twenty eleven

yet another new year is coming! will we have a snowy new year's day? hope so:) i wish everyone a funny and inspired year! try not to worry too much about that 20th cookie you eat and that whole bottle of wine you drink O_o

a little new year's present for you: what is this plant here?

fill in the form with block capitals using a ball point pen

inspiration comes from such diverse sources! i have decided to turn my recent experience with bureaucracy (ahh, had to check spelling in the dictionary so bad!) into a cartoon. yes i did.

how i love bureaucracy, mm! all that filling, and refilling the same forms over and over again. all that writing your own address in 20 different places, getting cramps in your wrist. all that slowness in spite of your running out of time. all that feeling of dependence, when you want to scream your lungs off at his face. all that not giving the necessary information at the beginning, when you could just have avoided that whole-day waste of time. and, of course, you have to have infinite amount of cash with you, just at that spot. of course.

don't you love it, too?

back to basics

sometimes an idea leads to other ideas, leading to yet other ideas and so on. inspiration builds itself up, exponentially. in no time you are approaching towards a meaningful whole. but that happens when you are happy with your initial idea. it is like a virtuous cycle.

what happens when you are not sure of your initial idea? does it stop producing anything in a while? does it stay in your 'to do' list forever, collecting dust and eventually fading into nothingness? do you think it is better to force to make it work, or to let it go and start over? hmmm.

check out my fake-3d-microscopic effect:)

bead curtain

voila! this is the work in the exhibition:) since i didn't get permission, i cannot put the other peoples' works here. but i really would like to thank all my kind friends that helped me with their ideas, their photographing skills, their poses, their fun and their patience:D this is not an individual work at all.

ok, here's the link to what this workshop is all about... for me it was a great experience to work with all the different people from different backgrounds. i think it still is not finished, but let's see about that.

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what do you think this work could be about? what do you feel when you see it? before i explain i would like to hear from you...

you exhibitionist

hihi yet another teaser for you here... i have been working quite a lot lately, and not just by myself. there was an intense workshop. i am not showing or telling anything else until... the exhibition begins!! can you believe? this will be the first time i suppose, that i am in an exhbition! yuppiiii:) can you guess what this can be a part of?

just wait, more details coming soon.

orange and brown

finally! i have finished my sample and i'm ready to go. maybe a few little tweaks here and there, but basically i am done (sorry about the watermarks, but you know). remember my rant about the fabrics and my last disappointment? it is all forgiven:) i'm quite happy about the color, too, don't you think? there is one more tiny detail i never mentioned here about this bag, but that will remain unmentioned because that is the point which will probably make or break my design.

i am fantastically happy! (dances, dances all around!) now proceed to the next step...

mustache

ok, now it's time to get my hands dirty once again with sewing machine dust. action!

so what's this guy looking at?

resume

some interesting emergencies come up. they always do. and interrupt life. i have just resumed normal activity, and there is a huge pile of... life waiting for me to take care of them!

the professional sample did not happen. mine was far more professional than the one i got from the tailor. it was a huge disappointment (sorry, so bad that i can't even upload photos). i didn't discuss the matter too much with them, took my sample home and decided to... do it by myself!!! as usual. actually, i was expecting things would turn out this way, but hoping i would prove wrong...

one note on the positive side: my dear friend brought me lots of samples of shopping bags. a biiig thank you! i think mine is still the cutest;)

so i guess this means even more sewing machine time for me!

fingers crossed!

i have left my own prototype of my shopping bag design to a tailor couple for a (hopefully) more professional sample. i'll hope for the best! i will be getting the results tomorrow by noon. i'm praying to the prototype gods...

paint myself into a corner

so meric, why are there no entries in the first ten days of november? well well well... have i been mysteriously erased off the surface of earth? was i lying in a coma at a rural hospital? hell, no. my absence has a valid reason. none other than... painting the house with my dear hubby, of course!

it was pianful, it was tiring and it was awkward. i had one thousand work-related urgencies to take care of at the same time. there was a lot of plaster-mixing and paint rolling. a lot of sanding and masking with masking tape (huh?). a lot of covering the defective parts and isolating with styrofoam. but i'm not regretful. it all reminded me a bit of the good ol' days when i was a newbie design student, breathing dust instead of oxygen. how much fun!

the rooms have an interesting acoustic while painting, by the way. you can drive your neighbors crazy just by singing;)

buteo rufinus

just the end of another short trip with hubby. this time around we went to saros bay (which, according to google maps, doesn't exist-but believe me, it does). on our way there, we were on top of the clouds actually! it was pretty scary, considering how cold and wet it could be if all that fog would find us in komur limani, our camp area. but we went there anyway. and it actually did rain at night, but thanks to some kind scuba divers there, we had a nice plastic shelter on our tent to keep us dry. the sea was awesome and i dipped in:) yup, in the middle of the winter. so refreshing!

on our way back home, we saw a long-legged buzzard, the highlight of our trip again. she hovered in the sky for a loong time, leaving us much time to examine her. beautiful!! once again, my lovely binoculars were ready for the mission.

can you believe that we went on a trip, came back and it is still holiday!?

not so much of a feast for everyone

life always forces you to learn new things. i have, indeed figured the way to combine my portfolio with my blog. hehe. thanks, css! there is no way to dodge it, you have to get your hands dirty with a little script writing whatever you are trying to do on the internet. it feels very empowering to be able to do that, by the way... yuppi!

someone has pushed the pause button around here, everybody is on vacation for at least one week (what kind of a sentence is that?). i find a real peacefulness through the otherwise hectic istanbul. i'm guessing at least half the city has left here. that means roughly 6.391.480 people which is enough population for two cities, actually:) no, seriously, even the uber greedy gross markets are closed, which is a rare occasion. after 20:00. we are still considering whether or not to go somewhere tomorrow. let's see what the weather gods will say.

are you feeling that 'pause' button too, sometimes, or is it just moi?

fabricado

a designer's work is never done. never. i find a hi-tech fabric with a fancy name that is super fine, with the best texture and all, and it is too expensive. i find this super cheap fabric with the most mundane name, in these (yuck) strange colors (no offense, dudes), and it feels oh-so-wrong. things are always solved in a slightly different way than i expect, which basically drives me crazy! there must be a way! i'm not quitting, though. grrr. oh, and here is why i need some fabric for you who have just arrived to my blog:)

nature has its way

living in a mediterranean country, i am happy to enjoy my lovely lovely pomegranate. everytime i open one, i am amazed at what i see. how come those hundreds of gem-like units are so ordered, and so random at the same time? and what kind of glue holds them together, while they are so easy to snap out with your finger? great inspiration! don't step on them, though. really messy.

if you happen to be in ankara...

if you are by any chance visiting ankara and go to metu...:) there is much to be learned! hi to eden:) hope you come to istanbul, too...

almost there

i still have some reservations on the answer i have come up with to my 'how to have your bag design produced' questions, but i feel i am getting to the end. whenever i am at that point of finishing a self-induced project, i tend to procrastinate. well, that is hard to confess. but there you go, i'm confessing it. i hope i don't fall into that trap this time and ever again. it's true, i have tons of other things to do, but i don't want to use that as a shield to protect me against putting that one last effort.

do you remember the video game street fighter? (attention: violent reference ahead.) there is a point at the end of the match where you are prompted to 'finish him!' (your opponent, that is. yeah, really civilized.) i sometimes find myself not being able to 'finish it!!' as soon as i am able to. but i always do finish them, somehow. does that sound familiar to you?

progressive

ok, a little more sneak peek from what my website will be like... (no, the concept is not maya the bee, as one dear friend has claimed before;)) have you watched that animation series, by the way? if you are too young to have watched it, please go kill yourself. no, don't do it. i'm joking. don't ever do anything that any crazy blogger tells you to. most probably they are jealous.

yeah, if i am willing to combine my portfolio with my website, shouldn't i be sounding more... professional anytime soon? what do you think about that? are you keeping business with personal babblings separate? that's a tricky one, because designing is ultra-personal for me. how can i be all cooled-and-professionaled-up about that? i think that's a whoooole separate entry in itself. hmm.

i hope the coding part of my soon-to-be-website-blog will be easy. the visuals are almost done. time to hit the keyboard!!!

congestion

turns out it is not as easy to find producers to have my designs produced as i thought. perseverance is the key... i need to change my persuasion strategies i guess. i really don't know, this is a learning process. i'm sure i will do some stupid things that i'll regret along the way. dusting off and going on will be a better idea in that case. (yeah, i'm trying to convince myself more than you). is there a book on how to do business the right way? hihi... survival kit of the newbie businessperson. agg!

what the??

yeah, seriously what the??? i can't believe i have not been writing for almost a month! but i had good reasons not to. naah, that's a lie. in fact, i had no reasons, let alone good ones, to actually write anything. let's say i took a break from life where i went to and came back from canada, aand... i did some calibrations in the ways i'm thinking about life:D that's right. i was out of everything.

coming back was quite tricky, but eventually i was able to bring myself together. i'm now trying to have my bag produced (in a couple of weeks, hopefully!), working on the website (coming back to that one was reaally hard), doing a lot of reading and conceptualising new projects. if i work full throttle, i will barely make it to my planned deadlines to promote my stuff. just barely. all that calibrating stole a lot of time from me;)

as i get more ageful (let's say), i find it harder and harder to lose any time with indecision. ten years before, i had that luxury. but not anymore. and man, was i one indecisive person! these days, time is precious for me. so i need to speed it all up!! there is never enough of it. do you have time for everything you want?

back to life

wait a minute! how can i come 'back to life'; have i been dead already? i hope not. for the last 10-14 days (i'm not exactly sure) i haven't had too much human contact besides hubby. i didn't write any mails or checked any social networks (i'm talking to you, facebook!) and of course, i didn't blog. so where have i been? maybe i was dead after all.

let's say i need some kind of incubation at times. i'm afraid to see what i will hatch, though. oh no. first i was a zombie, now i am a chicken.

watch your step

look at this girl! she's such a cutie pie. she was walking around after a brief rain. maybe not walking, but shall we say... waving around? her bottom part was wavering in a funny way to push her forward. she was quite fast, too. once again, i would like to say, texture! oh, and i feel she is so much more intelligent than me nowadays:D

so meric, you haven't been talking about your projects in a while. yeah, i know. i actually made a lot of progress in most of them (mainly on the bag and the website), but they both are in a state where showing what is going on is meaningless right now. there are bits and pieces all over. but i'm getting there. and believe me, the world is full of crazy textiles! (the bag front). so thin, yet so strong...as for my animation project, i haven't forgotten that a tiny bit, either. i'll come back to it in a while. but first things first. i've suffered from too much multitasking before, so i'm watching my portions with that. that's what i am, a chronic multitasker. anybody taking too much on their plate as well?

the light in the end

just let me live in this pipe. i won't ask for much, just a bite or two of food occasionally and some water. i will poke my head out once in a while, just to see the daylight. it will be safe, cozy and silent in my beloved yellow pipe.

hidden gems

can you spot the animal here? hehe. this guy was quite funny, legs and all. we saw him in inonu yaylasi. plateau, to be more accurate. i think i would not be too comfortable with my legs much higher than my sight. he didn't seem to mind, though.

besides being depressed over the fact that summer is ending, i have been quite busy dealing with my website. new sketches, new layouts... i know, i know! i'm too slow. i will never get anything done. at least in this life.

tip of the iceberg

look what i can achieve solely by writing code:hihi, not much yet, but all courtesy of w3schools! i would like to thank the staff a lot. i didn't write the code from scratch, by the way. now... how to re-create a whole blog with this?

edit: i think this one looks clearer. i wonder why blogger displays the image so shooty?

the answer must be out there somewhere

i'm here in ankara, waiting for my train trip to begin in... roughly two hours! i've met my family and friends. we had long chats. i ate amounts more than humanly possible. i went to some places around the city. but i couldn't find any answers to my questions yet. i know i'm being ambiguous, but just wait for a couple of days. i missed my home-office as well!

wish me luck with the ultra-boring 6-hour trip. yeah, i do read books but after a point that does no good either.

impaciencia

today i sent my mom's cover design to the publisher. my fingers are crossed. i feel it, this time they won't be able to screw things.

i am hopefully going to my hometown in a couple of days, if the train ticket gods have left me a seat. i think i haven't gone there for ages. hihi that city (ankara, to be exact) is like kind of a temple for me. i need to revolve around the places i spent my childhood and early adulthood, looking for a trace of past. i need to see that it still remains the same, no matter how far i go and how stupid things i do. yeah, of course it doesn't.

my god! how i missed working in 3d... virtual space, wait for me!

spontaneity

i think i might have broken my hip while running. naah, i think it would hurt a little more if i did so.

as you are thinking that you've got it all figured out, and you believe that you are realising your plan day by day, something comes up from out of nowhere that smashes it all down. something unplanned and that you have no control over. then you wake up from your little illusion and think 'wow, i'd better make the best of my time around here! it's not infinite, i guess.' you have to be reminded of that again and again and again. how stupid.

here, have some pears from our garden. fresh and organic. no worms included.

headphones

please don't be cross with me. i have a lot on my shoulders right now. tons of things to do. it's not that i'm out of things to write, but i just can't seem to focus. i'm like a child right now, with an attention span of less than 15 minutes. huh? meanwhile, let me entertain you with this little gal (how do we understand that it's a she? well i don't need to prove to you, she just is. grr.) another piece of my soon-to-be-website-blog-combo-box. cheers!

zona prohibida

this is all i can show right now from the new design of my blog and website. a small sneak peek. i will try to combine those two; both physically and designwise. is that possible? i think i will have to learn a lot of css for that. can we call css the big brother of html?(excuse me for the ultra technical references!) yet another session of learning new programs for me. sigh.

the website is progressing, though not as fast as i want it to. you know i constantly have the famous freelancer's dilemma of trying to motivate myself when nobody wants anything from me yet. but when i don't come up with new things to offer, nobody will want anything from me anyway. it's a snake trying to eat its own tail. i have to make him spit it out! the dilemma might not be famous at all.

honey rocks

agg! i need to reconstruct my website, together with my blog. pretty much work to do. i should have done it years ago. i also added a blogroll, which is quite miserable right now, with only two blogs, and one has not even been updated in four months! one step at a time, no?

this is one lovely spot in nature. it is called ballikayalar. i'm not giving a google map link, because i am lazy. the trail between the hills was quite enjoyable. we had to da a lot of jumping over rocks and dangerous waters:)

such a happy little life

yesterday i made a quick research on different textiles. i will continue with some field study. hm.

i also watched revolutionary road. i am a little disappointed with the ending, but overall it was really nice. what an appropriate movie for me at this time of the year! have you watched?

fully booked

this is roughly what my mom's new book is going to look like. i'm not sure about some points; whether i should remove the square that overlaps the title or whether the illustration looks really shitty. i'm not sure about the colors, either. the text on the back cover is the same one from the last book. that is going to change when the new text arrives. you see, i am in such a determined state:)

edit: i think this one is more like it. let's see what mom thinks...

endless repetitions

my lovely dear shopping bag is finished. i had to sew it again and again and again, until the constant 'ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta' clatter of the machine was filling my nightmares. you can't believe how stupid mistakes i made along the way (should i turn this backwards? oops-wrong side!). my next steps will be doing a lot of paranoid investigations. can i have it produced? in what volumes? at what price? who is going to be interested in it? those are some unanswered questions for now. but hey, if all questions were answered, it would be such a boring life, wouldn't it?

i think it might be around 45 degrees inside (i couldn't find the stupid 'degree' sign on the keyboard, do you know which key to stroke?) i need to go on with a lot of other work; my mom's book cover for one, but i'm kind of cooked right now. more images and animations are about to come, so stay tuned!

concrete

don't let your self-confidence shake near electronic devices (edit: terrible grammar!!). they sense it immediately and bam! your work becomes a mess. i am at the very last turn with my dear shopping bag project. just a few more alterations, and i'm done. then, suddenly, i have doubt in my mind.

meric-'should i sew this a little slower, so that i've got more control over the stitches; so that i am less likely to make a mistake?'
sewing machine-'a-ha! did she say mistake? i sense weakness. hahaha!' and then the guy completely destroys my hours long work in a split second. folds of fabric on top of each other, ten thousand stitches on the same point, threads sticking out from everywhere.

do you feel that too? when you have the tiniest bit of self-doubt, does it all go wrong suddenly?

trees again?

once again it is time for me to design a book cover for my mom. she is doing it again! hehe she is one of my most consistent customers:D i hope this time the publishers do get the color right... nowadays i have this problem of too many things going on in my mind. so i'm trying to calm down a little. every project one by one. breathe in. breathe out. as for the cover, let's see what happens:)

how are you and your mind doing these days?

lightweight

this is the top secret illustration from before. it hung for a long time on the school wall. now it proudly hangs at home. it wasn't actually top secret, i just didn't want to show it until it was finished. one of my friends says she wants to be the pink sheep, because that one looks the happiest.

digital painting is great, but i still love good old manual painting. brushes, acrylics and all.

doble

as i was blogging about our beloved trip, my video entries sunk deeper and deeper in the bottom, thus not getting a lot of visibility. i'm giving them one more chance. don't worry, i won't write double entries for everything.

hasta luego

i'm excited. as i decided before, i need to say goodbye to my bag once more, at least in this blog. so here is the two colored version. and it does fit in the little pocket on the right:)

hope you are doing well!

ruins

voila! my last entry on our trip. i'm not sure if i should create a separate blog for travel. are these entries damaging the design/animation focus of this blog? i don't know. keeping two separate blogs seems too much for me, though.

another nice lake called gökgöl. we saw black or common terns (edit: checked, and they are black terns, because the bills were black, not red) and observe their hunting and singing behaviors. we even saw orange-colored cattle egrets there.

usak was a little... fundamental for us.

if you happen to go to tavsanli, don't forget to stop by aizonai. it is a fantastic little historic site. such a surprise...

our last stop was delmece plateau (near tesvikiye village). it was foggy and cold and looked like a dutch landscape painting.

does birdwatching count as voyeurism?

our next target was olimpos. we took secondary roads again, passing through wonderful lakes and mountains.
we did see ferocious predators (i'm not sure if they were eagles) on the mountain road. we were lucky enough to see them with binoculars, but not fast and silent enough to take pictures.

a stork chorus was practising a canonical song:)

the lake avlan was bursting with bird species. even the burning heat couldn't stop us from enjoying this fairy tale spot.

this was by far the best moment of the whole trip (it was not the best artistic moment though, as you see). seeing a night heron just in front of our eyes. he just came flying, landed on that stick, and stood there for 15 minutes, leaving us time to enjoy his beauty.

here we are, in olimpos. can you guess which plant this is?

margharita

looking back, i miss our beloved trip so much. but i do enjoy working these days. so here we are, in datca again.

we went to marmaris as well for a night out. we weren't quite crazy about the impossibly touristic city. the bar we entered had some fireworks going on, though.

one mysterious dancer!

of course we had to build a sumo bunny of sand... she couldn't survive more than a couple of hours, though. when we came back after lunch, we found her kicked to death by some bully. grr.

settling in the peninsula

our next destination was datca (i have some problems with google maps by the way. can you see the locators?). my oh my! we wanted to drink the sea water. what an amazingly clean piece of nature! and how lovely people! and believe me, what we are eating in the city is shit compared to the food in datca.

this is old datca. all of the houses were made of stone. they used to be the villagers' homes, but were converted to trendy eco-tourism shops and ateliers.

i think it was a little windy at times.

what? of all the pictures you've taken, are you uploading this bug? yes, i am. this guy's movements and overall looks really struck me. he once tried to sleep in my shoe.

electric cables all around

my, writing travel entries takes long! now, i downsized the photos to be a little bigger. aqui, the second phase of our trip:

on our way to kula, we passed through extraordinary territory. at some point, there were rocks resembling fairy chimneys.

kula seemed to have a nice old town district. what absurd colors, materials and details once again!!
you know how i love sunset photos, don't you? i love them so much that i want to cover all my walls with the most cliché-looking sunset photos in the world. as we are about to arrive pamukkale (karahayit is more like it), and we are ridiculously exhausted, we can't help but capture this very moment.

asphalt eaters

alright, here are some photos from our beloved trip (some of them courtesy of hubby). i downsized them quite a bit, if it is too much, i'll try a bigger size next time. i will try to keep the entries simple, 3 photos maximum for each place, so you don't get bored to death!

so i have broken my own rule already. this photo has nothing to do with our last trip. so why did i put it here? no idea! it is from a trip on 23-25 april to assos. but my, what a surreal view!

ok, now for the real deal: this is simav, a lovely camping area near a lovely (and bird-laden) lake. we were there quite early, around 14:00. the pictures do there no justice, actually.

i told you i was going to birdwatch, and you didn't quite believe me, did you?. well, we did, and we saw soo many different fantastic birds. i could easily say that this was an amazing nature kind of trip. the little gal here was quite timid and we had a hard time photographing her.

after a comfy nights' sleep and lots of amazement, we continued our way to pamukkale. this photo was from a secondary road not so far from simav. most of the time our jaws dropped at how beautiful it was around (and yes, that is the windshield of a motorcycle:)

i will try to continue with one post each for every place we stayed over the next days. is this a travel blog? well, i don't know yet. stay tuned!