Emma's Random Ramblings...

A Sunny Sunday...

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:41:00 +0100

So, the three things that never seem to align together in the universe for me are for it to be A) A day with little/no work commitments, B) For the sun to be shining and C) For J to not be working and/or playing football.

Today was that perfect day.

So as not to waste such a glorious day, we decided to drive over to Knowsley Safari Park for a day out. Score!

It turned out to be quite awkward to draw animals that were mainly hiding from the sun or moving around (How dare they!) and with about 2 minutes to capture what I could before holding up a huge queue of cars… but here’s what I came home with anyway.

Sleepy Lion is Sleepy.

Rhino’s are funny lookin’ but awesome. I LOVE how they crease. I also love that their horns are actually formed from matted hair. Who knew?!

Camels are pretty badass. This one was anyway… he pretty much stopped every car he didn’t like the look of by strolling in front of it and eyeballing the drivers for for a long time!

Not quite an antelope. Not quite a deer… but it had stripes and trotters?!

Oh, and some older sketches from my book. Don’t ask what the crocodile thing is. I don’t know myself yet. Something I was making up as I went along!

Anyway, we finished the day with a pub lunch in a gorgeous non-rowdy beer garden. Hopefully we’ll get to go to Chester Zoo next if this weather keeps up. It really felt like a holiday day! Hope you all had an equally great day.

Peace out x

Happy Wedding Day, Sarah & Stuart!

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0100

I have a lot of admiration for Sarah (@sazzy on Twitter) She’s only slightly older than me is a fantastic web designer and entrepreneur. (www.youknowwhodesign.com)

There has been a few things we seem to have had in common over the years including both our grandpa’s passing away at similar times; both having been massive influences in our lives. It was nice having someone to relate to with this, as well as lots of other business-y/personal instances.

We’ve had the chance to work together in the past so as a little something for her big day, I put a couple of booklets together for her child guests as they worked really well at my own wedding. Here’s some of the artwork I used which although they are sickeningly pretty couple, i still really enjoyed creating!

I cheated a bit and used the Disney background pattern I had created for my own Wedding back in December. I might eventually even get it made into actual wallpaper one day!

(For top seeeekrit reasons, Stu has to avoid publishing his photo online so he will therefore only be known as a cartoon ;) Hopefully he’ll be recognizable to those that know him! *Clue: He’s not the white, fluffy one!

Disney-esque Cartoon Makeovers are a part of my Cartoon-Illustration service that I have provided for lots of clients over the last 5 years. Prices and more information can be found over at my website.

Hope you had a lovely day guys and i’m sure you’re currently enjoying your San-Fran honeymoon! (Jealous, moi?? ;)

The Rooney's

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:21:00 +0100

I’ve been looking forward to posting this, as it was a ‘Cartoon-Cature’ I completed about a month ago.

I was commissioned by a (then) new client who wanted a picture to give personally to Wayne himself as a thankyou for something he had done for him. (Not that I can prove this at all, but I can only go with what i’m told!)

My brief was to steer away from the usual unflattering carticature cartoons that people draw of Wayne.. and who better to come to than And’ertoonz! ;-) (After all, I pride myself on creating flattering cartoons of people that are more camera shy. I often take years off age and pounds off weight, a caricature in reverse in effect!)

After the World Cup, Wayne, Coleen and baby Kai went to Barbados so weren’t able to receive this until they returned. (Hence my waiting to post it on my site).

Anyway, I haven’t heard what Wayne, or Coleen think of their family portrait but I’m pretty proud of how it came out regardless.

I’ve been able to work with this client on a few exciting things since, (Nothing to do with the Rooney’s - that was a one off) so fingers crossed i’ll be able to talk about those soon as well :-)

Testing camera+ for the iPhone. I’m getting a little...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:59:16 +0100

Testing camera+ for the iPhone. I’m getting a little addicted to camera apps, but this one is great as there are so many options to play with.. :)

Sketch Dump

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:01:00 +0100

A few *ROUGH* sketches of some stuff i’ve been working on recently.

In other news… I have some work and projects that i’ve not had permission to post yet which i’m really excited about! As soon as I get the thumbs up, you’ll be the first to know :-D

Jet the Pup!

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:06:00 +0100

One of my best friend’s recently lost her mum and so to try and fill a *fraction* of the void, Jayne and her dad bought a little lab pup. They named him Jet as her dad used to call her mum that when they were younger. Very fitting and a lovely tribute.

Jet is soooooo cute, even if he did want to eat my cardigan! (And no, that is not a butt behind him.. it is a soft toy’s ear! :P) I <3 him soooo much, so I decided to procrastinate from a less inspiring project by doodling a little piccy of him with a sock to make Jayne smile :) That, and well…. i just love drawing dogs!

I doodled him with a sock after filming this video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQSrbwvxBjE (And tried to upload it several times to Tumblr to no avail! Grrr).

I might get round to finishing him one day… but for the time being i have masses of ‘paying’ commissions to work through, and a house renovation to finish!

I love my husband to infinity and beyond...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:13:00 +0100

Starting on Saturday (Just gone), the Daily Mirror here in the UK are promoting the release of Toy Story 3 by giving away some pretty cool gifts…

Being the mature woman that I am, naturally i wanted the LEGO Buzz & Woody. Unfortunately, as I had some tight deadlines to meet over the weekend, I was unable to spare the time to go and get the paper, cut out the voucher and then go half way across town to Toys R’ Us to collect said toy. So I sent my husband :P

After about half an hour, I got a text that made me LOL.

“I am currently stood in a queue of about 70 people waiting for this Toy Story thing and they can’t serve us till’ 11. I hope you appreciate this :-)”

Little did the rest of the queue know that he was waiting in line for his wife, and not a child. <3

Huzzah! GOD i can’t wait to see this film! It’s out today actually, but I have to wait until a week on Wednesday to see it in full blown 3D at the IMAX. I’m pretty sure it’ll be worth the wait though! Now where did I put my TS 1&2 DVD’s….

The day my iPhone 4 went into the light....

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:13:00 +0100

Sunday. An relatively ordinary day drawing famous chefs and anthropomorphised lions, whilst happily watching re-runs of Come Dine With Me.

Little did I know it was also to be my last precious moments with my baby as I (then) knew him.

It all started with a quick sync so I could back up the photos i’d taken in the past week or so. All fine and dandy until part way through my iTunes popped up with an error.

The iPhone “Emma’s iPhone” cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (-39)

Meh. I tried the usual, unchecking sync photos/music etc. and then resyncing them but to no avail. Still the same. The last things i’d changed before getting this message were photo events and movies. As I couldn’t be sure what exactly was causing this, I backed up the phone and decided to simply restore it to factory settings.

Then came the best part…

So after unplugging it, all I was then getting was either the black Apple start up screen, or the initial ‘Connect to iTunes’ screen. So I tried all the steps on Apple’s troubleshooting page including using a different USB cable and USB port, all with no joy. Infact, it had now wiped the drive’s name and capacity details, effectively leaving me with a £600 brick!

I followed the steps again, only for it to just take me round and round in circles telling me it could not be restored. I couldn’t even transfer my sim to a temporary handset so I was royally screwed! (Even one day was likely to mess up some client negotiations if they tried to contact me out of office! Stressssssss!)

I’d self declared the time and place of death and put him back in his little box with receipt ready for the next day. All was not well. *Strop central*.

STEP IN MY KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR!

My Husband, (with the patience of a saint!) re-read as many articles as possible, and although no one had reported this issue with the iPhone 4 (As yet!) he sat for about an hour (At 11:30pm!) and eventually discovered it needed to be in something called o DFU mode and not the ‘plug into iTunes’ recovery mode it was currently in.

This was done by fiddling with timings holding the home/sleep buttons (under a different iTunes profile) until the screen stayed black. It had to be kept plugged in, holding both Home and Sleep buttons for 8-9 secs before letting go of sleep and keeping hold of the home button for another 5 or so! Even then it took a good few attempts to get the timing *exactly* right!

FINALLY, after the final kiss of life and a few stressful hours we had life in the form of a loading bar!! HOORAY!!!!!

However, even after backing my settings up a few hours earlier, I still lost all my text and phone history and all my app settings. (Thank GOD for Mobileme!) I’ll have to spend some time putting everything back in folders, re-syncing my iPhoto/music library and app settings, (Things, 1Password) as well as all my general settings, but I suppose it could have been worse if I hadn’t had been the organised freak that I am!

All I can be thankful for, is that I didn’t have it cremated! (And that this post hopefully helps someone else who may eventually encounter the same problem!)

I knew I married J for a reason! ;)

Peace out!

Em x

My New Baby!

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0100

As most of you will know, I’m a self-confessed Apple fan-girl and über Geek and an *actual* bit of drool came out as i sat and watched the big iPhone 4 reveal keynote speech (looking down) at the my 3Gs screen at my desk! lol :)

If I could have queued on the 24th, I would have been there at 5am with all the other geeks but as it happens that was the *one* day I had to be elsewhere at 8:30am. :-( It probably worked out in my favour anyway, as I would have had little time to play with it between then and the Saturday (2 days later) when I got it anyway.

So far so good. I won’t bore you with the fine details as there’s TONNES of dedicated blogs for that, but IMHO I’m glad I have it and I LOVE it!

I have had no problems with reported yellowing of the screen, or white spots on it but yes, the bars of reception do decrease in the ‘Death Grip’ - So if you’re a lefty you’ll definitely need a case. I’m right handed and haven’t bothered buying a case yet though; I’m hanging fire until some more 3rd party ones come out as I’m unimpressed by current offerings. My Trusty ol’ iPod sock will do for the time being.

The Retina screen is is A-Mazing, as is the HD recording. Obviously the camera (with flash) is loads better too. From what I see though, a lot of sites downgrade the video quality so I’ve only seen the pristine quality via my MBP so far…

If you’re ‘umming and ‘arring whether to upgrade, I’d say go and have a hold of one first. Feel the magic for yourself! For me though, I love the convenience of a true all-in-one device. I know lots of people ebay-ing digital cameras and Flip Mino’s, and I don’t blame them.

I have yet to try Face-Time (I’ll need a face of make-up for that! :-S) and I am currently taking lots of photos and videos of my Cousin, Mia - who is staying with us for the summer so I can experiment withe the iMovie app as a souvenir for her.

All in all, it’s harder, better, faster, stronger and all that.. Well, faster, clearer and prettier anyway! I look forward to lots of app updates, as the only thing so far is the quality of the graphics in old apps, they look a little pixilated on the new screen. But that’s just me being picky as usual! lol

Awwww, I found this today whilst sorting some of our stuff for...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:00:00 +0100

Awwww, I found this today whilst sorting some of our stuff for moving house… I was probably about 10 and i remember mithering my poor mum for that Sonic the Hedgehog watch for weeks! i LOVED it! XD

And'ertoonz Framed Cartoon-Catures

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:15:00 +0100

While I remember, Here’s a few examples of that Decoupage ‘3D’ effect I use when finishing up most of my ‘Cartoon-Cature’ commissions. (As promised!)

While relatively inexpensive, these frames from Marks & Spencers are FAB because they have a little bit of depth between the glass and the mount. This is the perfect gap to allow me to build up the layers using those little sticky pads to really make the finished piece ‘pop’.

Here’s the finished article from this quick initial sketch I previously...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:43:00 +0100

Here’s the finished article from this quick initial sketch I previously posted. http://tinyurl.com/27rl4tz Apparently, it went down a storm (Client’s words, not mine!) as a leaving gift for a girl emigrating to India.

I spent alot more time finishing the the digital image in Illustrator than I usually would, so you can probably see a fair few differences from the original; All down to my not spending much time on the original sketch. *Slapshand*.

On the final frame I used foam pads to create a decoupage layered image to add depth. In true Emma form though, I forgot to take a picture! Douche! I do lots of Cartoon-cature commissions in this way though so I’ll route out an example and post it asap :)

(Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get permission to post original photos of the ‘model’ yet… but I’m sure you can take my word for it that she would look like this if she were in ‘Enchanted’ XD )

Yay!! Mum came home from visiting my uncle (In Florida) this...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:00:00 +0100

Yay!! Mum came home from visiting my uncle (In Florida) this morning. True to form she brought me back a gift that only probably children and cartoonists would appreciate! Hooray!

RT @ChrisOatley: “New ArtCast :: Disney Artists Q&A :: Taking Your Work To The Next...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:40:57 +0100

RT @ChrisOatley: “New ArtCast :: Disney Artists Q&A :: Taking Your Work To The Next Level” NOW AVAILABLE at http://ChrisOatley.com

Here’s a quick initial sketch for a ‘cartoon-cature’...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:38:00 +0100

Here’s a quick initial sketch for a ‘cartoon-cature’ commission I’m currently working on. Far from perfect, but I’ll be finishing it up using illustrator in the next couple of days whilst I juggle a few jobs! She’ll be printed and framed for a leaving present. :-)

BoomBot - Designing an iPhone app

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:46:00 +0100

Just over a year ago, I worked on my first iPhone app. I LOVE the iPhone platform and so it was a pleasure to work on.. but I encountered a few hardships along the way which I will share with you!

It’s took 3 months (MONTHS!!) for Apple to approve, but when my first iPhone App, ’Boombot’ became available to buy, it was from page ONE of iTunes Appstore to boot!

I worked with the fab @edlea; the genius behind top selling TV plus, Copy Share, OverHere & THE MMS app that pretty much all iPhone owners used before the 3.0 update! Ed is well known for his innovative ideas, which is why I was also really chuffed he asked little ol’ me to design for him.

Anyway, Previously knows as ‘Mack’ (explanation to follow), ‘BoomBot’ is your retro pocket speech synthesizer who will repeat anything you want him to say. Boombot also has his own ‘memory’ and stores all your saved phrases for easy access should you want him to repeat anything.

For anyone looking to team up with a programmer and design an app for iPhone, I’ll talk you through the process and unveil the story of our little ‘saga’ you may have heard me twittering about too…

As a designer, I can assure you despite my initial concerns, that your graphics will stay the same colour on the iPhone screen as they do on your computer screen. I can’t speak for the iPhone 4 (Yet!) but I was initially wondering if they would look any different, but they don’t. Not to me anyway, so don’t worry.

Using the same principles as saving for web, I saved all my graphics using Photoshop ‘save for web’ option and saved them as 72dpi transparent PNG’s, or JPEG for backgrounds etc. The JPEG’s were slightly smaller in file size than PNG so I found this was the best way.

For the animated mouth effect, the transparent graphics simply overlaid one another in the SDK, (Software Development Kit) and the alpha transparency was changed according to the volume of the speech.

The icons needed were a 57x57 pixel icon and a 512x512 large icon, (Actual sizes below) which Apple use to generate artwork for iTunes. The small one is the one you see on your phone’s screen.

I initially also created ‘rollovers’ of the on-screen buttons which were to look ‘pressed in’. However, The SDK seemed to automatically create a darker version of a button for this purpose. We went with the iPhone version to keep consistency and familiarity between the iPhone UI and its app as best as possible. Again, these were saved with transparent backgrounds.

The main background image was 360 x 518px, but if your app design needs a bottom bar then you’ll need to take that into account too. (Update) While this is true of the iPhone 3Gs; the 20101 iPhone 4’s iOS SDK simulator can also render an app’s images, user interface controls and text at a higher resolution of 640x960!

Aaaaanyway at the beginning of this brief, I set about illustrating Ed’s robot as one who would appeal to the vast audience. As I was sketching out my ideas, I somehow made something that kind of resembled an old iMac. It was that light bulb moment that then left me exploring the idea of having a robot made up of old Mac parts. Being exclusive to the Apple iPhone and all that. Well…I thought it was quite clever anyway :P

*Lazy tip for iPhone users* Rather than faffing with a scanner, i take a quick snap of the drawing and upload it to Skitch , (If I’m sharing with my twitterers) or simply just email it to myself. Much quicker! However, I know this wouldn’t work so well if you use Photoshop to clean up your hand drawn artwork – but I work by tracing sketches over in Illustrator to vectorise them anyway.

I finished him up using Adobe illustrator and even designed another ‘animated’ element showing the loading status, but it turned out we never needed it as the ‘cloud in the sky’ processed it much quicker than we originally expected while testing him.

I must admit I had a slight niggle Apple *might* have some kind of issue with it, but Ed liked it so we tried anyway (minus my *ahem* on/off switch ). Technically, I hadn’t used Apple’s logo anywhere and had just made (be it strong) resemblances to their products.

It wasn’t okay. I should have known better.

They came back with this:

“Thank you for submitting Mack the Talking Robot to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Mack the Talking Robot and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because of Apple trademark images. Please refer to the attached screenshot. We want to remind you of the importance of following Apple’s posted Guidelines for Using Apple’s Trademarks and Copyrights: <http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html>.

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that Mack the Talking Robot does not infringe on Apple trademarks, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.”

Meh. Luckily, being a vector graphic, it was much easier to edit and move bits around… so no big deal. For now. So I removed all major resemblances to Apple, his ‘Mack’ name chip, and I even changed the buttons just for good measure. (I had designed them by playing on the default iPhone UI designs to suit the ‘new speech’ and ‘memory bank’ ones we needed… and as Apple weren’t being specific we thought these could be part of the problem.)

Ed knew from previous experience, if/when Apple reject apps they’re generally quite quick to reassess them after you submit an alternative version but no. Not this time! They took weeks in fact… before coming back with the same ‘copyright infringement’ wall. FFS!

We were losing hope in little Mack, bless’im.

So now, from a designers point of view, I was making unplanned artwork changes which weren’t covered in the original contract. I’ll probably be stoned to death by fellow freelancers, but I decided to overlook it in this instance. Again, my fault. This should have been covered in the contract but wasn’t. Learn from my mistakes people!

I could have left Ed high and dry at this point but that’s not who I am. Sometimes to my detriment, I always like to go that extra mile for others and treat them as I would like to be treated myself etc. I know – not always good business sense but there you go. I’ll usually judge these things on gut instinct and am still happy with my decision.

I don’t mind sharing the fact that Ed and I had approached this partnership on a % deal. I would receive a % of profits after server costs had been taken away. So technically I hadn’t received any payment at this point. Although a method I wouldn’t normally recommend and a little risky, I simply looked at this as a learning curve and a chance to have my work published on a new platform. A platform that I love, and use everyday.

Knowing of Ed’s previous success, which was also an important factor in accepting the % contract, I was happy Boombot would sell, but think the exposure would make up for any shortfall should there be any. It should have been a smaller job than we both envisaged, but shit happens. I would be happy to design more apps with Ed, or other developers again in the future and this hasn’t put me off at all. These things are sent to try us. I’ll see if the % deal pays off and adjust my pricing strategy for the future based on that, and the developer in question, but I suppose the best way to learn is by doing…

Anyway, I made even more minor changes, but no. They didn’t like those either. WTF? This was getting beyond ridiculous.

I then decided I could spend ages delaying the project by changing lots of mini things, or just sack it and come up with a new design.

To cut a long story a *bit* shorter… this is how ‘Boombot’ came about. The love child of Mack, and the retro Boombox I’d spotted on Alan Carr’s ‘chattyman’ talkshow set. Don’t ask me how they met.. That’s their personal business

To end the ‘saga’, Apple approved this version (Huzzah!) and even put Boombot on the front page of the iTunes app store! Its climbed up the charts and, at it’s highest, came in at #12 in the top paid apps and #3 in the entertainment category. Love and happiness is restored.

Initial figures showed that is shifted about 800-1000ish a day while on page 1. Not bad for something ‘novelty’ I reckon. We stayed in the *new & noteworthy* for about 4 weeks, moving down a page each week.

In conclusion (if you’ve made it this far!) I swear it would have been easier to illustrate Steven Hawking and have that approved! :P

Peace out x

Emma’s recommended links:

Ed’s site

BoomBot’s Site

Here are the free iPhone UI vector graphics (and PSD) i used to mock up my design. Excellent resource! (Update) here’s an iPhone 4 template! —-> http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2009/06/18/iphone-gui-psd-30/

And finally, a great article from SmashingMag, (Fantastic design blog) about designing for iPhone.

(Update)

Since this post, I have received many inquiries about how to get started designing for iPhone. My advice is to firstly check your idea hasn’t already been done (and better at that!) using the app store in iTunes.

Secondly, you might want to approach a coder familiar with the iPhone SDK. (Software Development Kit). If you don’t know where to start, perhaps use the app store to see which are the best apps and usually you’ll find the link to the developer beside his/her app. Always read the app reviews (But take them with a pinch of salt!) and then, if possible, try their UI out for yourself.

Please also be aware, while the app-market can be very lucrative, it’s also very overcrowded. People can be very fickle about apps they download and aren’t usually willing to pay alot for them. (Most of the money will come from mass sales and/or advertising.) The more unique your app the better and It ALWAYS pays to do your research!

Thankyou, Grandpa

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:14:00 +0100

I originally posted this over a year ago directly from within my initial website’s integrated blog, but as it wasn’t really upto much user friendly-wise, I’ve just transferred it here.

My ‘re-designed’ website (The one that’s live now) was long in the making and was finally published thanks to a little help from My Brother-in-law, lots of dedication (I’m not naturally a coder!!) and lots of encouragement from my Grandpa.

Every week, my Grandpa would ask my progress and check for any online. He showed much interest in new technology, and was the only one in his school class to be a member of FriendsReunited. He never stopped learning.

Grandma and Grandpa lived just around the corner from us, but moved in with us as Grandpa became weaker so we could care for him. Although he was extremely poorly in his last days, I managed to break the good news that my site was finally live. He passed away just a day later (Probably at peace that the damn thing was finally done!). I am therefore dedicating my entire site to him.

Although over one year on it still doesn’t seem real, I originally wrote this the day after my Grandpa’s funeral. He was 81 years young.

My Grandpa was basically my Dad. He should have been there to give me away at my wedding in December last year, but the world works in mysterious ways.

Grandpa taught me to draw. And paint. And make things. He sat with me and helped me with my homework, college and university projects. In fact he helped me with some of my early freelance commissions! He took me on holiday, built our house extention and gave me so much more than anyone showered with money. Time.

He had time for everyone. Grandma had once come home be greeted with a tramp eating a full English breakfast at her dining table. Of course Grandpa had taken him in and this short tale sums him up perfectly; there are also countless other stories of similar nature! I could write forever on how fantastic he was but in a quote from a relative:

“Ronnie was a truly wonderful and kind man. Tremendously clever in every way with so much talent and extremely modest with it. Not one person in the whole world could possibly dislike him. He will be very much missed by everyone who was privileged to know him and the world is now a lesser place without him.”

I have 25 years of happy memories with my Grandpa/Dad, and for that I will always be thankful.

_{(This is the last piece of work I finished for my family, also given to my Grandpa at the chapel of rest as a final thank you.)}