heres the lovely couple at octocon last month.

Heres the three witches, but that wasnt a halloweeen photo, everydays pretty scary around here. Ish went out guising last night as a foxy wee devil. I shuffled around doing dawn of dead impressions, freaking Ish out, i hate drugs. diazipan is scary stuff, and all the other stuff they've got me on..
I'm afraid of computers !


the computer i'm working on can't cope with finishing the film even with an added external harddrive.

ive spent a day off work, semi parayslsed, injected, & mashed out of head in jelly coma diazapaned up, the pain was still there, but i didnt care any more. off work again today trying to stay off pain meds long enough to do a bit of film juggling.

this film crap just gets worse !
so ive been animating til at least 2 everymorning, working everyday, starting to think ahead beyond one scene at a time, how to put the whole thing together, titles, the missing scene links, etc...
So i got permission to use some music by the talented Ewan MacPherson & his band Fribo, its scandinavian scottishy folky, Ewans my sister in laws brother. This was an excellent breakthrough, but before i can even start trying to tweak the volume or merge a couple of songs to match the pace of the film, i need to finish the film, i have no software & no idea how to do this, i havent heard from my 'mentor'/ trainer in weeks. but thats another story.
and then the next hitch..
i started to flatten out the layers & try to merge the scenes together, and the computer i was supplied with hasnt got the guts to deal with the file sizes...
i have spent around 18 hours attempting to composit the whole thing, i dread to think what will happen when / if i try to export it & change format... but then i have no idea what format the projectionist is looking for , or the means to convert it, i think i may just walk into the premier on the 11th with laptop under arm & say,
" gather around audience i can show you one bit at a time, the playback times all wrong, but you get the jist...oo sorry it crashed again "
i have painfully put my neck out, done my eyes in, have a permenant headache, have a trapped nerve down one arm or some sort of RSI numb hand syndrome, havent spoke to friends or some family members for months, and am going nuts from lack of sleep...
be wary of winning prizes !

so i had a fantastic weekend at Octocon, maynooth near dublin. Met the lovely Mike & leoni Carroll, the oh so wise Harry harrison, & J P Hogan and lots of lovely peeps. poor beleguered brain tried to stretch with all the interesting panels & talks, especially those with my lovely boyfriend person on.

then home, and back to the brain tunnel shrinkage that is the sunny North west... and it took me a week to pick up the animation threads again, with panic gnawing at my bones.
burning the midnight oil to try & get it done, cutting myself to edges of functioning on minimal sleep.

and the film festival has a front page slot, i still havent even got any sounds or score or sound editing facility sorted.

cracking on with film, but its taking over my life, and sleep, and dreams, i dream in animated images now. week one, ive done 4 seconds worth......

A member of the public who was up here on holiday & attended our fire station open day sent some cool pix of us doing the chop up a car in 10 minutes demo. which was jolly nice.  all of which doesnt further film-making.

bah blog doesnt like films, even horribly shrunked deformed animated GIFS, you'll have to click a link yourselves;

here be butterflies

day two in the animatrix house, ive vaguely cheered up in the hope that i might actually be able to do some of the film after all. installing the bloody softwares being an all day pain tho, i need californian bums to get out of bed & send me unlock codes.

Okay so its not great but i only started today with the equipment to make the animation film.

The butterfly was my first doodle. & this here is an experiment in changing formats & uploading. It looks completely different in different formats. It should run faster, & i should be able to have it randomly fluttering about, but that is another project.
Its been a bit of a nightmare, its taken 4 weeks of the precious 3 months i had for the organisers to get me the equipment to even start training on, Ive been tearing my hair out in stress while they seem to have been inpervious to any sense of logistics with regard to film-making. its hard for me now to get stuck into it when i'm not sure whats actually achievable in the limited time left, & how much do i compromise & axe the original story ?

meanwhile;
the art therapy work with the kids who are carers, Is full on & very challenging, the hundreds of miles commute is good head-space tho.
Eldest daughter Blu-Tak started college today, Hurray !

Radiohead concert at Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh tuesday night, bus down & back today. Beck was the highly entertaining support. Radiohead were even better than last time i saw them, with the crowd going mental and Thom kept getting the giggles. Awesome. Played loads o old ones, every one a high point, and some new songs too.
somewhat bruised & aching today however.

re-thought storyboard again today, taking us back to pretty much my original story in the first place. figure three minutes is basically a pop video, there isnt any time, for character placement, explanations, lead ins, nice conclusions, basically, heres a girl, heres a wolf, heres the hunters, this is what happens, and heres the result will have to do. Its getting too late in the day for all sorts of sub plots, so any more wrangling & i'm tempted to say, " okay, heres a film which features 3 minutes of girl & wolf playing in a forest, NO plot at all "

been up to neck in it recently, trying to work most days, and deal with son moving to his own place & daughter about to leave home too, on top of trying to crack on with the film, and organising our first public open day at the fire station.
Knocked out the film storyboard sat in a car park one day, the only place to get peace.
needs a huge squish to fit it in 3 minutes.

Last night worked late putting up marquee, and collecting giant bouncy castle etc.
Today, a very successful opening attended by enthusiastic & intrested people. Behold Crew Manager Preston flipping burgers.
Gasp at the way we removed two doors & a roof off a car in front of crowd in 10 minutes & 30 seconds. Be afraid of the 12 tonne engine we borrowed for the day, the 6.5 er is quite enough on these single track roads thankyou very much. laugh at the childrens bouncy castle merriment. Pictures of Fire fighters being attacked by hoards of bouncing children not included.

Took Ishie to the Belladrum tartan Heart Music festival, which she was very grateful for.
an unusal method of moving forward to near the front of the stage involved a big beastie and lots of drumming children with shields. Its that sort of festival, lots of great stuff to look at, shame about the band line up. heres Tal & Jonny, after 'The Automatic', if we had a quid for everytime a drunk eeejit sang the tag-line " whats that coming over the hill, is it a monster?" that weekend, in the "quiet" camping zone, when we were trying to sleep, we coulda bought a fairy costume and sparkly cowboy hat each, and even a pint at the piss stinking beer tent.

conclusion ? we grown ups are getting a little old for this malarkie. Next time the kids can go theirselves. please.

Camping trip of doom, cut short due to midgeys and monsters from LOST. continuing from the irish rope bridge theme, above the waterfall in pic below there is a tiny bridge which certain reluctant persons were tricked into crossing.
Heres the Ishmeister on the viewpoint above the 200ft deep corrie shalloch gorge

Bruno guards the camp.
north coast of scotland sandy beaches & amazing rocks ( and spooky black nights ). Thon wee specs below are my camping chums.meanwhile our other cats disappeared since the old one was put to sleep.

and work on the animation wolf film has started, ive got 9 weeks only to complete it. eeek !

More pix from N' Ireland, Heres the Giants Causeway from cliffs above, or in fact from a giants view, the tiny weensy white speckles below are tourists screaming & running to take cover under ..erm... rocks when rain showers passed over.


looking east from causway, very similiar scenes to north east Skye, same volcanic stuff going on.

view from the other side of the rope bridge, and suddenly i find out everyone on the planet watches CBBC, which is possibly why they all seem to think a bridge is a scary thing, it was great i could see guillimot swimming underwater way beneath me n everything.

Dun Luce Castle, which was very cool indeed and we plan buying when our lottery numbers come up.

Had a fantastic weekend last weekend in Northern Ireland. took a billion pictures of the giants causeway. wobbled across the famous rope bridge, was driven up the scenic Antrim coast. The differences & similarities with Scotland where fascinating, its great to go to a another country that still has a distinct culture of its own rather than some tesco led tele-glued hedgeomony.
All of which is secondary of course to the wonderful company i was in, but i'll stop before i make the casual blog reader feel ill. Next weekend i get my own back & drag my Irish companion around the north coast of scottieland, in the slightly less luxurious mode of camping & the miniscule mouse infested bou-mobile.

meanwhile, full time work continues a pace. I had to get our old cat put down as she was dying in a slow unpleasant manner. No art is getting done whatsoever...eeek.

Working flat out this week & a couple of late night shifts & a call out in the small hours too. Busiest week of the year summer visitor wise as its been the weekend of the Lochcarron Highland Games. ( photos of tossing the caber & pipers not included ). The games themselves are of course secondary to the beer tent & the friday night dance, both of which i avoid like the plague.
The Boys raised a lotta money with the Engine & a raffle, of course all basking in the attention of tourist ladys, everyone loves a fireman.

Tho on call, i was in civvies selling crafty arty stuff to the apathetic masses, which bored me greatly. i think i managed to offend a couple of people with the Wild West Wendy comic, but was pleased to sell most of the ones i had. I think i'll have to find another way of flogging the tat i'm compulsed to make as direct selling frys my brain. why do i live here again ?

meanwhile, lots of art to get on with but very little time...

The Kyle Fire brigade Annual Charity raft race, its murder ! We're the wee dark blob directly below the gap between the two islands & next to the long blue raft.
We came in forth overall but were the first all firefighter crew so got the fire brigade trophy, hurrah !
Thats the crew, me, dave, Ollie, Sandy.

And heres some of our trusty cheering on-shore support team;
cameron; hayley; Ishie; natasha; Claire; Flora; Anna. Alex; daves mum & shona.
All good fun, and hopefully some funds for local charitys. Thanks to Applecross for the borrow of their raft.

( This all means i Missed DR WHO final episode with is worth triple the sponsor money ! )

Heres us doing sea-trials on a new raft for the annual fire brigade charity raft race tomorrow. As per usual muggings is one of the crew on the raft, its bloody murder ! anyone laughing at my pink wellies is in big trouble.

and heres a lovely dragonfly that Ollie ( above ) ' s son found injured, sadly it didnt survive. sniff.

heres a text story that we all provided illustrations for;
http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/fiction/2006/roguetrooper/nuearthtearjerker.shtml

i hope its anonymous Author produces some more soon.