Posts Tagged roderick

23 results.

Well, that went reasonably well!

by on April 11, 2014 at 6:00 am
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Another week, another experience!

All this week, I’ve been trying to sell my paintings at work, to my ever-tolerant colleagues. I’d set it up as a blind auction, so that I could garner some information on how best to price my artwork. The conclusions I have come to are as follows:

  • It’s a lot more difficult to sell art than I initially anticipated!
  • Many people, while they may appreciate a painting and have kind things to say about it, may simply not be in a place where they want to purchase one.
  • When you have no cachet, as an artist just beginning the journey, your work is worth a lot less than what you might envision in terms of real money. That does NOT mean that your work is any less VALUABLE, but you’re not going to make all that much more than cost + time if you want to start building up your reputation and credibility.
  • You may have to be prepared to let a painting go for a little less than cost + time, if it’s going to generate more business or goodwill; ye olde loss leader. Just be sure that you’re not being taken advantage of, and I suspect that’ll be a completely separate lesson.

Having learned all of these, I have received two bids for two of my paintings, which is nice! I shan’t announce the details, as I believe to do so would not be proper, but I now have a baseline to gauge my pricing around; My 8×8 in pieces should go for an average of £50, so I now have real data to refine my pricing model. read more

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Homage and Duplicate – The Thin Line

by on January 24, 2014 at 6:00 am
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As always, I’ve got a few creative projects on the go at the moment. Key, of course, has been the art style experimentation in the comic; I’m quite pleased with the results so far, and I hope you’re enjoying them, too! Parallel to this, I’m cleaning up the first Mei Wu for publication in print, am rewriting the synopsis for my script submission, and am (etrenally) reworking the opening and tone of my novel.

In addition even to that, however, I’ve been working on a little something else, more like written doodles than anything. It’s a mixture of short stories and ‘found footage’ style scraps, set in the early days of faster-than-light travel. I intend it to be a love letter to the novella, ‘Roadside Picnic’ by the Strugatsky brothers, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games it inspired, with characters exploring a devastated post-human colony ravaged by a mysterious alien waste-product. read more

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A blast from the past (at long last!)

by on January 17, 2014 at 6:00 am
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When I was younger, back in the heydey of the CD-ROM, when PCs were creeping into homes and Mac was still a plasticky beige nerdy brand, my father bought me and my sister some edutainment software. “Just Grandma and Me” and “Arthur’s Teacher Trouble”, produced by the very aptly named ‘Living Books’ company. I remember them so very well.

They were, at their very heart, interactive books on tape where children could follow text along to the dulcet tones of a narrator. They were obviously intended to help primary school pupils to read, but that’s not why I remember them. To me, the main appeal, and the reason I kept on going back to the programs, was in the interactivity. After each page had been read out, you could then click on various bits and bobs in the illustration. There were always so very many items that would spring to life, do a little animation, and play a little sound. What amazed me then, and still fascinates me to this day, was just how detailed these tableaus were, and how incredibly imaginative they could be. These events ranged from the simple (Radiator xylophone!) through the wonderfully bizarre and delightful (a tray of cookies that sang like a soul choir), through to the just plain brilliant (that recurring paper plane that had the awesome metal soundtrack). read more

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The Benefits of Rest

by on September 10, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Although I’ve been really busy during the last week, I’ve found that I’m actually getting more rest, ironically because I’m getting LESS sleep during the evenings. The result is that I’m actually tired enough to take a nap on the bus home from work which, thanks to the schools being back and peoples’ schedules reverting to normal, can take up to an hour. So I actually get a good proper chance to catch some sleep which actually makes me feel a lot better later on in the day. And if I get a decent amount of rest, I find that I’m less worried about life in general, I’m not as depressed about love or art or money, and I’m far more productive in the evenings. read more

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The Cycle

by on August 6, 2012 at 6:00 am
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I suppose it is, by now, a cliché to say that everything must end to allow the new to take root. But finally finishing off something, whether it’s a book, a game, or something that you’re working on is always so exciting. It means you’ve accomplished something, that you’ve borne it out to the end and maintained the effort required to do so.

Then there’s the excitement of what you’re going to work on next. Maybe you’ll choose a different book, or you’ll revisit a game that you’ve neglected for a long time. In my case, I get a couple of pages’ breather where I get to try something completely new, followed by a brand spanking new story arc that I’m really pleased with (having actually written the script beforehand, instead of just plot outline). On Friday, I’ll be telling a story as the Accountant, and the Monday after that I’ll be experimenting with new photoshop techniques to produce a ‘cover’ for the new arc, ‘Dreamland’. It’s not so much a break in that I’ll be doing less work: It’s a break in the routine, a chance for me to do something completely different. That’s what I find most exciting: Variety. read more

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Keep on fightin’!

by on August 3, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Ah, those were some good birthday shenanigans. I highly recommend the Living Room on St. Vincent Street in Glasgow, for those of you in search of tasty cocktails and awesome atmosphere. Though it’s not required, I do advise dressing up a bit for the occasion: You’ll feel so much more suave and sophisticated. Try the Black Cherry and Vanilla Manhattan!

But anyway, to business, and today’s business concerns dreams. The word dream is very frequently used in day-to-day discussion; I dream of one day doing this, you dream of becoming a that, they have a dream of achieving something else. Somewhat related to my rant the other week about ideas and execution, I assert that dreams themselves are merely nascent goals. Life goals are dreams for which you have set out a reasonable, achievable plan to work towards. Perhaps they change throughout life, and having just turned 25 (mid-twenties, argh), I thought that maybe my goals might have changed. read more

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Excitement!

by on June 1, 2012 at 6:00 am
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It’s Friday, and as usual I’m a sleep deprived wreck. Fortunately, several things have added up to make me a particularly happy sleep-deprived wreck today!

1) I got my hardcopy proof back from the printers for Memecasters #1, my first ever printed work! It feels great to hold a physical comic in your hands after years of doing the online thing. It feels like I’ve reached a real new level, although the artwork itself is a year old. It marks the start of a new phase for me, especially as now I’ve gotten over my jitters about never having printed before. I’m looking forward to receiving the final product in just over a week! read more

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Mm, Souvla.

by on April 16, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Aloha all, sorry about the quick update, but I’ve been working late to make sure I’m finishing as much Lemon Candies as much as possible.

On the plus side, my first print work, Memecasters, is almost ready for print. Hopefully I’ll be able to send it off to the printers this week.

I would’ve gotten it done on Sunday, but I found myself absolutely stuffed full of Souvla thanks to my good friend Christakis. Mmm, laaaamb. And stuffed vine leaves. And potatoes.

Also, that’s supposed to be a crowd in the background of the last panel. Yeah, you may have to put up with this for a few pages I’m afraid! read more

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On the use of the word ‘Gwailo’

by on April 9, 2012 at 6:00 am
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It’s been a couple of weeks since it was actually discussed near me, but the issue came back to me in the shower this morning (not sure why but hey, let’s roll with it!)

Somebody at the Drink and Draw meetup had commented on how they had recently begun finding the word ‘Gwailo’ a bit awkward, having previously thought it a quaint nickname. For those of you not in the know, ‘Gwailo’ is the term used by Hong Kong Chinese to refer to white westerners, usually in an affectionately disparaging way (bear with me on this). read more

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Draw Something AWESOME

by on April 6, 2012 at 6:00 am
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Ahoy thar folks, a short update tonight partially because I want to get up early to finish off a page of Lemon Candies and finalise Memecasters for print, and also because the webhosts for this site are annoying me again with their apparent inability to maintain server uptime.

It’s not all grumpy, though! I’ve just gotten the Draw Something app for my tablet, and I’ve been having great fun with it! If you want to play Draw Something with me, I’m totally up for it! Send a game request to MaoTheCat and let’s rock some awesome art 😀 read more

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