http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal The Journal of Ludwig Wendzich NZ English lwendzich@gmail.com Copyright 2008 2008-06-08T04:23:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/its_motion_picture/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/its_motion_picture/#When:04:23:00Z Long time, no post. Agh, sorry. Barcamp Auckland is going well, we’ve secured all our sponsors and I’m just awaiting artwork for the t-shirt designs! But, more Barcamp Auckland stuff in a later post. This post, is all about motion picture! No...not movies, but podcasts! Specifically video podcasts! My (one-man) design firm, WebCreative, is now producing a weekly podcast called the Second Draw Down. The show is hosted by my great friend, Novia Ng, who’s doing a great job so far. The show was supposed to be aimed at teenagers but it seems the show has a much more general appeal, with almost a 50/50 adult-teen split (We did aim the show at the older teenager which is why this general appeal makes sense.) As you would hear Novia say, the show is as random as the stuff you find in the second drawer down! This means that anything off-beat and exciting we find on the internet and around Auckland, we’ll stash in the second drawer down (which is usually a collection of strange, single-use utensils) and then share this with you every week when we release the show. Please visit Second Draw Down and watch our latest episode, and then subscribe if you like it! Following is a little behind the scenes video I made using iSight to just share how we do things and to share some important tips I’ve learned along the way. How to make a Podcast from Ludwig Wendzich on Vimeo. 2008-06-08T04:23:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/barcamp_auckland_2_is_here/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/barcamp_auckland_2_is_here/#When:08:16:00Z Always, and I mean always, make sure your website works in all current browsers if your target audience are web geeks. Seriously ;) Even though, logic (and even statistics), tell me that most people who would be visiting Barcamp Auckland 2‘s sexy (if I do say so myself) new website, http://bca.geek.nz, it seems that almost all of them decided to check the website in the delightful IE7. Which, isn’t a bad browser as such, just doesn’t quite agree with Firefox and Safari. They then proceeded to tell me that my website was broken in IE7. Thanks guys. But seriously, I love you all. You are all awesome and I’m so glad you visited the site, multiple times ;) This brings me to the point of this blog post. Barcamp Auckland 2 is here! That is right my friends, all the fun and games from last year is back this year and, as the strapline goes, its bigger and better. This year I’m expecting about 120 people to signup and hopefully, the same number to attend. I won’t be surprised if the number of registrants go over 120 (but the cut off will be 150 registrants.) The event will be held at the same venue, the lovely, Botany Downs Secondary College (thank you so much for sponsoring the venue and wifi once more) and will be held on Saturday the 12th of July, 2008. As always, the event will be free! I hope I don’t need to ask you again to sign up! Please spread the word! Blog, twitter, email and tell your friends. Sponsorship As we are expecting 120 attendees this year sponsorship will be even more important. If we are to meet the high standard set last year (yes, I’m talking about the great food and awesome t-shirts) then we’re going to need a lot more sponsorship funds. At an approximate cost of $35 per head, we need to rally a total of around $4200 in sponsorship this year. I hope that your company can help.  If you think you can, please get in touch. Remember, every contribution helps (we aren’t expecting a $2000 sponsorship from each company!) 2008-04-08T08:16:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/expression_engine_201/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/expression_engine_201/#When:07:06:00Z Oh my! That looks so awesome! It will make Expression Engine such a more compelling choice as a content management system - flexibility in templates, content-type/database management and now, control panel views (such as Publish/Edit screens,) Accessories (additions to the control panel that enable you to give information on how to use the system - including mini-screencasts!) and more (since it’s now based on CodeIgniter.) I can not wait! Watch the preview below. http://expressionengine.com/ee2_sneak_preview/ How much more will it cost though? 2008-03-16T07:06:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/kiwifoo_08_leads_to_nzwc/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/kiwifoo_08_leads_to_nzwc/#When:22:07:00Z I am honoured to have been invited to the KiwiFoo/Baacamp weekend organised by Nat and Russel. It was held the past weekend, Feb 1-3, which was filled with amazing sessions, very smart and creative people and lots of “corridor talk.” The people ranged from Tech Nomads from Estonia (Tony had fascinating tales to tell), Media folk (such as Radio NZ, Weta Workshops and TVNZ), robot-heads, web geeks (I met some of the Shift guys, who were awesome), crafties (Lucy from felt.co.nz was always interesting to talk to), events organisers (such as the organisers of Barcamps Wellington and Christchurch, as well as Natalie and Simon from Oxford GeekNights - now livin’ it up in Brighton), Kiwis livin’ it up in the Valley (such as Ponoko) and much much more. The one thing Foocamp has over Barcamp is the control over who is attending. Where Barcamp is more a web geek event, Nat and Russel could control who was invited to KiwiFoo and so could make sure there was a great variety in attendance allowing cross pollination of ideas. The invite only part meant that everyone was cutting-edge or leaders in whatever they did, so a lot of the more technical talks were way over my head. I especially enjoyed Justine‘s talk on Usability and the effects of change and unintentional blindness and the effect on user interfaces, e.g. showing errors, opening new tabs in the background or even just navigation to a page with a left-hand side navigation adapting for the current page. A lot of the time, the change is not apparent so we are lost, trying to figure out what we are meant to do next. Another talk (the last one of the weekend) was also about usability, and this was basically a round table discussion about solving some issues with a particular site’s “Privacy and Security” form. It is a real mess, looks like a port from the database structure to a form. My immediate reaction was to solve 90% of the problem with only 10% of the interface. After a heated, sometimes boisterous discussion, we seemed to reach that conclusion. Showing 2 options “Public” and “Private” then only revealing more of the options when you select private. Simple check boxes will do, no need for Yes and No radio buttons! Another session I attended was led by Russel, Rod and Mauricio, entitled “Fixing broken revenue” in which we discussed the current advertising model and how this was broken when it came to smaller publishing companies. It was definitely an interesting discussion that I’m excited to keep going. By far, my favorite sessions were about “building web communities” and “bringing geeks out of the woodwork” - which is ideal since I believe the reason I was invited to Foo this year was because of my organising Barcamp Auckland. The first session, which was entitled “Web Community NZ, who is it and how big , is it closed shop? How to nurture it” we discusses whether we were missing out on something and if we were, how we could find out about it. We decided that yes, a lot of us were missing out on something and that was mainly because of lots of “pockets of community” that weren’t interlinked or communicating with each other. Our solution? A single agnostic activity aggregator. More on that later. The the next morning, Simon and Natalie presented a session on “bringing geeks out of the woodwork.” Natalie started by talking about her experiences organising GeekNights and how this quickly grew to a large event. Mike, Mike and I talked about our Barcamp experiences (Sydney, Wellington and Auckland) and others talked about other smaller communities such as The Valley in Christchurch. Mauricio rightly blogged The conversations around here are not NDA, but it’s a matter of principle to only disclose things if you ask and receive a positive response. so although I’d love to share more details I don’t think it’s appropriate to share more than an overview of the weekend. One thing I can share, and we’d really like to share, and would love you to pass on is a little thing entitled “NZWC.” NZWC What is it? Basically NZWC is the agnostic activity aggregator I talked about stemming from the building web communities session. We decided the best thing we can do is to create an aggregator of everything happening in the NZ web scene. It’s open to anyone to post to, just tag your stuff with “nzwc” and our stuff should start appearing on the site. Currently the actual site is just some information about the project and a quickie MagieRSS mashup, but we plan to build it out into something a little more useful. Of course, if you start tagging content you believe is relevant to the NZWC then we’ll be able to see how people use it a lot better and build a better experience around the content. Something to note about posting to NZWC. The content you put up there doesn’t necessarily need to be your own. You can add it as a del.icio.us bookmark, tag it with “nzwc” and it’ll show up just as well. The idea is to surface as much content concerning the NZWC as possible. We are planning to support Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us but could possibly later include support for Twitter, Upcoming etc. All we need from you right now, is to tag stuff. Surface it, for the rest of us to find on NZWC. 2008-02-03T22:07:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/indie_developers_ahead_of_apple/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/indie_developers_ahead_of_apple/#When:08:38:00Z I bought my first Mac (a MacBook) in late October/early November and it arrived on the 20th November. As soon as it arrived I started downloading trial versions of all the software I felt I would need; think Coda, Pixelmator, Inkscape, iWork, Adobe Illustrator et cetera. As the trials started to expire I started purchasing the apps. First Pixelmator. I really didn’t want to buy Photoshop (it was the reason I switched to Mac; the indie developers) so I was glad when I got my hands on this beautiful app. Then came Coda. Again an amazing app that is always running. I love Coda and don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to Dreamweaver without feeling like I’m missing some great experience. I ditched Inkscape because it wasn’t working out (which is when I actually got the Illustrator trial) and considered purchasing Illustrator. Which I did, along with InDesign and Photoshop (it was a special Creative Design Suite which had a price I could not deny...even if it was slightly higher than just buying Illustator.) And finally came iWork ‘08, which had long expired but I hadn’t needed to use for a couple of weeks. I asked to borrow my parents’ credit card and hopped onto Apple’s website. I was excited to purchase software from Apple because I believed the Indie developers based the experience on that which Apple offered (and the experience from the Indies were awesome.) Alas, I was mistaken. Apple was behind the curve and the experience was pretty sad. After my dad’s credit card failed (because it had expired) I was logged out. I logged in again, went to check out and tried with my mum’s credit card. It went through. I got an email after a few minutes. “Thank you for shopping at the Apple Store. We’re processing your order now.” O… This was followed by another email, “Order Acknowledgment” containing “Thank you for shopping the Apple Online Store. We are processing your order now.” Wow, thanks - again. I searched through those emails trying to find a serial number. Come on, anything that looked like a serial number. It must be there...Come on, all the Indie guys had them in their first email! Annoying. What makes it worse is Apple sells their computers with iWork ‘08 Trial Version on it! It’s not something I need a DVD for, and you can download the trial anyway. Why make me wait 3-4 business days before I can get my serial and use the application when I can have it instantly. I’m really disappointed in the company who’s business model is commonly referred to as a “distribution” model. Not just music either, tv shows, podcasts, movies and even iPod games. Come on, iTunes Activation for the iPhone should have helped them improve my experience! Why not let me activate iWork from iTunes? I want my application running now! By doing something so simple as to include the serial number in the email (either “Thank you for shopping the Apple Online Store. We are processing your order now.” one would work,) the experience of buying software from Apple Inc, could have been so much more enjoyable, but alas, it was frustrating. Note: If they do give you the serial somewhere then forgive me. Still, it shouldn’t be that hard to find. 2008-01-22T08:38:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/more_on_barcamp_auckland/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/more_on_barcamp_auckland/#When:00:53:00Z So I just paid the final invoice for Barcamp Auckland. Money well-spent in my opinion. Anyway, I'd like to publish the "finances" if you will as well as talk a bit about the next one. Finances The table below breaks down the finances a bit. I'm not going to give every single transaction here but general costs. Item Provider Cost Catering (incuding morning tea, lunch and all-day tea and coffee) Venue's Cafe $810 T-shirts, Lanyards and Name Badges Identity Gurus $2470.50 Minor Expenses (including stationary, cables and adaptors, powerboards etc) Whitcoulls, The Warehouse, Dick Smith Electronics... $270.50 The next one? We are definitely planning to have another Barcamp Auckland in mid-2008. This would need to coincide with secondary school holidays as it makes it easier to organise when I have a week before to sort out the final details. (If we are planning to use the same venue, then we also need to wait until the school isn't being used.) If you are interested in attending another event, please leave a comment below as this information will be useful for finding sponsorship. 2008-01-18T00:53:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/pictures_say_a_thousand_words/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/pictures_say_a_thousand_words/#When:03:45:00Z I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a regular blogger (that’s why blogger wasn’t one of my tags at Barcamp Auckland) and that’s mainly because it takes a lot of effort to write something good, something you know your readers will be interested in but more importantly something no-one else has said. When your topic of choice is along the lines of “web design and development following web standards”, your job becomes that much harder. Lots of the problems you solve is case specific, and even if you were to share these with your readers you would have forgotten about it by the time you’ve completed the project. So you hardly ever have “something good” to say. In some ways it’s a lot easier to write when you know you have people reading, even if it’s just ten readers, you know someone will be reading what you wrote, someone will benefit from the time you put into writing a post. You know there are people who are interested in what you have to say. Some say when you have thousands of readers, your job as a blogger becomes much more difficult. I disagree, when lots of people are reading what you have to say, a couple of them are bound to respond to your post and give you material for the next post. When you blog about the field that invented blogging, you hardly ever say something no-one else has said before. Every web developer and their cat has a blog, and every web developer has to deal with the same browsers, standards and mainly the same issues. So, coming up with something revolutionary is really hard. My point is; blogging, consistently, is really hard! And anyone who manages it, even if they have hundreds of readers, has earned my respect. When I found out that my friend, Novia, has posted 102 blog posts since August 2006 (that’s an average of over 6 posts a month!) I was amazed and extremely proud. I introduced her to blogging in 2006 and said she should write about whatever she wanted. In this way, her topic became her life. Her blog has gone through 3 redesigns now (when I say redesign I mean she picked a skin and I modified it for her.) And this latest one is really cool because it let’s her add an illustration with every post, and if she doesn’t, it degrades gracefully down to a default image. Novia has always had awesome cartoons and sketches (you should see her school diary!) so I can’t believe it’s taken us ‘til now to give her a way to express this through her blog. On her last redesign, the header contained an image I vectored, from a self-portrait she did, but this was a one time thing and was really a piece of my art inspired by her drawing and not her own image. Although her blog is based on her life, and you may not know her, I encourage you to read it. Often it contains rants and recounts of a day she enjoyed but at other times she writes interesting essays about life from the view of a teenager. With Novia, you never know what you’re going to get and that’s what is so great. If you don’t care for her topic, subscribe at least for the illustrations. Of course they’ll make more sense in context (with the actual post) but would be just as entertaining and inspiring to look at by themselves. One final thing before you leave to see it, please comment! She loves receiving comments, and although my stats package says she has regular readers who spend over an hour per visit on her site, she doesn’t believe me because only her friends comment. So, without further ado, check it out. 2007-12-20T03:45:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/well_that_was_fun/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/well_that_was_fun/#When:19:00:00Z Phew! Well that was a blast (and tiring!) I’m sorry I’m only just now getting to writing the post wrap up but unfortunately this is the first time I’ve found time. So I haven’t blogged since Barcamp a GoGo for a lot of reasons including school and national exams but also because I’ve been doing web development work and organising Barcamp Auckland. Beforehand Sponsorship I’m so grateful to Botany Downs Secondary College for saying so early on in the year that they would provide the venue and wifi. Not only because this made my life as a Barcamp Organiser so much easier because I could focus on other things like t-shirts, food and Twittercamp, but also because the venue is perfect for a Barcamp situation. There a 5 classrooms (each with a mounted projector) surrounding a commons area with ottomans, tables and chairs and a kitchen! Even the design fit in well with the Barcamp philosophy, with the use of glass echoing the Barcamp openness and the layout symbolises the coming together (in the commons.) So thank you Botany Downs Secondary College. The hardest thing was getting sponsors. “No duh” I hear you say but I really did underestimate the amount of work required to even get an answer, not to mention a positive one! One thing this taught me was it’s who you know who counts. None of the (possibly hundreds) emails (which I customized for each firm based on how Barcamp would benefit them) resulted in a sponsor, all of the sponsors came from people I knew who knew someone at another firm who sponsored the event. Our first sponsor was Microsoft (thanks Nigel) and I got in contact with Nigel via Mauricio Freitas. The first sponsorship is definitely the hardest and to get a big name like Microsoft on board meant a lot, not only as a confidence boost to myself, but also in the confidence other potential sponsors now had in me, and the event. Around the same time I got a phone call from another firm who said they wanted to sponsor but then pull out about a month before the event! It was a real shock because this firm was going to sponsor all the food and Microsoft’s sponsorship was going to be going toward the t-shirts (at this time I was hoping for 50 people to even turn up!) I can’t quite remember how or why I chose him, but I started emailing Karl von Randow about getting some local web development firms donating $1-300 (at the “Bronze” tier) so that we could at least have food! Shortly after I received an email from Che Tamahori (of Shift) and Darren Wood (of APN Finda), each wanting to sponsor at the “Gold” tier. Wow! I was stoked and I knew that the amount of sponsorship I had received meant that I had to put a lot of work into making the event as successful and professional as possible. I wanted the sponsors to be pleased with how their money was spent but more importantly I believe it was my job to shine a good light on their brand - and I hope I have done that. The t-shirt Up until the point where I had decided that this event had to be a defining Barcamp, bringing a touch of professionalism to the unconference, I was planning on making the t-shirts myself, with the logo on the front and sponsors on the back. I think it was after chatting to Karl on the phone one afternoon we decided we wanted the shirt to be a wear-again one, not unlike webstock’s. At this point I really wanted an illustrated shirt (similar to those great threadless shirts) and Karl said he knew someone who might be able to help. The t-shirt turned out wonderfully even though I put Matthew Allen (aka Mata) under a great deal of time pressure and I found mself becoming the annoying “nit-picking” client. Sorry Matt. In the end though Mata hung in there and delivered a beautiful t-shirt that was printed by Identity Gurus. Mata talked a bit more about the shirt design in a session “Spaghetti or Meatball” and I’m hoping he’ll be typing up the main ideas for record. Unfortunately after we placed our order we found out they didn’t have any more coffee/chocolate brown left - which is what Mata designed for, and we had to go for black instead. Setting up On the 14th, Eugenia, Novia and Zak joined me in setting up the venue (which took from around 10am til 3pm.) Here we tested the Wifi (and I found out about the proxy which I apologise for immensely!), set up the rooms and whiteboards and tried to get a custom-baked Twittercamp running on the plasma screen. Twittercamp gave an installation error so I ended up borrowing a friends laptop which I knew it would work on. The t-shirts arrived around 2.30pm but when I got home I realised that the lanyards and badge holders weren’t with the t-shirts! Panic! I called Identity Gurus but the lad who had handled m order was away sick, they did their best though and managed to track the lanyards and badge holders to a particular courier whom the contacted and asked to deliver immediately. These arrived around 6.30pm (after I had dashed to my mum’s school to borrow some adaptors (mini-DVI/VGA to VGA.) That night my dad printed out the name badges and we assembled the lanyard/badge combos. We did some final t-shirt checks and organising and then headed to bed. On the day I woke up at 5.30am. Lay in bed til about 6.10am and then decided to get up, get dressed and start cutting the session forms which we had forgotten to do the night before. Then I made some changes to my presentation which was followed by pacing. A lot of it. Until about 7.45 am when I left to go meet the security guards who were unlocking the venue. The morning (up until 9.30) went really quickly as people started turning up to help set up. The list which I prepared for things that needed to be done was quickly sorted out and soon most people were just sitting around, waiting to begin. A great opportunity to set-up Wifi, meet people, get your mugshot taken and begin twittering. 9.30am rolled around and I was faced with the introductory speech, which I think went well. From here we had session registration and then everyone moved to their first session. I’m not going to recount the entire day, there are people who were live blogging, an blogging afterward. Instead I’ll leave you with the photos taken on the day (and tagged correctly with “barcampauck07") and links to buzz around the net. Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Buzz http://ijump.co.nz/join-the-conversation-about-social-media-in-new-zealand-on-a-plane/ http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/4263 http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2007/12/barcamp_aucklan.html http://www.mandamonium.com/tag/barcampauck07/ http://twoseven.co.nz/2007/12/15/barcamp-auckland-liveblogging/ http://www.dontcom.com/2007/12/barcamp-auckland-07/ http://www.kloss-familie.de/blog/article.php?story=20071216004925404 http://www.jonbeattie.com/barcamp-auckland-2007/ http://oneteachersview.blogspot.com/2007/12/barcamp-auckland.html http://simonyoung.co.nz/my-presentation-at-barcamp-auckland-2007/ http://rob.coup.net.nz/2007/12/cool-data-in-browser-with-dojo.html VIDEO: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=BarCamp+Auckland&sitesearch= Sorry if your post isn’t here, the is what I found from some quick Googling, please drop me a line or email barcampauckland {at} ludwignz {dot} com Final thanks to our... Sponsors Thank you Shift, APN Finda, Microsoft and D-Link. The event would not have been as good as it was (materialistically) if it weren’t for you! Presenters Thank you to everyone who presented, the event would have sucked if it wasn’t for you, you really made the day worth it. Bartenders and other Helpers Thank you to everyone who helped out; Novia, Zak, Genie, Rebecca, Felix, Lisa, Heino, Mum, Dad, Tannie Shoneen (Aunt), Oom Eddie (Uncle) and my grandma for bringing the lanyards which I forgot at home. I really appreciate you giving up your Saturday (and in some cases your Friday also) to help out, you helped make the day run a lot smoother. Right about now I’d like to thanks Helen Henry and Mary-Anne Auger for the food. It was good and beautifully presented. Thank you so much! I’d also like to thank Mauricio and Karl for supporting me in terms of marketing the event and gaining sponsorship. Thanks guys! And finally, Mata for the awesome shirt he designed. The rest of you Without you, presenters would have no-one to present to, Bartenders would have no-one to serve and sponsors would have no reason to sponsor. Please do come along again, tell our friends, and help us make the next one even bigger and better! 2007-12-17T19:00:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/barcamp_a_gogo/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/barcamp_a_gogo/#When:21:49:00Z On the 15th of December there will be a Barcamp held at 575 Chapel Road, at Botany Downs Secondary College. Barcamp Auckland is an event I've been thinking about since the start of the year. I got permission from my school to use their campus for the event and then created the obligatory Barcamp.org wiki page. Now I've decided it's time to get serious, spread the word and finalise the last details for the event. Everyone is an expert at something. BarCamp allows creatives, technologists, scientists, programmers, and bloggers the chance to gather together and share new ideas. It's about passion, creating community, and exploring new social media. The difference between a traditional conference, and an un-conference like BarCamp is that BarCamps allow people to interact with speakers throughout the presentations. At a traditional conference the best ideas originate in the hallways and corridors. BarCamp is all corridor - Erica O'Grady Barcamp is a free event that will be open to anyone interested in web technologies- whether they are developers, designers, bloggers or technologists. The event will encourage open discussion amongst attendees and will be focused around "sessions" that those present at the start of the BarcampAuckland event will put forth and vote on. For more information about BarCampAuckland please visit BarcampAuckland's portal page. Sign up at Upcoming If you are interested in attending the event please follow it on Upcoming, however for those of you who know you will attend, please register your attendance on Upcoming. We need to know the numbers when we order things like the t-shirts and food, create charging stations for your laptops as well as finalizing the amount of rooms and which spaces we need. So, register your attendance or interest at Upcoming. Sign up, it's free! If you want to register your attendance for BarcampAuckland please do so at the registration page, if you've already signed up at Upcoming please do so again at our own registration page. This allows us to collect more data at registration so that we can get more organised! Thanks We need your help! BarcampAuckland will be going ahead on the 15th of December - really, all we need is people to hold such an event - but we need your help to make this event uber-cool. BarcampAuckland will be a free event which means we have no revenue to pay for things like the morning tea, lunch or the awesome event t-shirts that we'd love to give away to attendees. If you or your company would be able to sponsor any of the previously stated items (morning tea, lunch or the t-shirts) or you know of another way you could help us out, then please contact me using barcampauckland [at] ludwignz [dot] com. Any and all help is appreciated. 2007-09-09T21:49:00+12:00 http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/abstract_artwork/ http://ludwignz.com/index.php/site/journal_entry/abstract_artwork/#When:03:56:00Z For the past year or so I've been really into abstract art and wanted to take a break from doing the realistic art. So I came up with these two paintings. I loved how I could be creative and just put paint to canvas without worrying about whether every stroke was perfect. Ofcourse there were times where I felt almost as much stress as when I did the realistic paintings - especially when I had to paint from my imagination without anything as reference. I'm really happy with these and the response has been good, so I'm sure I'll be going down this route once more. From now on I'll be practising my sketching and drawing skills because I believe these skills are important - Universities agree. I'll be trying to increase my speed but mainly my accuracy. I'd love to be able to fill up my sketchbook which I carry around with me at school (a poor man's Moleskin.) Keep an eye out for some sketches :) Reflections of the Future I wanted a change of pace and decided to something more abstract. I saw an image of the Vancouver skyline which was beautiful but I wondered what it would look like before all the buildings and lights. I sketched out this idea and then started painting. This is by far the biggest painting I've painted (even rivalling my other lion) The painting poses the question, “How far is too far?” and let’s you debate whether our race’s advancements is worth the destruction of nature. See the process recorded at Flickr ("How Much is Too Much?" was the working title.) Dawn of Judgement Day Inspired by the stress of getting ready for exams this painting was designed during one year of exams (2006) and completed just before another year of exams (2007.) The painting follows the path of getting ready for exams, then finally reaching the dawn of judgement day. Time melts away as you have to work through mountains of books while under pressure - represented by the flames. The gold is the reward you stand to gain at the end of it all. I was going to have a more cartoony lightbulb in the top frame to signify the light at the end of the tunnel but opted for this sunrise because of the colour it would bring to the piece. Thanks a lot to Tony for pushing for the sunrise scene over the lightbulb idea. They are for sale Please remember the paintings are for sale ($US 300 and $US 60) respectively so if you like them please snatch them up by visiting the portfolio entry for the painting (the showcase images are linked.) There are also more paintings for sale in my portfolio. 2007-08-25T03:56:00+12:00