Emma's Random Ramblings...

The Rooney’s

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 :-) 

Sketch Dump

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!

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…

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….

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!

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 

And’ertoonz Framed Cartoon-Catures

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 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 )