I should really have kept this more upto date O_o.

I'm still jobless and getting ticked off at the dole for making me feel bad that i can't land anything yet. (I have a homework diary that i have to show them so they believe I'm not skiving O_O) Matters get even further complicated with the fact that in less than 3 months I'm moving down to dunstable (and tying the knot in 5 ) so my search area has widened considerably. Add on top of this the reccession putting a lot of people in the same boat as me and most art related jobs want 2+ years of studio experience for them to even look at you and its a bit of a hair situation.

Not all doom and gloom however, the papertoy for the dali universe is making headway - I'm at the point where I can print and build them when i get the order in, however I would also need to set myself up as a business in order to stay above board. This means loosing the dole (which would be liberating if not for the fact that it pays the bills) but I would need more than one client to keep myself afloat. I'm not adverse to burger flipping either.

The wifeling and I have been working on another avenue of employment, being kids workshops in schools. We were asked into 2 schools for world book week 2 weeks back to do illustration workshops with a range of infants classes (reception upto 8 O_O), the outcomes of which ranged from giving the kids unfinished pages and asking them to come up with the rest of the artwork to all out books made entirely of children's artwork. Mimi and I came up with a story about a boy wanting to build a robot and raiding his whole house for the pieces, only for one to crash in his garden when he was asleep and swipe all the spare parts to fix himself. I even had a session at the end of a day showing 40 kids how to make paper robots and it didn't go too badly - I much prefer engaging the kids one to one to talk about the art than standing up in front of them all but I'm getting better. We've been looking at setting this up as a company too, with another website (that muggins here needs to build) aimed at schools and parents.

I've also been selling my Squat papertoys in a shop in Preston called Rubidoo (It's near the uni if anyone is in the area) - It feels great to have something I've made packaged and available to the unwashed masses ^^. If you would like any of the kits and can't reach it I would be willing to post them. It seems weird charging for papertoys as the general ethos from nicepapertoys and other places is that they are supposed to be free examples of your work, but I've tried to go the extra mile and offer a service that you can't readily do at home. These ones even have instructions!(I'll try and post up some packaging pics)

It's weird that I feel both busy and lazy at the same time - just trying to keep on i suppose

PS I forgot to mention I got a mention on the makezine website!! [link]