NOOMS

I’ve had a couple of solid weeks of work so despite making good progress on a number of things in progress I’ve not managed to publish a video of a completed project. I’m considering altering my approach to ensure more regular updates.

Anyway it was a dad and F day today. “The Nooms” as they are called are the representations of the numbers in his F’s favourite tablet game ‘Dragonbox Numbers’, which is incidentally the only educational games series that I have ever yet found able to wholeheartedly endorse both as parent and educator.

Obviously it is not my IP but I had a look and couldn’t find any colouring sheets or activities suitable for his abilities. So I whipped up these and we had fun painting them to match their game counterparts and the big brother mucked in to help finish painting the last of them when he got home from school.

35 Page A4 Printable PDF here: DragonboxNumbersNOOMS_A4_1-10

It’s rough as guts as I had an impatient 3 year old as a client the whole way.

The Game and its sibling apps can be found here: dragonbox.com/products/numbers

 

 

Zelda

Zelda Wind Waker grabbed my imagination the very first time I saw it many, many years ago now on a Gamecube in somebody else’s lounge room. Now, by the power of modern computing, I have been sharing the joy and frustration of this adorable game with my sons. Intermittent play has gotten us almost to the end after a few months now.  I also now have two of three Zelda inspired projects complete and ready to share. The first is the newest one, Link’s boomerang (the protagonist is Link, Zelda is the eponymous princess). This was given to F for Christmas and was designed specifically to be light enough for indoor play as outdoors it is very likely to end up in a tree or on the roof.

The second is this papercraft model of the Link’s boat the ‘King of Red Lions’ This took way longer than anticipated and is far from the perfection I envisioned. But it is at least done. I have shared a gallery of images here on imgur and in r/papercraft here.

 

 

A Box of Art

An extremely hot and quite busy couple of days here on the surface of the sun western New South Wales. I have accomplished a spot of wood chip shovelling and garden maintenance, A little video editing, the results of which are embedded below as well as some digital painting and I’ve finally gotten a long running paper-craft project near to completion.

The second episode of my going story reading project. 

Today a box arrived from my mother. A box of art, mostly my art, mostly from ’82-’84. So 35 year old pictures by me the child. The boys and I had a lot of fun going through the box admiring and laughing at the pictures, comparing hand and foot prints to the boy’s and mine now and of course we were then inspired to make some fresh art of our own, which I’ll photograph and share sometime soon. For today here are a couple of the prize pieces:

Bravo indeed.

This particular Sith lord made many appearances.

 

One of the many bulldozer paintings had a treat on the back.


A Brandon Cavallari sketch!

A Long Time Coming

Finally sat down and got some solid editing done. The final parts are compiling now and hopefully I’ll have enough space to start recording some new content in coming days.
This September holiday started with whole family head colds so a bit slow off the mark on my pile of projects. still many days to go fortunately.

 

Bohdi

 

I have a new completed project to share.

‘Bohdi the Yeti’ was one of a number of holiday projects I set myself over the last break. Videos of some of the other holiday projects will follow in time.

 

I am currently working my way through the enormous backlog of footage captured during the build, editing and uploading the build vids to my new Youtube channel.

The first two build process videos are up and the third will be up by the weekend.

 

I am also doing another editing pass on the build videos for L’s Sir Vader costume and bringing them across to the new channel as well. Obviously work has taken a big toll on my energy and ability to maintain this blog with the regularity I would like, but more posts can be expected as the next few video’s go live.

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Vader Complete

 

So it has been a while. Reporting season is always a hectic time and doubly so when dealing with unfamiliar systems. Anyway the bulk of that is past and we’ve had a productive and relaxing long weekend. Among the jobs completed which included much pruning of grape vines and ongoing tidying of papers, we have finally got out and done a photo shoot of the completed Sir Vader costume. Which although officially finished for at least two months hasn’t felt done in the absence of good photos and so progress on the build videos had lapsed as well. That has changed as two videos have gone up today, a third will upload overnight and the final will be completed during the week.

First the cape:

Then the sword, belt codpiece and scabbard”

The painting video is uploading but has hours yet to go and the last video showing detail, donning and shooting of the images is not yet complete.

We were lucky enough to catch golden hour ( more acurately 5 minutes) at Cobar water tower.

N included watermarking in her fantastic images only at my insistence. More pics to come with the final videos.

A Job Confirmed

I have been booked in for a day next week to do handover and orientation with the public school’s still quite shiny and new 3D printer. I am not yet sure if I will have a class of my own or the TRS (everyday relief position) but work is pretty much guaranteed for 2017, which is a great relief. Time to brush up on my 3D modelling skills and start rebuilding my classroom resources.

After mixed success leading guided meditation with a year 6 class today. I have resolved to have another go at daily meditation starting tonight. Headspace is my guide of choice (and what I used in class).

An altogether exhausting day, compounded by a very rough last night means I am to bed directly.

I did whip up this first take on a channel header for Ytube before dinner.

vlog-channel-header-lrg

 

A nice find while looking for resources to demonstrate good poster design this morning:

Foam Armour Pt.2

A couple of exhausting days with kindergartens and year one’s later and I’ve had to take some early nights. Managed to sort through a significant portion of my travel photos selecting a set for printing. I have also just finished editing 3+ hours of video down to 6 minutes which is included below.

Swapping to painting for the rest of the evening now.

 

Editing

I’ve spent the last two evenings editing together a build vlog for the first piece of foam costume armour I started back on Thursday. It is still ten minutes too long and thus not done. I have a new found respect for people like Casey Neistat, who are producing a video a day. Presumably you very quickly get in the habit of making shots count, otherwise hours will be spent trawling through footage and making cuts. More experience with Premier is doubtless helpful as well. I’d love to post it but I’m taking a break to paint tonight. Going to apply lessons learned in the filming of the next segments.

Huge outdoor day today. We made a trip to the farm, collected new fencing materials and load of hay. Borrowing a ute, we made two trips to the dump and finally rid ourselves of the pile of rotten timber, metal scraps and crap that has been expanding and blocking up the back corner of the garden since we arrived. Also raided the dump and a town skip for a collection of fresh palettes and a massive pile of cardboard boxes.

Politic

Some interesting things are being written in the wake of the Trump election. I am a believer in the long peace. But I acknowledge that the peace is on thin ice both literally and metaphorically. For anyone still struggling to come to terms with the US result I have a couple of recommendations. This surprisingly accurate piece from cracked.com is an excellent start. A breakdown of voter demographics demonstrates that a million less young people voted in this election than in 2012. Pundits will blame many things for this but to me it is obvious; young Americans overwhelmingly backed Sanders. When the DNC screwed him they became disengaged if not outright hostile to Clinton. This was further compounded by pre-polling giving many the impression that Clinton would have an easy win, thus they at least, didn’t have to vote for her.

 

Film

I’m excited. But by golly it better be as good as it looks.