23-03-09 – YAWA Girlz / I kick him in the guts!

So! What’s there to report this week?

I…

- Had a seriously epic YAWA Weekend.
- Had my first ever picnic!
- Saved the world with Scratch (Still Gears of War 2, yeah?)
- Mixed Supernova!
- Modelled *another* body for my assignment
- Recorded upcoming underground rapper Shortty-E’s debut solo song!
- Was introduced to my homegirl Rebolio’s cat “T-Bag”

As much as it sounds like a rapper, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Unless this is him:

This is the end of life as we know it…

This weekend was ACE. A Full Sunday and Monday of YAWA – I wish we could have this every week. The Monday was pretty funny – Zak came round at 11 in the morning (Jamie, Kieran and I had been up watching scary movies ’til about 3) and woke Kieran and Jamie up by throwing his shoes at them. I was fortunate enough to get up of my own accord upon hearing the doorbell (I think my Zak sense was tingling.) We got a bunch of stuff done – We all Practiced with the laser and fog machine (They’re AWESOME), Jamie and I put together a smooth jazz beatbox/bass video for your loltastic pleasurings this YAWA Sunday:

We sat down and planned out what we are gonna do and the best way to spend our time (probably something we should have started with, but I guess we got carried away with playing I am the Navigator as much as possible), recording some random footage I’ll be turning into a video blog this week, putting together a gorgeous intro to the EP (J, K and I all listened to it on loop with the lights out and the laser on for ages, we love it )

There was also some bad news – The gigs with BrokeNCYDE have been cancelled – the promoter has quit promoting ¬_¬ Bloody typical.

We also did other, less YAWA-y stuff too – We watched Signs, went out to asda at midnight only to find that 24hr ASDA isn’t open 24 hrs (What, are they religious or something?), played some serious gears of war 2 (Jamie and I beat level 10 of horde mode, HELLZ YEAH!) and ate a tonne of stuff. Pizza + YAWA = Slightly heavier YAWA. I also discovered I’m the only member of YAWA who can see his ribcage without the assistance of an X-ray! …don’t ask.

No squirrel stomping allowed.

I headed up to Wolverhampton on Saturday to sell tickets to the GLC gig (yay! Next week! ) to hXc YAWA homegirls Vikki and Carnie (Who were pretty much walking rainbows) and hang out with my YAWA homegirls Rachie (a lot of YAWA girls end in the postfix -ie… intriguing!), Lou and Claire who had promised me a picnic experience of a lifetime.

For my first ever picnic, I was not dissappointed; between the random loud chav woman losing her brother’s child (“I Can’t find the little ****** with all these FREAKS -looks at us- around here!”), the random loud chav guy who mistook me for a woman (OMG THAT’S SO NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE) and the actually awesome food (Quavers, breadsticks, grapes, vanilla milkshake, wafery-marshmellowy stuff, jammy dodgers, party rings, chewy lace sweets and cheese squares – NOOOOOOOOOOM.) It was certainly a success.

It was also the first time I’ve taken advantage of a nice day in England in YEARS. Lying in the park, chatting about life, the universe and everything… the wailing of angry, swearing chavs punctuating our conversation… that’s what it’s all about, you know?

Oh, and on the subject of YAWA girls, Jamie and I found this:

LOL. Turns out “YAWA Girl” is the Ghanaian equivalent to “Disrespected girl” or basically “Ho” in western rap. That made me giggle xD Good thing we’re not touring in Ghana any time soon!

Let’s DO this.

We finished Gears of war 2 less than 10 hours after I posted my last blog. Another short story mode, but it was ace – so much action, and one of the few shooting games that keeps giving interesting takes on the genre (I especially like battling on moving objects. Sometimes it felt like pirate battles )

But yeah, now the Horde mode is on the agenda when we take to the Cogs. So much fun – killing wave after wave of enemies whilst trying to avoid dying. Like tower defense, if the towers shouted action movie-esque quotes every 5 seconds and the enemies tried to eat the towers.

Finally!

YES! That’s 6 songs that (at the point of finishing them) I was happy with! Since then I’ve re-listened and found problems in 5 of the 6 songs (I’m never satisfied…) but I guess there’ll come a time when I just have to let go and release the songs.

Uh… this feels a bit dodgy for uni work.

I’m not an art student, so I’m not used to being told to find naked chicks to trace round. But that’s what we had to do for our uni assignment – 99% of the girls on the reference images on the websites we were given were incapable of donning even the simplest of garments. I eventually (after spending hours scouring deviantart) found a clothed anime chick that suited the style of my head (I couldn’t find ANY suitable reference images for anime guys, so I’ll have to put my head on a chick’s body. Lol.)

But yeah – I’ve modelled the body, and the plan is next week, I’ll rig it, the week after, animate and the week after, write up and hand in – job done!

It’s just a caaaaaaaat

I don’t often produce artists without featuring on their songs, but Shortty-E was so talented I just had to let him shine – check out his song “A cat called Fred” on his myspace. We really tried to get into the mindset of “What would a cat make as a hip hop beat?” with the music. I think you can really tell.

My fave line:

“F.E.R.D was my life to me!” – Now we were confused, ’cause that spelt Ferd, so we asked him if we had misheard. xD

Next Week on Dave’s Blog:

Well I’ll be busy this week! With the GLC gig on the Sunday (YAY! ) and a ton of stuff on my sprint list, I better get cracking asap!

I didn’t do quite a lot of last week’s sprint – I’m finding it really hard to get motivated – as soon as I started working on my FYP I realised I was about to collapse with exhaustion from everything I’d been doing that day and I never found the motivation to do it again. I know logically that’s no excuse, but it’s difficult to use logic as a motivating factor when you’re constantly tired. Also, the T-shirt company didn’t get back to me regarding the quote for the screen printed T-shirts >< The gays. Anyway – this week will entail:

- Tidying up all the YAWA mixes
- Making a YAWA video blog
- Making a tidier Giant Robots from the Future T-shirt design
- Order those T-shirts if everyone’s happy with said design
- Making a new Boyinaband video (Can you guess what I’m going to show you how to make the beat for? )
- Rig new 3D body.
- Make 2 more levels for my game

But mainly

- Get back on track – I’ve really been struggling with following my plans lately. I need to reply to everyone as well; when no-one’s around I’m just not motivated as of late.

AND THE BLOGLY QUESTION: Since it’s getting to the time of year when everyone’s worrying about exams and deadlines, what do you do to calm yourself down from all the stress?