Welcome to the internet

For my current project at uni about self promotion, I decided to join twitter and flickr, 2 very important ways of self promotion and easy for everyone to see, whereas blogging can go un noticed. Twitter at a first glance is pretty good and I can see why people can get addicted, as there is a limit to your word count. And I’m liking the fact I have now got some work on Flickr which does copyright everything, unlike facebook which has access to all of your stuff, so I will be taking some of my stuff down from fb very shortly.

All in all has been a good weekend, went out to celebrate my birthday last night (even though it was a week ago) and I’ve been doing some stuff to do with my project. My group have decided to do something about recycling and remixing images. To start with we said to find an image we have got and then pass it on to remix. I found a drawing of a robot made from a cassette player so I re-drew it, printed a few copies and made a junk pile from it, not sure if this counts as remixing from myself, but it’s a cool image.

I have also finished my first album cover design made for my friend’s university project. His solo project is called “I Electric” and the EP is called “Falling Through”.Check me out on Flickr – Jamieisjokes

The weekend approaching…

And I finished re doing the A-Z pages that needed re doing, finished 100% what is done is what is going in the final thing. Whilst re doing or going over some of these pieces I realised how much better they looked and was glad I got the average grade because it has pushed me to new limits of creativity.

My mixed media (Mos Def) page is about 10 times better than it was, because last time I tried to do pencil, collage, ink and paint at the same time on one piece and it looked a mess! This time I drew a light outline in pencil, scanned it and then printed it four times so I could do a different media and keep it roughly the same size. I did ink, pencil, felt tips and collage and they all look great. Then I cut each piece into four and mixed them together (take a look if that doesn’t make sense)

these are two of the four.

That’s just one example but I did re-do or add to 13 of the a – z pages in the last week which is great progress. With less and less work to do in this everyday, I’ve began recreating Hip Hop album covers with Ninja Turtles (purely for fun) which has been great, I’ve done 3 so far, this one is probably my favourite:

and it’s not all work, I’ve been playing drums, met up with a few mates and seen my lovely girlfriend a couple of times this week too, plus got to see Avatar today which was awesome!

So for now goodnight! and have a good weekend!

Wow I have not been on this in a while

With a project approaching that is all about self promotion for a designer outside of the portfolio, I decided it was time to get the old blog going again.

So what’s new? Not much, same old guy, still drawing and playing drums and of course going out.

My current project from Uni is an a-z of graphic design, we were allowed to make this as interesting as possible and use whatever we want, I decided to do hip hop album covers and re make each one in a different medium (eg Beastie Boys is drawn in BIRO). The project is finished but it has been roughly marked at 55% which is what I need to get to carry on to next year, but I want to do much better than that so I have improved it and I have the next 4 weeks of xmas holidays to work on that, and I am aiming to achieve 70% at least when I hand it in in January.

Here is some examples of my favourites…

B for BeastieBoys/Biro

C for CypressHill/Collage

F for Fugees/Felt tips

If I can figure out how to make an extra page for the whole A-Z I will

A new post?

Thats right I’ve decided to come back to the wonderful world of blogging. Have to say its been a very busy few months and Uni is still goin pretty good, I’ve decided i’m not gonna work part time over next term as apparently its intense and last term was really stressful!

Things with my band have really taken off though! Played a gig last week in the Ship in Croydon where we had our very first gig back in November! It went really well and all that practice has paid off !

Theres me goin mental on the drums and we have videos up of us playing up on youtube! Just type in Deviate 88!

Went round my uncles yest for a family gathering and he let me look through his loft and we found 16 vinyl singles I was interested in and he let me have em SAAAAAAAFE!

The time has flown and by June I will have completed my first year of uni AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! But things are goin good

Snowed in

OK I’ve had plenty of time to update my blog but ah well I guess I’ve been waiting for something interesting to write about, didn’t think there would be much to say on my day off from uni but today everyone is snowed in! No buses are running, barely any trains and the roads are covered in snow! I’m yet to go out in it because im actually trying to do some work for uni ! But I took some photos last night before I went to bed, the thickest snow in England in 18 years!!!!

Just been doin the usual really, band practice, going out, uni. We did manage to finish recording our demo last week and now have a myspace set up! www.myspace.com/deviate88

check it out if you like a bit of rock/metal music, all the artwork and the logo is done by me too

currently have two songs up, should be more very very soon once we record them lol.

Master Of Puppets

Just listened to the album by Metalica, classic!! haven’t listened to it in ages. I do think the songs are a bit too long though, I mean 8 minutes a track come on!? I guess the albums 2 years older than me so it’s allowed to be long.

Just been the usual this week, handed an essay in on thursday which was 1500 words and it had been 2 years since I wrote an essay!  But I think I did ok, I spent last thurs, fri, sun and mon workin on it so I tried my best (even though I had the whole time before xmas! lol) I’ve also been buying loads of vinyls on ebay and had a good sesh messin around with some of em last night, I don’t know if the postmans happy lugging loadsa my vinyls around haha, also got the new Linkin Park live DVD/CD Package in the post, love the cd, might watch the dvd either today or tommorow.

Just ended up chilling out last night, me and my bro had a chinese takeaway, I had a couple of beers and we watched an hour of 2 and a half men, an hour of southpark (THE GUITAR HERO EPISODE!!!), some live at the apollo, and the Jonathan Ross show! It’s good to have him back on tv, and he even poked a bit of fun at himself which is good to see he’s not bitter about what happend, hopefully he won’t get banned again lol. good lineup of guests too, Lee Evans, Stephen Fry and Tom Cruise, good stuff. I think I watch too much comedy on tv but theres nothing else to watch, aside from the news!

Random.

Inspired by the Kanye West pic on my last post, I made my own favourite song pic! used tracing paper over a photo and then pasted it over the photo on photoshop check it out!

got quite a mixture of songs on their, mostly Linkin Park, Xzibit, Public Enemy, Incubus, Red Hot Chili Peppers and wu tang, but missed out loads of my fav songs, maybe i shudda done bands instead. Enjoy.

On a further note not impressed with the person leaving comments posing as my brother. I live in the same house so I’ll find out if its him leaving the comments wont I? Use your brain and maybe find something better to do with your time, I only spend a few minutes on this a week, its not my life, its just a bit of fun when I have free time, I would rather noone read my blog than get stupid spam. So go ahead spam me but I won’t accept it so your only waisting your time.

kEEP It REaL!

Jamie achieves!

Had my marks for my first project at university given to me on tuesday, they send us our marks via email, and I was so nervous when I opened that email, but my nerves were wrong this time! I got 81 percent, the highest grade I have ever achieved in anything EVER. You see I have always tried hard at education, but it seemed from age 12-19 I was destined to be average, even during my art foundation course I was working as hard as possible and only came out of that with a pass, despite my tutor being completely amazed by my final project!? But NO MORE! 81 percent, only 4% away from a distinction and over the holiday I recieved my grade for a presentation i had to do and thatwas 70 percent. My first assesment at the beginning of the term was 56 percent, so I am improving, I am growing, I will succeed. Sorry this probably sounds like a lot of me hyping myself up, Im just actually starting to feel like I have recieved the recognition I deserve and I am trying hard!

Also been having a lot of fun with my turntables, blasting out some XZIBIT, DMX, PUBLIC ENEMY, WU TANG CLAN, N.W.A, THE ROOTS, KRS ONE, etc mixing it up, scratching, blending, playing acapellas over instrumentals, its great fun,and if your serious about your hip hop like I am but can’t seem to put a rhyme together, get decks man, they are the ultimate way to really get into ur hip hop! the only problem is I have become obsessed with buying vinyl lps and singles off of ebay, so I am burning my birthday money haha.

Really been inspired by this image too, it’s of kanye west, and it’s made up of all his favourite songs, see quite a lot of wu tang clan in there (always a good move) some RUNDMC,  some Notorious B.I.G, also some Jay-z and even some STING!? Why not, classic stuff. The image had me consider some of my favourite songs, and I’m gonna do one myself, so wait and see! (BTW if anyone knows who this image is by please let me know, the website didn’t say!!!!)

Happy Birthday To Me!

Thats right today is the big day! I am 21 Years old But to be honest I feel exactly the same haha, still it’s been a nice day, my brother woke me up at 7.30 to give me the card from both of them, I was half asleep but it was a really nice card, and I got a few nice cards on the mantle.

My rents are going to give me my presents in a bit, going to a chinese restuarant which I’m looking forward to as I’m hungry! lol. Got Jen coming in a bit and she’ll have presents for me too . Had my mate Ad round today too and had a right old laugh messing about on the decks and my electronic drumkit. Last nights band practice with him and dave was quality and we had a right laugh messing around with the microphone echo effects, Dave did some quality beatboxing and a mental frog style dance to it, and Ad did a whole helicopter/machine gun chase scene with his voice it was jokessss!!!! lol

So a Happy Birthday and It’s not over yet!!!!

btw check out…

my mates blog, he’s a freelance nintendo/videogames magazine writer so if you’re interested in that sort of thing check it out

http://digitalgigolo.blogspot.com