Yep, finally after so many years I finally got myself a full-time job at the BBC Television Studio in London. I knew all those years doing 2 courses in film & TV & 1 in Animation would finally pay off. I have been appointed as a Director & Producer of a Saturday Night family TV show I'm working on called 'April Fools'. I get to do my own scripts & Storyboards, I get to do the set design, camera filming & editing, write the theme tune, sing the theme tune and I even get to star in it. What its about? It could be about anything really, like unicorns with chainsaws or dinosaurs that fly spaceships. ( don't worry I got the budget for it.) I can't reveal anything really but I will accept any ideas if it's the first thing that pops into your head. Its gonna be broadcasted in the slot that Doctor Who would usually be on like 7-8pm. And It'll be done by April 1st 2015.

Okay joking aside I really still haven't found a full time job but it would be great to get a Job at the BBC. I haven't really updated what I did with my life lately so I'll just summerize it as briefly..or not so briefly as I can.

Well, I did gain some work experience with king bee animation last year as well as my friend's self-made Animation company called 'Crump' where he wanted me to animate some scenes for a series he's working on. Well when I got back to him last October he said it was put on hiatus due to budgetary problems but he said that he can give me some work experience helping him animate some objects for a game he's working on as an iphone app. I had to ink & colour some Milk Bottle power-ups in Flash & even learned some new Flash techniques like manipulating lineart & fill colours into different shapes as well as trying to create explosions out of circles.
Well, it didn't last long as after 2 weeks he let me go, I think he said that I was too slow or holding up production or something and need to continuously learn new skills & improve in Flash. And that my style didn't match. Well at least he let me gain some work  Experience & skills and I can use him as a Reference.

Throughout December I did try to get myself a 3 month Internship in Chelsea, London called Elightenment Entertainment and I've been exchanging emails trying to get an interview but they take about a week to reply and the last email asked if I was based in London.  When I said I live in Southend I never heard from them since.  Well the train journey would have been pretty long and the money for travelling to London for 3 months would be expensive.

However I'm still looking out for places that could give me work experience and see if they can give me at least a months worth of it.

Recently I went to a job recruitment building that deal mostly in factory/warehouse work and I was given a form to fill in and needed to provide 2 forms of I.D as well as proof of my nationality.

Speaking of which, since last year I've been spending months trying to apply for a new passport. My original one disappeared since 2004 which was the last time I went abroad which was a college trip to Paris & Disneyland.
The biggest obstacle wasn't having to fill in a separate form for the loss of my passport or sending in my birth certificate, it was trying to find a countersigner who is someone who is a professional, isn't a member of my family and, knows me for 2 years. Well first I tried my Manager at the pub, but he didn't fill in his passport number resulting in my application getting rejected. So my dad offered to get one of his co-workers who has a passport to be my countersigner. It might work but I just know that will get rejected as well as part of the form may have not been filled in correctly , or there was a mistake or the wrong type of pen has been used. Its like that trial in 'the 12 tasks of Asterix' trying to get a form in the place that drives you mad, but with trying to fill out a passport application instead.
Why do I want a passport you may ask? Well its in case I need it as an additional form of I.D as well as wanting to go abroad. One idea is that one day I would like to go to the Netherlands for a day or so. For the last few years I had my dutch friends come over here and I would like to do the same. Learn the culture, see the sights, taste their brow..er their cusine, that sort of thing. Well, it all depends if I do eventually get a new passport sometime this year.

As for this year, well, apart from playing Skyrim on the Xbox which I've been playing for over 3 months straight since Christmas Day last year ( may put up a journal review later comparing it to Morrowind which I played last year.), I did get to meet up with   in Colchester which we usually do regularly in Feburary. A lot of shops has closed like that pre-owned game shop & various game shops. Yeah a lot of shops have closed down in my town's high street like Hawkin's Bazaar, element, Past Times and I even heard that GAME & Gamestation might go as well. Quite a shame really, I remember when GAME used to be called 'Electronics Boutique'.
Anyway Euan got himself a HDMI cable for his Xbox so that the quality appears better and more high-quality. (Got myself one as well and nearly made my eyes explode.) We played some online Team Fortress 2 and I got to learn how each class works and the abilities they got. Its quite hard killing people that are pros at this game for years. My fave would be the Pyro as it's useful to reveal any spies that might stab me in the back. We also played the demo of the Simpsons Arcade game which was one of my fave arcade games back in the day. Be really cool if there were arcade version of 'King of Dragons' or 'The Star Wars Trilogy Arcade'. We also played Marvel vs Capcom 3 and I keep beating him. I suppose its payback for all the times he beat me in games.
Then Euan showed me the footage from the Doctor Who parody movie. (yeah its still in development hell) And even get to see new footage I haven't seen before like running past the camera like he saw a Ice-Cream van offscreen, running around  and I finally found out the true nature of one of the props brought was used for. And theres a hilarious cheesy scene of me as The Master sending 2 Daleks off to attack as I laugh manically in the background. Anthony Ainley would be proud. ( He was The Master during the end of the Tom Baker era and most of the Peter Davidson era.)

Also last month I went to the London Super Comic Con. It was one of my new years resolutions which was to go to Cons often. I left near the middle of the day And I expected a simple train ride to West Ham where I can take the Docklands Light railway to Custom House. Man was I wrong as the line between Leigh-on-Sea & Laindon was closed to maintenance so I had to take a slow bus ride to Laindon and from there to West Ham.
Well when I got there I wandered around a bit and I did manage to meet up with who was showing his portfolio to comic companies. He said that he might be able to get work with one of them in the future. He looked like a completely different person, like he sorta resembled Sherlock Holmes. ( not in his memetic outfit, mainly the scarf & dark Jacket & hat like Benedict Cumberbatch or Jeremy Brett) . He also drew me a picture of 80's He-Man.
The stuff I got there was a Graphic novel prequel of Batman: Arkham City,  a Timelord symbol keyring and an issue of Jimmy Olsen as the covers of the series has Superman treating Jimmy like crap or trolling him. This was the one I got: [link]

I also got this independent underground comic called 'Hard Rock' by Tasos Maragkos. Its translated from Greek and it involves this typical Greek teenager getting involved in sex, drugs & Rock & Roll. The artist even signed it for me.
I even have a star comics issue of 'Masters of the Universe 'and a 3-issue miniseries of the DC version of He-Man. In this version Man-at-arms has no mustache, the sorceress was called 'the Goddess' and wore Snake Armour which was what early versions of Teela wore and in some panels Skeletor looks like he has an ape's skull!

Also finally I recently joined a voice-actors forum called 'The voice actors alliance' where I can find projects to voice-act for so that I don't have to wait around for my friends to ask me to voice act for them. In one project I got the role as The Burger King &  Ronald Macdonald and gave him a voice similar to Mark Hamill's Joker. Haven't heard back from the person I sent the lines to yet.
Another one was for a dub of the final battle of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I auditioned to for the voice of the antagonist known as 'Father' who was reborn as a god. However my audition was turned down. He found my voice great, its just that I'm using the wrong sort of recording equipment. The headset mike that I use would 'peak' or distort a bit when doing raised voices or when I shout/scream and would only accept people that use condenser mikes. I believe these are the sort of mike professional voiceactors or even abridgers use and it might make the quality of my voiceacting better. So I recently ordered one that I can afford as well as a pop filter so that outside noise & my breathing won't get picked up.

So that's my update on my life so far (probably) sorry it was so long, serves me right not updating it in yonks.

I am planning to go to the London May Expo as I haven't been there since October 2008. Mainly cos I heard that & are going to it. Might see if I could cosplay as Mario for it. Also I'm planning to meet up with in Colchester on that weekend.

So Happy late April Fools, have a good Easter & someones gonna turn 26 on the 20th.