HubHouse: Infinite Stairway

Here's the stairway the player begins in.

Access to the actual home part of the house: coming soon!

New house hub-area...

Here's what I've been working on today:

When I'm done, the player can try and try to get out, but they will always end up in the same place...

FireBENCH!

This is a little something I made last night, for fun:

... I call it "FireBENCH!"

When you click, you fire benches that are on fire at the targets on the wall.*

... The targets are flammable.

Each time you click, the word, "Fire!" can just about be heard over the background music of a version of Firestarter that had Eric Cartman dubbed in as singing along to it.


* The targets' faces originally looked like a slightly modified version of the "troll face" that I've seen around the Internet, except with pink skin, brown hair added and an orange hoodie. I believe the picture was drawn by Frodey [or Frody?] in the year below me, but I hadn't asked to use it so I've got some more standard targets in for these screenshots. Also, I started feeling a bit creeped out by the fact that I had made this game when all those faces were looking at me, so I thought I'd better change it anyway...

Someone's vandalised the second room!

It has been a while since either of us have posted on this blog - apologies! Dissertations are out of the way now though, so we'll be able to focus our efforts on the project more :)

In the past month, "somebody" has vandalised room two.

They even put one on the outside of the room!

Meanwhile, I've been sat here at my laptop figuring out some javascript. I did manage to make the OrthoCamera [the 2D side view camera] move to the correct position depending on which room the player was in, but for some reason it kept forcing the view to change to it each time the new camera was created.

That wasn't supposed to happen, so after a chat with Mike Reddy [a Games & Artificial Intelligence lecturer] and Cody [? I think Rich said he went to UWN and graduated a few years ago?], I'm attempting to code this new script that tells the OrthoCamera to translate to the new position instead of destroying and re-instantiating it there...

I got quite stuck on Tuesday when I started doing this, but after watching a few Unity 3D Student videos, I think it's on its way again.

Roath will be happy days for me, I think!

Okay, I suppose I deserve a slap on the wrist. Not only have I not been doing anything on the book designs front in the past few weeks, I have also not been doing much in the way of Uni work either, and my 365 page a day project has been neglected for... I'd say around a month. I am a bad, bad girl.

But wait! I have not been doing nothing!

I've been heading out to Cardiff a lot lately, first to find and view and choose a house to live with some friends. There are eight of us, six of which will still be in Uni next year, but we have split up into two groups of four for the purposes of house-finding. I'm going to be living with Claire, Dave and Todd, who I can affectionately refer to as The French Actress, The Dark Dove and The Wizard Rockstar... Really need to come up with some good names for the other four guys. I'm also not sure what nickname I would have, although I've been told by the DarkDove that if I were a Pokemon I might be a Persian, and that the French word for cat is pronounced the same way as the first half of my name. Perhaps I'm The Petit Chat?

Almost us: This image drawn by The Wizard Rockstar includes members who won't be part of the Cardiff crew, and is missing out a couple of people...

We've all managed to find houses and flats in Roath, literally a couple of blocks away from each other, which is fantastic. We won't have a garden in the flat my half will live in, so I was looking up allotments in Cardiff and found some cool things going on.

Then I found out all about the Roath Market, and the Craft Market too, as well as an apparently abundant craft culture in Roath [see here too]. Needless to say, I am now even more excited about the first post-Uni year of my life than I was before!! And unfortunately more distracted from my current Uni coursework....

Come now Petit Chat, don't get too ahead of yourself!

Yellow Snake

Today I made a little artwork to splat onto the walls of room two. Wasn't sure what to do though, so I'm drawing a little inspiration from my 4 Pillars [if you don't know what that means, don't worry. It's one of those Chinese Horoscope things].

Here's my year pillar, the Yellow Snake:

I literally just painted the body with the touch pad on my laptop, and sneaked a peek at this tutorial for some help with making it look like old graffiti.

Here's a quick look within Unity:

Empty Room; Requires Vandalism

This is a quick check I'm doing to see how the texture I've put on puzzle room two looks, before I start vandalising it with paint and more wear and tear like Tim has done for the first room.

I'm going to paint some walls

Project

Well, the animating plan didn't work out too well. I found it really hard trying to work with a rig I didn't understand. I might have done better if I had used the same tutorial Tim had worked from to rig a character, so that I'd know from the start what all the lines on the rig meant [perhaps I should rig up Mr Shiny when he is made?].

So this week I've got to texture up the second room of the first level. Here's what I've been given to work with:

Tim has shared a bunch of textures with me using Dropbox [Dropbox is a file sharing/syncing software and website that's pretty cool. If only I had more computers with files I want to keep track of so I could play with syncing stuff with myself...]

UPDATE: Have put the base texture on the walls, floor and ceiling, now it just a little tender, loving care vandalism decoration.

I've also made a little task chart for us to look at and use. I'm not sure how up to date it is at the moment and we haven't thoroughly discussed Milestones at all, but it's up there and is shared in our Dropbox folder for us to edit as we go.

Dissertation

I think I've gone into denial. The sun is out, I can smell freshly cut grass, I've got plans for living arrangements next year in Cardiff with some friends, and I've got texturing to do today. Let's just say I will be happy when I have seen the end of the dissertation period.

I'll be like Dr Frankenstein

Looks like I've got me some animating to do! Tim's gotten sick of looking at Tagger, so we're having a bit of a switcharoo. He's going to take over the environment for now, and I'm going to animate the rest of Tagger's animations. Except I haven't done any 3D character animation since the tweaking of old Igor back in year 1...

Tutorials to the rescue! Here seems to be a nice little one from OliverBarraza on YouTube about importing character animations from Maya into Unity. Not hugely in depth but I think I get the gist of that side of things.



What I seriously need now though is some tuts for tips on handling a rigged up character for animating. Part 2 following the above video has some tips, not sure I quite understand some of them yet though. I think I will just have to have a play and see what I can do.



He has some more tutorials in his Advanced Unity Tutorial series, so I'm going to check those out now and see what I can learn.

Idle animation in engine

[by Tim]

Paper Production Grades, and Minecraft

Got my grades back for the Paper Production module today.

Post Mortem/Diary:
Creativity = B12
Research = B13
Development = B13
Overall = B13

Design Portfolio:
Creativity = B12
Research = B12
Development = B11
Overall = B12

Presentation:
Creativity = C10
Research = C10
Development = B11
Overall = C10

Overall grade = B12

Nice.


Minecraft

I played Minecraft for the first time last night, and I think I probably shouldn't buy it. It seems like the kind of game I would waste a lot of time and attention on. That said, I might end up buying it anyway, because I had a play on the free version on their site and got annoyed that I couldn't craft things from the stuff I found, only place blocks and destroy blocks...

Did I say might? I kind of... just did...

Unfit for Public Consumption

Oh man. Some things just aren't. I remembered a dream the other day well, but I didn't want to write it up in detail. It involved getting a naughty letter from someone I know. Today's dream however is a different sort of unfit for public consumption.

The first bit was fine, it involves me being a cop and then being arrested even though I didn't do anything, and at my trial they gave me a prescription and sent me to a triangle shaped Square [a bit like in Tenby] / street, where I was to go see someone and get me some pills. Before that there was something to do with a train, and after that something to do with being on the force again with three other guys [I think I was a guy when I was a cop. Why do I do that, dream that I'm male? I've only noticed it since writing these dreams up], and being in a car reversing while one of them explained that we were to climb onto the top of the roofs as back up to each other, one on each building to the left of us and me on the last one. Why is this unfit for public consumption? It's not. Just wait.

The Dream

Continuing with the story, there is something to do with a flashback of this girl, when some mob boss had a load of dudes involved in some crimed lined up unconscious on the floor waiting for a helicopter. Out of some act of goodwill or something, he gives the blonde girl, who may have been a cop [played by someone who looked now and then like that blonde lady in 30Rock], her friend, played by Eva Mendes. Eva Mendes in this dream was one of the unconcious people. If this scene were in a movie, it would be really odd to see. Blonde girl was sat in some kind of pale painted metal area, like on the top of a building, bridge or submarine, holding Mendes fireman style, shouting some sort of thanks to the helicopter.

This is when things start sort of changing and getting weirder. I remember things looking slightly futuristic, like Star Trek, but things were also a little Medieval. I heard a ruckus and went through some double doors. These people were convinced that they should worship this bubbling cauldron / hot tub of water. The blonde girl was there, looking all fanatic, and around five other people, one of which seemed to have developed warts on his hands that for some reason I knew hadn't been there before. The cauldron was actually talking in an evil ominous voice and lighting up inside with pink light, saying, "Don't worship me! Don't worship me!!" Why they thought it was a good idea to worship it when it was telling them not to I do not know.

Everything up until this point kinda made a little bit of sense. In the past month I have seen a few cop films, and I saw The Other Guys that had Eva Mendes in, and have been watching the Yogscast Minecraft videos, a few of which included a Star Trek custom map. Although none of my dream today had any pixally cubes in.

This is where it gets nasty. I left the room a little while to listen to what the Mayor or whoever he was had to say about it, as did the "worshippers". Then the blonde ran back in to do more worshipping, but instead of the bubbling cauldron hot tub there was a sinister table with robotic arms and instruments, like a modern day Medieval torture device. First it grabbed her and stretched her out, dislocating her joints, then I think it folded her up sort of and chopped her hands off, then it... took... her lips. And she was totally awake for all of this. Also, when did her clothes disappear? This is horrendous, I thought. How is she still awake?

And just like that, my brain decided I had seen enough, and turned off the dream.

The Reality

I was back in my room, eyes still closed wondering why the dream just turned off like that, as if something in my mind had said it was past my bedtime and that I shouldn't be watching this horrible stuff. But as horrendous as it was, I think I could have taken what else the horrible machine was going to do. I've seen worse in films, plus, it wasn't that gory. There was no blood and after I woke up I realised that if that ever happened to someone, there would definitely be some blood. Also when it took her lips, it just looked like she had thinner lips, not no lips, so apart from the fact that she screamed, it didn't look that bad. Well, the fact that it took her hands was nasty, but the lip thing was fine.

It is times like these I wonder about my sanity. Then I remember all the crazy things people have put into some of the films I've seen and heard of. I saw worse in Cabin Fever. Urrgh... Cabin Fever is horrible.

Torchlight Rainbows

The Dream

Last night or this morning, I dreamt that someone had shown me a nifty way to use a screen with a camera connected filming a piece of card with colours painted on it in the colours of the spectrum used to reflect light from a torch straight at the camera would cause a beautiful rainbow light to appear on the screen, as if the coloured card and camera combo would work like some kind of prism refracting white light from the torch. Then I practised getting it to work. I think I showed it to my sister Yvette too.

I think earlier on in the dream there was something dangerous going on involving someone killing people or people just being killed by something, but I don't know the details or what that was all about.

The Reality

Your guess is as good as mine.

Previously

I didn't post this before because it was really short and I wasn't sure of the point, but I may as well. This was probably over 4 nights ago.

The Dream

I praised a girl named Zoe Vaughn for her math skills.
Then I accidently nearly made Dave Ware cry.

The Reality

As above, your guess is as good as mine.

Let's get it started! *

I have really been lagging behind on this Business.. business. I've researched adequate packaging for shipping, checked out what other people are selling, had a few ideas, made some things... But I feel I haven't really gotten stuck in yet.

I haven't actually made any products for listing, and ArtFire's 45 Day Guide suggests having at least 100 products to list. So last night, I began to make a small 100 page notebook to fill with product ideas and material requirements and probable costs. I definitely don't have 100 ideas in mind yet, but it's okay. I have a few to get started with.

It just needs some holes and some stitching together. I could have stitched it simply last night, but I want to try something experimental with a macrame spine...



* Have you seen the movie Hot Tub Time Machine? I loved it. Check this out - although I reckon it's better in the context of the actual movie! :)

dA Portfolio

Wow. I totally forgot I had this.

DeviantArt gave us all some kind of portfolio space ages ago. I like it, but I haven't updated mine in over a year. Hmm. Nor have I signed in on dA for a few months.

The Game

New York, Newwww Yorrrrk...

This felt like a really long one.

The Dream

I'm going into a really old house with my three sisters. We're playing hide and seek with my mum, except I think she's tracking us down as if we are wanted assassins of some sort. In other words, stakes were high, and things were dangerous.

The house is huge, a massive maze that seemed to consist of a ramshackle of old dusty beds and platforms that go upwards and outwards almost forever. I peer down through a gap to the bottom level where mum is, and I see her walking about on the old stone floor, the sun shining warmly on it through some kind of opening in a wall I can't see. Up where I am it is dark, but still plenty light enough to see.

The house reminds me of the layout of PlayZone, that indoor adventure place that I went to in Swansea with Tall Dan for his birthday, and the layout of my bedroom when I was 8. We had one room between four girls and to fit us in we had to squeeze two bunk beds against the sides of the room. There was maybe about a foot of space between the beds.

We have a little collection of books between us on my team of sister assassins. I think I realised that I was supposed to smuggle at least one of them out from the house. One of them looked old and magical, and also contained game maps. I didn't understand how to relate them to where we were though; they were very abstract.

This is the point where things begin to merge with a different theme. We are no longer in a huge old house of infinite bunk beds, but outdoors. All we did was move upwards some more, and now there is a well kept hedge to hide behind as well as beds. But then suddenly, Genevieve yells, "There's police in the fields!!"

We all duck, but I think it's too late. Damn it, why did Gen have to shout so loud? Two detectives approach and find us. One was a woman, but not my mum. The other one reminded me of that annoying friend in... hmmm. What's that film with the narrating cowboy and the bowling and the man they call, "The Dude"?

The man interrogates us, and some things start to look pixelated. For some reason, I have a sword now. So does he. Apparently, and according to old and magical rule books that both the police and we had, each of my sisters and I were supposed to have been following roles. They wanted to know what roles we were playing, and if we told them, they wouldn't kill us.

I also seem to remember some kind of little pig-like animal getting a bad fate in this dream, but I'm not sure when or where that happens. I feel like it wasn't at this point but some time earlier...

I didn't understand how simply telling them what our roles were during this game would avoid death by stabbing by the bad cop, so I didn't say anything right away. Then, after some kind of jumping about as if trying to picture possible manoeuvres out of the situation, things felt tense as if I figured there was no way out, so I yelled, "I'm the map reader!" I don't think I was the map reader, but my sisters didn't protest.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next. All I know is I was continuing along a totally 2D pixelated scene, slaying pixelated panthers and other beasts that would probably try to eat me as I went on my own merry way.

Oh, come on post editor, you're made of pixels and you don't know that "pixelated" is a word?

Eventually I come upon some kind of facility. Things change; the place is still kind of pixelated, but more 3D now. It seems to be a square storage area, full of those huge storage containers and truck things and also guns on tripods. Also, I'm in a helicopter. I make my way anti-clockwise around the edge of the facility, hopping over the storage containers as if they were hurdles in a race, being chased by trucks and shot at by guns. I look up to the top left, and see a circler HUD, flashing between orange and red and swarming with enemies. It doesn't look good.

Eventually I fly into a big box that looks like an area has been surrounded with wire fencing around it and above: I'm trapped, and swarms of little truck things roll in after me. Not only am I trapped, but the area appears to be a crushing unit. The trucks begin to get crushed, as does a man who seems to be the owner of the facility. Win! With his legs half crushed, he lets me go.

Seriously, WTF?

I am rewarded with the sword I used in the pixelated jungle. Also, the view is now 3rd person, and I seem to be a simple drawing of a man in a suit and handlebar moustache in black and white. I hug three ladies [we all look old fashioned and dapper], and comment on their umbrellas/parasols. Then I head to a nearby shop, which holds an interesting array of merchandise. I find too little men dolls made of light blue felt and yellow stitching, and I ask if I can have them, with the intention of being them so I could be 3D too.

The shop keeper has a better idea; a framed portrait of the man I'm supposed to be. He gives me the portrait and an umbrella in exchange for the magic umbrella sword I won, because I have no money to pay him with. I happily put the portrait on my face, carefully hanging the top edge of the frame on the top of my forehead, and walk on with a buddy, swinging my nice new white-with-an-elegant-orange-flowery-patterned umbrella. Then I witness a conversation, possibly between Dave and Thebag about how the film was. I think by the film they were referring to the dream. I disagreed with Thebag's telling of the film.

The Reality

... I have some game level design to be doing today. And now I have that New York New York song stuck in my head for some reason.

So this is my dream blog...

Welcome and hello. Let's get right to it, shall we?

The Dream

This morning I dreamt that I was in my current uni room with some of the guys, and there were various parties going on. I noticed a drop of water hit my left arm. Then I noticed that there was water dripping from my ceiling around the edges the room, and from my fire detector. Obviously, I wanted to go upstairs to check out who the fuck had decided to flood the room above. Who would dare think a recreation of the AberG lounge Beach Party Flood above MY room would be a good idea?!

This happened almost 2 years ago. They got it cleaned up THAT NIGHT.

Fair play guys, fair play.

But I couldn't get out of bed. That's right; for no apparent reason, I can't get up. I also can't leave until I have put my little bit of crunched up tin foil in the bin next to my guitar. Which is literally only just over there. I completely forget all about the fact that the ceiling is dripping and that somebody gotta lotta 'splainin to do - my one goal now is to put my that foil into that bin.

I have to ask the boys for help. I remember Sam being one of the people definitely there and still in the room, so I ask him to pick me up or piggy back me or something over to my bin, and then we can all head over to where the party is at. Unfortunately, it totally doesn't work. He gives me the piggy back, but for some reason it fails and I'm back where I was in my bed.

The fall "wakes me up" and I realise I'm definitely in one of those dreams again. The ones where I'm dreaming with my eyes open.

I once had a dream last year where I was in bed and I couldn't move. I couldn't see it happen, but I remember feeling my whole abdomen totally dissolve. It was an incredibly odd sensation to be able to imagine and remember, and I remember feeling really annoyed with it, as if it was something as common as knocking over a drink. Who cares about the fact that I am now missing an abdomen; not only can I not move my limbs, but once I can move them I will now have a big disgusting mess to clean up out of my bed!

And ever since then, if I haven't seen a monster in my dream, I haven't been afraid of being paralysed. Just a bit miffed, really.

I don't know how the next bit happens, but somehow I managed to get out of bed and make it to my door. Except my door now has see through panels, and I feel like I'm in a weird cross between the lounge and a cafeteria. It seems to make sense at the time though. The other guys have gone, but through the window now I can see Joe Tranter, except he's dressed up all crazy and doesn't really look like Joe Tranter. He doesn't look like Red Mist either, but for some reason, that's what he reminds me of. We chat about something, possibly the party that happened "last night" that I had just woken up from. Or something.

Then a lunch lady / cleaner comes by the corridor with her trolley, and I duck down so that all she sees is Joe standing there, alone, in his crazy gear. Joe asks me as she passes if I did that just to piss him off, or if I was gonna do that anyways. I think I laughed and said I would have hidden anyway.

The Reality

I had just been woken up by my alarm at around 10.30am, and I turned my light on to wake me up. Except it didn't wake me up.

I went back to sleep, with the light on, and with the weather outside being noisy and windy [yesterday morning the wind had managed to blow a few little bits of roof off of the new City Campus building. It looked much less exciting than it sounds].

Then my eyes probably opened a little bit to show me this:

It's my room from where I could see it in my bed. Note the fire detector on the ceiling. My bin is just out of shot, at the bottom, to the right of my guitar. Last night when I went to sleep I purposefully arranged my blanket around me in a way that would obscure my vision of objects in the room. I didn't do the same after turning my light on in the morning.

I've had many dreams now where the scene or the overall look of the scene looked very much like what I see from my bed. After being told that I look freaky when my eyes are open when I'm asleep, I have not only come to the conclusion that I must be dreaming with my eyes open, but I've also become intrigued by just how my dreams are affected by the visual stimulus I am getting and my various reactions to it. And that's why I have started up this blog - I want to tell people about these experiences. Should have thought of it sooner, really.

I find it's more annoying than scary when you don't imagine it's a demon doing it to you.

The thing that I don't quite understand is why it feels like the last thing I dreamt was the exchange with Joe, when I was definitely in my bed in my dream just prior to waking up. Or maybe I wasn't. Maybe I just think I was because when I saw my bedroom again I thought I was still dreaming, until I turned my head to the side and realised that - in comparison to everything that had just happened - that minuscule turn had felt more real than any of the other attempts to turn my head or get out of bed.

Where have you gone again my sweet?

Woah. I can't believe I actually missed out an entire month from writing on here. And I've had two hand-ins to write about.

Dissertation Draft

I handed in almost the required amount of words in time on Moodle [the online submission thing]. Except, I might have posted it on the wrong submission link and I didn't hand in a hard copy, so the other day when Rich emailed me asking for it, that may have been the first time any of the lecturers saw it. Woops.

Also, I've been staying away from it since the draft hand in on Jan 13th. On the plus side, I finally borrowed Raph Koster's Theory of Fun from the library. It was an interesting read and some of it might come in handy. I definitely should be focussing more time on the dissertation than I have been though. I guessed biggest problem is a lack of dedication. I should probably set myself some extra deadlines to meet to make sure I have something half decent to hand in.

Portfolio - Paper Production

Handed in a concept doc [or "Design Portfolio", I should say], dev. diary and 1500 word "post mortem" of the process. The hand-in itself was pretty easy going in the end. I wrote up my post-mortem on Sunday, the day before the hand-in deadline. Then because the deadline was at noon-ish the next day, I figured I'd hand it in via Moodle early, that Sunday night, so I could have a sleep in if I felt like it. I don't think I did sleep in, but I did keep on my pajamas.

In other news...

The 365 page-a-day Project

I wrote about this on my "business" blog [I'm not sure I can really call it that until I sell something]. Check out the post here [I also talk about sheep poo paper. And tiny houses].

It's been going okay, I've noticed after 3 weeks of doing it that I've started to attempt colour coding my days.. Standard sorts of emotional colours, adding random extras of yellow for happy, blue for sad and red for angry. The pages have also started to be less about drawing something artsy and more about recording what I was doing or focussing on that day.

Shown here are 28JAN, in which I accompanied Sam and Tom of the Irving and Booth varieties on their day off to Barry Island, and then drank wine, helped invent a new game, and went to a fairly empty Uni rave, and the 29JAN, which was when I spent part of the day catching up on five days worth of pages. Apparently I'm not very good at doing a page a day sometimes, especially when I spend a few days over at Camp Sausage.*

*Camp Sausage n. the house at which numerous friends of mine - of the male variety - live

And oh my! I totally forgot. According to page 25JAN, that was the day I died.

...Not for real. Dave of the Ware variety phoned me up and asked me if I could help him and Dan of the O'Hara variety with a teaser tape. I had to run around Caerleon for a bit and look scared and then relieved on camera and then - oh no! Turns out there was still a murderer nearby. I had to lie on the muddy pathway and pretend I'd been killed while they dripped fake blood on a real knife and tried not to drop either upon me. It was all quite fun actually. Still need to wipe the mud off that coat though.

And Claire's acting was really interesting to see. I say interesting; I should probably say awesome. It was really unnerving - in a good way - and as a result, half of my acting wasn't even acting. She really was behaving the whole time like the kind of person who was on the edge enough to kill me, and until she said "I'm back" and laughed her friendly laugh, I was slightly scared that she might actually kill me [I'd seen her around before but had only met her properly that night].

It was brilliant, and totally freaky. It was as if she'd put herself under hypnosis - she wasn't acting the character. In those few hours, she was living it. Dave told me later that when they filmed some other scenes at her house while she was back in character that it was even more intense and freaky, as she'd actually be talking back to and staring at them while being this on-the-edge and unstable, agitated character.

I know that story is not much to do with CGD but.. self induced hypnotic trances? The whole thing just fascinates me.

Teaser Coming Soon

Tim here, Well we are halfway through and are about to start actually making FP3.

A lot has happen but even more is going to happen. now we are in the process of creating a 30 second teaser trailer for FP3. This will hopefully get people talking and who know might even get extra support. for now I'll leave you with some nice 3D concepts.

Sheep Poo Paper, Make Something a Day & Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

Whew! Today was the hand in day for my dissertation first draft. Before today, I felt a little bit guilty every time I was doing something other than coursework. It was my 21st birthday on January 10th, and I actually spent the morning working on the dissertation! I did treat myself to a nice long day at the Camp Sossage [translation: the house my guy-friends live in] playing Rock Band and drinking cocktails the next day though, as a reward for being well behaved enough the previous night to catch the bus in the morning and make it in to my first ever lecture at the new Newport City Centre Campus.

Speaking of birthdays, it's my sister Abi's birthday today. I have told her already, but, Happy Birthday!

Now I've uploaded my draft and can relax a little while I let myself work on some other things...

What I got up to today...

I found out something I didn't know. There are people here in Wales collecting sheep poo to make paper out of the cellulose fibres they didn't manage to digest... It sounds gross, but the process sterilizes everything, creates good fertiliser as a by product, and actually creates decent looking paper. You'd never know it came out of a sheep's back end! Here is their website.

My browsing of the the Internet has also lead me to 365, a website all about making something, anything, everyday for a year.

I've been feeling so stuck in a rut lately - that is, until I complained about my lack of time to do what I want to my friend Dave. He told me, in true Dave "Mr Motivator" Ware fashion, that I had nothing but time. Strictly speaking, that's not true... but what I think I need to realise is that I can spare ten minutes every day to complete a little 2inch by 3inch page, in the art journal I made for myself today after watching some videos by Moxylyn. Such as this one:

365 has presented me with the challenge of actually doing it. My little art journal only has 120 pages including the cover pages, so I'm going to have to make a couple more of the same to have enough pages for a year. I have no pictures of it yet because I haven't actually sewn it together [I'm thinking a nice bit of Coptic Stitching]. I made it specifically to doodle in because I definitely don't spend enough time out of my own head these days, so using some paper once a day should be good for me!

Something quite unrelated to book making but a wonderful example of design [and also creating something that I now really want to own for myself] is the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Check it out, I actually love the look of these things.

The tinier ones can be built on trailers and can technically be considered RVs, even though they look like tiny houses! My favourite at the moment is the Weebee. I really really want one, but I don't think right now is quite the right time to get one, what with having my nice big standard Uni room for another few months and my dad busy building a nice extension to the side of our house. And don't even ask me where I'm planning to live next year when I've graduated... Current ideas involve moving to Cardiff with a few of the Sausages, one of which has already graduated. The others will be in their final years doing film degrees [ = free access to really good cameras].

I think I would like to live there with them. But I'll need to get some work done and start earning some income if I'm going to keep on top of rent without blowing my savings of the past few years!