Merry Xmas!

Question: does this keep playing when no one is watching it?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

More girlies

More girlies dancing from the same project:

and stills from the Flash anim:

Nice beer last night with the old LAS crew. A little depressing about the state of the industry here, and animators can and do moan to Olympic standard but still had fun.

Mark, where were you?

Invite Drawing

Me and Louise are getting married in April. As a 'creative' I wanted to do something for the invite rather than just buying something. I did this drawing from a photograph with the intention of having it on the front.

I got lots of help from my friend Carrie with the design and tried a load of different things, but it just wasn't working. Eventually Louise found a make-your-own kit in Confetti and the drawing found a home inside, opposite the details.

This was a difficult drawing to do because I hadn't tried to draw a 'realistic' likeness of anyone for years, and I'm used to drawing rough sketchy scribbles that noone apart from myself needs to get.

It's difficult to be objective but I like it. Carrie said it looks kind of like the Posy Simmonds strip in the Guardian which is is fine by me.

Cartoon Saloon and the Book of Kells

A couple of years ago a friend sent me a copy of the book Flips 7. It basically gives a profile on about a dozen studios and creators and the things they're working on. It also had a free DVD with some clips and by far the best animation on it was by an Irish company called Cartoon Saloon.

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/website.htm

Basically these guys are the best. If it weren't for a couple of really frustrating reasons (well, a two bedroom flat shaped frustrating reason anyway) I'd be over there, happy as a sandboy working on their Flash series Skunk Fu: http://skunkfu.blogspot.com/

And I don't know of a more exciting project than their feature Brendan & the Secret of Kells: http://theblogofkells.blogspot.com/

It takes so much money, talent and resources to make even a half watchable feature animation that it always surprises me how keen everyone seems to be to keep doing it. It seems to me that 5-30 minutes is the ideal length for animation, giving you a much better chance of getting more things right than wrong. But this project looks like the absolute bees knees and I can't wait to see it.

Listening to the cricket

Done for the Skwigly Animation Sketch competition: Theme: "I should really get some sleep”

http://www.biganimation.com/forum/tm.asp?m=5814

just before Strauss needlessly gave his wicket away.

Arse

Coloured Podium Angel

And these are stills of the animated version:

New Job

So I've got a pretty cool job doing illustration/animation for an internet gaming company. I wasn't really sure what it was going to be like but it's actually quite fun.

This is the kind of thing I'm doing.




As per usual, pretty rough sketches.

So, in the petty, childish words of the Cranberries; Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We.

I've been meaning to do this for ages, but when it comes to actually doing it it's difficult to come up with drawings that I think are going to impress people. I've become quite a lazy drawer because I know I can clean things up and change proportions etc when I come to draw it up in Flash.

Bad habit to get into.

Anyway, these are the two drawings that turned into the Spider-Man at the start of my showreel: http://www.bentosanimation.co.uk

Later I shall write extensively on the deficiencies of the English football, rugby and cricket teams.