Character action

Mind, body and spirit.

Oh dear, it's been a long time since I posted. I'll try and post more regularly.

Anyway, back to the point of this post which is about exercise.  My upbringing was in an arty 60s-70s, family where making art was considered a wholly intellectual way of life. Physical exercise, if there was any, was a secondary by-product of some other intellectual purpose, such as having to climb a big hill to look at the view. Even my youthful cycling with the CTC in the early 80s wasn't about the physical, more about bikes, tea shops, old churches and the, of course, the view. Hills were just annoying because they got you out of breath. I kept cycling joining the mountain biking revolution, still sort of denying that it was also about exercise.

It was only a few years later when a illustrator friend of mine told me he attended a gym that I started to think may be exercise for it's own sake could be cool. I also had a shock when some holiday snaps came back from the developers. I was in my late 20's and I'd developed a bit of paunch and rest of my physique looked far from toned. I started attending the gym and really making sure I got some serious exercise in and started to really enjoy it.

Now in my mid 40s it seems more important than ever. I am becoming aware that even being pretty fit I'm only mitigating against the start of the long slow decline of ageing. I'm definitely going to go down fighting. I remember my father's last 10 years. He would complain to me endlessly about all his illnesses and physical problems. While many were unavoidable so most could have been avoided with even a little exercise. He barely moved, hours reading or watching the box. I was passed the other day by a guy on a road race bike who must have been in his 60s, of not 70s, judging by his face, but not physique. He looked great, strong, fit and healthy clad in garish racing lycra, he powered past me. That's where I want to be.

I was thinking about all this and here's 10 reasons why I keep fit:

#1 Vanity. I admit, this is my no.1 reason. I'm no oil painting but keeping trim is one thing I can do. I see a lot of guys around with fat bellies, and it's not a great look.

#2 Ready. I want to be physically ready for as many eventualities as I can. This may sound daft, but if I need to run, I can, or if I have to spend 6 hours digging a hole, I can, or sawing wood for 3 hours, etc. For some reason I'm impressed by capability, aren't we all? I think keeping your body "ready" and able is one of the tools in life's tool kit.

#3 Bright. There is no doubt that working the body brightens the mind. If for some reason I miss a week or more of exercise I feel my brain gets fuggy. I'm just not as alert, awake and with it. Exercise blows the cobwebs away!

#4 Achievement. Working freelance in a creative industry is full of ups and downs. Your ability to achieve is often out of your control, often in the hands of people with little ability themselves. It can be frustrating and stressful. Exercise and improving things like stamina or strength are all achievable if you work at it. It's such an easy way to achieve!

#5 High. Sheer pleasure. I know this sounds crazy but listen to this. I used to approach hills on my bike with dread. The awful pain of exertion in legs, the gulping for oxygen, and what seems like the total draining of all my energy. Now I search out the biggest hills. I've grown to love the sensation of physical effort.

#6 Whizz. This is most specific to cycling. It is pure schoolboy exhilaration at whizzing about on a bike. Panting up hills to a drummed out tempo then hurtling faster than you dare down them. Even slogging away on my rusty elliptical trainer, when it's too icy to ride, I'm visualising whizzing around on my bike. Just brilliant!

#7 Cool. It kind of goes back to vanity, but there's no doubt it's cool to be fit. Cool people in films, or on stage or whatever, are usually fit. You've got at least one plus with the opposite sex if you are fit.

#8 Alive. Life is so in the screen these days. Exercise, even the pain of it, tells me I'm alive as a whole 3D entity. It tells me I'm not just a (smallish) brain attached to a keyboard.

#9 Respect. I feel gifted by life itself. I know I'm lucky to be alive! I think you have to respect that by looking after your precious body. All of it, right down to the tips of your toes. After all, it's the only one you've got!

#10 ...and the view.

Time Wasters and Ranting

I get a little upset when I make a complaint, a quite justified complaint, to be told that I am ranting. To be told one is ranting somehow reduces the severity of the complaint to the extent that one becomes classed as the one at fault rather than the injured party. The particularly annoying and dangerous aspect is that the party that caused the complaint in the first place can dismiss one's reaction as a rant and basically get away with all kinds of bad behaviour.

That is not really the subject of this post, just prepare yourself for a complaint... or, if you like, a rant. In an earlier post I bemoaned the fact that I do a fair amount of work that will never sees the light of day. This post is a follow on. About 3 weeks ago I was asked by my agent to do yet another sample. At the time I was short of work so I agreed even though it is not at all in any style I have done before. Of course the deadline was to be 24hrs, or some such short amount of time. I duly stayed up late to complete it, then later still when I realised I'd somehow overwritten the finished file with a much earlier one. (A problem I keep having.. even today I overwrote an entire day's work.) So I send off the image and get a cursory, "lovely, thanks" email from the agent. Then nothing. Even my agent does not reply for 3 weeks (probably off on some luxury holiday that I could never afford).

Bear in mind that I have exactly reproduced the characters and background styles from animation character drawings they supplied, so they have no reason to reject it as it fulfils the brief perfectly. I would accept any explanation. Perhaps they wanted the sample for some business deal that didn't work out, or they changed their mind on the characters, or even a straight "no thanks". What makes me rant with fury is the totally contemptible way they they cannot be bothered to communicate anything with me. It's the most basic common courtesy that is missing. It also reveals the fact that they do not value, at all, the contribution of the creatives without which their business would not exist at all. Bizarre behaviour yet sadly common.

There you go, now was that a rant or a complaint?

Enid in Colour!

Cover for one of the Enid Blyton covers that I am currently working on for Award publications. For the first time I used Art Rage on a professional job. It's a great program that now has a nearly realistic watercolour paint system. I say "nearly", because although I mostly get good results, I still struggle to get the same flexibility that traditional paint on paper provides. Computer watercolour can't seem to match the way real paint mixes and merges. Perhaps Art Rage, Painter, Photoshop, etc. can manage it and it's me being incompetent in the use of the program. These days I don't think that is a reasonable excuse from the developers. A user should be able to pick up the brush and get painting straight away instead of grinding through tutorials and help files. Art Rage, of all paint programs I have tried over the years, comes closest to this ideal. Best of all it's so cheap, if you've never used it give it a go. Art Rage

Trouser Pump

Find out more over at the Bantering Boys blog.

Spot the Difference

I just finished this little job for Oxford University Press, the English Language Teaching Department. They've been good clients of mine since I first started out. I quite enjoy drawing domestic everyday scenes, but the jobs are often quite tough where they ask for many different elements in the same picture.

Orchestral Cutout

I recently found an orchestra cut out that I did in 1992 for a now defunct part work publisher. I was thinking of dusting it off, tidying it up, and popping it on Fantasy Cutouts so that, even though I say it myself, a great fun educational piece of work sees the light of day again.