Inspiration is the key to give us the desire to achieve. After having started my first drawing and painting lesson and having a go a charcoal drawing, I feel somewhat inspired by art. Today a friend told me about a program called ArtRage and all I can say is, "Wow! What a program". It combines a very nice way to paint digitally focusing on the artists needs rather than photographer's or designer's tools that Photoshop does. What's even more, it only costs £12.95; a true bargain. In fact, at a price that low, I still feel like I'm stealing it even after purchasing. Much cheaper than Corel Painter that comes in at a cool £200; but lets not even consider the Photoshop pricing.

But while a program doesn't make the artist, and in my case, this is why I've taken the painting and drawing course in the first place, there are plenty of inspirational pieces of work. So lets take a look:

Lounge in the city
MyLand
Industrial-24/7

But clearly, all hats go off to Waheed Nasir on some stunning pieces of work. Check out the gallery and even the music section.

On the topic of music, my acoustic guitar course has been postponed by two weeks, so I shall live my life in silence until then.

Now down to some of the real work. My claim to fame for this week is having friends and family see a TV ad that I had the pleasure of working on. This is the RTE 2fm advert which is now showing nationally across Ireland and can be viewed here. As I've mentioned before, my involvement was the motion tracking, chroma keying and box zooming composition.

Furthermore, most of the work for the Eddie Rockets had has been completed and it is now in review with the client. I'll give an update on that when the ad has gone on TV.

I've been told the RTE 2fm ad has now gone out on air in Ireland, and even in cinemas! Tim did a fantastic job on that project and I'm thrilled to have been able to make a contribution to some of the composition work.

So for new developments this week, I've now been given the opportunity to produce a CG intro and outro to an Eddie Rockets diner advert, which will be aired over in Ireland. What a fantastic opportunity being able to have my CG work aired on TV! The deadline is however just over a week away, and as I'm at Disneyland next week for a couple of days, the only time I'll have is really at the weekends.

Other than that, I decided that doing a Painting and Drawing part-time course just simply isn't enough. I've now enrolled onto a beginners acoustic guitar course; so that'll go nicely with my nice new red acoustic guitar.

But, in the mean time, I've managed to dig out a few more things from the archive. For example, an early car model project (made with Animation:Master):


Over the years, I've even had a play around with Terragen, and here's what I managed to come up with - very basic, I know! But as time permits, I'll be doing more landscape work with Vue Infinite.

And here's something on a micro scale - even though I don't actually know what it's meant to be...

That's enough 3D for the moment. I do have some photography to share as well. Here's one of my favorite photos of: me, Robert, Tim and John (in that order).

Of course, its nice to be able to keep things simple with some black and white photography, so here's a collection of photos I took.

Enough now as I'd better get started on this Eddie Rockets ad.

Ever get that feeling that you're standing at the bottom of a mountain with the desire to climb to the top. Now, I'm not referring to actually taking part is some outdoor excursion whereby I exhaust myself by even making it to the base of a mountain. And if I were, I'd have to take a trusty dog with me, at least they'd know where to go.

But alas, no its not a mountain I'm referring to, but a desire to achieve something great and challenging. This is where I am now.

As I mentioned before, I'm due to be starting a Painting and Drawing course in a couple of weeks. I'm getting more and more excited about it. But for anyone who knows me, I can never just stop there. I have a couple of other plans in progress, but I wont spoil what that is just yet.

The problem I have is that I'm interested in too many things. Normally, when someone goes through an unmotivated stage and don't fancy doing anything, I tend to find that my motivation switches instead. When I'm not exciting about 3D, I'm exciting about something else, whether it's filmmaking, music, art; and many more. But the funny thing is, even though all these interests are somewhat different, I have a master plan to bring them altogether into a single project - thus my mountain.

I'm slightly buzzed about music at the moment, and buying a cheap acoustic guitar off eBay has been somewhat exciting. Even though I have an electric guitar, I figure that it would more convenient to learn an acoustic before switching. And if I get good at both, I have a nice little treat in store for myself.

So while we're on the topic of music, here's a sample of some of the previous pieces I've created using Reason.

Somethin' Somethin' - 2:32 - 2.9MB
Hollow - 4:02 - 2.77MB
TheOffer - 6:15 - 4.29MB

So what's happened in the last week? Well, on Wednesday, we had our Blue Fusion interview shoot. The day went really well and I got a lot of practice at setting up all the lighting, cameras and microphones. It's also my first chance to record in HD, even though the final project is 4:3 SD. The result of this now means I have an awful lot of editing to do, along with the CG intro and outro sequences and music sequencing.

The bottom line is, the next few months are going to be very challenging if I'm to get something valuable out of it. There's too much to do and too little time to do it; but at least I'll know what I'm capable of at the end.

Where does the time go? I don't mean the last week as I can recall what happened there. But the past few years. Is it that I don't have the time to progress that I feel like time is disappearing?

I was digging through the archives the other day and came across some funky little projects from the past. Here's some of what I dug up:

Manny Worth - May 2005 - 116MB
A final year project for a friend. I did all the music sequencing for this movie in one night. Yep, I got to bed at about 7am that night. The film is a great story about addiction.

Can you spare 5 minutes - April 2005 - 37.3MB
A short film about a guy swamped by street salespeople. I sequenced the music in this film.

Bargain - November 2002 - 21.4MB
I have a small role in this movie, but rather menacing nonetheless. It's about a woman who hires a hitman to kill her partner.

But alas, this is the more recent stuff. I'll put some of the even earlier work on here in time.

The good news is that on my holiday I did managed to work on a high-profile TV ad for the Irish radio station, RTE 2fm. I got my hands dirty with some chroma keying and motion tracking. The ad will be going out to all major TV stations out there an even in cinemas. Hopefully there'll be more work like that in the future.

So what now? What's next on the cards? Well, I feel like I'm in a bit of limbo at the moment. New major updates are about kick off in my web freelancing work, plus I have a busy schedule with some video projects.

On Wednesday I'm shooting various interviews for the Blue Fusion video I'm producing. That will involve a heavy amount of editing and needs to be done as soon as possible (what projects don't eh?). Then immediately after that, its back to editing the long-overdue HTX video. Only then can I have a clearer outlook of my time ahead.

Projects I want to work on after include the Dreamer's Dream music video and a short film with the filmmaking club at work.

On a side note though, I will be starting a Drawing and Painting course in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. I've been stocking up on lots of materials from eBay. I'll aim to post up some of my work as the course progresses.

People do ask me how I manage to find the time for everything I do. I've said it before that doing 2 jobs, working on video projects, editing TV ads, doing a part-time course and trying to explore my talents in 3D are all quite time consuming. Yes, sacrifices are made in one's life to accommodate for everything. But I think the true answer is the passion. I love doing the things that make me go the extra mile to do it. But I will always say that this way of life is only temporary. I mean, there's only so long one can go asking the question, "girlfriend, what's one of those?".