An update

I have had a very busy year so far! Early in the year I went New York to work on a production on broadway called 'Sunday in the Park with George'. After that I headed over to Dallas and spent some time working with all the legends at ReelFX on the film Open Season 2 (due for release later this year). When I got home we managed to sell our house and bought a beautiful old farmhouse out in the country much closer to my parents (yay!! Baby sitters for the first time in 4 years!!!)
We moved out to the country to try and get out of the rat race a little and to ensure our kids had a childhood as they grew up. So far so good. They love it here, and we now have a couple of goats which Aaron (my son) absolutely dotes on.

I found a clip on youtube which contains some of the animation I have completed this year on the Kung Fu Panda marketing.



I animated the first clip ("My name is Po..... I'm a panda......" etc etc ) and the last clip of po ("Panda style..... is something I kinda made up...." etc etc) in this sequence.


Anyway, til next time.

long time between posts

I've been over in the US recently, so as soon as I get my act together I'll post some photos and new animation and stuff.
I've been over in NY working on a broadway production 'Sunday in the Park with George', and then across to Dallas to work at ReelFX for a bit, then a quick explore of LA and now back home.

I had an absolute blast meeting a bunch of people who I have known for a long while but never actually met!
ANyway, as soon as things calm down over here I'll upload some stuff for people to look at.

Parallels between good animation and good dance

Let me make this clear. I can't dance. My wife has regularly commented on my inability to look even remotely cool when I dance (I don't try very often... it gives her to much to giggle at). I was watching TV last night and the final for 'So you think you can Dance' was on. In it one of the dancers did the most amazing solo for the program, and while I was watching it, it occurred to me that there a so many parallels between watching a wonderful dance/dancer and watching amazing animation.

From my undeducated dancing eye, the thing that I most enjoyed about the dancing were the same things I most enjoyed about great animation.
- Incredible strong storytelling poses
- Wonderful interesting absorbing transitions
- Variations in movement and timing
- Curves (man.... the way the guy in the final was able to move his body through the air with everything following these fluid arcs)
- Settles

It seems to me that a good way of explaining to people what the difference is between good animation and bad animation would be to get them to look at good and bad dancers and compare them.

I had a hunt on youtube and found the guys final solo. Unfortunately you have to wade through the standard corny discussion leading up to it, but if you're an animator, watch this guys solo. The pose he hits at the end of his pirouettes is wonderful to watch.

Great stuff.

:) I love animating!

His solo is about half way through the whole clip (2 minutes 11 seconds in), so skip forward to it if you can.


The Viennese waltz!

What I'm up to

Its been a crazy month or so. I've finished up working on Animalia and have spent the last couple months working on some Shrek 2 marketing, Bee movie marketing and am shortly to start working on a full length feature (of which I'm not sure I can speak yet... ). Its all very exciting. At the same time my son has turned 4, my daughter is walking and talking, and life is thumping along.

As soon as I get a chance I'll post some of the shots I did late last year for the TMNT movie, and a few other bits and pieces that I've done which I'm allowed to post.

More drawings

I went to life drawing this week and really felt I made some progress. In the past I haven't been so happy with my drawing style. They're satisfactory drawings, but not really the type of artwork that I like looking at. Tonight I tried a different shading technique and was very happy with the result. I feel like I'm starting to improve and it makes me happy. One day soon.... I'm going to tackle the face.... I'm a bit of a gutless wonder when it comes to drawing the face... if you stuff up the face, it always ruins the drawing. Still, I have to try it at some point!

20 minute pose 1:

20 minute pose 2:

The moon

So... there I was, at my desk animating away, and my mum gave me a call to tell me to pop outside and have a look at the moon. So we all went outside and found the the moon was a deep red colour as a result of a total lunar eclipse. It was captivating to watch. Imagine being on the moon while this happened and seeing the image of the earth as it crossed the path of the sun...

The photo above is not by me btw. The next one is in 2011. A couple of years ago we also saw the transit of venus (which is the same event that captain cook came south to record), which was also pretty astounding to watch.

Some animation

Its been a while since I've posted so I thought I might add some animation that I completed a while ago. I have posted a shot I did for the shrek 3 advertising campaign in which I animated Puss in Boots being interviewed in spanish. The ad was for Spanish TV. Go to the animation section for a look.