Thoughts From A Long-time Lostprophets Fan

To be honest I’ve remained fairly quiet when it comes to speaking online about the subject so this will be one of the first times I’ve been able to fully express my feelings on it (I’m by no means a writer in any respect so if this seems drawn out/poorly structured/a load of crap/etc. please bear with me).

 I’m going to start off by saying that for many years Lostprophets were undoubtedly one of my favourite bands; I remember first seeing them on Kerrang when I was round at my Gran’s house aged 12. Nu-metal was the “in thing” and I was just getting into bands like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Korn and so on and I remember seeing the video for Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja for the first time – skateboarders, baggy jeans, spiked hair, DJ decks, everything just looking so early 2000’s. “Woah… These guys are cool!” my 12 year old self thought. In years to come my opinion wouldn’t change even slightly, nu-metal is awesome! Deal with it ;).

 Anyway since that day I had been a huge fan of Lostprophets; I’d bought their albums and listened to them countless times, most of my top played tracks on iTunes (sadly an Apple product…) a while back were some of their tracks. The thing I love most about music is how you can relate to the mood or emotion of a certain song and how you can remember how you felt or where you were whenever you hear that song played. That’s one of the things I loved most about Lostprophets. I spent a lot time in high school listening to them and I can vividly remember both the good and the bad times because of their songs. To side track slightly, I was what is referred to as a “mosher” in high school. Being a mosher wasn’t cool if you went to the school that I did. The social hierarchy for the most part (in the early years anyway) seemed to be that if you were a ned (in other words a complete fucking tosser douchebag arsehole waste of space) then you were looked upon like you were the Dog’s Bollocks. I know that a lot of people I know can relate to getting a hard time from these knuckle draggers for liking heavy music, but I digress…

 Even out of high school and into uni I continued listening to Lostprophets and even went to see Ian DJ up in Floor 5 at the Union one night. There were a lot of people there who were very excited to see him, myself included. I remember standing watching him and thinking “he looks a bit off… He must be on something…” however after asking somebody about it the next day I was told that he was straight edge – no drinking, no drugs. Seems fair. Must just be a bit of an odd guy...

 Which brings me to the day that I found out that Ian was being accused of paedophilia. I remember being on a graphic design internship and taking a break to quickly check Facebook to catch up on how people “can’t wait for it to be the weekend” or what their thoughts and opinions on the weather are when I noticed a post that I vaguely recollect as saying “So, turns out that Ian Watkins is a paedophile”. I ignored it at first thinking it was just somebody trying to be funny about a band that they didn’t like, however as I went further down my Facebook feed I noticed the same thing appearing over and over again. To confirm my curiosity I did a search and what everyone was saying turned out to be true; Ian Watkins was accused of being a paedophile.

Still a massive fan of Watkins and his band, I didn’t know what to think. My first thought was that it was all just a big mix-up and that they got the wrong guy. My second thought was “what if it’s actually true?” Surely someone like him who so many people adore and look up to couldn’t be capable of what he is accused of? A few days later it came to light that he had “furiously denied” the claims against him. That gave me some relief in that if he was so confident to make a statement such as this then it may have been some kind of set-up, a hoax or even a mistake. I occasionally did searches on the web every other month or so to see if there had been any developments. For the most part, nothing had happened except for when Lostprophets made an announcement on their website stating that they would no longer continue as a band. Perhaps they were breaking up because they thought that, even if Ian was innocent, their reputation would be tarnished just from being connected in any way with a case such as this?

 Last month however, once again via Facebook (I know a good bunch of wannabe news broadcasters, eh?), it was coming up all over the place “Ian Watkins Pleads Guilty”. I could hardly believe it. I know this whole article probably sounds like it’s written by some daft fan boy but when you listen to any band for as long as I did Lostprophets you build up a connection with them and their music and, being very honest, this news was very difficult to take in. Somebody who I looked up to when I was younger actually turned out to be this vile creature barely worthy of being referred to as a human being. The list of crimes that he had plead guilty to were absolutely sickening… And to confirm what I thought when I saw him DJing, it turned out he was off his head most of the time on who knows what…

I knew that his sentence was to be passed on the 18th of December so while on a break at work I decided to look up on a news site to what he’d got. 35 years… I read further into the article and found that he had referred to what he had done as “mega-lolz”. How does someone so happily throw away 35 years of their life and not even show so much as a shred of guilt or remorse? Ian Watkins is clearly a very ill man and there is no question that he got what he deserved (not that his aforementioned statement did him any favours…)

 I know a lot of folk are saying that they’ll never listen to Lostprophets again, that’s fine and I completely understand why. I wish I could say it would be as easy for me to say the same however. The band made some incredible albums, my favourite being Start Something, and the quality of the work that was put in by all of the members hasn’t changed even in light of everything that has happened. I know a lot of people will disagree and I accept that, but even with that being said it would be difficult to ever listen to those albums in the same way ever again. Whether it be Fake Sound Of Progress, Sway, Wake Up, 4am Forever or Hello Again – all songs that I have very fond memories of – as much as I enjoy the work itself it will be almost impossible to listen to those tracks and not be reminded of the terrible things that Ian Watkins has done.

Thank you for reading.

NEoN Screen Idents

While working at the Fleet Collective I was given the opportunity to get back into Ye Olde After Effects and create some screen idents for NEoN Digital Arts Festival (www.northeastofnorth.com). When it comes to producing something digitally, there's nothing I love more than doing a bit of motion graphics and this proved to be great fun as well as challenging. So here they are for your viewing pleasure; these will be displayed all around the festival so keep your eye out for them!
(NEoN Festival begins on Sunday the 4th of November. Check out the website for more details)

note: these are designed to be on a constant loop however my Vimeo account does not allow me to do this...

Neon Blue Ident 1 from Andrew Gavine on Vimeo.

NEoN Ident Blue 2 from NEoN Festival on Vimeo.

Neon Blue Ident 3 from Andrew Gavine on Vimeo.

Neon Blue Ident 4 from Andrew Gavine on Vimeo.

Fleet Collective

I'll start by apologising for my lack of blogging in recent months (this has left me with quite a lot of catching up to do)... At the beginning of August I started working as an intern at the Fleet Collective in the centre of Dundee; this opportunity was presented to me after my friend Jamie had to give up his post at the Fleet and leave Scotland for the much, much greener pastures of New Zealand (if you have a moment, please check out his work at iamjamieknightillustration.blogspot.co.uk). Lyall, the man in charge of it all, very kindly took me on and got me straight to work designing various bits and pieces, which are displayed below.

Chamber Christmas

This flyer was my first task, designed at the time of year when the Christmas spirit is in full swing (early August). 

Wedding Brochure

It had been a while since I had done any kind of brochure design so this was a very refreshing design task to undertake.

Funeral Brochure

Despite the fairly morbid subject matter, I really enjoyed working on this design and was very happy with the final outcome.

Thanks for reading!

"Unparalleled" - Final Course Project

In my previous post I spoke of my final project for my course, accompanied only by stills. Well ladies and gents, here it is in its full animated glory!

 Enjoy! Or don't, it's up to you...

 

"Unparalleled"

Now that I've completed all of my coursework and and have finally got round to spending a bit of time making my page look nano-decent I figure it's time to fill you all in on what I spent my final term in education doing. Through what felt like hell-fire and brimstone, I present to you my very first attempt at "animation" entitled "Unparalleled". The artwork and style was heavily influenced by the likes of Nicoletta Ceccoli, Adam Jones of TOOL and Niklas Sundin of Dark Tranquility; though I wouldn't regard myself a fan of Dark Tranquility I must say that for Sundin's artwork I am, to be quite frank, "mad for it" (many thanks to Lord T. Colquhoun for introducing me to this fine gentleman's work). I won't give away what the video is about for the time being as I wish to wait until my degree show to let it grace your optic nerves in full, but for now here are some stills as a small preview of its aesthetic. Scroll down, have a wee look and that.

Peace! GH

p.s. our degree show is at Kingsway Campus and starts on Thursday the 31st of May, come on down!

Feels Good!

One of the projects for my course required everyone in the class to search for and enter a competition. After sifting through many that I thought seemed lame, too boring or not challenging enough, I stumbled upon one for the Feel Good Drinks Company. An independent UK-based drinks manufacturer, the company required an ad campaign designed for them to boost their profile.

With fear that I would be exploring territories that I am all too familiar with, I decided to jump way out of my comfort zone and try something that I had never done before; motion graphics. Though AfterEffects was completely alien to me initially, after a lot of experimentation I managed to get the hang of it resulting in it being one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever undertaken.

The video features John Walker, a friend of mine, who kindly volunteered to play the part of the unfortunate soul falling victim to the perils of an upturned plug; we did the photoshoot in Deen's house and I can assure you that every photo from that shoot was hilarious.

And that funky soundtrack? Credit goes to Ross Paterson for that, many thanks to him for all the time and effort he put into sorting out the audio for this! The scream sound gets me every time...

As this is intended to be part of a series of ads I hope to complete another similar to this very soon, this time featuring good ol' Scot playing the part of a rather unhygienic chap...

So here is the video... Hope you enjoy it!

I'm A Blogger Now... RAD BRO!

This is my blog I guess... I'll start by apologising for the generic and rather poor layout that is currently present but fear not friends, I'm the new guy here so I'm working on it!

Anyway, here's one of the most current things I have spewed out of my Asus A53E running Windows 7 (BY JOVE!! A GRAPHIC DESIGNER NOT USING A MAC?!?!)  for the metal/rock/alt. clubnight that I am involved with running at the Dundee Uni Students' Union. Instead of placing a fierce looking gentleman from a metal band onto the poster, often the norm for designs such as these, I opted for the ever beautiful Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil to be the face of this term's events.

I must confess, I have never been a what could be regarded as "meritous" when it comes to writing conclusions so... Yea...

Shibby xx