Wednesday 31 May 2017

Mrs D's Current Obsession ... with Animating

Night and day Mrs D sits at her desk: monitor on; pc on; graphics tablet all lit up and nibs for the stylus worn down to stumps and strewn about the place.

What is she animating? Your guess is as good as mine ... or hers. You can see her Mood Board over at Pinterest. There certainly seems to be a lot of stuff flying about.

Will she succeed in making a short cartoon? Alors! Me and Chunky the dog don't know. But here are a few frames for you to wonder about.



Friday 26 May 2017

Grey Doll Will Be Watching ... The Handmaid's Tale

Without a doubt  I shall sit myself down for the new TV serial based on Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" -  Episode 1 of which is due to be aired UK telly on Sunday evening (28th May 2017) - Channel 4 at 9pm.


Margaret Atwood  is a great writer, I genuinely think so. I read The Handmaid's Tale and think it is one of the most chilling pieces of speculative fiction, alternative histories whatever you like to call it - since Orwell's 1984. Was that a lazy comparison? Possibly. But I am old, hot, tired and want to get back to drawing. Incidentally, this also means that I am old enough to remember the mindset of things before late twentieth-century feminism reared it's "nasty", "castrating" Medusa head ... and I am referencing just such a mindset here.
Finally and a propos watching the new serial, I just plain want to see what they have made of the book.

I give you a link to Atwood's own article (published in the New York Times earlier this year) on her writing of the novel and her thoughts about it.

Read Atwood, Yeah!

Friday 12 May 2017

Current State Of Obsessions

We are a household filled with obsessions. Aren't you? For me, Bike Girl, it's fantasising a life on the road with my bike and my dog. Have you met my dog?
 Mrs D "arranged" him for me. I'd thought I'd like one of those rangy Lurcher guys. But I think some Chow Chow got in to Dog's mix by the look of him. Whatever, he is a good-natured old boy.

So what are these current obsessions? Grey Doll still reads crime novels and has just reviewed "Fatal Crossing", a crime debut by Danish journalist turned crime writer Lone Theils for Euro Crime. You can read The Doll's review in this post on the Euro Crime blog.

The Doll's eyes are tired and rectangular from her evening TV-viewing as well. She and The Old Man did give up on multinational crime thriller The Team ... and she is beginning to think that the third series of French dirty-politics and PR-villainies series, Spin, has ... spun. But she is happy to see Hinterland back on the screen. It's a Welsh crime series set in almost total darkness and packed with monosyllabic conversations... except for the Welsh bits. Loves the photography though, does the Doll.
Other viewing she has recently enjoyed includes globe-trotting situation comedy Gap Year. And, Oh, how she misses the weekly slot filled with pillage and war, tattooed Danes, prissy Saxons and the muscular, jaw-clenched Uhtred (nee Osbert) of Bebbenburg in The Last Kingdom.

You may ask about The Old Man's obsessions too. But why ask? Didn't you know that in the UK we have a General Election coming up? Shouting at the telly and radio has gone to maximum decibels in this household. Grey Doll joins in and then Dog starts barking.  Then I have to rev up the bike and dream of faraway hills and open roads.