Loch Ness Marathon

Hi folks,

Just a quick post about my latest project... A marathon.  Over the last few months, I have been working hard to get in shape and be able to run for a bus without running out of breath. So after completing the Insanity program (possibly the hardest workout I have ever tried) I heard that my brother was training for the Loch Ness Marathon on September 29th. So I joined him in the 12 week training program to work up to marathon pace.

So far, we have completed a half marathon in 1:40 (avg pace - 8 min/mile) which we were really happy with. During this time, we were researching into raising money for charity and found that out of a massive amount of fantastic charities, we chose to raise money for Diabetes UK. This is a great charity campaigning to raise awareness and provide support to over 3 million people suffering with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes.

This charity is a great cause, and if anyone out there would like to find out more, please visit our JustGiving page here. Please donate as much or as little as you want. Any support will be hugely appreciated. Here is my fundraising poster, if you like, please share.

Thats all for now.
More info to follow in the coming weeks.

Creative Cloud Updates

Hi Folks,

Here is a quick update on the new software update I downloaded from Adobes Creative Cloud.

I downloaded After Effects Creative Cloud (which I am assuming is the new name for CS7). So after looking at the native Cinema 4D compatibility, I thought it was awesome that 3D can now be created and updated really quickly with Cinema 4D. So I have decided to continue learning more about C4D, as I find it much easier to use than Maya and works along with Illustrator and Photoshop. The rest of the summer will be spent working with 3D. Good fun.

My 3D renders will be uploaded very soon on mikestruthersmedia.com and my youtube page.

Cheers

HND completed- the next step

Hi folks.

Thursday the 14th of June is the final day of my college years and I am successfully leaving with an A in my graded unit. This year was really good for pushing me to think and research about what I really wanted to do in the creative industries. VFX is still the field I want to pursue. At the moment, I have been reading VES Handbook of Visual Effects. This is an education into the history and common practices in the visual effects industry. This will be a good grounding to give me a more clear idea of how to pursue my target.

Now. The next step after college is now getting an honours degree in Creative Computing. I plan on continuing working with my promotional material, making regular videos, and update my website with all my projects I am working on. My next major target is to get a summer internship with Framestore in London. I will work as hard as I can to get this job. It's going to be a tough couple of years. But I think I can do it.

Cheers

Work experience - A Runner Job

On top of the graded unit and all my other stuff for college, I put my name down for some work experience as a runner on a feature film set in Edinburghs city centre.

I then was contacted to start work at 6.30am at their unit base near the location.

I loved the experience, it was very hectic from the start of the day right through til 7pm.

During filming I was part of a team of runners helping lock off areas of the set during takes. This task proved more difficult than I had thought, some people walk very fast... however I managed to find my feet after a couple hours of doing it.

In the end, I was asked back for two more days, so I officially have 3 days experience on a film set... not that impressive but a start.

For more info about my work experiences and projects I have worked on my website

Cheers

Graded Unit Submission!

Today is the day I have finally submitted my graded unit (development stage) after months of graft.

My Graded Unit can be found on my website.

Creating a promotional material package for myself was a good experience, and I will continue to use the skills I have learned on this course to progress in the Creative Industries. Over the course of the Graded Unit, here is a track of changes which happened throughout the development stage:

• Vimeo Channel - Once I created an account, I found that there were upload restrictions such as file size caps of 2GB a week, unless you set up a PRO account... For just now, I will stick with Youtube's player although I intend on building an HTML5 video player to show my media.
• My showreel ended up at a duration of 1 minute when I had originally planned 2 minutes. But after a peer review, I found that my showreel was too short and needed more material in it.
• Overall, I followed my week by week schedule (which I was very surprised about!). 

Next step is to sum up my Graded Unit in my Evaluation, this is the last section of my course and I can get my grade from there...

MikeStruthersMedia Tshirt!

Hi folks,

I thought it would be a cool idea to create my on t-shirt with 'Mike Struthers Media' on it. So when I made image in Photoshop, it looked great with reflections etc, but when I uploaded a tiff to the t shirt printing company 'StreetShirts', it came back saying the image was too large. So I settled for a Jpeg which printed out not so good...

The image had much more colour depth and the reflection I made didn't show up very well, so its back to the drawing board. More research must be done to create a better T shirt, but here's what I have learned.

• Make the image a reasonable size, so there is less room for error when it is printed.
• Try and find a t shirt printing company that prints higher quality images.

More on this soon.

Cheers

Graded Unit 2 Peer Review

Hi folks,

Today was an important day in the Graded Unit Process; showing our promotional materials that we have been creating over the last few months to be reviewed by the class, to give criticism to improve next time. Here's what happened...

I presented my material (which can be viewed here) to the class and received good feedback overall. They found that my website was a good way of promoting myself, my CV was well laid out and was good at highlighting my strengths. In addition to this, I received some pretty useful criticisms that I can take on board:

• My showreel was very short - Initially, I had planned in my Planning Stage Document that my show reel would be between 2 and 3 minutes, but after some thinking, I thought it would be better at a shorter length in order to keep an audiences attention. But, I realise now that one minute is too short and as long as I keep the flow of the showreel correctly, it should turn out fine. If you haven't seen my showreel, it can be seen here.
• A section of my CV could not be read - One of the headings on my CV couldn't be read easily, which is an easy fix, but crucial to make a good impression to a potential employer.
• Change video player on my website - When the website was being coded, I asked for my videos to be embedded through Youtube. There is nothing wrong with this choice at all, however, there are more stylish looking players such as Vimeo (but the problem with this is unless you subscribe to a PRO account, all your material will be downscaled to 720p, and there is a cap on how much can be uploaded). But, since I have been researching into the new technology HTML5, which builds great looking players, I will pursue this which will be updated in the near future.
• There was no definition of specialism in my CV - I hadn't put at the top of my CV the specialism I intended to get into. This was a good point to raise, now it will allow me to make changes to my CV to make it better and more tailored to the VFX/Motion Graphics Industry. 

Overall I enjoyed the peer review as I thought it was very helpful to find all the loopholes in my promotional material, and to also have a fresh pair of eyes look at it to improve to make me more employable...

Well that's another post done.

Cheers