more random sketches including requests

sketchbookskool bootcamp

A selection of work from past five weeks as we enter the last week of a Sketchbookskool bootcamp. Starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms.

Building your own 3d world - a walk in the park

Picture the scene - it's New Year's day and you want to go for a walk in a park but don't actually want to get ready and go out. There's only one thing to do - build your own green space to navigate using the Oculus Rift.

Having watched this Unity with Oculus Rift DK2 tutorial, we felt compelled to have a go straight away and see if it inspires us further (it does)

Here's a short video of our very first Oculus-friendly world (1:08)

Things wot I learned

• It's expensive to use Unity the way they mention in the tutorial - but it's exciting how simple it is to get started. 
• It's tiring on the eyes to play in your world so we had to cut it short.
• No need to reinvent the wheel for some of the scenes - I used the Tuscany Demo to make the scene (large file rather than the small one used in the tutorial)

Todo

• Need to do more of the tutorials to get a hang of the textures available, and how to make my own 
• Need to find out more about the scripting language
• Need to check out the other game engines or things we can use to interact with the Oculus Rift - the Oculus site has integrations with other 3d software which I need to check out
• Start the project we dreamed of having done this! Very excited.

Portraits are hard

Here's three attempts at the same picture and they still don't quite look like the person.

Doggie

First drawing of 2015

Dog

Scary squirrel

Pencil and watercolours - worse for wear

Commuter

Roundup

Tried using the classes and styles to inspire myself in sketching in between courses.

Scene from a restaurant

Single line drawing

Biro drawings

Cartoon-like calendar

A graphic icon

Charcoal portraits - a start

Prompted by Capturing Likeness with Gary Faigin (a short short, free course on Craftsy) I had a go.
He shows you that contrary to what you may expect you can get the eyes, ears and mouth totally wrong and still have a recognisable portrait. Consider a blurry old group photo and remember that you can actually recognise each person (if you know them) or tell them all apart anyway. This attitude helps you get started very quickly. The success I had was varied but the success is in taking away the fear.

MOOC'ing around

2014 ended up being the year where I effectively spent the year learning online and completing MOOCs (Massively open online courses) every month. This wasn't a plan - but after a while I realised I was hooked on them. 

12 cool things I learned from my courses

1. When we learn as grown ups we often bring our baggage from school with us so how do we create environments where learning is enjoyable and likely? Sugata Mitra's TED talk , Ken Robinson's TED playlist and his talk at the RSA made me think a lot about learning and education and applying the thoughts to work life. (via Foundations of teaching for learning 1)
2. You'll be surprised what you'll come up with if you give yourself 30s (set a timer) to write ideas down for different objects - e.g. 30s write down what to create with a brick. You'll also be surprised how little embarrassment you have if you have a 'homework' to make a fool of yourself publicly and record this. I took several chances on Creative problem solving
   
3. Nancy Burson is just one of many amazing artists who merged computing and art. Her artwork on race is used to teach people and her pioneering work on morphing tech is still used to help locate missing people (including children).  Also, it's amazing to crowdsource your homework from friends and strangers. I did this whilst learning about computational arts tips for GIMP/Photoshop
4. Take requests - it is fun, revealing and intriguing to draw from requests and illustrate their stories - Sketchbookskool - ("Seeing/Storytelling")  
   
5. Learning about data science is only fun if you are interested in the data you play with. It is also not suitable for quick commute without a laptop. Data science or Doing journalism with data
6. Break things and rebuild them - you did it as a child, why not now? Spread the infectious habit of play - from a course on Tinkering. Also check out the amazing Jie Qi
   
   
   
7. Sketchbookskool- ("Beginnings") taught me about the power of groups and collaborative drawing and led us to exhibit in Reading Arts Festival inviting people to draw with each other (and amend others' drawings)
8. I am sitting in a room by Alvin Lucier is a strangely thought-provoking, creative and compelling piece of computational art (from Creative coding)
9. Frustration is a part of learning and a sign of progress as your brain makes the connections (from Learning how to learn )
10. It's scary but ok to draw in public - Sketchbookskool.com ("Beginnings")
    
11. Plants have short and long-term memories, can differentiate between colours, know up from down but not right from wrong. Buy the book and enjoy the ride. (What a plant knows)
    
12. Don't take more than one course at a time and take a break 

Going meta - 5 cool things I learned about online learning

1. Try to go for courses that are not directly relevant - that way there is no pressure (internal or external) for you and you can focus on enjoying things - if you don't like it or it's boring, you can give up.
2. Try to go for things that don't need you to be on a desktop/laptop - this means it is easy on the go and gives you less excuses to put things off. Coursera has a great app where you can download all the videos for offline viewing - this means you can watch them on your commute.
3. Keep a pen and paper handy (that's about the extent of prep you need)
4. Online forums for online courses are very engaged, helpful and encouraging so get to know the community (i.e. what time most people view and post) and then post your own stuff.
5. Don't take more than one course at a time and take a break - important so I'm repeating it