I made these trick photos quite a while ago, but never got around to posting them on here, until now.
The images are inspired by the stunning work of Thomas Allen, whose working process & images were featured on my blog a few years ago.
"Injury talk gets [Andy] Murray's back up" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
"Leader Luke Donald straddles a dried-up ditch after hitting a water hazard" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
"Bankfoot" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
I had almost forgotten about his work until recently, but once I had re-discovered it, I was keen to make some new pictures based upon his style (albeit within a different context).
The images shown above are just a small sample of my recent trick photography work (you can find the others on my facebook page); and while some of them worked really well, I'm not sure that any worked as well as I had originally hoped for - but they were fun to make anyway!
On Thursday, 10 May 2012, Charles, Prince of Wales, became my new favourite weather presenter after giving a very entertaining one-off forecast to the nation on BBC Reporting Scotland: And soon after, he turned into the subject of my latest artwork.
Prince Charles hijacking the Reporting Scotland weather studio.
The special forecast came about during a visit to the BBC Scotland Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow as part of a week-long visit to the country; and soon enough was a viral hit all around the world.
If you were unlucky enough to have missed this TV gold, you can watch it on the BBC website by clicking here, or search for it on YouTube - either way, I doubt you will regret it!
Prince Charles was such a natural in front of the map, that I am pretty sure the regular weather presenters were getting concerned for their job security.
As a result, my wee caricature/cartoon, shows weather regular Stav Danaos trying to wrestle back the clicker thingy from Prince Charles, with Gillian Smart & Christopher Blanchett huddled in the corner bound in ropes, while former weather girl Cat Cubie makes a triumphant return by utilising her circus skills and a hoop in the rafters to come to the rescue.
It was drawn with pencil on A5 paper, and coloured with Photoshop, using a style reminiscent of many classic animations from my time at Edinburgh College of Art.
One week after Prince Charles made his weather debut, I posted the finished picture to my facebook page & profile, where it has proven surprisingly popular, and even received a comment from the one and only Cat Cubie!
As if that wasn't enough, I later discovered that she had shared the picture (and my website) with her near 4000 followers on Twitter, which made my day!
A screenshot of what Cat said on Twitter about my cartoon
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!):
