The Personal Blog of Dr Banksy*.

Back in with Steve today to start the Fine Art project, and I'm already very excited and producing some work. There is a lot of freedom with the approach to work here, which leaves the possibility for some really interesting results. We're encouraged to just go for it, embracing a wide range of materials to create some visually stimulating artwork. It's all go again!

So Photo Media has just ended. I can honestly say that this course is getting better and better with every new topic - my mind has been opened to the incredible world of photography and I'm very enthusiastic about the prospect of studying it further. In terms of my final piece for this project, it unfortunately can't be viewed here because of file compatibility problems with Final Cut or whatever. Irritating, but at least it's finished. Mostly. No sound. Don't think anyone will mind too much though because we're presenting our work to the rest of the group and I have a feeling that verbally delivering my script with the film playing in the background could work really well. There was a bit of clipping that had to be done in order to get the (almost)-finished product down to thirty seconds in length. Unfortunately I had to say goodbye to the David Hockney part, but all the Bailey/Shrimpton stuff is still there, which is the element that inspires and excites me the mo...

Alright - this is it. This is what we've been waiting for. For the past couple of days I have been shut up in a small, dark room to record the stop-motion sequences of my short film. I used a program called Dragonframe (as also used by Aardman and  Patrick Boivin ) to do this, as well as a setup of a roster and two very bright lights. A sheet of white styrofoamy stuff made for an ample background and I was good to go. Slightly irritating was the fact that my camera decided to develop a fault while I was working, but thankfully I had all that I needed by that point. Some shots of literally just my hands make up the main part of this short film (along with a roll of masking tape), but the finished effect will look superb. Probably. I've anticipated that some footage of a young adult male's hands is not really enough to sway even the most captive audience, so I'm using my recently-learned "skills" with Adobe Illustrator and Flash to produce some vector graphi...

So we had a little peer review in college today, and I'm ashamed to say that I'm coming up a bit short (again). I've drilled my research pretty hard with this project, but it's time to show you where it's going. I could make excuses about the weather being poor for shooting and finding the right model in a short space of time being a big ask - but I reckon I'm above that. I mean it! Really! I am ! Maybe not. So let's set things going - fast. Here are the studies of Hockney's work that I promised. I went out and took some photos outside the college, trying to get some studies that would be interesting to "Hockneyfy". Rearranging the little squares can bit pretty frustrating (breathing is the worst thing ever sometimes - whoosh!), but I finally got it nailed. I used a laminate background because that's the surface I'd like to use in my final film. The lighting isn't great but I'm still experimenting with my setup. I'd love to ...

So today we took to the studio to experiment with some very useful setups, and finally know how those models get to look so good. Knowledge of lighting was paramount here - light can either make or break your photo, so you've got to know how to use it. I was introduced to all sorts of new words for things that were surely called something else if you were to use their correct name; gels, snoods, soft boxes, and brollies. To be fair, that last one isn't really debatable - it's a brolly, no bones about it. Below are some diagrams which map out the setups we practised. I made them using a website called " Online Lighting Diagram ", a really useful piece of computing that was very easy to use and even easier to understand. The setups below are detailed with photographs taken of models, which show the results of using each lighting arrangement. The above setup features very bright light focused directly on the model by means of twin umbrella lights angled inwards. It c...

I love it when stuff that I've looked at in the past comes in handy in the present. As part of my Geography A-Level, I studied cold environments and had to collect research for an essay-style report to be written in exam conditions. One particular source of my studies for this topic came from a 2012 documentary called Chasing Ice . It was made to communicate that, with sound visual evidence, ice melt and climate change are very real and very serious matters that are taking effect at an alarming rate. The documentary was created by nature photographer James Balog and his autodidact team of fellow photographers and technicians who make up the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) . The group travelled to many different locations across the frozen north to photograph and record the movements of some of the planet's most impressive - and volatile - glaciers. These enormous expanses of ice have been changing dramatically over recent years, receding more and more as time goes on. Balog has then ...

I've been looking into my personal inspiration lately and now turn my attention to stop motion animation. I have always admired this technique as I feel that it is an extremely effective way to give life to static objects and looks very impressive on screen (as can be seen through the work of world-renowned "claymation" studio Aardman .   Their work with Nick Park to create Wallace and Gromit , as well as feature films like Chicken Run  and television series like Morph is superb, and really showcases what stop-motion can do when realised to its full potential (which basically means: "with time, experience and money"!). However, when these three factors aren't present, the ability to produce effective and captivating animation / short films is diminished. This makes the work of YouTube personalities Patrick Boivin and Keshen so impressive. Boivin is a French-Canadian autodidact filmmaker who uses limited technology and equipment to create incredibly impres...