Monday, October 24th 2005 - 04:18PM :

IMAF 2005

Visited the International Anime and Manga Festival held in London this year. Was pretty cool and had one of my works on display in the exhibition
Like last year, I entered the festival’s big cash prize art contest. No wins for me this time around. Like everyone else who didn’t win, I was a little disappointed, but the standard was really high so it came as no big surprise. For my character- Kawa, I concentrated on a cool outfit, style, a polished piece of CG work and a good written description. After checking out the winners this year, I felt if I had put more emphasis on my character performing relevant actions and/or placed in appropriate environments it’d help to emphasis her personality and make her more believable. I believe this was a key consideration when judging the entries. I'm sure I'll still be able to make use of the artwork produced in the future, so it's all good.

Pics of IMAF 2005:

People viewing contest gallery art.

My submission highlighted at the top. Yay!

The animation viewing room.

Comments: 2

Monday, October 3rd 2005 - 03:24PM :

Still lacking blog updates

I’m doing a lot of arty stuff at the moment, but been too busy with it all to update OM. After 8 months of full time kitchen design and admin work, I decided to go back to education and am doing a two year “Graphic Media Foundation Degree”. It’s all good stuff and gives me the chance to expand my graphics, illustration and multimedia skills. I’ve also got a few commissions on the go, so I’m kept constantly busy.

[I’ve got a few more entries to add, so will back-date them to when they were actually written, rather than posted]

Comments: 0

Thursday, September 1st 2005 - 08:37PM :

Pay Day

The title Says it all Wacom tablet & Photoshop.

Comments: 0

Wednesday, August 24th 2005 - 12:05AM :

I'm working on it...

Just got one pic in the works at the moment- it's a bit of a secret, but she's all digitally inked up now and looks pretty spiffy! Although it took so long that it may be the last time I digitally ink! I’ll probably stick to pencils and try to refine my initial drawings instead of spending countless hours cleaning them up on the computer.

This is a quick self-portrait representation pic for the O.M. forum wallpaper we're putting together. Basically members on the board are asked to draw pics of themselves and at the end of the month, all the pics will be put together to form one big desktop wallpaper image. Just a bit of fun

Comments: 1

Tuesday, July 12th 2005 - 06:10PM :

Next move?

Finally finished the Pin-up Babe pic. Took ages, but looks quite polished and slick so I'm happy about that. Don't know what to draw next- I have lots of ideas, but when each one takes at least a week between other stuff I need to do, it becomes tough to make a decision. In the mean time I might go back to quickies...

If only all my art only took 15 minutes!

Comments: 0

Friday, June 10th 2005 - 11:07AM :

Art delay...

Went a month without adding to the blog- although I wonder if anyone noticed? Been artistically dead recently. I'm just waiting for a time when I know I'm gonna have several hours solid of free time to work on some arty stuff. In the mean time I've been collaborating to some quickie doodles in Open Canvas sessions- they can be found on the forum in the "Quick Art thread".

Quick doodle's are all I can manage at the moment! >_<

Comments: 0

Wednesday, April 20th 2005 - 08:14PM :

IMAF Win!

2004 saw the introduction of IMAF - the International Anime and Manga Festival held in London. A big part of the festival was an art contest and exhibition with a total prize fund totalling $75,000. I decided to submit my Sosuke character, which ended up winning me a prize for best character design for a teenage target audience There was a lot of great art on show at the exhibition from a variety of ages and abilities. I'll definitely consider contributing more of my artwork for future IMAFs and hope to make another visit to IMAF in October 2005.

Below is a draft press release detailling my win:


KITCHEN DESIGNER WINS INTERNATIONAL
MANGA AND ANIME TALENT PRIZE


Ben Krefta, a kitchen designer and freelance artworker from St Mary Hoo Kent, has won a US$5,000 category prize in the first-ever annual international competition to identify the best in Manga and Anime talent in the world.

The Teens Character Design prize has been awarded to Ben for the creation of Sosuke, a thoroughly ‘cool’ Japanese/Korean guy, an artist in his own right. Sosuke spends many hours working on his artwork and original comic book stories, and producing caricatures in the mall rather than doing his homework.

The competition has been organised by IMAF – the International Manga and Anime Festival, which is an annual event held at London’s County Hall, held for the first time in 2004. In all, ten winners have shared $75,000 in prize money for their outstanding work.

Ben says that he’s pleased that the Anime and Manga scene is getting stronger every day, and that it has lead to a competition such as IMAF’s.

“Sosuke is one of my favourite works to date – it took many hours of planning and refining so I’m glad it has won the prize. Every part of his design contributes to illustrating Sosuke’s personality, and personality should always be a key factor to consider when character designing.

“Winning the prize has made me think I’m getting closer to producing artwork of a standard which other professionals can recognise as quality.”

More of Ben’s work can be seen on his website www.organicmetal.co.uk

According to Dr Andre Singer, of the competition organisers, many of the entries received for the 2004 competition were of a strikingly high standard.

“We were delighted at the level and quality of the work for this, the first international competition of its kind.

Plans for the next competition are already underway, and we’re looking forward to launching this and the International Manga and Anime Festival 2005 at County Hall later this year.”


- ends –

Issued on behalf of IMAF

Comments: 0

Friday, March 18th 2005 - 04:59PM :

What can you do?

I was under the impression Organic Metal was MY site where I could post MY artwork and write what I want, but it seems a fair few people seem to disagree! The feature to allow visitors to add comments to artworks is a cool idea and I’m getting a lot of interesting feedback about my work. However, at the moment it seems many of the comments ask that I stop drawing girls with boobs or anything sexually suggestive, and even asking I remove my own work from the site!

I’ve tried to keep the site accessible for a larger audience and haven’t posted any “over 18” content, but even if I did, I feel I should be allowed to draw and publish whatever I want, be it big boobs or 50 foot tall chimps eating huge bowls of dog puke!

I’m sure a lot of these comments must be from kids that just want something to complain about. At the end of the day, if people don’t like my stuff, I’d prefer they just don’t visit the site- no one is forcing people to come here and look at my work. I wish people would be a little more accepting of other’s views and opinions.

---
Off topic, I got 2nd place at the MAG for my pic of Kitteh

Comments: 0

Thursday, March 10th 2005 - 08:10PM :

Status Update and Art Issues

:: Drawing issues ::

So far this year I've half drawn 1 full pic. The new job's totally restricting me from going all out with the artwork. My only issue at the moment is not drawing enough, I probably need to start by getting back into the swing of things with a few quicker pencil sketches or oekaki, so will try to get a few of those done before March is over.

:: Current aims with my work ::

Last time, I wanted to focus on stuff like backgrounds, sequentials, dynamics, anatomy, composition and characters interacting in an environment. Had a stab at backgrounds again- if I use reference they're always a little restricting, so I might try some made up stuff some time.

And if I get the time to start drawing again more often, I'll try to make sure it's doing more fun stuff. A lot of artists get criticised spending to much time doing what they feel comfortable with, but if they enjoy it and it's just drawing for fun, I'd say go with it.

:: Life Update ::

Been getting a lot of positive feedback from the new-look Organic Metal site. Still a few tweaks I'd like to perform, but I'm happy to keep the majority of it how it is for now.

No big commissions recently, which is just as well since much of my time is now spent designing kitchens for work! Never planned to be doing this as a job, but for now I'm happy to see where it takes me.

After work I've been going crazy on my new metal dance mat for PS2 DDR (Dancing Stage) dance games. Other than a few goes on the arcade I'm pretty much a newbie to dance games and they're great fun! Hoping to start Metal Gear Solid 3 over the weekend. Only came out last week here in the UK but I've been eagerly waiting on it for years!

Comments: 0

Monday, February 28th 2005 - 08:45PM :

Chilly

Started a new job recently which is taking up most of my time. That and my recent addiction to DDR dancing games It's been pretty cold recently, so made a snowman on Sunday! Not the most artistic creation in the world, but it was a good laugh as I'd not made one since I was young

Comments: 0

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