Last Tuesday I had fun burning the kitchen down. Well, not literally, thankfully but it did involve lots of fire. Controlled fire, at least.
I decided that the A1 board that I'd be using for all of my game concept work looked far too dull and I wanted to make it look better. To that end, I decided that since my game was all about Heaven versus Hell, a suitable background would be burnt paper.
I had been awake all of Monday night through into the morning and that's when I had the idea to go and experiment in the kitchen. The first type of burnt paper I tried was to simply put it in the oven on the highest heat possible and I left it in there for a while. It didn't really turn out that good though. It just turned brown and didn't really look burnt as such.
The next method I used was tea-staining which I enjoyed doing. I boiled the kettle, put a teabag in a bowl and then poured the water in the bowl. Then, using the teabag itself, I covered a piece of paper with the now coloured water. After that, I crumpled the paper up, creating small rivers where the tea would collect. Then I put the oven on, pulled the tray out and just let the heat dry the paper which took about two minutes. It looked great. I made quite a lot of this paper, as it took 10 pieces just to fill an A1 board and I knew I'd need more than that.
The third type of burnt paper I experimented with was a literal type. I turned the cooker on and hovered a piece of paper over it, allowing it to burn just enough to give it a nice yellow colour. Then I put the edges of the paper nearer to the flame and allowed it to catch fire, before going over to the sink and blowing the flames out. It created a nice effect, though the sink was full of ash, the house stunk and my clothes did as well at the end of it.
I was happy with my experiments.
The next day was spent sticking my paper to my board, which proved more of a task than I thought it would. I had bought a can of spray mount for the job, which cost me �6.20, but it just wasn't working. I did finally manage to get most of it stuck down, but not firmly.
I went out for a meal with my Mum and Gary on Sunday. Gary gave me �20 for the cab fare there/back and �40 more. I said that I couldn't accept it and that I'd just take the �20 that I needed for my fare, but he said keep it all. I hate taking it.
It didn't go too well though because I ate far too much and felt quite ill after it. It bugged me because the food where we eat is really nice!
Monday I went to college as normal and managed to finish off my board. It looked rather damn great if I do say so myself. Yesterday, I took a pic. You can see the actual artwork over at my Deviantart account.
I've not done much today, just sat here since about 2pm working on a few things. I have quite a few things to do but I'm glad that the game concept stuff is out of the way and I'm also glad that I produced some really nice stuff for it. On Monday, I have to give a short presentation and 'pitch' my work. I'm not looking forward to that!
