In the midst of things

Feel very much in the middle of many unfinished and uncertain things today, My masters project is proceeding, but is 13 weeks away from hand in, so it's at the early stages. It's odd being a student again, though I'm looking forward to going out into the world and no longer being a student. Ironically I've come up with a number of possible illustration projects, which will have to wait until I'm finished my MA. So keep your eyes peeled for those.
I thoroughly enjoyed painting Clara's album artwork last week, so I'm going to try and continue painting in what little spare time I have. today I'm feeling a little old and in need of a shave so here is me, half way through being 33.

Clara Barker: Fine Art and the Breslins

Well, so in amongst all this masters madness, My good friend and drinking buddy Clara, has been working on her second full length album and not only did I get to do the cover but also it's named after me too (wooooo!), one nick name I have is "Fine Art" and as some of you will  note the fellow who did the music for the MNH animation last summer was Steven Breslin, The Breslins refers to him and his lovely sister Sue, both of which are great friends, and awesome drinking buddies.
Anyway when the Album is released later in the year you should all go out and get it, it's fantastic.
Also it was so nice to do some real painting again, I hadn't realised how much I had missed it.

Masters project

So I've finished the pre production for my masters which took me all round the houses, I started off looking at computer games, then 3D printing and to what I will actually be doing: I'm going to model the little girl from my werewolf narrative and through the course of 5 models get her to be a werewolf, worst case scenario this will be just 5 models, best case there will be animation and will hopefully be a nice little short narrative.
I have deluded myself a few times, thinking that I could be a digital painter, however now I feel I'm actually getting somewhere with it, though I doubt it will ever replace my traditional work, I can see myself using it more often.
I will endeavour to update this a bit more often, but the masters will likely be very intense, so no promises.

3D printing

So everywhere I look at the moment, I see 3D printing absolutely everywhere, so as part of my Personal inquiry (a sort of research project I had to undertake for my MA, which ends in a presentation of the findings) I chose to have a crack at it, in order to do this I used the imp-like character I used to use a lot for art and illustration (pre welcome to the neighbourhood project).

I then took the simple character sketch and began modelling it in 3D, everything I read about 3D printing stated that as long as the mesh is water tight (no holes) manifold (no open faces or shared edges) it should be fine, there was no mention to ngons or unquaded triangles (sorry for the tech talk, these are things to avoid when creating a model for animation)..

So I deliberately left both of these things in, I kept the model low polygon (it's under 2k polys) and did not equally space the polygons, again this is something not mentioned in any of the write ups I've read about 3D printing and so after an afternoon I had this:

I then took it to see the 3D printing researchers here at the NCCA (who are doing amazing things) and I printed it on desktop 3D printer they have in their lab:

This took 11 hours to print and is around 3 inches tall (i didn't have to be there the whole time, we left it printing over night) As you can see, the structure is there, but that's about it, most detail is lost, partly due to the printer used and the plastic not being hot enough at the start. an unusual wood like pattern appeared on the model too, though unexpected, it has a nice quality to it.

Convinced I could get petter results I sent the mesh to a commercial printing service, who produced this:

The detail is all there, even down to the un-smoothed polygons. this has opened my mind up to all kinds of possibilities. Many people have asked me about sculptures of my work and the main reason why I've never looked into it is because of the spindly nature of my characters, I didn't think they could stand up. when I'm finished with the MA, this will receive a lot of  more of my attention. look out galleries!!

A new website

As many of you know I've not had a website for quite some time now (I think the I took the old one down in 2007) largely because I felt I wasn't really getting that much from it and it was a giant pain in the arse to keep up to date with, partly why I started the blog, it's much more Juan friendly. anyway long story short I recently applied for a teaching job that required me to upload my artwork to a wix site, it seemed very straightforward to get together, so after a long time here is my new website:

you can get to it here: http://juanillustration.wix.com/juanmoore
Once I finish with my MA I will make a more permanent website, with an address that is easier to remember. incidentally I didn't get the job :(

Zombies (again) and How long has it been since I updated this?

Wow, ok I'll admit it has been a bit of awhile since I updated this, The last few (by few I mean many) months have been so busy and so intense, work wise I never would have believed it possible. well since last December< I'm still in Bournemouth, still on the masters course here  at the NCCA, it's been fantastic, we have just completed all work leading up to the final masters project and now have a brief break before that begins, touch wood at the end of August I will be hopefully finished and will then be Juan Moore MA (fingers crossed) so the thing that has kept me the most busy by far was the group project (began in January, ended in March) I got to be the Director and worked with a great team to produce the following animation:

for an HD version go here: https://vimeo.com/65859663
I know, it's about zombies again, it something I keep coming back to, it never quite goes away, though I'm a bit zombied out at the moment so it maybe awhile before I go back to them again. I'm very pleased with the project and I'm happy to say that the team got distinctions all round. so all is good on that front.