Blogs, Video Games & Flash Animation - The Worst Would-be Film Title

      As of late, this blog has been seeing the back of my hand a lot. Now, it's not because I hate blogging, I really love doing it in fact. But it's mainly become a syringe in my arm. A syringe full of Aids. This is because I am having a difficult time thinking up wonderful new ideas to compose (like my in previous posts.........) and it's become more and more aggravating, like Christian Bale would feel if he were caught in the middle of a light show or something. I wish I was more productive like the good ole days of my blog, 3 months ago, where every week I would post several new posts of meaningless rants and inspiring mush that would non-erotically satisfy me. Sadly though I have reached a point where I talk about either the same things or try to talk about something sensible and end up looking inbred. Although to many I might seem that way already:

"Duuuh, hi I'm Seán!"

     I'll admit that I have a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to worldly events such as politics or general news. It's my fault entirely of course, but if I were to tackle THAT sort of topic I would probably come out in the end resembling something of a cross between a frog and an ostich (A Frostrich! har har har!). If you can't picture than in your head, I'll tell you now, it looks really REALLY stupid (although imagine how funny it would look if it walked). On top of general knowledge, I have a very limited taste in music and a non-existent interest in sports. In fact if I really think about all I have just said, I have serious ice-breakers issues when it comes down to first conversations. I'm surprised I have friends! Well apart from ye of course, my readers and followers (which is down from 16 to 15 in the last week or two, talk about ENCOURAGING!). At least I can still check up on the number of views my old posts racked up, back when I'd get excited at the thought of someone clicking and even looking at my blog for more than two seconds, to which I'd think "OH MAH GOSH, they READEZ mah BLOGGGgggggggg!"

"Bluuaaaaaaa Read MAH BLOG, BLuauauauauaaasohappy!!!"

     Luckily for me though I've been slightly above average productive on several fronts. 3 out of 4 of these things actually count. I've cut down on drinking, am saving moneys and I am regaining my patience for being productive yaaaaaaay! What does this mean for you? Well nothing, but you should be happy for me, as my followers. Before I go on to talking about what regaining patience has helped me achieve, FIRST I shall talk about number 4 of my productive front, the one that doesn't count, but has proven to be awesome to me over the last few weeks.

      Number 4 is a little Wii game called Donkey Kong Country Returns. I cannot state how much barrels of awesomeness this game throws at you, no pun intended, har dee har har! While many people might scoff at the mention of a game on Nintendo's comparatively retarded hardware compared to it's HD cousins, I can tell you one thing. Cram it up yo' ass! Donkey Kong takes most PS3 & Xbox 360 games and wipes it's arse thoroughly with them. It carries the franchises' old school gaming lovingly into the modern era, like a bum holds his liquor. On top of that it sucks you in, chews you up and shits you out because it is so damn tough. Just getting through the game in general is probably enough to test David Blaine's patience and then once that's done there's tons of secrets and unlockables all hidden away in this innocent beastly package. And, no thanks to Retro Studios (the makers), the amazing art direction hides the Wii's underpowered hardware to produce some truely stunning vista's and animation that sits up there with the top of any of this generations console games, take a look:

    Now, I'm finished speaking of productive front number 4. Speaking of animation however, this is where my patience has become a virtue as of recently. Where as over the last few years my patience for working on most projects has eroded away like Michael Jackson's face (both living and dead I guess), I have recently begun rebuilding it as I took my first step into the world of Flash Animation. A year ago Adobe Flash settled quite nicely onto my laptop but became the neglected eldest child in my family of programs because I had little patience to work on it. However, I recently came across videos on character animation in Flash on a great but expensive website to download from. Luckily for me I "found" most of the videos else where online at the base price you would pay for, I dunno, saaaaay, nothing. They're great tutorials (which I have yet to finish) but even with what I've learnt from them I've found that having the patience to go through with animation has been rewarding. For example, I have made this already just to flex my memory of the tutorials:

    In retrospect it's quite shite, very spasticated, short and simple. That sounds like I'm describing myself actually. Anyways I have proven to myself that I can use the tools of the program to make the creature above and the same workflow I had on that can be applied to an entire animation, which is what I plan to do next. I took a step and now I'm taking a leap, let's hope I don't fall, like I did the in stockroom at work the other day. My next big project involves a comic I made of my friend Paddy and his irrational fear of people touching his hair.

So I'm going to animate Paddy going from this (he's the really happy one):

To this:

It will be fun and it is also very true to life if you were to try or be caught in this situation.

As for the first 2 productive fronts, I have already mentioned them. Number 1 is saving money and number 2 is drinking less, which is actually an offshoot of saving money. I want to save up for a new DSLR camera, as I have been planning for ages, so I can make better quality short films and I also want to buy a scanner/printer so I can do some frame by frame animation on the side too!

That's all for today mah friiiieeeeeenndss!

P.S. I actually wrote most of this earlier but accidentally DELETED ALL OF IT. And learned that Blogger doesn't save previous drafts as a result. Patience.....dwindling...... gaaaaahhhh.....

Quitting Smoking and Other Aggravations

So, I just arrived home, it's 1.03AM and I am actually quite tired. Before I go to bed I usually have a mug of tea and something sweet. This I just realised answers a lot of insomnia problems I'm having lately, amongst other things, but no tea just doesn't feel right!

So to tire out the monkey having a sponge bath inside of my head I decided to do yet ANOTHER blog post. Reading is optional from now onwards.

So as the title mentions, I have recently decided I'm quitting smoking. It has been 5 days of smoke free in my lungs and my plan is to stick with this smokey-free-eeness. Alas, there is a downside to this. You see an addiction needs a distraction, whereas my distractions appear as a new addiction to something else. Now, I'll admit, I have an intoxicating relationship with tea already, but now it's increased 5 billion times fold since I quit smoking. If tea were a person I would be it's Josef Fritzl, I love it unhealthily now ... I wonder if he quit smoking too? (from now on I'm calling tea addiction "Fritzled")

"A Tea Party????"

So along with caffienating myself for 14 hours of my waking day which will without a doubt lead my dad into thinking I'm a diabetic yet AGAIN (oh the summer of 2004, you evil bastard), it's still not enough to divert my dependency of cigarettes. I smoke usually on 3 occasions, either when I'm extremely bored (which is quite often), frustrated (I'll get to that one in a moment) or when I'm drunk (which is quite often).

So boredom usually somehow links to frustration. Sadly the main bout of frustration usually happens around the time I play the Wii. So, this is how it goes.

1. I make a mug of tea and sit down to play the Wii.
2. I pop on the Wii and leave my tea alone for a while, it's still quite hot.
3. I insert my copy of Monster Hunter 3 to play

And there you have it. Monster Hunter 3. The Hitler of the gaming world, the pooh to your hungoverness, the Joey to our sitcoms. Usually what happens during this phase of my day is that I go into blackouts of raging frustration. The game just plain doesn't like the human species (much like my laptop). So after spending an hour thinking I'm achieving something in this game, it comes out of the left field with a big fat "F@&K YOU" which makes you feel like this:

So now I'm pissed, I just wasted an hour of my time playing a video game and achieving nothing. BUT I can't have a cigarette soooooo I go to drink my tea, but it's COLD. Because I wasted an hour of my time, my damn tea has gone cold. My frustration is now slowly beginning to morph into rage at this point, much like the power rangers morph, but way less cool. So I go to the kettle and fill my mug with hot water which spills all over the counter. Shit, that's annoying I better clean it up. I clean it up and then drink a big slug out of my mug. Forgetting there's hot water in it. The noise that comes out of me at this point is probably something not even a Lyre bird could imitate. Let's just call it "unpleasant".


Ok so now I'm quite fuming, but there's a day ahead of me to calm down and relax. Just shower and relax. Phone rings, "hello?", Phone voice "Seán we need you at work", me "ok". So I don't have a day ahead of me anymore, just 5 mins for a cold shower and -5mins to eat.


When I arrive at work I usually have self contained my rage. To workers I appear quiet because I don't want to inflict the anger on them. To customers I most likely appear something like this:





Just dandy, costumers are gone soon enough so they'll most likely forget my horrifying rage, their children will have nightmares however.


So I work away for the few hours wishing I could just have a cigarette but eventually that subsides and so does the anger. It's near the end of my shift, I'm moving a cage happily now knowing I will be gone soon. I roll the cage over my foot due to being distracted by the thought of having a mug of tea. At this point I really thought tea was trying to harm me, physically and mentally. But I just ignored the seemingly severedmytoefrommyfoot pain and just went on till the end.


I break through the doors leaving with my bag on my back. This day which I awoke to with the theme from Knight Rider stuck in my head (usually that's a good sign) had transformed into something of a Michael Bay film, without the explosions (which basically means all the shitty bits).


I need a drink at this point, I have to drink. Luckily for me I have a friend who is usually willing to, or can be made, drink (you know who you are). Actually that last part in brackets can apply to a lot of people (you ALL know who you are...). So we get appropriately shit-faced and then it happens. I buy cigarettes, smoke about 40 when I only bought 20. Wake up with a hangover as raging as I was the day before and regret every single moment of it. The only thing in the end that pulls me through my day is being Fritzled.


That, my friends, is why it is so hard to quit smoking.