Unreal Article

Hey, I know Unreal 3 has been out for a long time now but here is an article that provides a little bit of insight into its development. Interesting from an artists point of view and lots of pretty pictures to boot.

Resident Evil Production Art

Found what looks like early production art for Resident Evil 5, nice little video montage.

Alma

Alma, a short film by Rodrigo Blass. Find out a little more about him, the animation and the team that made it here.

Make You own Avatat

Ok I might not quite be able to reproduce this yet myself, but most of the techniques he appears to use are recognisable to me and I believe anyone with a competent knowledge of Photoshop.
I came across it on this Avatar obsessed blogg, which is in itself quite interesting.

Birth of an AVATAR from Peter Ammentorp Lund on Vimeo.

Skhizein

I also came across this whilst looking up links for the cat piano this morning. Skhizein by French animator Jeremy Clapin.

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.

This is an absolutely fantastic premise:

"After being struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living precisely 91 centimeters from himself."

Very entertaining and brilliantly executed and convincing. I like it when he says he is "beside himself" at the end.

The Cat Piano

Check this out, The Cat Piano. It was created by the Australian team, The Peoples Republic of- Animation. I thoroughly enjoyed watching... and listening to this piece of work. Gotta love Nick Caves voice. I need to look further into this but is Nick Cave a big animation fan, he is working on this but also the last time I came across him was when I heard about a collaboration between him and Mark Craste of Studio AKA?

Trevor Hardy

I made a post that Included some of Trevor's work yesterday that didn't go into much depth.
I will correct that now. You can find his website here. He also has a few more lovely short films posted their. Hope you enjoy.

Madame Tutli Putli

WOW, just watched this short film. Looks absolutely gorgeous and so intense to boot.
I wanted to watch this 18 months ago at the film festival in Auckland but missed my chance.
Forgot about it until now. I just find it amazing how beautiful the puppets face looks in some of the shots. Go here to find out about the woman behind Madam Tutli Putli's eyes. Also Jason Walker's site demonstrates how the eyes were compossited onto the puppet. It goes into considerable depth.

The film has its own site here where you can find out more about the crew, the production and the directors/ animators Maciek Szczerbowski and Chris Lavis.

British Animations 01

Ok below are some British Animations I should consider when thinking about every aspect of my own work.
Liver Good Life: An informative animation about Liver health and disease prevention.

Phoebe Boswell has some great work, she is an artist who has been experimenting with animation, check out all of the work on her website, she has some beautiful work posted up their.
Bellow is an example of some of her work and her show reel. Check out her page on Vimo to see a little more of her animation work.

Show reel from Phoebe Boswell on Vimeo.

Here is another one from Phoebe Boswell that I quite like. I think it could be improved however if the characters overtook each other (this may go against the intended reading of the piece) as the feet of some seem to be moving faster than others, I think that this would make the piece slightly more interesting to the eye and much more dynamic.

The Carriers III from Phoebe Boswell on Vimeo.

I have also been looking at the work of Tom Judd. A graduate from RCA London.
Bellow is the teaser trailer for his short film, 'Bruce' which I believe won the award for best student film at BAF09. I just wish I could see the whole film. Check out his site, it is nice.

Bruce - trailer from Tom Judd on Vimeo.

I was also struck by the style of the images in Tom's note/ sketch book.
Bellow is an image of one of the pages from his book. It has a style that I have ever so slightly adopted in my own note book, the use of colour in particular.
Ok next we have Lottie White who has a very cute website filled with beautiful Illustrations and animations. Her animation "I see what you are saying" was a finalist in the student category of BAF09. Below is her animation "I can't see". Also an example of her brilliant illustration.


NEXT: Billy Allison, a professional animator of 25 years. Here is his website with loads of stuff up on his page. Bellow is an animation that was featured at this years BAF awards in the short, short films category. "Highly Overated", check it out:

Now another animation from the short, short films category at BAF09,
this time a film by Trevor Hardy called "At Death's Door" which I thought was quite funny, I like the old Lady's no nonsense attitude, it reminds me of the animation "How to Cope with Death" Also a link to another film he released last year called 'Pushkin' which is also very funny.

WOW, just watched 'Stupid Table' by Andy Sykes, he won best short, short film at BAF09 with this. I related to this film in particular the way he describes his growth and progression, also I to was on the stupid table in primary school (so to speak) , I also love art and feel that my brain untangled in senior school meaning that I caught up with and surpassed many of my peers academically (not all tho, not by a long shot). In this short I also like the posters in his bedroom, some of which are very cool as they change over time.

I think he has a great sense oh humor, I recommend checking out his site and watching:
'Andy's Life Animations', 'Zimmy's Minnie Stories', 'Evil Fun With Zimmy' and his coloring book advert. Hell watch everything the guy has good story telling technique, I even detected a really sad subtext to 'Special Glue'.

Ok I have been looking at yet more animations that featured at the Bradford festival this year.


'Christmas at Small Birds Singing' was screened at the festival and as a result I also stumbled across the original short animation. They are both directed by 'Linda McArthy' check her out at Tiny Elephants.co.uk a very attractive website, some oddities on sale their as well.


Bellow is an extract from Philip Bacon's animation 'Yellow Belly End'. He is represented by
'Slinky Pictures' and another extract from this animation can bee seen on their page as well as a whole collection of extracts from the work of other animators registered with them. I recommend watching the extract from 'Yellow Belly End' that I found on 'Slinky Pictures' page. Watch it after the clip posted bellow, together they tell an interesting story. I would like to see the full movie to see if the story is told in this order.


Now for this next one, I know most of his work isn't done in the UK but I believe that it is where this next piece was made so I will Include it. Again check out his site fore some very freaky stuff.
I recommend 'Nose' bellow but 'Wolves' which was screened at BAF09 can be found on his site.


Ok, yet another one 'TXT Island' by Chris Gavin, check him out here.


Photograph of Jesus by Laurie Hill. this site has some interesting people and their work on it.

Check out the work of Bali Engel, and his animation 'Norwich to Sheringham' which was also shown at BAF09.

Wow, this shit is funny. Literally.

This 'Film about Poo' was directed by Emily Howells and Anne Wilkins.

More Advice

I would just like to make a note of some of the advice I got from Dave today. First off he mentioned a U.S website where people are able to post stings that small companies can buy and use, I am not sure if they are intended for broadcast, online use or for internal promotion, however the idea is that you create a generic ident that any company could use, allowing them to either add small changes or leaving them space to add their own images and logo. The idea being that you create this without any brief but sell it for around $10, however you have the right to sell it to as manny people as possible. He gave example of some selling in excess of 300 coppies, which would make a tidy proffit for the designer.
Anyway as well as being a useful piece of informatio (I just have to finde the site now) this stressed the point that it is important for me to know what my customer wants out of the designe. What do bussinesses want.

New Friend (I hope)

I made an interesting friend today, supose he is still an aquaintence at the moment. Started talking to the guy, who is called David by the way, who lives just at the end of my street. Started talking today about my old fasioned sledge as I walked past his house in the very heavy snow that we have had up here this morning. Anyways turns out he has spent years working in tellevision independently. He seemd pleased to be spaking with someone who was into a similar subject. Anywho of the manny things we talked about, predominantly film and software he told me that I should deffinetly have a look at the film Nocturne. A short film shot on a DSLR, the point being that technology has advanced so far that we can now shoot footage of a similar quality to "Raw film cameras" (I hope I have got my terminology correct their). He mad a point of explaning that the opening sequence of "Slum Dog Millionair" was shot with a stills camera in order to avoid having expensive camera equipment damaged or stolen in the rough slumms that they fillmed in. In David's opinnion this will be a great aid to some film makers reducing the amount of equipment that they need to take with them especial if they are filming in remote regions. I believe he feels that this is the way that our tecnology is changing and that the quality of footage obtained by these still image cameras is simply amasing.
Also, an interesting competition starting in a few days that cannon has set up. I bellieve that it will run for about 8 months.
Oh and bellow are some shots of the snow that I was talking about today.

Star Wars

Ok so the work is I am showing bellow is quite old now. I produced these drawings late in the summer of 2009 and finished putting them up on my first day back at university in 2009.
This was in a way my last act, working at Next Great Northern in Huddersfield.

Basically over the sale season at the end of the summer Next had a sci-fi theme to their internal sales competition. I designed this board with some of the managers redrawn as Star Wars characters. I know it looks a little crappy but I put quite a lot of work into this and I managed to pull off a few of the likeness quite well.

The Staff visible in the images are as follows, Lian as Leawock the Eawock. Rachel as princes Lea, Laura as a Storm Trooper, Saleem as Luke Skywalker, Nickie as C3PO, Sophie as Han Solo and Lia as Darth Vader. These names not mean anything to you but are hear for the sake of my shoddy memory.
Oh, to be honest the look and style of these is like something I wolud have done when I was back at school, but it was just a little bit of fun.

Christmas Card

Hey, here is a photo of a Christmas Card I made for my partners Brother.
Didnt have my camera available before I posted it but here is a snap of it that she got for me.