Matthew Nellis

So I’ve been getting myself into digital painting and illustrating recently, and bought myself a copy of Derek Lea’s Creative Photoshop CS4. The above painting was done working from his sketch, and then following his various tips and workflow advice. I’m pretty pleased with the outcome, and learned a lot from this style of digital painting.

I’m currently working on improving my general sketching technique, which quite frankly is pretty awful. However, working from a sketch I’m already feeling pretty comfortable painting in this multi-layered way. More to come shortly folks!

A couple of weeks ago I spent an evening at the London Trocadero arcade, with the sole purpose of marvelling at the diverse and eclectic group of people who spend time there. Everyone from your uber cool Japanese kids, to middle aged white men, through to families and kids.

The most heavily populated area always seems to be around the dance games, with upwards of 30 people hanging out, taking turns to have a go. I was there for about an hour just watching the incedible scenes; the people who play seem to know the moves off by heart as they barely even have to look at the screen. Many of them even have dance routines rehearsed, making it less of a game, and more of a performance. It really is something to behold.

Anyway I took a bunch of photos, most of which turned out not as good as I hoped but I guess thats all part of learning to work in low light conditions. Lesson learned.

You know what, instead of doing a weekly haiku every Monday shall we just say that I will do a regular haiku instead? I seem to be terrible at hitting deadlines at the moment. I also seem to be getting a little bit lazy; I have a ton of photos I want to do something with but keep putting it off, I have some illustration stuff I want to work on but forever seem to have something better to do, and there is a video idea I’ve had for goodness knows how long which is sitting half finished on my hard drive.

I need to get my arse in gear.

After a brief flurry of writing, that too has ceased up in recent weeks, something that I’m not proud of. I have the foundations for a TV screenplay but just need to sit down and flesh it out. I’ve heard the hardest part of this process is getting started, I certainly hope so.

Anyway, here are my lethargic thoughts in a more concise form:

Great, lazy Sunday.
Which follows into Monday
and the whole week too

It’s never easy
staying focused for too long.
I have internet

Is it safe at night?
Nay. Chandrian, Chandrian.
Pray you never wake

The last haiku is inspired by The Name of the Wind, quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read. Bold claims, I know. But if you’ve read it I’m sure you’ll agree. And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

I missed this Monday’s haiku. Please accept my apologies:

I was busy man,
Lost track of time and forgot
Don’t be mad at me

I’ve spent the last month working on Muckle Sandwich, a very cool art/music fanzine run my by brother from another mother, Neil Warrack. If you happen to live in Scotland, or more precisely Glasgow/Edinburgh, then you’re in luck as that’s where the fanzine is sold. However if you’re down in Englandshire and fancy grabbing a copy then give me a shout and I’ll sort you out.

Its a great read featuring interviews with the legendary Henry Rollins, fascinating comic-blogger Tom Humberstone, plus some crazy art and photography which is just too cool for school.

So whats next at MatthewNellis.com? Well, I spent an evening at a local arcade taking photos of crazy Japanese kids playing random arcade games. There also seems to be a bizarre sub-culture of people who go there simply to play the dance rythym games. I use the word ‘bizarre’ only because the people playing the game are often not what you’d expect! I mean, it ranges from uber cool Japanese kids, to middle aged white guys who look like my dad, to ridiculously cool black guys who appear to know the game so well that they don’t even need to look at the screen. Yep, these cats were dancing backwards.

So I took a bunch of pictures and plan on putting a few collages together in as interesting a way as possible.

In other news: Went to see ‘Shutter Island‘ the other night. Pretty cool film. Everyone says you need to to watch it more than once to get the full experience, but I doubt I’ll be doing that. It was good, but not that good.

Well, I’m finally back. I’ve decided to embrace the goodness that is Wordpress and managed to get it working with a bit of effort. Here’s my past week or so in Haiku form:

New toys to play with
A shiny new camera
And Wacom Bamboo

When pay day hits, it’s a glorious day. I can slowly work my way through my Amazon wish list one item a month, but this time I treated myself to two! I’ve been meaning to buy a new camera ever since I lost my old one a few years ago in New York. It took a good few weeks of researching, going back and forth over whether I should splash out to get a DSLR, or whether a compact will suffice. But then I also wanted to be able to shoot decent video. Have you seen the price of consumer HD camcorders? I really didn’t fancy spending a fortune getting two devices, one to shoot stills and the other to shoot video.

I eventually decided that my best option was to get a DSLR that was also more than capable of shooting HD video. After much deliberating I was erring towards the Canon 7D, or the Panasonic GH1. Both fine cameras that are capable of good looking HD video.

But then I started looking at prices.

As much as I wanted either of the cameras, I just couldn’t justify myself shelling out over £1000 on a piece of  equipment that would satisfy my hobby. Perhaps in a year if I’m really getting into photography then I could consider such a purchase, but not now. So back to the drawing board. DSLR out of the question really. Too expensive for what I need. What do I need? A good camera with full manual controls that shoots HD video.

And in steps this beauty. The Panasonic FZ38, a superzoom bridge camera which ticked all the boxes! I’ve only had a few days, and already I’m very impressed. Easy to use, all the manual controls I want, HD video (albeit in the horrible AVCHD codec), and at a very reasonable price tag of £245.

So I’ll be planning on posting random pictures as the weeks go on, and also some video stuff I have planned. Below are a selection of images I’ve done, and you can check out the rest on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mnellis/

Just the one haiku today, and yes I know its a day later than usual!

Textpattern, you bitch
Why are you so difficult?
So long, and farewell

Currently the site is powered by Textpattern, an open source content management system similar to Blogger and Wordpress.

I chose it over the aforementioned for various reasons, mainly because Worpress would just not install correctly on my web host. Whilst it is a very powerful and open-source system it also has it annoyances which, quite frankly, are really starting to piss me off.

So over the next week or so I shall be migrating over to another blog hosting site. Not sure what yet, might try to give Worpress another install and see if it wants to work.

So bear with me in the next couple of weeks where content might be a little light.

Where has this little gem been all my life? Probably the most fun I’ve had gaming in a while, and only £6.99 from Steam!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is that time again. Time for words presented in a certain ancient Japanese verse…

Magazine layouts
Are an artform of their own.
Strangely fun to do

Random indie game:
EnviroBear Two Thousand!
What the fuck is this?

You what? Drum and bass?
Oh whoops, you said ‘triple date’…
Damn my bad hearing

Last week was spent putting down the foundation for Muckle Sandwich issue 3. Really excited about this on-going project! Magazine layout is something I’ve never done but I’m finding it very interesting. Certainly learned a lot about the digital print process of the past week and I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot more before the issue is finished!

I really like what Muckle Sandwich is all about. In this day and age where digital rules over us, its easy to forget how nice it is to hold and read an actual printed publication (especially one that isn’t a free newspaper thrust into your unwanting hands).  I could go on but the founder of Muckle Sandwich, Neil Warrack, says it all in his editorial for issue one:

“Born out of necessity in reaction to the ‘log-in and blog’ culture of the internet. We are Muckle Sandwich, we’re here for you and we’ll always have time for you.

Now, we shall not criticise the Internet, we shall not dismiss such a hugely important network of minds, nor shall we discourage people from using it and loving it like the wonderful entity that it is. But we feel like it has taken something from us, something that we want back.

This publication is produced for those of you who, like us, appreciate the tactile aesthetic of physical printed press.“

Following on from last week’s scare fest that was Aliens vs Predator classic, I thought it’d be fun to subject myself to some more scares by trying out the multiplayer demo for the new Aliens vs Predator.

Like every Monday, here is my past week summarised in Haiku form:

Begun writing now
Forming back-stories and plot
A hit in the works?

It’s taken a while
But now we’ve got a drummer
Wait, no. No we don’t.

Come on Spurs, just score!
nil-nil is not good enough
Top four still a dream

Its been a strange old week. Work has gotten weird again which pushes me ever more to pursue alternative ventures. I’ve finally started work on my screenplay, and immediately I realise just how much work I’ve got myself into. It’s not a feature film screenplay, but an 8-part TV drama. I’m not going to disclose the finer details just yet, but I will say that it’s based in the city of Aberdeen. How glamorous!