It's official, I'm finished for the year!
Lectures are over and the only dark cloud looming over my near future is the final exam on the 18th of May. Still, I have approximately 432 hours until then so everything's looking good.

I had a great time over Easter Break, spent with my family and friends. My personal highlights were the Easter Party and a week spent Skiing in Andorra.

Skiing again was brilliant, managed to pick it up again within just a few hours. The first run's always a little daunting, but within minutes you'll be hurtling down the mountain with carefree abandon with a compulsory "Wheeeeeeeeeee!" sound.

As you can see below, there was plenty of snow which lasted throughout the week.


The apartment was much better than we all expected, with a massive amount of living space and a great view of the mountains:


And to top it off, bottles of wine for under £1!


While skiing I decided to do a bit of filming for the blog, so I grabbed the camera and recorded a full run from a first-person perspective. Unfortunately there's littl sense of speed because of the lack of detail in the snow as it moves past, but at some points the camera is moving *pretty* fast.


After getting back from Andorra I had plenty of animation work to do with Redders and Rachel. We headed back a bit early to work through the weekend on it, tirelessly animating our project. A few days (and sleepless nights) later we presented our work to the world, which went pretty well almost grabbing the elusive first.

The next panic after that deadline was the Technology exam the following week. I don't yet have the marks back, but I have a good feeling I've passed. *Crosses fingers*

To close the academic year, we had a rather interesting lecture. It was comprised of German Television, Prog Rock and our very own "TECHS-Factor" (which was as wonderfully cheesey as it sounds). It involved getting up in front of the lecture theater, logging into your chosen online instrument (eg: iNudge or Pianographique) and pumping out some "kickin' chunes" in a bid to win some booze. It was all worth it to watch our tutor Andrew Clay bob his have and have a mini-rave to the techno music on offer.

I had hoped by this point to have had my Music Video ("Watch Over You" by "Alter Bridge") and Creative Video ("How To Film Your Creative Video") uploaded to share, but it's been a nightmare. Google Videos is no longer taking uploads, YouTube flashes up errors with every attempt, Facebook gives up half way through each try and they're too big to upload to Vimeo. I really am stuck for ideas, so if you know an alternative please let me know!

TLDR: I'm Back!

I have returned! *Cue celebratory music*
It's been a while, I've been a little pre-occiped setting up the new PC (which incidently is so big it could eat my old one).

Back at University I've been keeping busy. Yesterday I walked into Uni wearing a full suit. This wasn't a random (and very nearly brilliant) decision though, I was becoming a fake news anchor for the afteroon as part of our News Report spoof. It went pretty well, I had my fair share of inability to read lines and there was a good dose of corpsing too. Themes of the afternoon included carnivorous lobsters, escaped lunatics and horse love. So a usual day at University it seems.

In animation we've been writing a storyboard and script for our mock fairytale trailer: "Lil' Red Riding Hoodie". It's planned out now, so all that remains is recording the lines, drawing the scenes/characters and then animating it together. Is this a good time to mention that I've been cast as the voice of Wolf from Gladiators? Yep, that'll be interesting...

I spent last Sunday at a heavy metal concert with some friends, which was a really enjoyable experience. The line-up was "Man must Die", "Bleeding Through" and "Hatebreed" with "Machine Head" headlining. While I don't typically listen to much heavy music (I'm more into Rock) I quite liked the first two acts. The third act; Hatebreed were awful though (despite getting the "best" crowd reaction of the three). One of the reasons I went was to hear Halo performed live by Machine Head, it being my favourite reasonably heavy track. Unfortunately I missed it as we had to catch the last train home. Maybe next time, eh?
You can find the pictures HERE.

Student Life

Thought I'd write something about my time here at University. For those of you that don't know, I'm studying at DeMontfort on a (BSc) Media Production course (yes, it does exist). I'm 19 weeks in now and everything's going pretty well.
During this time I have:

-Created a website in html using JPad Pro.
(It's basic, but it worked well enough.)

-Created a photomontage with Adobe Photoshop.
(Always been more of a Paint Shop Pro person, to be honest.)

-Learned Animation using Adobe Director.
(Still need to create a final though.)

-Learned to use Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing.
(Sensing an Adobe theme here...)

-Built a Radio
(What a useful skill, eh?)

-Learned that calculators have buttons on them.
(Thanks Captain Obvious... Erm... "Mike Howkins"...)

Some of the lectures are dire (here's looking at you, Tech Fundamentals) but others aren't so bad, and the lab sessions are always useful. Most of the work is done in my room, which has to fight for my attention between the Xbox, Parties and Clubs. It always gets done, though I have no idea how.
Out of tuition life couldn't get much better; cheap drinks, plenty to do and extreme chairing!



Anyway, I should bring this entry to a close. So, without further ado I present the second comic strip. Sorry it's a bit small, you can view it in full by clicking it.