Cattay's Journal

Wheeee!! I've just had the most amazing week! No boring work experience for me - instead, I wrote to a graphic design company, to see if they'd let me work with them for a week! :D

On monday, we arrived half an hour early, and had to wait in the car for a while. Jack and Em were dropped off at school for 8.30, and I wasn't needed until 9. When I got inside, I met the people I had emailed, and was introduced to the rest of the company-people. The guy I had to work with showed me a load of interesting stuff, and some of the programs he was testing. Then, horror of horrors, he discovered that I don't like making decisions.
"Not to put pressure on you or anything, but this could be seen by hundreds of people.."

I'm fine with making choices for myself, as he saw later in the week, but when it's going to affect someone else.. RAWR. Can't do it.

Tuesday, I did the same thing, but he got me started on a project. I had to design a front cover for a magazine. I decided that the theme for my magazine was going to be "Character Design" and my Dad dared me to put the name of it as "Random Stuff". Turned out I got quite attached to the name, anyway.. xD

Wednesday, I stayed in the office again, and worked on my project. I had to keep running downstairs to find some guy in a faded pink t-shirt and arsenal screensaver to check if some posters were okay. They took a lot of tweaking until he was happy.
I started colouring the cover of the magazine, and (WOOT) got to use Photoshop. Admittedly, it was an old version.. like.. 5 or something, and it was very similar to Paint Shop Pro.. but it didn't take me too long to figure out how to use it.

On Thursday, I wasn't in the office at all. I went downstairs to meet the printers, and they showed me how all the inks went onto the page to make the final picture. It looks like a boring job, but they had a lot of skill..
After that, I folded boxes all day. MY HANDS ACHED FOR HOURS AFTERWARDS. On the other hand, I had a good laugh at the fact the boxes were for "Cat Catheters, Sterile" or, as I learned in French, "Sonde Chat Stérile". HAHA.
But seriously. 25 catheters per box. 250 boxes per big cardboard box. We managed to fill about 7 boxes.. and only got about a fifth of them done. WHO THE HELL NEEDS THAT MANY SONDE CHAT STERILE?

On Friday, I finished up my project, said thankyou to everyone, and went home... WHERE I HAD MAH BIRFDAH PARTAY! St. Trinians themed, and a LOAD of fun. ^^


And now for something completely different.

MonkeyBird25 on DeviantART won our "Near Haters" competition, and I had to give a prize. That was ages ago, while exams were still on. So, It's late, and all, but I'm really glad it's finally finished. There are some things I'd probably still tweak, but I don't want to incase I somehow make a mess of it. D:

Anyway, HERE GOES, PROGRESS PICTURES!



The first sketch: (and I'd like to apologise for the huge size of pictures.. xD)



Scanned, and I start to colour:



I have to admit.. It doesn't look like much. Actually, the lineart wasn't coloured at this point, I did that as I went along.. D:

More Colouring:



And Matt starts to look a little more solid. But, needs MOAR colouring:


You can see I started on the hair, too, at this point.

Clothes, next:


I really wasn't happy with this. It might have looked okay if I had made sure that all the colour was inside the lines, but I was having a lot of problems, and the brush lines were really visible. I decided to go for a more solid brush, and see if that made a difference.


I did all this in a new layer, called RANDOMASS. At the time, I really wasn't sure if it was going to work, but the bold lines grew on me, so I ended up keeping this version.

Then I had to adjust a few things, and work on the hair. OH GOD, the HAIR. Matt's in particular gave me so much grief. I think I need to practise my hair skills.. xD

I made Matt's trousers darker, got rid of those annoying brown lines in the background, and did the hair:


Then I went around Mel and Matt with black, so that they weren't fading away at the edges.. xD


Then I added in the background. I left some of the black that I used as the outline as shadows:


I'm still not sure if I prefer the one with the wall or the one with the plain background.. but I really hope that MonkeyBird25 is happy with it.. :D