[Insert compulsory comment about long/short/average time since last posting]

BLOGGING IS REALLY BORING.

*cough*

I was up til about 3am this morning writing the first few strips of a web comic called Full Frontal Lobotomon, my upcoming contribution to the wonderfully eclectic www.the36print.co.uk. I really, really enjoy writing and I need to do more of it. But not blog posts. They always feel like I am just checklisting things what I have done lately. There are loads of things I would like to write about but I never feel fully informed enough to do so. Or entertaining enough. Or I just can’t stick with it. Hopefully doing Lobotomon on a weekly basis will help me improve and be inspired to do more.

Sooo the checklist. I have been:

- Freelancing for an iPhone game which I hope to share with you in the near future.

- Failing to find as much freelance work as I probably need when I move to Cardiff, hopefully in the next few weeks (I am very excited about this). Elance.com and similar sites were my initial source, but the undervaluation of creative tasks from both clients and contractors becomes overwhelming. Pangs of bitterness ensue. I’m convinced there’s some awesome resources out there – forums brimming with programmers who would love to pay me to bootify their games. But I’ve yet to find them.

- Still working on Mush LOL. Or should I say LOTOCOTI. Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. Or should I say, laughing because sometimes that is LITERALLY ALL YOU CAN DO.

- Not posting images on here much because everything these days goes on my Tumblr. Check that out instead. Aim to find time to do some more portfolio stuff soon, thinking of doing some mockups/marketing materials for game concepts.

Overall, I give things a 7/10. Neither here nor there. I think (hope) there is going to be a lot going on in the next few months, what with moving to Cardiff, finishing up projects (did I mention I live in eternal optimism that the release of Mush is only a week away?), as well as some other interesting opportunities cropping up.

Laters.

I know I’m out of procrastination ideas when I end up writing a blog post – it’s six months since my last post. Ooooops..

I finished that piece of artwork I was working on – check out my Tumblr, www.marblekittykat.tumblr.com, which gets updated more frequently. I also pretty obsessively build myself new portfolio websites, the latest of which is a mini folio purely for my illustration work – www.illustration.katekillick.com.

Although I am still working to build up my portfolio, I have found a more constructive way than self-set briefs – namely, freelance. I was surprised by the number of mobile game related projects looking for artists on elance and, having finally acquired an Apple device, feel pretty confident that I can meet their requirements. Got a couple of proposals in the pipeline which will hopefully be enough to sustain me whilst we finish Mush development / marketing.

In the mean time I am nervously anticipating the announcement of the student IGF shortlist this  Sunday!! We entered two titles, including mine & Henry Hoffman’s final year project, With the Dust. I can’t say I’m truly optimistic as there have been so many entries this year, but I am living in hope…

Finally, With the Dust *did* get nominated for a Ffresh award, which is “The Student Moving Image Festival of Wales.” I have no idea when the winners are announced (as seems to be typical of these events, they don’t even manage to email people to tell them they’ve been shortlisted….like, seriously?) but you can find out more at www.ffresh.com.

I’ve come to accept that I am a bit crap at blogging. I won’t bother boring you for long with news and the like since I suspect it is of approximately 0% interest to anyone (in summary: I finished uni with a first, had an awesome time at GDC Europe, Mush was announced as a LIVE title and I’ve finally started watching FMA: Brotherhood).

More importantly, I’ve decided to use Tumblr to dump doodles (I draw so much and yet put so little online…) and only blog here when I actually have something to WRITE. Thankfully due to the endless ways of cross posting social media, it will still appear nicely in the sidebar here >>
For the full show though, checkout www.marblekittykat.tumblr.com.

While I’m plugging myself, I’ll also mention that my folio is also looking rather tasty these days: Check It.

Anyhow I am now nicely unemployed and therefore trying to sort through the billion different goals that are buzzing around my brain:
- get a job as a 2D game artist
- go indie?
- develop my 3D skills?
- get a job in Flash/web?
- do a small solo serious game project on the side?
- get a local job? move to Cardiff and do it there?
- try freelance web? freelance illustration?
- apply for jobs abroad?
- finish With the Dust
- wait for Mush release

So far my process of making this decision is as follows:
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Whilst that sorts itself out, and I’m keeping my options open applying to all sorts of things, I have managed to narrow down my short term focus to practising my illustration (and possibly seeing what commercial/freelance opportunities that might provide).

SO what I am roundabout-ly coming to is this: I need Illustrator practice, my main problem being how distracted I get after 20 seconds with different styles, never quite committing to one style and changing things if it doesn’t look good immediately (I seem to have particular difficulty with line art and keeping my palette limited – thinking about reading up on colour theory). To avoid this, and to help me explore different styles to find what works for me, I am setting myself some briefs to do over the next couple of weeks:

- something with no lines
- something pet site style (single width lines)
- something serious
- something without the wacom
- something horror
- something scenic
- something abstract
- something urban
- something highly detailed
- something semi realistic

(some of these may be combined).

I am also trying to follow a few tutorials, more as a style guide than anything. This is one such example I started yesterday (got a long way to go):

(I wouldn’t have put eyes everywhere but it’s the theme of the tutorial…)

I had something else to say but I forgot it.