2015 Paintings

So 2015 turned into quite a mixed bag of work once again, including some very interesting projects I had not previously attempted. I didn’t make a great deal of paintings this year but then my focus was drawn in several directions. Still those I did create are shown below.

Starting off with acrylic paintings I decided I would try my hand at painting boxes and creating some tiny little magnets out of foam. The idea was to stretch the usage of my paint, test out those lovely iridescent colours and generally see if I could paint/create objects as well as my standard canvas and cradle boards.

Acrylic

The above butterfly box was a reconditioned item and has a push lid as opposed to a clasp like the below snail box. I’ll admit I struggled with the surface of the butterfly box and both pieces ended up taking an awful long longer than I anticipated when I started!

The below three foam blocks were much faster to create but very fiddly as they are much smaller than I am used to painting. The foam was an interesting and unusual surface to work into and surprisingly more solid and forgiving than I thought it would be. I also got in a bit of a pickle with the superglue when trying to affix magnets to the reverse, especially on the first one because I had magnetic strip that came in a roll and thus did not want to be laid flat… oh and just glue in general, never let me loose with superglue lol!

Night Sails (left) 1.75 x 2.5" and Moonlight (right) 1.75 x 2.5"

Posy - 2.5 x 1.75"

The only other acrylic project I did this year was part of a neat little show called Inter-generational Art. The idea of this was to bring together the young an old to work on a singular piece between them. Naturally I was interested in collaborating so Petrina offered up one of her charcoal sketches.

Her sketch immediately gave me an idea but I was running a little short on time for the deadline and wasn't used to working on something so large!

So here's a picture of me hard at work: 

I'm pretty sure this was the day before the deadline and as you can see I haven't even started lol!

Still I did start and finish and we mounted the art just in time for acceptance into the show :)

Here's a better picture of Petrina and I with the finished piece:

Next up are the few oil paintings in made in 2015. Allure, Clouds and The Bonfire are all the same size since I got gifted some wooden slats to work on. Of course then as with any arty gift I just had to test them out and see what could be done.

Oil

Allure - 3 x 7" Oil on wooden panel

The above was the most successful of the three in my opinion but then it is also the most detailed and orientates around my favourite subject of tigers.

Clouds - 3 x 7" Oil on wooden panel 

Clouds was an experiment to see if I could work in a different palette, specifically in pastels and paler colours to my beloved dark blacks and vibrant greens. I think by the end I couldn’t decide if the landscape shown were dark clouds or impressionistic mountains but I achieved my goal at least.

The Bonfire - 7 x 3" Oil on wooden panel

This was an experiment in speed and layering. I wanted the dark background to remain fairly thin to show the wood grain and the flames to be quite thick and sticker. It’s a simple piece no doubt but sometimes simple is best.

Up next, well I went back into my love of fantasy and decided to create another dragon eye. This time I went for a blue palette instead of red and some unusual scale shapes around the eye. For a cool toned piece, I think it is quite interesting.

Serous Eye - 6 x 6" Oil on cradle board

This next piece was created and displayed in a show at the local gallery. An unusual entry perhaps both in size, style and subject but I had a clear cut vision for this piece. My aim was to move from cold tones to warm ones as you travel down the painting with the staircase leading your eye downward into the light of the study. I was told it was well-received at the show so hooray! ^_^

The Study 13 x 5.75

(And we won’t mention that yes that’s an elf character at the desk, so yes, this another story-related painting … shhh…!! xD)

Mural

An entirely different painting project that occurred in 2015 was the opportunity to paint a square of the planned local mural. An odd one for me, trying to paint one square of random colours that would eventually make up the whole picture using a type of paint I was unfamiliar with onto a metal sheet.

 This one had me scratching my head quite a bit since I found the given paint and surface very difficult to use. I did complete my square in good time for the final which as you can see from the below photograph was quite a varied piece. So wonderful to know that I was able to join in and be part of a large scale collaboration that now stands proudly in Lake Country :)

Mural - One 12 x 12" square

Photograph of complete mural.

Digital

Last but by no means least I was commissioned to create not one but two digital book covers this year! :D

Always ready for a challenge I worked very hard on these pieces and it took quite a bit of learning new techniques to get them working as the authors wanted. I designed custom brushes and palettes that would be invaluable for future projects that is if my laptop hadn’t decided to have massive hard drive failure at the beginning of October. Argh >.<

The good news is that I didn’t lose any of my work -phew!- Only the settings I had created for my software were pushed back to default since I had to reinstall everything. Glad to say that my laptop was fixed quite quickly and didn’t interfere with any deadlines, unless you count putting up examples of work for Inktober every day – that took a bit of playing catch up!

Obviously both of the below images are missing their written content. Neither of the books have been published yet.

The Year of Us – book cover commission

My first rendition of the leaves in this piece wasn’t very good at all but I quickly learnt that making custom brushes wasn’t difficult and gave a much better effect. Praise be to my Intuous tablet too for having a good amount of pressure sensitivity.

The Lost Server – book cover commission

This cover was the bigger project of the two. While the background came together quite quickly, the characters took a great deal more work. Refining what the characters should look like took a great deal of back and forth questions between the author and myself, eye colour, hair colour, clothing and even attitude of the characters were discussed. Then came the clincher; the floating castle.

This is part of the story I enjoy re-telling as an example of just how much clarity is required when you ask someone to design something for you. Now we had been communicating well and I had carefully taken down all the details for the characters but for whatever reason I didn’t ask enough questions about the ‘floating castle.’ (top left of the painting)

My brain just simply said ‘yep OK I know what that looks like,’ and off I went to sketch it up. I am glad that my first scribble for it was literally a scribble and was based off of a Myazaki style castle (though looked more like a dalek as the client joked – oh dear, lol), so next I thought they wanted an English castle…nope wrong again, we’re talking a Chinese style temple here! 

Finally, I asked for a reference photo of the building, which is what I should have done in the first place. Live and learn on that one, and never be too embarrassed to ask your client to be more specific! Glad to say that they were very patient with me and that it all worked out well in the end ^_^

Also now whenever someone isn't specific or I forget to ask I get to call the situation, 'another dratted floating castle!' xD

2014 Illustrations

 2014 turned out to be quite the interesting year for illustrations. Or maybe random would be a more fitting description.

I certainly think my skills improved throughout the year which I credit to the previous year’s practice creating miniatures. I was amazed how much that practice paid off and think it shows when I switch to larger illustrations. This year I also happened to create the smallest illustration I have ever made so let’s start there!

Fellow artist Sea Dean introduced me to this niche little movement of postage stamp art. The operation is run by Friends and Faux https://friendsandfaux.wordpress.com/info/ and the idea is that each artist creates an original piece of art, the size of a postage stamp, in the allotted spaces on the reverse and then mails it forward to another artist until all the slots are filled. Once it is complete the postcard is returned to Friends and Faux to be displayed. Below is my teeny tiny addition to the postcard I was sent followed by the postcard as it was when I sent it off to its next destination.

Lion Cub postage stamp

Watercolour markers, Prismacolour pencils and Sakura white gel pen on Bristol vellum card.

Postage stamp, approx. 0.9 x 0.6” (or 2.5 x 1.5cm)

Friends and Faux Postcard ready to be mailed!

Next up is a piece I started in 2013 but never quite got around to finishing, that is until January 2014 when I decided I really must put the final touches to it. Completing the below magpie was very satisfying especially since it had been on my ‘to do’ list for quite some time. I’m not sure why but I really like magpies (aside the awful noise they make) and had wanted to make a larger illustration of one for quite some time. I also wanted the challenge of attempting to draw wings in perspective and boy was it a challenge. I was pleased with how this turned out and it was also well received among my peers.

Even better this image ended up being selected for use by Darcy Nybo in her short children’s story named Emma Jean Finds a Friend, fantastic! More on Darcy and story illustrations later though since that didn’t happen until 2015.

Treasure Seeker

Waterman ink, Prismacolour pencils, Micron ink and Sakura white gel pen on cartridge paper.

Letter, approx. 11 x 8”

The below illustration was created for a monthly competition set out by Colored Pencil Magazine. I recall agonizing over this illustration for a very long time. It took well over a week of short (3-4hr) drawing sessions to reach completion. Oddly, once I decided to draw the line and call it done, I was quite dissatisfied with the final. I think this occurred purely because I stared at it for far too long and because I compared it to the many other artists who drew from the same image. After a time, I grew to love it and now believe it is possibly my best realistic cat portrait to date!

One honour was that Colored Pencil Magazine bumped me into their advanced category instead of adding me to the beginner section as I had specified. I chose beginner because it is very rare for me to work purely in coloured pencil and nothing else. Hey-ho they obviously assumed I was a pro with this medium! Best of all this kitty was matted and framed and has now found a new forever home. I’ll admit I was a touch sad to see it go but also ecstatic to know that the buyers fell in love with the piece – there is no greater accolade as an artist. ^_^

Cat in a Sunbeam

Waterman ink, Micron ink, Prismacolour pencils and Sakura white gel pen on Bristol vellum card.

Letter, 8.5 x 11”

Below is one of those pieces that just seemed to sit on my desk forever. True it is a fairly complex layout but somehow it always got put on the back-burner. The reason for this is probably because I had so much else going on and I knew that this piece could wait. Yes, it’s another story related image! I quite enjoy creating layouts so it was a lot of fun trying to design what a section of the central part of the main city would look like. The large block on the left that has a diamond pattern is part of a huge spiral tower. The diamond shapes are meant to be slotted together pieces of vibrant green glass that shimmer when they catch the sunlight. I’m assuming they don’t reflect enough light to start any fires!! I do hope to eventually colour this layout, perhaps digitally but hey that might take another three years.

Draygun City Layout

Prismacolour col-erase pencils on cartridge paper

Letter, 8.5 x 11”

The below three illustrations were created for an Erotic art show. Now ‘erotic’ would not be my usual choice of subject but I thought it would be interesting to give it a go. I decided not to do anything too risqué, so don’t get your hopes up lol. Racy art really isn’t my thing and of course my mind went straight to my fictional characters. Since I nearly always draw the figures of my characters before I clothe them I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to do a few shirtless examples. I chose men over women because I figured more artists would draw women and popping a few men in there, even cartoonish ones might balance it out.

We were also asked to add a one-line statement for each entry so I decided to get artsy and make a short poem for each one which I will include under the pictures. Also, yes, these three characters were purposefully designed to look similar to one another.

This first one below is actually a print from one of my original ACEOs that I first created for a theme week challenge in one of the ACEO groups I belong to. I think the theme was either roses or valentines but can’t quite remember. This image was the catalyst for the theme of my ‘erotic’ pieces and dictated which other two characters I would draw. I’m not sure why I decided to take this route because I’m not well practiced at drawing flowers and roses aren’t something I revere trying to render.

The character’s name is Adeth and the print was created using Hahnemuhle fine art paper then embellished using watercolour markers and Prismacolour pencils. I decided to recolour and re-edge the whole image to make the colours more vibrant than the original so that it would better tie in with the rest of the set.

Roses are Red

Embellished Print, Watercolour markers and Prismacolour pencils on Hahnemuhle fine art paper

Letter, approx. 11 x 8.5”

Statement:

Roses are Red and Adeth is blue,

This poet’s hand outstretched

In hopes you approve.

The below character is named Luk. I decided to add a bit of magic into this one with the telekinetic floating rose petals. This character is meant to look a bit sickly, mean and um, well strange since he isn’t the most balanced of personas. I imagine being in Luk’s boudoir would make anyone feel uncomfortable, including him lol!

His World

Watercolour markers and Prismacolour pencils on Bristol vellum card

Letter, 11 x 8.5”

Statement:

Fragile beauty and broken grace,

A fading flower reflects this space,

Stay here he beckons and my world embrace.

Another weird one; the below character is named Kale (yes like the vegetable) and he’s a few to the left of sanity. What I really wanted to capture with this piece was a piercing gaze which I think I achieved. I imagine locking eyes with this character to feel quite intense as though he is looking right into or through you.

Awakening

Watercolour markers and Prismacolour pencils on Bristol vellum card

Letter, 11 x 8.5”

Statement:

Bright night of jagged thorns,

Twisted vines at breaking dawn,

Light once lost, ever scorned,

Awaken now to new ties formed.

Sadly, the show ended up being cancelled due to lack of interest. This last piece however did make it into a different show to which I attended the opening. I recall it was winter and utterly freezing outside so I had on a huge purple duffel coat with my fluffy hood drawn tight to a close. The second we stepped into the gallery I roasted in that coat because it was a packed out with people! I’ll admit I was surprised just how many folks turned out to see the art on display that night and being nervous just made me sweat even more intolerably – argh!

Glad to say I did get to speak to a few of the patrons despite the fact that it was difficult to hear anyone above the chatter. I was asked by one person what the roses meant in ‘Awakening.’ They wanted to know the significance of the vines being threaded through his arms. To this day I don’t have a great answer to that question beyond, ‘he’s an insane and sadistic character that self-heals.’ It was an answer that got a look of intrigue that’s for sure!

Anyway, that’s all from me for this entry, see you again next time :)

Book Sketches 2009/2010 - (part 4) - Layouts/Backgrounds

Ok, last post to do with the book, I promise, for real this time, honest it’ll be at least two whole posts until I mention it again.

This one is all about the layouts I created way back when, so it will be art heavy, dealing with my initial concepts of what the places in this tale might look like. Many of these are largely unfinished, they vary in quality and handling, some have suffered bleed through or dreaded tea spillages over the years. The ideas are still sound even if tea drenched intentionally or otherwise so let’s take a walk around.

First up, gates to Draygun city: those are meant to be huge stone dragons. I imagine these gates to be colossal but like most things on the isle of Niam rather broken and rundown.

A rough layout of the city centre within Draygun, showing the glass spire that gives this blog its name.

So this one is a little confusing due to my choice of warped perspective; to explain, there are tunnels running beneath the houses of Draygun city, these are primarily lit by glowing moss (the blue bits here) and this is a semi down shot of a tight bend in one of those tunnels.

A complex close up within Niam’s city centre, I worked on this many times and actually only just finished it this year – yikes! Hehe and yes for those who have visited my website, (here) those are the two shops I mention in my welcome write up ^_^

Above are the first three renditions and below is the final. I might have a go at colouring this at some point, at present the different coloured pencils merely served to help me get less confused in the myriad of lines.

Niam’s wastelands and Tine canyon; Fao and Amber live here and yes this was intentional usage of aforementioned tea staining.

Below is an idea for the entrance to Amber’s cave within the Tine.

Knuks is a small town outside not far from the major city of Draygun. Below is a very very clean (by Knuks standard) example of a street.

Another example of a street this time in a town called Odel which is not on the island of Niam.

A very basic room; I imagine this room to be in the very seedy ‘hotel’ in Odel.

Yet another confusing down-shot, guess I must be a fan of those. This is a small cylindrical tower in one of Dirzryn’s hideouts, a place I imagine he goes to sit and drink tea and brood.

The location of this dungeon is not known, however I imagine it to be a place where vampires keep their thralls and just you know generally torture people.

Speaking of torture, below is an early concept for a place affectionately called ‘the room of the dead,’ I’ll let your imagination run with the reasons why it’s called that.

This had both bleed through and tea-spills – oh joy, oddly the bleed through on it is actually from the first portrait sketch of Dirzryn.

Last but not least, well I couldn’t leave without posting up our lovely Cold harbour dungeon.

This sketch was created for a written role-play we set in The Elder Scrolls universe, specifically the daedric realm of Cold harbour because none of the games at that point had any playable content in that realm. The role-play began in an empty cellar, hence this sketch. Also it seems even more appropriate to mention it again now since the makers of the Elder Scrolls games are soon to release their new MMO which is set in …yep, Cold harbour!

2006/2007 - Third and final year at uni - Animation - Graduation Film!

So here it is, the post I’ve been dreading writing the most, my final year at uni and graduation film: ‘Out of Ashes.’

The culmination of three years of hard study, blood sweat and far too may tears, the end of a long struggle, completion of an epic journey, a tale ending not in tragedy but in success.

Why then have I been dreading writing this? Well let’s just call it a difficult year for me, both in and out of university. As an artist I know, I am highly self-critical but alas, even now revisiting this film makes me wince and cringe in every possible way.

However before I launch into reasoning for the above statements, let’s have a look at some of the artwork, shall we?

Layouts and Backgrounds

So below are the three layouts and final backgrounds that provide the main outdoor setting for our film. Layouts obviously, are the top three line drawings and this was technically one layout with a few tweaks to represent the different seasons. The bottom three are the final rendered backgrounds as they appear in film. I thought it might be nice to lay these out together for comparison.

For all you non-animators out there and anyone not in the know, the black ‘holes’ in the bottom of the layout images, are, well, holes actually, one’s specifically shaped for a peg-bar which is used to hold animation paper in place so that many sheets may be layered and correctly aligned.

I should also clarify, particularly for any new readers that this graduation film was rendered using charcoal in a method similar to that used by William Kentridge. The yellow glow is simply what happens when you place a charcoal drawing over a light box, an interesting effect that we decided to utilize.

Above and below are examples of the interior setting and also display the process with the middle image being how the charcoal rendering looks in natural light or in this instance captured with the light box off.

Now whilst I was director I was also lead background designer, assistant animator and sole renderer for the entire film. Our team was small, actually that’s not true our team was huge to begin with, a rag-tag bunch of folks who didn’t get onto other films and apparently all wanted to alter the entire storyboard to match their own visions, so that was fun.

Our number blossomed to eight, swiftly shrank to six, then dwindled to four or so dedicated individuals. By the time we were half way through the year, the only artists really working were our lead animator, the most wonderfully ditzy Azad Mohammed and myself, although this is because the two second year students were busy with their own projects. 

We also had a producer for about five minutes one day. 

Thankfully, we did manage to pick up an editor, the charming Chris Alvarez who was also willing to composite and pick up the slack of producer-related jobs, or that’s how it read on paper. I’ve no idea what producer-related things he did but praise be that he slaved over all of the composting and editing! Our sound designer I never met, however in emails Xan Williams proved to be prompt, very capable and a pleasure to deal with.

Below are a final two examples of the backgrounds. Firstly an upshot of the clock, it’s pendulum is missing because, as a moving part, it required animating.

This second image shows the third setting of our film, the woodshed. The final in this group perhaps looks less complete than the other’s I’ve shown but this is because we knew we were going to animate a light source over the top.

  

A bit about team ‘Ash’

So Azad, or A-Zee as we called him, was a 6ft tall blonde lady in the body of a black man, I kid you not. He was a well-travelled, religious and energetic, French speaking, basketball player, a hip-hop, body popping kinda guy who always had a smile on his face and always managed to make me laugh. I honestly don’t think I could have survived the year without him!

Here we are graduating together; he doesn’t drink so that’s imaginary champagne he’s toasting with.

For anyone wondering how skinny I managed to gain two stone or so in under a year, this is the fabulous result of a diet constructed around stress, vodka and fast food, who’d have guessed they’d be bad for your waistline? :P 

 

*Ahem* Anyway, A-Z would do the ‘late’ shift, arriving at around midday and staying until the evening, whilst I would do the 'early' shift, starting around nine or ten and leaving around four or five. This was probably the biggest mistake; I was putting in far less hours at the university than I should, but then spending large amounts of time locked in a tiny dark room hovering over a light box is enough to send most people screaming for the hills. Of course I worked at home too, in between Paul O’Grady and whatever else trash television was showing, still it wasn’t enough.

Also: Wednesdays. Yep, Wednesday’s were our cursed day together at university, for one reason or another that little blighter of a mid-week day never produced a single thing. Both Azad and I would tear through paper, cursing (actually I think that was just me he was far too polite to swear), so much so that we ended up dubbing them, ‘Black Wednesdays,’ and would then laugh in that kind of stir-crazy frustrated artist way at how the day had cursed us every week. Black Wednesday’s would suck our creativity away, the more we tried, the more excited and feverishly we attempted to move forward the more it seemed to take away. A little factoid that spurred me to write a short story about a place called Black Wednesday Isle, which in turn, as I am sure you recognise, became the title of my character portrait blog.

Characters

I had a lot of imagery in my head of the settings but the characters not so much. This is perhaps because when I write a character that I want people to transpose themselves into I usually leave a lot of the details blank so that they can fill in the gaps and identify accordingly. In a way the old man and boy of the tale were blank faces, one’s that anyone could imagine as their son, brother, father or grandfather.

This coupled with the sensitive subject matter and my lack of practice in character design made fleshing them out visually a real challenge. I don’t think I will ever be happy with how they finally looked and even less so with how they moved but that is more a combination of technical difficulties with the production method and a mis-match to the vision in my head. As I’m sure the artists out there will agree things are always way better in your head!

Animation

As I said Azad was lead animator, he did all of the hard work making things move on reams and reams of ye olde animation paper. I then took his shots and laid them underneath the singular sheet I was working on in order to copy, capture, erase and repeat until the shot was complete and the remaining paper looked like a big black smudge. 

Animated shots then had to be taken into compositing to remove the white paper for each individual frame and laid to match the final rendered background. This compositing was done by Chris Alvarez, which I am ever thankful for, my input to rendering ended at the charcoal stage, anything more and I think I would have literally collapsed. 

There was one shot however that I can lay claim to as being entirely my own in animation and background if not in compositing. Precious shot no5, I animated, rendered, created the layout, the background, yeah that shot was my baby; I even did the AfterFX lighting, thereabouts!

Thus below is my line test for shot 5. 

AfterFX

AfterFX proved to be the camel that broke the horses back. Yes I realise that isn’t how the saying goes but I assure you trying to work with this bit of software with zero prior knowledge felt an awful lot like trying to steer a horse mounted camel.

We chose to use AfterFX in post-production for lighting on four of the shots to give the effect of lantern light, as a bright white spot would have been almost impossible to maintain whilst utilising the Kentridge erasing method of animating.

However as this part of production was close to the end of the film and the pressure of ever-tightening deadlines loomed I will admit it reduced me to tears. Still we got there in the end. Here’s an example of two of the shots we used AfterFX on for lighting, they run a bit faster than in the final film I do believe.

Covers and Film Posters

What? You thought the work ended when we finished the film?

Nope, we also had to put together a whole bunch of promo material including DVD covers, disc inlays, film posters and display boards. The display boards were partly for exhibition at the university but also in case we were nominated or awarded at a film festival, having a board to show off all your hard work certainly then is a good idea.

So here are the two boards and DVD cover we made for ‘Out of Ashes.’

DVD cover 

 Board 1

Board 2

Board 1 is the better of the two in my opinion, however the second includes some nice details which clarify our methods somewhat. Bottom left you can also see my concept oil painting for the project, a painting that is…everyone together now… ‘still in England!’ Or at least I hope it is as I cannot find a copy of it anywhere on my hard drive.

Conclusion, Insights and Link to Film

In reflection, one thing I learnt is that there is a stark difference between academic success and the sense of reward when you actually feel successful. Up until this point in my life, my work was graded and I judged the quality according to those grades. Upon completion of this course, I realised that the number on the sheet of paper in front of me was not representative of my work. For starters I should clarify I was thrilled to pass, and with a 2:2 which although was not the 2:1 I had hoped for was still in the mid-range of grading and afforded many congratulatory pats on the back. No, what I loathed was the project itself; the work spat out the other end looked like nothing more than a nasty globule to me, a greyish-green lump tarnishing my folio and any possible future I might have in art.

Of course that’s all 100% an exaggeration, the melodrama singing loudly in my brain, mourning the loss of what never was. The film wasn’t bad at all, at least so my peers told me countless times. In fact it was so ‘not bad’ that it received a nomination at both the prestigious Edinburgh film festival and one a trillion miles away in Seoul! Now if that isn’t an honour or a grand form of hat-tipping recognition then what is?

Still I was dissatisfied, my hopes for the project were, and still are to this day, dashed, because to me it missed every point I was trying to make, and I think perhaps I will always feel that way about it which is a shame. With distance from university, the project and troubles in general I think I have come to realise that I see it as a negative reminder as opposed to a piece of artwork. The problem isn’t with the project so much as the memories it brings to mind. It makes me think of fatigue and struggling against the odds, of having lofty ideals and falling from grace and tells me that even perceived success can be tinged with a sense of failure. It is basically, everything I fear as an artist, personified!

The positives from this terrible feeling of failure that I and I alone experienced here is that I finally began to learn how to be less precious with my work. Not always wearing my heart on my sleeve is invaluable, as is being able to let go and learn from mistakes as opposed to mulling on them. Knowing when to call it quits on a problematic sketch and start afresh. Most importantly, realising that it doesn’t matter if I make one hundred ‘bad’ sketches or awful films because in the long run the things I learn from doing that are far more valuable than a graded slip of paper or an inflated ego. Sure I’ve ‘failed’ many times before in life, haven’t we all? My point is that I don’t think I understood that there were benefits in not always getting it right.

So in the end I did receive new growth, ‘out of ashes,’ kind of ironic, really.

You can view the final film embedded here:

Or failing that you can find it under the following link on you tube:
'Out of Ashes'
where it is being kindly hosted by our editor :)

Oh and here’s a couple of obligatory hat-toss images for you featuring all the bright and brilliant students in our year. I am also in there somewhere, you can play ‘where’s wally?’ if you like.

Hooray we’re freeeeee!