"TERRIBLE, I know"...

I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...

x 1000... 00000000000000000000000.......... 0






Wow, so it's been a good few months since I posted.... TERRIBLE, I know. My only excuse... [which now I think about it, really isn't a valid one...... so let me not bother explaining]. Anyhooow, on the UP side, I have actually been keeping up my creative productivity [just haven't blogged about it]. Below are a few doodles, illustrations & digital paintings done over the past few months. Browse through & I hope you like.


As always feel free to comment = )
More to come...
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BELOW: A few caricatures I've done over the past month as part of a weekly 'just for fun' quiz I recently set up for friends of mine on FaceBook... I usually throw it up on Sunday evenings [8pm UK time]. If you're in the neighbourhood, stop by, add me & feel free to join in the fun! Who knows, you may be the lucky winner & receive a FREE caricature of yourself too! It's all good clean fun >= )

BELOW: Line Art...


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BELOW: Some doodles...
   

Captain's Log.....

Star date.... 13, 7, 2010...... I've been a real fan of the original [Gene Roddenberry] series for years now but actually only just managed to get them all on DVD, including the feature films. Such a shame the series only made it to 3 seasons but for how cleverly creative the storylines are I guess it makes them that much more of a collectors item. I remember watching episodes on TV as a kid & being totally mesmerized by the adventures Kirk, Spok, Bones McCoy & the rest of the crew went on. The costumes, makeup fx & [almost pantomime] lighting were great; even the now not so special "special effects"..... & on top of that I had my phase of absolutely believing Cptn Kirk was the coolest man in the galaxy...... I believe he still is!

Anyways, will be working on a series of Star Trek themed illustrations over the next few weeks. Here are some roughs I've worked up so far. I know there are other fellow secret 'Trekkies' out there so hope y'all like [more to come over the next few weeks].

A.T.A Development Work...

Thought I'd post up some of the concept/ development stuff I did for the 'Tag Attack'...... I didn't actually explain before but one of the main things I was hoping to achieve in my piece was the overall look & feel of a movie or mystery series made back in the 1960's. It's a very specific style of editing & acting; down to little details like editing mistakes, damaged film frames during transitions or cuts to a proceeding shot, even also to the way d.o.f is used [love it!]. Main inspirations on this were James bond flicks [Sean Connery] & believe it or not, cheesy Elvis movies from the late 50's. Also a piece of work that caught my eye last year sometime was illustrator Kevin Dart’s trailer/ titles for “A Kiss From Tokyo” animated by Stephane Coedel. Won't go into it too much right now but I absolutely loved it! Anyways, below are series of stages I went though leading up to the finished sequence.

///CHARACTER RE-DESIGN/ ROUGH SKETCHES///

Early on I knew I wouldn't have the time to put as much into the animation of the character as I would have liked, so dint spend much time designing him as a whole person. I knew he wouldn't move much at all so once I was happy with getting his face the way I wanted I just worked out his main pose & that was it; animating only his breathing motion & hospital gown umm... draping in the wind.

///COLOUR THUMBNAILS/ BOARDS///
Again I didn't really have time to get too bogged down in detail with the development process so decided to just use these somewhat detailed thumbnail sketches as a final storyboard... [they made sense in my head]

///FINAL BACKGROUNDS///
Photoshop- digitally painted 

                                                                               






///BACKGROUND 05 time lapsed Artwork///



///BACKGROUND 04 time lapsed Artwork///

ATA-Episode 6

So it's been a little while since my last post but hopefully my blog will forgive me as it's not all been in vain.... For the past few weeks now I've been working on & off on my episode for the 'Animation Tag Attack' & finally here it is... Had to cut short the precipice I was planning to end on due to time but think I'll add that in later on here as some what of an alternate ending.


Actually had a lot of fun & learnt loads working on this so it's been a nice little breakaway from commercial work. Hope you guys like it? All comments are welcome! Watch all the EP's together & let me know how it reads to you; it's interesting to see how each person interprets the narrative/ order of events so far.  I myself can make some sense out of it... Whether it's right or not, who knows [haha] but I guess that's what this little creative exercise is about........ ENJOY!         = )
PS: will post up some concept stuff soon...

Tag! You're IT!!!

Talented Animator/ illustrator/ musician & all round cool guy Christen Bach who I had the pleasure of connecting with through the Berlin Pictoplasma Festival was kind enough to invite myself & co-director Ewen Stenhouse to take part in his 'Animation Tag Attack'. [similar to the 'psst pass it on' collaborative film project]:

"Each participant gets 4 weeks to produce between 5 and xx seconds of film. When the time is up, the clip gets uploaded to the blog and the next one in line takes over. It is up to each individual creator to pick the style and media they want to work in - and to decide how they think the story should evolve."

He's hyped us up quite a bit, which I guess can only be a good thing right?.....[gulp]..... NO PRESSURE! I'd always wanted to take part or set something like this up but the opportunity never really presented itself. Just think it's a great way of exercising creativity, a good means of improving narrative skills & collaborating with other filmmakers. Once all the films are pieced together the end result can never really be bad I think; it's just interesting to see how each story fuses with the next.

It's kicked off to an interesting start with some pretty cool pieces, all using different techniques. Love the hands on the character of EP_03 in the close up shot & Christen's piece [EP_01] I'm still trying to figure out how he got that look... cool stuff! I'm actually up now after this piece by Oren Mashkovski.



..... LET'S GO!

sssSSUPER POST!!!

See that? I call it 'super post' because it's 'super' quick!... Sort of like, "NEWS FLASH!"... or a... "THIS JUST IN!"... or maybe... "BREAKING NEWS!"....................

Anyway, just received word from a friend that the 2008 C.O.I. 'Try Life in Another language' commercial I co-directed & animated with Ewen [as Angry Natives] was featured in 'Drawn' Weblog.... "Eeeeexcellent!" Big thanks to John Martz for being kind enough to post it up! Vimeo hits are going nutz & we're getting a lot of great feedback! Thanks to everyone who's taking the time to watch it. Definitely more to come real soon so hope you stick around!   

"Give me Biiiig Aaanime eyes!"...

In a brief panic that I'm not keeping up with my weekly posts, I thought I'd just pop this up.

Here are a few designs I did for a- uummm... commercial job...... (BOOOOOO!) I know, originally I wanted to keep my commercial stuff off here just so it stays purely personal (if you know what I mean) but thought well commercial or not they still came from my mind, I still had to envisage & create them same way I would any other, so to me that still counts dagnammitt! but with this I'm extracting the impurity of advertising, branding & product placement with which they were created for... Hopefully you too will see them purly for what they are originally... an outlet & expression of creativity??

I think I'll save an in depth discussion on this topic for another post as I have too much to say on it... Trust me! Anyways here are some designs for those of you 'big Anime eyes' lovers out there. The characters needed to look full on anime style & fit a sort of guitar hero arcade game kinda feel.............. That is all.