herbal-jazz;

I am going to be celebrating my birthday a little over a week early as next Thursday I am in hospital.

Unfortunately, my jeans have yet to arrive, I need to leave for work in 45 minutes, my hair won’t straighten right, it’s due to rain whilst we’re out on the town afterwards, I can’t afford that really nice new top and some new shoes, I left everything to the last minute, I have to rush from work to a friend’s house to my own party, and in the meantime, I’m wondering how many people will actually turn up at 7.30 for a meal at the Italian.

I think people were more excited about the prospect of drinks than going out for my birthday.

Yippee.

Woops!

Try this instead.

So first and foremost, here’s what I’ve been working on for the future of Herbal-Jazz. I mentioned a couple of posts back that I’d like to work on making HJ a proper logo and site design, and this is the first stage – the logo.

I used a font called Chaparral Pro and added some fancy swirls and of course edited the font so it’s not 100% the same as just typing it out. I think there are still a couple of things I’d like to edit about it, but for now, this is good. I like the simplicity! I’m debating whether or not to add some styles – outlines, shadows and the like – as I quite like the cutout look of it at the moment, but we’ll see. I’ve got a whole summer ahead of me to plot this sort of stuff.

Now for the doodles – first up we have a picture of Rolo (the fox) tugging on Tamzyn’s collar. They’re very good friends – Tamzyn the ringleader has Rolo as her second – and often Rolo mistakes this for “yes you’re allowed to play around with me”. Unfortunately Tamzyn doesn’t see it this way and you can rest assured that soon after this she has him on his back, snapping at his neck, very pissed off indeed

I’ve changed Tamzyn’s design up a little bit, as the last one was a little bit sparkly and overcomplicated. You can see her out-dated design here. This is Rolo’s character sheet. There’s a little bit of information on their back story there, hopefully it gives you a good idea of what the two of  them are like.

Finally this one, aptly named F-f-falling. I was just doodling about and wanted to experiment with this sort of pose and a different style of linearting – not that you can really tell as it’s just the same as my usual lineart – but it doesn’t look too bad in my opinion, I would have liked to take this further but …My brain lacks any motivation for this sort of thing, regrettably.

Not sure what I was going for with this other than a falling wolf, it’s no character of mine as far as I can tell. I’m not 100% pleased with the way it’s turned out – lots of sizing issues, look at those legs they’re all different sizes etc etc – although I do like the shape of the muzzle, heh.

That’s all from me, over and out!

Starting on the layouts for my pets’ lookups First up is Lunuhris, this is the image for hers, but I’ll probably change the shading as it bugs me as it is at the moment.

Well next Friday marks the last day of my first year at university and boy, what a year it’s been!

He and I arrived at uni a week before anybody else so we had our whole houses to ourselves for a week. As the others trickled in we began to slowly get a feel for the university. The weather was beautiful, the people seemed nice and the campus was a lovely place to be. But of course – and you may have read about this in previous blog entries – it wasn’t to stay thus. I always knew students were known for being party-animals but boy I didn’t expect that in the slightest!

Tom in particular was awful. When he arrived, we were cooking dinner, and – trying to be nice – we offered to leave some for him. He accepted, but never ate it, and I knew from then on that he was going to be a complete dick. And lo! – he was. Dan was – is – a nice guy to talk to, lovely to get on with; Chris is the same. Siona I hardly saw or spoke to and Andrew just freaked me out (the day he arrived, it was hot so I had my bedroom door open, and he kept walking in and talking to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do – NO! DON’T DO THAT!).

The problems arose when we met to discuss the cleaning rota, and get to know each other. Of the five other housemates four of them liked R’n'B, dance, hip hop and the like – and for someone who likes indie and rock, that set off a warning sign. I didn’t think it’d be too bad though, until Tom introduced the house to his top-of-the-range sound system by playing his wonderful music at 3 in the morning, every morning.

I was sick during Fresher’s week – it got to the stage where I’d just curl up in bed and cry because I was ill. Exhausted, because people would party outside my house until the early hours then come and party inside and I’m a light sleeper anyway, I went to the doctor’s one morning when I felt particularly awful and asked to see the doctor as soon as possible. Bearing in mind that this is Fresher’s week, half the students probably aren’t registered or even on campus yet, and it was mid-week – when they told me I couldn’t have an appointment until the next week, I just burst into tears there at the reception desk. After a lot of complicated phone calls I was eventually told – here – yes – you can have an appointment after closing hours at 5pm or so. So luckily I got to see the doctor after all that trouble, he prescribed some pills and a week later I was fine again.

Alongside the music problems, my housemates were filthy! They didn’t seem to mind leaving leftover food about the place and letting it mould and, instead of cleaning, they’d use my things instead (because I was meticulous about cleaning my own dishes). The toilet managed to get poo stains all over it, they urinated on the seat and rim, toothpaste all over the floor and the shower room is constantly soaking wet because they … I don’t even know what they do. Plus the whole house STINKS of cigarette smoke because three of them smoke and two of them don’t bother to go outside that much.

I gave up cleaning the house at around New Year’s when I came back after the holidays to find the house had failed a major inspection because of the pots and pans all over the place, the state of the kitchen and so on. I just … couldn’t do it any more, and haven’t cleaned up after them since. Which is a bit sneaky, but apparently they don’t care, and instead blame the dirty things on Andrew, who refuses to do anything anyway. Such sneaky bastards.

Now in the boy’s house there weren’t these problems and all his housemates got on fine, except for one French girl. She was lovely to talk to – but even lighter a sleeper than me! She eventually complained to the student wardens and the house had a meeting in November about it, but even after that she couldn’t take it any more and moved out in January. In her place, another boy moved in – Jack. He seemed nice, until he started playing HIS music obnoxiously loudly too, although he tied it in with his XBox and all we could hear half the time was the sound of bassy gunfire. Eventually Steph blew her lid when she was ill and trying to sleep and he had his music up, and he hasn’t been as bad since. (Although saying that, he’s just started up his music quite loud again…)

In the meantime, student finance were being a pain in the backside for both of us. On his part, he had mis-read a question but they weren’t going to tell him that – so he spent forever trying to find the question he’d answered wrong before he could finally get his money through. On my part – just a simple case of not having letters forwarded – all they needed, by the look of things, was my bank details. Until my mother got in touch with the local MP though nothing was heard about it until mid-November. Eventually my money came through too, but the fact that I’d had none to start with meant I was already way into my overdraft and wasn’t on my way out any time soon. I had to extend it during the second term but I’m trying my hardest not to this term, although after my rent payment goes out on the 22nd I’ll only have £200 left to last until mid-September …. interesting.

All the while I’d been working on assignments and the like for six different modules. Compared to sixth form, where we’d have 6 months to complete a project at a time (although maybe two or three running alongside each other), having six projects all due in an 8-week window – often with several deadlines all at once – and there being a very set-in-stone deadline was a lot more exciting. It kept me on my toes – although I’ll be the first to admit I still left things til the last minute, and as a result maybe didn’t get grades that were as good as they could have been! But I’ve learned for next year (hopefully).

The projects were a huge range of things – from Java programs to presentations about my inspirations, I learned a lot of things this year, including how to present myself a little better when presenting ideas and solutions. I also learned a lot about the principles of design and how to incorporate a lot of the things I learned in BTEC – where we just learned about them in BTEC, I actually learned how to use them this year.

Plus I got to play around with Flash! I made two websites in Flash and am more than a little pleased with myself for that. I got 95% for the first and 94% for the second, so obviously I did something right somewhere. I’m looking forward to trying to make HJ a Flash index page, but first I have to go about making up the logo, which could take longer than I’d anticipated.

Speaking of new logos and HJ – I’m planning on making a lot of layouts and art this summer! I’m just simmering with artistic creativity, which I’ve missed, and just want to grab my tablet and start drawing. I really want to start working on sketches and posting them up here – like a sketch blog – but first I need to start doing some sketches. Easier said than done!

But before I start on that I’ve got other things to do. I’ve got revision for my last three exams to do, I’ve got to pack things up and figure out my moving arrangements. I’ll be travelling home by train on the 31st – and then Dad will bring us both back at the end of June to move things over to the new house. It’ll be a bit difficult because the tenants for this year don’t have to move out until the end of July, but we have to move out by the start, so it’ll be a bit difficult to figure out where we’re going to keep our things – but hopefully we’ll manage okay, the landlady seems to be very accommodating.

For some reason I signed up for PAL next year, and have a class about that on Friday all day. I’m kind of looking forward to it but at the same time – no – I don’t want to do it! I’m signing up to a very labour-intensive thing for next year before I even know how intense my course will become. How do I know if I can manage both? I’m not very good at time management as it stands! But we’ll see. With any luck it’ll all be okay, although I’m still having doubts.

I keep trying to convince myself that it’s a good idea to revise, but I don’t think I’ll be able to – not with people outside kicking a football around and Jack across the house playing his music so loud. Loud music seems to just make me so angry, makes me want to hit the person who’s playing it, but I’m not 100% certain that that would be appropriate in this case. My laptop speakers just don’t do anything to drown the sound out, unfortunately. I can’t beat him with sheer volume – needs to be a lot of bass too…

Hmm, well, I want to go and play with making a new layout for HJ now. Hopefully by the end of the summer this will have a dual functionality – working as both my blog and as a portfolio, which was what I’d intended the site to be to start with. With any luck, I’ll be able to split it up quite nicely, and I’d like to make the portfolio in Flash, although I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to manage it. But first things first – colours and a logo – then I’ll start on the rest of it. Wish me luck!