MARLEY & ME.

                 

This is a drawing of Bob Marley because the Christmas beetles are driving me insane. I can't be arsed mining any more coal in Minecraft. Sleep has been dis-jointed and uncomfortable as of late.

As Ice Cube once so eloquently put it ''What you gonna do fo da holidaze?''. Well Mr. Cube, what I iz gonna do is, try and survive this dreadful slog of the boredom blues, by drawing nothings; hair, hands, chairs and music legends.. obviously.

TUTUS.

Stags can wait, they've been waiting. I've been busy, shutup.

Tockity tick, all your problems gone, clikity click

A long while ago i decided to draw a ballerina in my note book. At the time i didn't know why i chose to draw a ballerina but i just did. So i drew one, a second one, then a third, then i was out of space to draw a fourth. Today i couldn't count for you just how many ballerinas I've drawn. I couldn't recall all the places where I've drawn them. I've now come to thank Mr. Kanye West for that rather significant first drawing. Music videos.. fuck yeah. 

Ever since I've been steadily wasting time simply scribbling away ballerinas in my note books, in my journal, on any loose piece of paper i can get my hands on, on public property if i ever chose to pop a can of spray paint open. I've been in love with ballerinas for quite some time now. I've been having an affair with scribbly lines for even longer. It was an inevitable that they both met at some point. How glad i was with its consequence.

However I'm not an illustrator.. yet. I'm a student of animation, so animate is what's i's gotta do's babe. At first i thought it was a cute phase, a new tag, static. So i put ballerinas away and focused on rat things, jelly fish eyelashes, walk cycles and the y-axis.. that was until we were given a solo project, a solo project that would round out the end of our first year of BDes animation. Some people had trouble deciding what they wanted to do, for we were given an incredible range of possibilities; you could choose to draw 150 pages worth of observation, rig a 3D-model, create a character, animate pop-eye, you could do a back-flip. I knew exactly what project I wanted to undertake, I knew from the moment we were told 'go'. Hand drawn animation, ballerinas.

I won't bore you with the intricacies of animating hand drawn ballerinas but i will say this, it was a plunge into nothing, it was diving headfirst into something you couldn't be sure about, you didn't know.. i didn't know how it would turn out. This is one of the few projects that made this year, worth it.

In the end i fell off a computer chair with a 28-second animated cocktail of hand drawn animation and digital post-processing. In the end my peers congratulated me on what i had done. In the end it was the best feedback i had gotten all year. I owe you one Kanye West.

My piece was put on display on Thursday the 22nd of November, at a little show we held. There I sat on a couch, watching my animation being played on a screen suspended in mid-air. I had friends on either side of me congratulation me on my work. It was nice. I looked over at a woman sitting in the front row. I didn't know who she was. She was looking up in adoration of what was playing on screen, i smiled at the fact that she was smiling as she watched. There are very few moments when i am ever satisfied with my work, that was one of them. 

STAGS.

There's a lot of concept design involved within BDes Animation. Design characters, design settings, design worlds.

This is a world i took part in designing. A bleak North Korea inspired totalitarian landscape devoid of all warmth and freedom. A world where the meek proletariat is dominated by the strict regime. The denizens of this suffocating grey, are herded into concrete shells, where they eat, sleep and work in, live and die in. These grey monoliths are all however over-shadowed by a staunch reminder that the regime is forever present, inescapable, in the form of a hulking stag monument of gargantuan proportion.

You see the regime or 'the party' is proudly signified through a stag emblem. The 'Stag party' as it were. Cold and strict, merciless, and brutal, members of the stag party and its myriad soldiers live a life a long way away from the common trash locked away in their grey monoliths. In fact what the 'proles' are unaware of is that --

You know what...I can't be fucken arsed completing this impromptu 'stirring' description of this 'bleak North Korea inspired totalitarian landscape devoid of all warmth and freedom' right now, i'll have to get back to you later, but do stay tuned! there's a twist in the works. Currently incomplete you see. This is largely a 'two-part' project*. In the mean time look forward to the following "work in progress'' and next part of the ''narrative''.

*This was a design challenge handed down to us as an assignment over in BDes Animation. (It's a finished project.. but me being me, i was not happy with it). I have three months to do something, anything i like, let it be this, allow me to re-build? Please?

PS. Finally! Some colour!

INBETWEENS.

I study animation at the University of Technology, Sydney. My course is a 'Bachelors of Design in Animation' or 'BDes Animation' for short. I've just completed my first year in a three year course. If you have ever had any reason for wanting to explore animation, take it up as a career, expand it beyond a hobby, are wasting your life, apply for this course. It's amazing.

''But i can't draw!'' or ''I'm not good enough at drawing'' is a reason i hear most often as to why people don't or won't pick up this course. Fuck that, you'll learn how to draw or you'll get better. I use to think i was good  at drawing. In hindsight i have realised that i was mediocre. I've realised i have a long way to go, before i can call myself 'good'. I couldn't be more thankful.

If you've ever considered this course or are in the process of choosing what you want to do after high school, if you'd like to expand your abilities further. Don't hesitate. Apply.

A warning though; It's a tough course, it's not all drawing, and getting pissed at the Clare. A lot of this course is presenting your work and having it deconstructed (often in a manner that is brutal in its honesty). You will receive feedback from your mentors and peers that you won't agree with. Your flaws are thrown back in your face in the hopes that you will have the sense to fix them. You have to be tough, you have to be flexible. This is what makes you better. That is what helps you develop as an animator/designer/artist. You will learn how to adapt. Sometimes you will have no other option but to 'start again'. At this point you would want to die and i won't blame you, but eventually you will learn how to harden the fuck up.. and do better next time.

Pardon, but this has been the best year personally in recent memory. Largely thanks to BDes Animation at UTS, the people in it, the friends made through it, the accomplishments gained from it. Regret nothing.

ALAN SHAKIR.

Your favorite number is forty-four and you're crazy. Never change.

This blog is called 'THE.FORTYFOUR' for no particular reason other than the fact that it sounds smooth as fuck and that you would obsess over the number four, to the point where it would get stuck in my own head. Thanks bro.

P.S You've got a hard profile to draw, none but all of these together look like you. Still trying.

ARTHOUSE.

Find me life drawing at the Arthouse Hotel in Sydney on a Monday evening. I found these two there. I tend to get bored of drawing the models and instead opt. to draw my fellow life drawing patrons.

We each have our own ways of signifying which drawings we like the most. Some mark their pages with asterisks, torn corners, love hearts and all that shit. I leave the page alone, because i would never leave the page alone otherwise. My sketchbooks are a jumble of rushed sketches, drawings and notes. Often you would find an inability to focus on a single image, because there are so many on any given page. These two however; were given there own page each. They're lovely. They were staring at nude models..

..As was i.

LET'S GET TO IT.

I have been meaning to start a blog for some time. A blog to show off my work. Work i have put in countless hours toward, disregarding sleep, because fuck sleep. Work i have spent five minutes on, sketches  of people in food courts and local hangs, and on various forms of public transport because i can't be arsed looking out the window and instead choose to draw the beautiful people of Sydney. It's not going to be that great. Don't get your hopes up. I'm still a student at university, and i study animation. Expect minimal activity here due to the fact i will be busy elsewhere drawing in-betweens and helping friends get couches up multiple flights of stairs. I have only found the time to create this now,  simply because i have about three months to waste away on holiday, and pretend like i am doing something useful.  

So, my dear friends, time to pretend.

HELLO.