+ all that other pointless crap you hold so dear.

There is a saying... Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he'll empty the oceans of absolutely everything in sight, pour it down the bellies of his 12 children, and become a huge burden on our health service. BUT THIS IS WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANT YOU TO DO!

Tree decorations can cost quite a lot, and you only use them once a year. Inkjet printers cost a bit  more, but you use them all the time, and they can make anything.

There is a message here for everyone.

I can't bear Christmas generally. I think it's a very, very hollow event. It's the epitomy of the term anticlimax, due to this emptiness. A highly flawed concept, all in all... Bit like football.

I've already tackled anti-xmas cards this year with some success, and so I thought why not stare the monster in the face, and attempt going through the motions of having an average Christmas (which people may often incorrectly call 'a good Christmas').

I have a tree, which I've slung a string of fairy lights round, and hung a few baubles my mum gave me on. I realise this is quite undertrimmed by most Christmas afficinados' standards, but I refuse to let this pointless annual event cost me money... I'll need all that for whatever intoxicants I can get my hands on to blot out how horrendously poor the event itself will be. Which brought me directly to home made crap to stick on the dead tree in the name of 'aren't we having such FUN!'.

To cut a long story short, I had some fuseable beads, like kids use, and Jo decided we should make something to top the tree with real meaning, not just the same irrelevant, predictable symbols everyone has been brainwashed into using for all time.

Through maybe an hour's worth of effort by the pair of us (me sorting the right colours of beads out and Jo doing assembly), we produced the Christmas Heart. A thing of naive simple beauty, with inherent geek value due to the pixel construction. (l33t h4x0r pwned!!!)

I have been listening to the Mariah Carey and Diana Krall Christmas albums on repeat to increase the festiveness inside my heart, maybe I'm getting there... Maybe indigestion.

--- JESUS vs SANTA : The Ultimate Showdown!!!

Nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING says ppppaaaarrrttttttyyyy like hedgehog cake. Well, not when you are about 6 years old anyway.

As none of the people I think of as friends plan on growing up anytime soon, this was the obvious choice for the Breakin' Bread Xmas Special.

Breakin' Bread

The art of communal mealtimes at Islington Mill, the idea being to bring some food and share with others over lunchtime chatter. Extreme purists say you should always make the food you bring, though many less-able and less-organised attendees are allowed to attend (but silently shunned) with pre-bought foodstuffs from Sainsbury's.

Back to caking... And specifically some general instructions on making your own hedgehog.

What we are trying to create here is a rustic novelty abstract animal cake which is stupendously sickly and consists of as much chocolate as possible. It also must have a face. These are the rules we're playing to here.

Ingredients

• 1 * Tesco Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix (easiest because it contains cake and icing mix, some other brands only include the cake mix)
• 2 * Eggs
• 75ml Cold Water
• 2 Tbsp Milk
• 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
• Buttery Stuff

Cooking Shiz

• 2 * Sandwich Tins
• 1 * Mixing Bowl
• 1 * Measuring Spoons
• 1 * Measuring Jug
• Greaseproof Paper

Commence Bog-Standard Cakery

First bake the cake as per the cake mix instructions. You will end up with the two halves of the standard cake sandwich, which then need sticking together using the adhesive that is 'fudge icing' (part of the cake mix pack).

Stop with the cake mix pack instructions at this point... This is where we have to go freestyle on this shit.

Pimp My Cake

Take your stuck together chocolate cake and cut it in a similar pattern as above. You will want to cut the side parts slightly thinner than I did here, or your headgehog will turn out tall and thin like mine did. I was okay with this look as I'm so anti-obsesity, and despite me taking the time out of my life to write this blog entry about a dumb cake, didn't really care that much.

Next, stick the two sides on the top using glue, I mean fudge icing, and get rid of the two smaller offcuts of cake somehow... Maybe these could be used to add extra appendages to your hedgehog if a genetically deformed form is preferred (e.g. trying to approximate a 'mong').

Hopefully you should now have the vision to turn this thing into a hedgehog through complete coverage by fudgey-mortar, and then using rows of chocolate buttons cut in half.

Style out the face in whatever way you like. I used a glace cherry for a nose, and spent about 15 minutes cutting thin strips of chocolate out of some buttons to make 'I AM FUCKIN DEAD' eyes... Thereby making this a deadgehog. Bringing death to a party is always a good way to remind people that WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE.

Delivery and Consumption

You can action this part of the process in your own personal way, but I put mine on some tin foil and drove 40 miles to deliver it in a specialist tupperware cake box, which any heterosexual male should have at least one of.

I have to admit a lot of the spines had subsided overnight, and the hedgehog had suffered quite a major spinal prolapse due to the top of my cake being so convex, thereby forcing the two cut off/stuck on bits to lean in opposite directions... Not the general look you are aiming for, though it kind of worked in the context of it being so DEAD.

Here are Breakin' Bread hardcoreists Sarah Jay and Lou Gardner enjoying deadgehog like cutesy toddlers at a birthday party just before we all played musical chairs and had a 'quiet time' lie down with some milk and security blankets.

I own a lot of shoes. It's definitely a buying compulsion.

In order to normalise my behaviour I thought it good to buy copious amounts of trainers and justify it as a business related activity, thereby both feeding my addiction whilst keeping it tax deductable.

These are currently my footwear-of-choice due to their somewhat waterproof nature suiting how the grass which we park on outside Islington Mill has turned into a large pool of muddy sludge recently...

While my feet are keeping dry, you can enhance your retail visualisations with my work.

Available via Turbosquid right this instant!

Puma Tennis Shoes

X-Factor = not good.

Islington Mill = non-stop party.

The above facts were combined into some lofi visuals for the recent Xmas party.

Green Screen

This is a situation where there were things I would have done differently if this had been a commercial production. (a) Obtained commitment from 'talent', and (b) Taken a steam iron to the green screen. As sometimes it's nice to proceed with a minimal production value in the name of keeping-it-real, I threw our set together in the midst of an exhibition in the gallery space. I definitely did at least some minor damage to someone's life drawing with one of the lights - sorry :(

I filmed some Islingon Mill residents and staff dancing on green. Be aware that you need a lot of pixels and a minimum of image compression to rock a green screen. Here I used a 1080i HDV camera, which is basically about the worst choice you could possibly make... But 'I could have done it properly if I'd wanted to'.

Video Loop

These are a few stills from the video loop, featuring Islington Mill dancers, some ghetto rave motion graphics from back in '88, and my reworked version of the X-Factor logo.

Documentary Evidence

About the only photos from the night I can safely publish :)

--- Happy Bastarding Xmas!

I've been working on modelling trainers recently, producing good quality renders but keeping the poly count low. The intention is to use these in photoreal 3D retail visualisations - stills, but with the possibility of fast rendering animation also (realistically not achievable by many high poly models/scenes).

There's some way to go to finish these off, they're gonna need lacing for starters, but they're not looking so bad for a model made from 250 polys*. (in a Hypernurbs, obviously)

*Technical Glossary

250 Polys = fuck all

Update #1

Added the tongue and laces - laces are relatively high poly, as they are geometry... I may optimize this aspect at a later date.

Update #2

Finished and ready to launch... Added the rear logo, created a couple of simple alternative colourways and created the right hand trainer.