Managed to get two chapters of the book off to the publishers yesterday – that means I’ve got three more to go – and I’ve got until the end of the month to do it….

The google adds seem to have really kicked off now – I got someone calling yesterday who wants a children’s book illustrated – something I’d really love to do – especially as the guy who wrote it is an artist himself and has some great visual ideas in the story.

It’d be really good to do it, but I have a feeling it’s not going to happen – he’ll need 30 or so illustrations and I don’t think the publisher will have the budget to get me to do them. I’m offering them a discounted rate because I’d like to do it, but he wants detailled realistic renderings of fantastic characters and scenes on every page (effectively what you’d see in a pixar movie– and I think they’ll have a budget for nothing more than watercolour sketches.

Oh, well, never mind.

Another call came in today from someone doing a scientific study and wanting pictures they can judge children’s emotional state from…. In contrast to the previous one, these images have to be completely without character or emotion. I have to try to create characters that are ambiguous in almost every way! Again, I’m not sure these people have much of a budget for what they’re proposing either, but the pictures aren’t quite so taxing, so this one might be doable.

On top of that, I got a call last week from someone who took some photos on Christmas day and found the images were full of “spirit orbs” – they want me to see if I can get them any clearer… I’m still waiting for the disk to arrive, so we’ll see what that turns up…

I’ve now got the investment fund animation job and I’ve spent most of today getting stuck into that. The idea for the animation is quite a challenging one to achieve – lots of animated light beams and movement going on everywhere…. There’s even a bit of motion capture involved and because it’s an ethical investment fund I’ve thrown in a few dolphins too… it’s beginning to look really good, but it’ll take a while to get everything in place.

Once finished, I think this will be one for the showreel – and re-editing that to give my website www.darkin.demon.co.uk a better range of work is another well overdue job.

Let’s just add that to my huge list of well overdue jobs, then shall we?