paper was by the screenprint titled, “The Worlds Greatest” by Cameron Platter.  The bright green was so attracting and immediately caught my attention from across the corridor-like area opposite the bad paper stand, I also spoke to Ben at the stand who told me that it each screen print came out slightly different due to parts being out of line, which made me like the piece even more because each one was still different to the next even though the visual artwork was the same. The first work that I absolutely hated was “Dirty Mirror” by Pascale Marthine Tayou, I found the work to just be very boring, although I could see the work was an attempt to be playful I found it unsuccessful and just something that shouldn’t be at an art fair (in my personal opinion). I also disliked “Blue Water Boatman” by LR Vandy, I found it to look very ornamental and almost like a modern day shield but also looking like an iron – 2/10 wouldn’t recommend. And lastly, I could not find the title but the work at the Stevenson stand by Serge Alain Nitegeka was definitely something that was very overpowering for me and made me feel very frustrated and bored because of how flat the painting seemed to me.

3. Predominant mediums and processes I found at the fair this year were photography, as there was a very large area taken up by photographic booths (i.e: Billy Monk) in the fair this year. There was also a lot more collage based work and mixed mediums like markers/paint pens and screenprints.

4. Some booths had their walls painted different colours such as yellow or grey, and some spaces had gallerist desks whilst others had none. And some booths were simple squares but others were rather awkwardly shaped.

5. Obvious differences are how some booths are labelled either very clearly or not at all. Some booths were very risky (in my opinion) and wrote labels of artworks on pen & paper and laid it on the floor in front of the artworks which I found to be rather frustrating and un-clear as to why it was curated that way.

6. The layout was a lot more spacious this year and allowed for easier & more comfortable movement. Its perhaps layed out this way due to the group tours that were happening, which I do not remember seeing last year & I found that altogether there were a lot of improvements at the 2019 CTIAF in comparison to what I saw last year. The lighting wasn’t very harsh either.

7. As above mentioned, the lighting wasn’t very harsh this year and each booth had their own lighting where necessary (i.e: Bad paper stand & Sitaara Stodels stand). There would be individual lights for certain artworks shining above the work to highlight it or bring it out more. The only artwork I thought lighting could have been placed differently with was the light above the Marine Ambramovic’s work. The light was reflecting directly off the area of the face and so one struggled to see the artwork properly from most angles. 

8. People at the booths are mostly dressed in black and have very professional aspects about the way they look, wearing things like blazers and smart chino pants. The young people (i.e our third years for example) all wore black only and looked the part for whatever task they were handed. Viewers are the ones that seem to amaze me, as many people come to the art fair dressed in their most ‘outgoing’ kind of clothes as I would imagine it may be because they feel safe to try it out at the art fair considering it’s a creative & exciting space to be in.

9. There are ‘markets’ for your regular person where one can purchase books, merchandise and small prints of artworks for a small price. There is then the bigger market for buyers which you will find gets an entire separate event before the show officially opens to the public, which is crazy for me to think about. This separate opening via invites-only is for collectors and potential buyers to view the work with champagne or wine in hand and choose what they’d like to own. This ‘higher’ market can purchase artworks and expensive prints that are very much out of the regular persons price range. They can also make connections with other buyers and collectors.

10. A work that I thought exemplified the spectacle of wealth was Athi-Patra Ruga’s bust sculpture that I have previously seen at What If The World gallery in town. Its incredibly glamourous and really seems to make you say “wow” as it is jewel encrusted (not sure if fake or real jewels but nonetheless), and uses a colour scheme of golds and reds – making for an impactful and memorable piece. It seems like something a very wealthy person would want made for themselves to place in their gigantic, marble floored foyer.

11. I mentioned it previously but will mention it again, I thought “Dirty Mirror” did not fit with the rest of the fair and it just stuck out to me as something that seemed to annoy me just because of its mere presence amongst such other conceptually and technically great artwork.

12. I found it much easier to ask about prices this year as I felt more confident about my own knowledge on some galleries and their artists so I knew how to approach it better this time around and each gallerist I approached seemed to have no problem telling me the prices of work even though I was clearly a student who can’t afford it.

13. Investec were the lead sponsor and also Fiera Milano Exhibitions Africa, of the Fiera Group. Fiera were there on behalf of international artists to handle international exchanges and services between all sponsors. Boschendal champagne were also very evident sponsors as their branding was largely all over the place, and their brand of champagne was served. Artsy was also another sponsor of the event as well as Art Africa, The Lake, Art Times, Arthrob and Flash Art.

14. It takes place at the CTICC due to the available space, professionalism in appearance and the lack of limitations within the space when it comes to size and transporting of artwork around the space.

15. Irma Stern pieces were the oldest I could find.

16. Young artists that were exhibited were Chris Soal, recent 2018 Michaelis graduate Takua Ramkilawan and Michaelis graduates from a year or two before such as Sitaara Stodel, Gitte Moller and Michaela Younge.

17. Solo booths seem to be themed, have painted walls to coincide with the artwork and simply look more ‘put together’ as all the work is cohesive. Group booths are trickier to curate and could easily look like it was carelessly thrown together so a lot more consideration should be taken with group show booths.

18. Marina Ambramovic’s work had a lot of talk surrounding it, I think this was because she is such a notorious artist and there is so much information surrounding her and her body of work. And I feel like very few south Africans ever thought they would see a Marina original piece with their own pair of eyes.

19. Artwork surrounded a lot of subjects regarding identity, personal experiences and shared/relatable experiences. I think this may be because we are living in a day and age where identity is becoming more and more complex and experimentative which in turn makes it difficult for some to navigate through, hence why they make art about it.

20. I would love to be represented by Kalashnikov gallery, I just love MJ Turpins style of curation and the risks he is willing to take by putting certain types of work up. Turpin has fresh ideas that really resonate with me and I would be honoured if I ever got to show work in his gallery.

21. I would love to work at Bad Paper with Ben. I love his approach to artists and collaboration, and how he brings some of the wildest ideas into play. Ben is an interesting person for starters and I can totally see how Bad Paper is like the rebellious child of the art world. I would love to be a part of his team some day.

22. A question for me would be, is it best to take an organized tour of the art fair or go on your own?

23. If I had to hypothetically have my own art gallery/institute I would love to show something, but I would try and make it interactive where I can use different coloured lighting to go with the works. Make it so the lighting acts as a part of the artwork instead of it being something to highlight it around the artwork.

[connorrenwick]

Style Icons that Prove Glasses Aren’t Geeky by BrandsExclusive

Feeling flat about your frames? Turn this essential into your favourite accessory with inspiration from these style icons. By honing the art of laid-back cool, and flamboyant character, these style icons prove glasses are always a good thing when it comes to fashion.

Iris Apfel “More is more and less is a bore.” Keeping true to her fashion bible, Iris Apfel has hit the streets of New York for the last eight decades with a powerful maximalist style. The interior and fashion designer is rarely seen without her signature oversized glasses, and as a self-professed flea-market freak, she’s a collector of unique frames with the motto: the bigger the better!

“If you have to wear glasses, wear glasses!” Iris Apfel

John Lennon The iconic musician and song writer was a late bloomer when it came to embracing this fashion accessory. So much so he only wore his glasses in private, often hitting the stage with the front row a blur! When he finally came ‘round to the idea of sporting his round-rimmed glasses out in the open, they soon became a part of his trademark image, propelling him to global “style icons” status.

Styling tip: round-rimmed glasses soften angular features.

Elton John With over 250,000 pairs of glasses in a separate walk-in wardrobe, we can safely say: Elton John is obsessed! The singer, musician, and composer has been sporting quirky specs throughout his career, making the most of his short-sightedness with frames in flamboyant colours and shapes. With a more reserved approach to his eyewear picks these days, we can only hope there’s a special shrine in the wardrobe for his infamous windshield wiper glasses.

Dita Von Teese Elegance and sophistication goes hand in hand with Dita Von Teese’s vintage glamour look. The Queen of Burlesque is no stranger to best-dressed lists, flaunting her inspired flash-back style with classic cat-eye frames the icing on the cake. Her signature eyewear shape, which oozes 50s and 60s flair, is a perfect fit for those with a heart-shaped face.

Diane Keaton Taking the reins from Katherine Hepburn, Diane Keaton has championed the pant suit on the red carpet, making it her own with accessories such as men’s ties and fedoras that boast androgynous appeal. This quiet confidence for accessorising is ever-present in her choice of eyewear, too. Playing with a varied range of frames over the years – round, rectangle, and oversized – she’s mastered the perfect finish to her look.

Main photo by Thomas Whiteside

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