A one-off storyboarding session at Racodac today involved the storyboarding of an existing television advertisement or a one minute story titled “Taking Out the Rubbish”. The excitement of the second option was far too much for me to handle, so I storyboarded the great Capital FM advert with Johnny Vaughn dancing about all over London.

I also found out that I’ve got a life drawing class on Wednesdays at 4:30 PM for the rest of term. Eeek.

My new Racodac timetable is jam-packed except for Wednesday mornings, which they seem to have forgotten about. As such, I only went in today for Context Studies at 2:00 PM - something that I’m hoping to make a regular thing of doing for the rest of term.

Context Studies was all about Dogme 95 - a manifesto that I covered in considerable depth in Film Studies at RWS. So other than going in for a new project brief (which requires me to write my own manifesto) and getting to walk in with Karl A, I could’ve had the whole day off. Bah.

Racodac today saw the start of a new unit: Animation, which I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. We’ve already been set a huge project - a fifteen second animation at 24fps (that’s 360 individually hand-drawn piccys) due in two weeks time.

I’ve done a wee bit of animation before and loved it. But what with yesterday’s project and other bits that I’m likely to be set, this could prove to be more trouble than it is worth. Thankfully we’re not allowed to use anything other than a single stickman character and limited props. But it’s still going to be a lengthy process.

On a completely different note - it’s one month today that Star Wars: Episode III is released. And between you and me, I reckon Anakin’s going to become Darth Vader.

The third and final term of my first year at Racodac has begun. It’s hard to think that I’ve nearly done a full year there already - I’ve still got the taste of that horrible milk in my mouth from my first day at primary school. Yet here I am knee-deep in university bits.

(an aside)
Sitting waiting in a dentist’s waiting room today for a friend to finish her treatment, a mother told her young son to “Leave that man alone.” I was the man in question, and the boy was kicking my leg. Still, it didn’t half feel weird being called a “man”. I know, of course, that I am one. But she could’ve said “young man” or something.

Talking of Racodac, we were set our first project for the new term today - a branding assignment for the BBC’s Young Musicianage 2006. The requirements are stupidly identical to those of GNVQ IT (which we *had* to do instead of GCSE) at RWS. Only this time, we have to make a title sequence too.

# Fun, fun, fun…

I’ve just seen the full-length theatrical trailer to The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, which rocked socks.

I’ve avoided spoilers for this (and Star Wars: Episode III) at all costs. So learning that the characters are coming to our world did come as a pleasant surprise.

The trailer does lose points for “Calm down, dear”, though, as reminding people of those awful esure ads can’t be good for marketing anything.

I finally gave Genesis of the Daleks a viewing earlier and surprisingly enjoyed it muchly. It has inevitably aged since 1975, but far from the extent that I was expecting. No clunkiness here.

I’m going to have a look in the Racodac library for more old school Doctor Who when I return on Monday. Given the millions of archived recordings, I’ll be shocked if they don’t have anything there.

Tonight’s episode of Doctor Who was utterly brilliant - one of the best pieces of television I’ve seen for years. And I mean that.

Assisting my father today in the digging of what can only be described as “a big hole”, I’ve managed to injure myself in a rather delicate area of the body.

I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt because it ruddy well does. But I thought I’d share the news for two reasons:

1. I’ve been advised to remain seated, and I thought blogging would take my mind off of the throbbing pain.
2. It’s a laugh.

Getting ready to watch a film, I’ve just found a loose Rainbow Drop from yesterday’s binge down the side of my bed.

Result!

Ingredients for a fine day:

• a cold morning’s lie-in;
• dark skies with heavy rain;
• delicious pub lunch with my mother;
• a bit of a laze; and
• the engaging conclusion to The Bill’s special two-parter.