Old Man ButtonHead in the snow.

It all started with the button for the lift. This thing looks like it should be scanning your retina.

Here is my old man ButtonHead concept. What's in the bag? Who knows? It could be his marbles, or mine. It could be treats for his old dog Jimmy, who passed away 15 years ago. He clings to hope.

Many thanks to the environment again for providing the imaginative backdrops this week. These curious little footsteps were outside my back door this morning. Well, after I made them with my fingers they were. Top ones would be the neighbours.

ButtonHead and his range of looks.

Here he is in the snow,  his calls for Jimmy down to but a whisper.

Jimmy?

This was picking a filter I hadn't meant to and I was surprised by the result.

Starting the cold days with a happy bowl of porridge.

This is how it came out of the microwave.

Urban self portrait.

Have you ever seen an iron drool before?

There's two faces for the price of one here:

 Looking slightly startled.

What could it possibly be? A wrinkly shirt?

Whatever it was, it was all a bit too much for him.

Anyway, on to the characterising and environmentalisng of this fella. 

With the shape of the handle and the water housing unit on the back of the iron it reminded me of a snail. I drew out the illustration of the snail first in Illustrator:

I looked up some snail shells and made a tracing of one to use here. 

I always felt that this was a good picture to use to sum up the urban area.  It is our habitat that is pushing out the natural one, and will continue to do so until there isn't much left.

Here are my IronFaceDroolFace snails racing to get the very last of the food .
Could this be our future also if we're not careful?

I'm a fan of black and white, what can I say.

Here's a few foggy night pics.

These pictures were all taken on my phone adding a grainy quality to the pictures which I didn't mind because it adds another aspect to them.

The lights leading to a vanishing point drew me into this picture

Both this picture and the red one above are two ways I might approach this picture as a painting. It has been 'shopped, yes.

Not a huge amount of photoshop involved here because it was dark out, but the saturation and contrast are changed.
It looks very much like a print.

This atmospheric little scene was in my driveway through the trees.  Slightly eerie.

The fog had obscured the blue Christmas tree on the water and the orange lights along the road gave it an appealing contrast.

Latchhead Video

The sound quality isn't great so it compliments the video quality which is a bit lo-fi too. I was enjoying the saturation slider and the music seemed to be going well with it so I recorder it. Maybe a little long at 4 minutes but it's nice to look at.

Latchhead's got a bone to pick.

Security.

The pen-tool is your friend.

After colouring the vector drawing I made an extrusion of the flat shape. The colour is still very flat so over to photoshop to match with an environment and add some shading for a more textured character.

A sign of the times.

Local news reporter Terry TV Head.

Brings you the news as and when he can be bothered.

Here's Terry in real life.

Stay tuned for updates from Terry about stuff and things.

So I see this really sad lamp one day.......

 It reminded me of this ad I saw before:



This is a quote from :

Spike Jonze IKEA ad, Inanimate Objects and Human Social Behaviours

  July 17, 2008 by Dave Allen

From this page at socialmediatoday.com 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/40640

"The ad works from a simple premise; play on our emotional attachment to inanimate objects - in this case a desk lamp that is discarded. In the first second, as the woman leans in to turn off the lamp, we hear a click of the switch or is that maybe a goodbye kiss ? The lamp is then dumped outside alongside a trash bag. It's raining… How do we feel as the piano tugs at our heartstrings? We should feel nothing, it's a ridiculous situation, but in many people it may trigger deep human responses to abandonment. That illusion is shattered by a man with distinctly Scandanavian/German overtones to his accent, who berates us for having such stupid feelings."

"Spike spent exactly one minute reminding us, if we are really watching and tapped into our subconscious, that the human need to control other animals and inanimate objects is foolhardy and doomed to failure. It won't stop us buying new desk lamps though."

This is the dejected lamp I saw:

Why so sad and forlorn? I'm not sure.

Character done in Illustrator. Terribly sad altogether.

These two have nowhere to go.  Electricity prices are up and they can't be kept any more. 

Ah, my old mate cardboard. It's as urban as it gets, and this unwanted lamp has found refuge in it.

Black and white,  a friend of ambience.

For lack of a more adequate description, this is Frying Pan head.

Original photo: where the handle meets the pan underneath.
What a happy little chappy.

This photo was an obvious choice for characterisation, there's plenty of personality in this shot.

The outline was done in Illustrator and I've made a sample of plain coloured and patterned characters.

Next part of this piece was deciding which environment was right to put these colourful little fellas in.

These are two photos I went for:

I wanted a drab, muted background to bring colour to.

This looked like it could be a temporary home or animal bed to me when I saw it initially.

A little help with brightening up the surroundings a bit.  

I prefer the colour in this one. I edited the colours in photoshop. I would like to see this printed on canvas.

Would you have a home for it?