Hello everybody, sorry for my long absence and lack of updates.
But here's the good news: I've recently re-ignited my creative spark, and occupied myself with a number of new caricature drawings over the past week!
Only a couple of them are completely coloured so far, but you will soon be able to find them all (including "work in progress" images) on my facebook page - please "like" it if you haven't already.
My favourite caricature so far, of 2012 World Snooker Championship finalists Ronnie O'Sullivan & Ali Carter, is embedded below.
I'll add a whole load of in-progress images to the facebook page tomorrow, and hopefully have a load more work posted soon.
Stay tuned, (I promise it won't be as long a wait as last time)!
Here's an amusing sport highlights video that I made over the festive period, but forgot to post on here (until now).
It was filmed one afternoon at my place of work, Kinross Curling Rink, while two of my colleagues played in the Grand Final of our little one-day tournament (following a long pre-Christmas maintenance week).
The full video required about 2 weeks for all the voice recording, graphic designing, editing etc, which is a lot more time than I originally planned to spend on it, but I think the end result was well worth it.
If you don't follow the sport of curling, you will likely have no idea what is going on! So here's a little guide to help:
- There are two players, who will both use a cue (stick thing) to propel heavy rocks down a sheet of ice towards a target at the far end of the ice (similar to shuffleboard, or vaguely like golf).
- Alternating after every stone, both players will throw a total of 8 stones each, before any points are scored.
- Points can only be scored by having stones in the round target (AKA: the House) at the far end of the ice.
- Only one player can score at a time, and they will get one point for each of their stones that sit closer to the centre of the House than their opponent's stones (therefore a player could potentially score anything between 0-8 at a time).
- In this competition, the Grand Final is being played to a distance of 2 Ends, meaning that they will throw all the stones down the ice once and count the score from that End; then they will throw all the stones back up to a House at the side of ice they started from, and count the score again for that second End: Whichever player has scored the most points will win the overall game.
- In the case of a tie, both players will do a Draw Shot Challenge to decide the winner, whereby each player will throw only 1 stone (down the ice to the far House), while aiming for it stop as close to the centre of the House as possible. The smallest distance from the centre wins.
This guide is specific for our tournament only - regular curling is played for about 2 hours (about 8 ends of play), and the cue/stick is only used as an aid for players with knee or back problems... For an idea of what regular/professional curling looks like, watch this short video clip (don't let the amazing shot fool you into thinking it's an easy game!):
I've got a couple of wee video projects currently in the works, which will be written about soon. But in the meantime, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and have a good New Year!
Last month there were a couple of big events at work, with the 21st annual Kinross Junior Curling Classic taking place from 7th-9th October, and the Kinross Wheelchair Curling International Invitational from 18th-20th October.
On top of my usual Ice Tech duties, I was also the official photographer & webmaster for the Junior Classic. This involved creating, maintaining, and editing a blog/website for relevant news, scores/results, and photos throughout the weekend; as well as perching myself rink-side for between 30 & 60 minutes per session to photograph the sporting action (with 13 sessions & about 48 games - if I remember correctly - over 3 days)!
