Tag Archive for Memory
17
Nov 2014
Creative SparKs are Flying
Although I am only just writing about this, the things I am about to share with you actually started just over 18 months ago. But it has taken this time to get the project to where it needs to be.
A friend of mine is a magician, children’s’ entertainer and balloon artist. A role that he has played out for many years before I even knew him. Many of his clients and party gig’s he got through word of mouth and his website and business card. Both of which he admitted didn’t show his true personality.
He is known in the business as sparkey….. A play on his main profession and surname, but with no definition between the two parts.
He mentioned that he was trying to redesign his image and website, to enable him to move forward in his role. This is where my creative brain kicked in And I asked him if he would mind me having a play around with his ideas.
So, I started with my brief and his name….. And off I went.
First things first, his name….. I wasn’t going to change it, but I did ‘alter’ it a bit.
So sparkey became SparKey.
And the fun really started to begin.
I am not going to bore you all with the sleepless nights and crazy ideas that flowed (due to me suffering with insomnia, not due to the stress of the brief!) But I took the initial idea of a ‘burnt out clown’ and gave him The SparKey personality.
The brief was to work in fun, laughter, magic and balloon modelling into a single character. The balloon magic was a challenge, although it didn’t need to have been, I was missing one key feature of the package. SparKey always made and wore a 3 coloured balloon made top-hat.
The magic was simple with a traditional black and white magic wand.
The fun came in the form of 3 iconic metallic green juggling clubs that SparKey used within many of his shows from the very beginning.
The fun, from his oversized green and blue clown shoes.
But how to portray the laughter?
That took more work, that took many a drawing being scrunched up on the kitchen floor, over flowing the waste paper basket at the kitchen table. It turned me into, what to appear to others, unaware of the project….. A First Class Stalker.
Several hundred photographs, videos and observations of the man behind SparKey.
As the time went on, my sight went away. Graphics was part of my degree, part of my soul and a brief like this wouldn’t have taken me a quarter of the time before. This with it, bought its own demons, its own dark moments and at the same time, its own moments of creativity that may not have come, had the brief been completed in a quicker time.
One part of the design was really challenging, it was the key to bringing the whole design and character together. It was the laughter, the smile, the energy that came through from the man behind the costume that was SparKey.
At one point, I struggled to distinguish shadows and laughter lines on his face, so I even spent time, feeling his face. Touching his mouth and sketching as I felt the ever so slight small lines that made the smile. The smile that made SparKey the character come to life and also the smile, that on many a draft occasion made the character look more like a psychopath than a childrens’ entertainer!
Tweaks and re-draws filled yet more waste paper baskets. Colours and rendering took time. Then, just before Christmas 2013 SparKey was born, he wasn’t perfect…. But that was part of his charm, part of his fun and part of the cheeky personality of the man that lay behind the image.
The man that is Simon Key. A.K.A SparKey.
Then came the colour and the logo to match.
All in all not bad for a VIP like me !!!
The images above are the ‘computer tweaked’ images of my hand drawings. That have now been formed to make SparKey’s business cards and website. A website that you can find at www.thesparkeyshow.co.uk
(copyright 2014)
30
Jun 2014
Archimedes would be proud
As a VIP, I have little tweaks in the way in which I do things to enable me to feel like I am as ‘normal’ as everyone else. (Even though the strong independent part of me knows that I don’t need to be the same as or normal like everyone else!)
One of my tweaks, is to fill my bath to a successful level by using the timer on my iPhone. First the hot water, then the cold. Of course this isn’t fallible, sometimes the water is still too hot or often too cold.
Either way, I am not flooding the bathroom or even close to washing the floor!
As a busy mum, who has increased her classes and time spent at the gym, it has actually been several weeks since I last had a bath (having showered instead, so I am clean and not smelly)
So imagine my surprise yesterday evening, upon filling my bath as my usual tweak, checking the temperature and getting in that I discover that the water didn’t cover me as much as before.
I stood up and used my hands to measure the level of the water, it was the right amount of water, give or take…. So, there was only one answer for it.
There is less of me in the bath to displace the water !!!! YIPPEE
All that time at the gym and eating lovely seasonal fruit is paying off.
And now back to the drawing board on the timings for the water level?
Or, as I did last night, sit in the lower level bath and fill up when I am in it to get the desired depth and temperature.
Either way, I am a very happy bunny.
19
Feb 2014
The pooch surprises me again.
My guide dog has given me so much independence and confidence to do things in the 4 1/2 yeas we have been working together, she has also listened to all my woes and never told a soul.
She is now in a stage in her working glide where she is slowing down and her ‘stubborn retriever’ personality is overpowering her guide dog training. But she is still working, I have had to allow myself time to adjust to this slower pace, but a slower guide dog is still a much better option than a long cane. Definitely for me, although I am aware that isn’t the case for everyone.
When she was trained, Vicky also recovered additional ‘target training’ from her handler. This means I can say key words and she will find these for me, for me, this is key when out and about, she is trained for crossing buttons, bins, postboxes, doors, counters and lifts. Since being with me, she has picked up a few extras from the ‘usual’ places we go to. She can now find cash points, she can also find a costa coffee house, even in towns we have never visited before.
But tonight she surprised me totally with her target. Arriving in town we popped to the cashpoint, then leaving there I said “let’s go to the pub then” to which her posture stiffened and she was off, passed the ‘local’ pub that we were stood near into the nicer pub, which was the one we haven’t been in for months and months. But she knew!
The costa coffee I could put down to being a ‘far too regular a route’ but the pub? She didn’t just go to the one we were stood by.
Tonight, after what has been a challenging time with her has just affirmed how much more than a mobility aid she is. She has a memory, she can think on her paws and she does so much more for me than get me from A to B. She keeps me independant.
Oh and tonight she got me a free drink from a stranger while I waited for my friend!!! BONUS
Theresa Osborne-Bell |
No comments | Tags: doing it, GD, Guide dog, guide dogs, independence, Memory, training, VIP
08
Nov 2013
Fireworks
This week saw me with my family go and watch a firework display with my daughters Cub group, after navigating in the dark from the car to the camp site where the bonfire was crackling away.
We sat around enjoying campfire songs, I was mesmerised by the flames, watching the little flecks fly off into the night sky, thinking how this looks to others, do they see the flames as I do?
This was when I began to think about what a firework
Actually looked like when it went off
In the sky?
For me it is just a burst of colour, but I wondered if ‘sighted people’ saw individual flecks or different colours?
So after the camp songs & warming up by the fire we walked up to where the fireworks were being set off from & I divided that I would film some of the fireworks on my phone so I could see it as others.
This was what I filmed
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The film shows almost perfectly what a saw from the embers that were coming off of the fire, little fuzzy balls like those I spoke of in an earlier post (looking through raindrops)
Looking at the practicalities of using an iPhone to film fireworks that are roughly 100 feet in the air won’t give you the clearest image, but actually the ‘poor film quality’
Allows me to explain more to you about how I actually do see.
Maybe you can have more of an understanding as to why I was mesmerised by the little embers flying off the fire rather than the fire itself.
This has given me the chance to let you literally ‘seemyway’
I hope you enjoy?
15
Feb 2013
Missing the Obvious
I often feel silly and clumsy as I am totally and utterly able to miss the obvious. My condition is such that my field of vision is reduced and then what is left in the reduced bit is incredibly short-sighted. if I’m not focused on anything I can see a lot-or rather my brain tells me that that is the case. But as movement into the mix and I actually see very little.
This is me, there is no hiding the fact, but it does mean that when looking at a bigger view I can miss the obvious because I’m focussing on the wrong part of it.
I can often miss someone or something right in front of me, often a friend or family member waving. I can also be blinded by too much information and not see anything even though technically I can see it all. This is where my brain and memory comes in..
But then that’s for another blog!
