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Well now the BBTOONS adventure has concluded and I will be going back to concentrating on getting full employment doing graphics and illustrations again.

I am also going to look into what I need to do to become an art teacher.... this is one of my ideas that has made my other half smile as she thought I should go into teaching years ago. I just have to decide what age groups I would like to teach for and what mediums of art I actually can do, ideally digital graphics obviously... so will go well with the kids computer lessons.

Cont...

::CLICK PIC:: I am getting geared up now to take on the next challenge of getting bbtoons even more hits on it's website. Just starting the process of creating the heads for the animator, as soon all my bigbrother cartoon characters will be flash animated also.... cool eh! Looking forward to it as I have no idea what happens after I give the animator all the graphics of the expressions for each housmate. It's pretty much his choice as it's not just animated it's a TALKIE.

So the jnext few days will have periods of creating all the heads and sizing them up, it's good fun as I can do almost any expression I feel like and all the ones inbetween too if needed... which means some FUN expressions generally. To find out more pop to Http://BBTOONS.COM and have a peep

With bbtoons going really well, newspaper coverage, radio chats about me and my little graphics and getting on TV, I thought it would have gone to my head.... oddly enough it hasn't.. it's that rare comodity of a REAL JOB that I am striving for still... but things are looking up this month and looks like it could soon happen!

Clickie piccie to getie biggie(err)

Well my graphics will be on Big Brothers Little Brother this evening on TV.... I may be asked over at some point, but just my cartoons of the housemates for now.

I got an email from one of the team at Endamol BBLB and after a nice little chat I started creating backgrounds for the cartoons. They were only done as Icons so I had to create ALL the backgrounds from the sets of the house and the Diary Room Chair which is a SCARY looking and very colorful piece of art deco vulgarness.

Clickie the piccy to makie biggie!

Well seeing as I only started cartooning a few of the new housemates from this years Big Brother, it has already got the attention of the fans online. Over 300 hits today alone and I only started about 24 hours ago doing the cartoons in Icon form.

Been getting some GREAT feedback too from people online, some even remember me from several years ago when I did this before and were upset when they found out I wasn't doing it... until now. So me is happy as Larry. Who is this LARRY anyways?

Only got about 4 of the guys from the house cartooned so far, but will be working on the rest over the coming days.. the plan is to get them all done by next weekend.

Tomorrow if I recall correctly a few of the housemates are technically being evicted, hopefully not anyone I have cartooned yet... that would be upsetting for me, not to mention annoying as I spent a good while designing a cartoon version of them.

read more....

Well I have now launched the Big Brother Cartooning Website ( Http://BBTOONS.COM ) and all is going well so far, the housemates almost all look ODD which helps and I have figured a style and got 2 chatracters already done.

Channel 4 has removed all their forums which was a MAIN target for my marketing and word of mouth so I will be having to find new ways of getting the word around.

I now have a LOT of graphics and designs to create, marketing and a bunch of other stuff to do. Hopefully this will get me noticed by some people in the industry and I will get some work though all this.... fingers crossed.

A good start though.

Well the NEW series of Big Brother starts in a couple of days and I have been working flat out on the website and various other bits and bobs for my BBTOONS project.

Click the piccy to see BIGGER version...

It's been extra tricky this time as before the website was all HTML and quite easy to manipulate, but this time it is all CMS which is populated by content and has a backdoor where you can get everything uploaded and set into the right places... I am still fairly new to this way of creating websites so it has been a rather interesting learning curve, but it will make things a LOT faster for me to get the graphics online and be higher up the search engines... which is ALWAYS a good thing.

It hasn't been without its pitfalls so far...

Cartooning the Big Brother House

Way back in the good old days of 2005 I had an idea of cartooning the 'Housemates' from the Big Brother House. It seemed silly at the time, but it seemed to catch on as I was getting a LOT of hits and even FAN MAIL from all over the world even from housemates themselves when they managed to escape/get evicted.

The following year I decided I would actually put some time and effort into the idea and created 'bbtoons' with it's own dedicated website and see what would happen.... LOTS as it turned out.

This time a lot has changed and I am putting even more work, design and well.... hard work into it all from the ground up as this could very well be the very last project or commission I work on as it's not just me now as I have the whole 2.4 children family thing and have bills to pay and have to put the kids first. So as you can image I am putting EVERYTHING I have into this venture.

Anyhoo.... I will post more another time as I did a HUGE entry a short while ago but the system this blog runs through didn't autosave my draft and I have an hours worth of text and graphics in here... so disheartened as I had done all the text and was just putting in a final image I will call it a night with this entry and type it all up again when I don't feel like setting fire to the computer server.

It was a REALLY good and well written entry too, if I say so myself! sigh :(

Well after a few days work which was mainly an hour or so in the afternoons and a few hours at night I have my first part of the design for my Agent in the bag now and I am starting on cleaning up the 2nd version later on this evening after the little ones have gone to bed.

I am quite happy with the way this one has gone.... or rather the 2nd version that will be in my next post as it is very close to what I had in my mind at the start.

Click the little image at the side of this text to see a larger version. This version is tagged for copyrights but does have a few mini pics that I took on the way of the design process. Alas you wont be able to see the little details as they are too small in this version. You have to do these things high resolution really as there is no telling on how big they will be printed and having to go back into the graphic a year after you have done it to clean it all up would be a real pain.

The 'cute' version of this graphic character will be in my next post. If anyone wants this cupid for their desktop on their pc then just comment and let me know you email and screen size and I will send you one:) Nobody ever comments on this so I am not expecting to have to do anything:) Kinda like offering a 'round of drinks' just as last orders is over at the bar:) You learn these tricks when your unemployed and/or freelance to save pennys.

OFF THE PAGE

I popped onto the main Staines News website and found that I have been taken from the front page of the website now:( Probably been moved for some interesting articles featuring a river or local crime 'it's hard to tell', so my plight to find work as an illustrator must have dropped in ratings recently... either that or a river or lake is doing really well?

I'm not going to grumble as I was amazed to find myself on the MAIN page of the website in the first place and even more amazed to see that Steve Bax 'The web editor' placed me at the TOP of the page for a short while also.

I shall continue to post though as a lot of these things I write about I also type up in various other internet communities and various blog sites... I currently do these.

Deviant Art: Artists Gallery and Community
Livejournal: Personal Blog
Facebook: Friends, contacts and photos
Twitter: Little moments in my life
Staines News: Graphics and Finding Work News.. occasional editorial Illustrations

and from time to time I also have a life outside the computer... which reminds me I need to reboot myself and get some sleep mode.

The powers that be may put me back up there one day.... failing that I will harass a couple of lakes to make myself feel better. I would engage in a heated debate with a river but they are BIG and scare me.