I’ve just finished working through the book, Directing the Story by Francis Glebas.  This is a fantastic book.

If you’re interested in learning how to create a story that will capture an audience’s attention and how to portray this visually, then this is a very valuable book to have.  The book concentrates on the application of  these principles to film, but the information is pertinent to all levels of visual portrayal of stories.

It’s even a great book for someone interested in learning what it takes to create a good story, without considering the visual portrayal of it.   Glebas is extremely generous in sharing his knowledge and he does it in an entertaining way too, with lots of storyboards to illustrate his points.

Glebas delves deeply into what makes us watch movies and why we go for stories.  Having an understanding of what audiences look for in a story, he then shows us how to provide this in the storytelling.  He shows how to transfer the story from words to images through the use of storyboards.  He gives insight into what’s important in terms of camera angles, composition, cutting and editing, lighting.  He gives great advice on how to draw for the storyboards and artwork, and also discusses the importance of character expressions and design.

The book is crammed with great information and is one of the most pivotal books about art and visual presentation that I’ve come across.  Glebas explains things in a way that makes them very easy to understand.  I highly recommend it.

My niece, Elspeth Addicott, is going to Uganda this summer to spend six months teaching saxophone, flute, clarinet, and

oboe at a music school. She is just finishing her degree at the Royal Welsh College of Music and will be able to share the knowledge she gained during her four years there. She’s exceptionally talented at communicating and getting along well with all types of people, of all ages. I’m always very impressed by her skills.

British Airways has set up a competition in which they’ll give away free tickets to outstanding applicants. They include comments and ratings left by the general public in their assessment of the applicant.

I’m writing this post to ask if you could take just a few moments before the application end date,  March 29th, to go to Elspeth’s page on the British Airways site to rate and leave a comment on her application. In her own words: “BA are offering free flights to winners of their competition, which seeing as mine would be £500-£600, would be really really useful!”

Thank you,
cheers,
Nat

Well! I had plans to write a blog post these last few days, but they were foiled. I was preparing the photos for it when it occurred to me how much more effective it would be to have a slide show of groups of those photos. Hence the hold up: I’m learning how to do that.

Since January I’ve been learning how to use the Adobe software programs using the Total Training Online Courses. I’ve been learning how to use Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver and in the future I’ll add studying Illustrator and probably Adobe Acrobat. The courses show through video how to use the programs. The instructors are great and make it much easier to learn these very complex programs. Whenever I leaf through instructional books on these programs my eyes glaze over and become completely blurred without focus. I take notes as I watch the videos and then later I have the information in a format I can quickly identify and relate to.

It’s great having access to all the Adobe software courses because it allows access to all the information. And if any new courses are added these are also available for as long as the subscription lasts. It’s much cheaper than buying the DVDs for the specific courses. A couple of years ago I bought a set of DVDs on InDesign and I discovered that after taking notes from them I no longer wanted to spend the time it takes to watch the videos a second time. Having the DVDs was really no extra benefit to me. The online subscription gives me access I otherwise could not hope to gain if I had to buy the DVDs.

This is taking rather a lot of time however. I had a structure in mind about which lessons I’d do first and what I needed in order to progress with the art. All those great ideas have flown to the wind. I started with Photoshop. Then I realized I wanted to add another gallery for Digital Art to my website. But I would need to redo my website in a format that is easy to edit and add to…I started the Dreamweaver lessons, which are really great. This weekend I had the idea to post an article about how I paint with egg tempera… and so… I started watching the Flash course videos with a view to preparing that blog post.

I’m having loads of fun with it, and as a result I’ve ended up making good progress in most of the programs I want to learn. My days of systematic, ordered approach appear to be over!

These courses are giving me more confidence to move forward with my plans for the art. I hope, in time, to produce digital art as well as the egg tempera paintings. I’d like to create short image-dominated books; for example, I want to paint many of the photos I took of Annecy, France, and include text next to the paintings and print this as a booklet. I’ll start by using the DweezelJazz blog posts about Annecy as a basis for that project. And as I hone my skills in writing and telling stories, I’d like to illustrate those. So there are many things I’m hoping to do, but it takes time to learn the tools required in order to create these things.

I think I’ve learned enough about Flash to create the slide show/movie to demonstrate how I approach painting with egg tempera. Stay tuned for the next DweezelJazz blog post to see how it turns out with the making of a Flash movie.