Merry Christmoose!

Merry Christmoose everyone!

Been quite busy with college and essays and what not, so my blog hasn't been loved for a while. So what better time to post up this year's Christmas card! Merry Christmoose everyone! I always try and hide something a bit dodgey in the card... can you find it? 

Here's some of my card designs from previous years. 

Again, I always try and have an element of mischief... Enjoy!

The Tiny Tim of fish is about to become sushi! 

    
You can't read it in this image, but the file on the table says "Santa Paws" and a red stamp saying "Fraud".

     

This one really offended people! hehe!

     

     One family this was sent to, genuinely didn't realise it was cheese, 
because they'd been so "nativity scene" programmed   

       
This one is subtle... but you'll find it. You know the jist of it now. Just like everyone every year that gets these cards knows they're be something amiss! Hope I can still deliver something clever next year!

   

       

Finally on Twitter properly!

I've always been a member, but didn't quite get it... Still not sure I do, but I definitely like it now! So I'm glad I finally stopped paddling in inch high twitter water and just went for the deep end. 

Maureens Twitter.. Come follow me!

Heres the graphics for my page at the mo. Probably change it up when I've time. Just good to get the sizing down etc, so I can more easily play around with it in future. Thanks for stopping by!

Frisbee Follow Up!

Ok, so the entries are all in for the frisbee competition. Fingers crossed! Here's a link to the collection of entries. Frizz can be seen clearly anyway! It's a pity the quality of the image is so low, so you can't properly see a lot of the designs, but theres definitely some competition in there. Good luck to everyone anyway, and may the best discs win! 

Frisbee Ffindr Competition Final Entries

Aarting Blankies Follow Up!

Just a lil stop motion video of the series 1 Blankies up to mischief, rallying support for Blankie Series 2. You can see the collection of winners for series 2 on the wall in places. My lil "Hootie " design is in the bottom right. Yay! Enjoy! 

Aarting Blankies!

There may or may not be a reason for me drawing attention to Aarting.com's designer blankie toy competition that I entered a while ago ;) I'm merely just posting up my designs since I haven't them on my blog. 

The other winners/designers are from all over the world. You can get more information on all of us at Aarting.com. I'm representing Ireland on there anyway! 

Hootie

Some were just hand drawn, some were visualized in 3d and most were done in illustrator or photoshop. I quite liked that all styles were accepted.  I've included the other entries I sent in. I actually really wanted "Rover and Co." to win and when it went to public vote, that's the entry I got everyone to vote for! 

Ironically, Humble Hootie won! Whats better, the two artists who run Aarting, Melissa and Todd, chose my design (Hooties votes were humble also, as everyone voting was voting for their friends etc) so for me thats even better! ( I'm not the biggest fan of "public votes" on the internet... just because I'm not a collector of random friends on facebook etc., that shouldn't mean I've less of a chance to win a competition that should be skill based. Never the less, I won and I'm so pleased! 

Hope you like them! I loved making them! Feel free to groan at the play on words of "Matt O'Doore" below! hehe.

 

Frisbee (my second entry that I thought I posted!)

Here's my second entry for the frisbee design competition. I'm a sucker for play on words and puns (as the poor unfortunate people who know me know!) so even though this design took two seconds to make, I thought it still deserved time in the "Really Maureen? Oh God that's terrible!" pun light. I do enjoy a good pun! Thanks for enduring my bad sense of humour readers!  

Frisbee Contest

I whipped up these bee Frisbee graphics for a Frisbee design contest I just entered today.

I'd ideally love this top design on a frisbee, but the company for some reason can't print large areas of colour, and so the image I entered is below. Colours can not over lap or be near each other either, so I had to outline most of the colours in white too. It got a bit messy and I think over all it still looks ok... but as I say, I prefer the original above. It'd make a good frisbee team mascot I think! Mr. Frizz the Bee!

To be honest, I'm pretty sure I've disqualified myself as the rules specify that you are not allowed write "frisbee" on the design as a separate company owns the rights to that brand name... but if it's an iconic implied version of the word, it should be OK right? A bit of semiotics going on there!? :)

Either way, I enjoyed doing it. It's funny when it gets to the stage that you have so much college work to do, that to do a design for a competition as a treat! I rewarded myself by entering this competition after finishing some of my life drawing homework. Anyway, Enjoy! 

Hentertainment!

http://www.hentertainment-video.com/

Hentertainment (the cheesy pun name was concieved by me!) is the name of my boyfriends on the side business. It does exactly what it says on the tin and makes hen parties more fun! I helped out by doing the graphics for the site and may do an animated piece for it in time, if I have time. 

In a nut shell, the bride to be is shown a pre-recorded dvd of her future husband answering questions about their relationship, likes and dislikes and even naughty questions! 

If she guesses what his responses are correctly she will get a reward! But if not, she gets a forfeit and has to down a shot or some other form of punishment! I helped out by doing the graphics for the site and may do an animated piece for it in time, if I have time. 

The DVD of the grooms interrogation comes with my fancy designed cover too. There is a gap on the cover to enter the grooms name to personalize it even more.

Anyway, check the site out and spread the word if you know anyone who might enjoy this as a hen party treat! 

Doodles

Doodles galore! Just some inane scribblings in my notebook while thinking about film ideas. I'm keeping my idea sort of hush hush until I pitch it to the class, because if it's old hat by the time I present it, people will be more interested in the films they haven't heard about and therefore more excited about them, so it'll just hinder my chances waffling about it. 

                      

Hopefully it'll be good news and it'll get picked. If not, I'll probably make this little movie in my own time, as its super simple, not too time consuming with regards design etc, and it'll be just shy of a minute and a half tops, so shouldn't be too exhausting to finish alone. Keep ye posted! 

Storyboard

Here's a quickly roughed up storyboard that I made for a friend who was doing a project for the ICAD program. Definitely not my finest work, but hey, it's work regardless! 

Natural History Museum

Here's some drawings I did on a recent outing to the Natural History Museum in Dublin. I did a lot of them quite quickly and left a few drawings to stay in my notebook unseen. I was half thinking of leaving the Phalanger behind when taking these photos, but he's got such a funny name, I decided to put him up. And Sloths...well, they're just so ridiculous really. So even my rubbish drawing of the sloth deserved a place on here. Phalanger.... hehe. Still makes me laugh. I'd never heard of them until that day!

I always try to use lots of different media, even if I'm not a big fan of it. Hence the mixed use of charcoal, pencil, pen, markers etc. 

moose

hippo

angry and wierd haired monkey.

Phalanger!

Sloth

2d Showreel

I was just looking at this again on my weebly site and you know what... I really like how I put it together. Vainty eh?  Just the timing with the music and you never get too bored watching it... well... that's what I think, but I guess I'm just happy it all looks relatively good, since it took a lot out of me! Not making this video of course, but the contents in it. Phew it was hard work! Can't wait for the hard work to kick off this year! hoooot hoooot goes the crazy train! Non stop journey to No Life Ville/aka College work 24/7! Ah well, it'll all be worth it! We'll be trained up and ready for work! Hope you enjoy the video.

Lion King 3d! Roaring Success! Rawr!

Got to see a special preview/premiere showing of the Lion King 3d yesterday (2nd of Oct)! Woohoo! It's not officially released until the 7th! I have to say, even without the 3d, seeing the Lion King back up on the big screen was fantastic! What a great idea Disney! 

Having said that, I don't even think they knew themselves just how successful it was going to be! It earned a whopping 30million on its first week release in the U.S. and an impressive 22.1million its second week! It has currently in total, made a whopping  847.7million in its existence, and if it makes a mere 48million more (which is very achievable with the numbers so far, considering it hasn't even been officially released in Ireland/Europe yet) it will comfortably enter the top 20 largest grossing movies of all time!

A photo of me just after coming out of the movie

As for the 3d, it wasn't full on, which was great. It merely added to the film. I remember trying to explain 3d to someone when it first came out and simply put I said "it's like the difference between digital HD TV and regular TV... it's not massively different, but you really do enjoy what you're watching more". Some 3d is over the top, distracting and frankly sometimes uncomfortable to watch! I really don't think that's what 3d should be about. It should enhance the film, but not to the extent that it disturbs your enjoyment of watch you're watching or distracts you from the story etc. The Lion King got it spot on. Visually beautiful (as before) with an added touch of magic. Really nicely done. Well done Disney! Looking forward to possible future 3d releases perhaps? Fingers crossed!

The Marvels!

This is just a shout out to "The Marvels". I designed their logo...
but they're also awesome!

 Check out their great website at:

http://www.themarvels.ie/

But why not go one step further, and check out their amazing repetoir of rockin' tunes and their fantastically produced and super fun video! I love these guys! They do a christmas message each year too! Can't wait for this years one! 

Here's their video... Enjoy!

Buttons and Bows Craft Fair (21st August)

Sorry about the delay in getting the info up about the craft market I did. I had photos of the stuff I was selling, but I was waiting to hear back from a few folks who had taken photos of myself behind the stall, working away. Finally today the photos arrived! So this is me and my friend Courtney at the Buttons and Bows craft market in Crumlin.

It was only the 2nd Buttons and Bows market, so it still isn't very well known and hasn't quite taken off yet. Regardless of that, it was a nice day out (bar the lack of sandwiches, which I'd a huge craving for all day!) I sold quite a bit, and it was definitely worth the experience too. So here I am, hocking my wares to who ever will have them!

On a seperate note, I was painting ceramic piggies at the Lucan Festival on Sunday. It was a horrendous day until about 4 o'clock, so sales were slow. But the weather picked up then, and business picked up a bit too. You can see examples of my pig painting here: 

http://maureenwalshe.weebly.com/personalised-pigs.html

I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading!

PS: Here is some of the stuff I made to sell. I also sold my paintings which are in a previous post, if you so wanted to see them, they are at this web linky:

 http://poisonarrowblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/paintings.html

Googles Doodle honours Jim Hensons Brithday

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393517,00.asp#fbid=CY2m3CGU20e

Google have done it again. After the amazing Queen tribute doodle (link below) which I thought was amazing, they've gone one step further on the awesome scale and made interactive muppets on their doodle today, in honour of Jim Hensons birthday. I was playing with them thinking "what a shame they don't make noise when you click on them" but as I continued playing with them, adding my own muppet-esque sound track, I realized not adding sound was something they must have done on purpose to make wierdos like me make silly muppet sounds as the mouths open and close! Anyway, I figured I'd do a few screen grabs and post them up incase any of you guys missed this epic doodle at the time. Each muppet could be controlled one at a time, but I've merged the resulting actions together on indiviual panels, as it would be silly to have a panel for each. Enjoy!

main screen

when you hover the cursor over each hand option

(with this option, you could make the muppets follow the cursor)

when you click on the hand option for each muppet

additonal fun options

additonal fun options

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bxGrdUbCRw)  

Queen Google Doodle

Long live Google doodles!