Progress...

September already! So the time has come to say goodbye to another summer and welcome gloomy evenings.  Still the Chimney sweep is coming together a little more, I have yet to finalise a storyboard but with thumbnails piling up it shouldn't be long.  Below is the final design for the little sweep minus the dirt textures to get a better feel for the shape and form when modelling.

Along with this are the front and side drawings I'm using to model, these have been quite useful already in blocking out storyboards.  Maya modelling of the sweep has begun as well as for the Victorian environment however story definitely still needs to be the focus so my next post will be set of boards.

Getting Somewhere

Hi all, well the final sweep design is now going under a few last tweaks and I've been reworking the story a little through rough storyboards.  I'm currently on my lunch break at work so this is a quick catchup post really, I've attached a few sketches and a Photoshop render in progress.

Animations Sans Frontieres is just over 6 weeks away now so the project needs to be back on course really if I have any hope of a good pitch.  I anticipated a little Maya work would be done by now to post up but alas I've been preoccupied :(.  So a rough model of a character or 2 should be up on the blog soon.  

Thanks Max for following ;)

environment, sort of

With no idea which character designs to take forward I've decided to start throwing the maybes into a story based composition/environment to get an idea of their contribution to the feel of the film.  This layout features the moth having found light/ hope for the little chimney sweep, injured and trapped.  These are 2 slight variations painted in Photoshop.

Moth matics

Another moth post, had abit more of a go at the wings here.
Starting to think a stronger use of pattern in the wings might be interesting.

A William Morris influenced pattern could be great. 

I'm perhaps getting a little too cutesy with the character here

Project Moth

Here is a concept for the moth of "The Chimney Sweep"
The moth really has to be an appealing character that an audience can empathise with.
























I'm looking at it's design from a few angles, this was a rabbit/owl like moth,
Expect to see many more moth posts :S

Catchup!

Hey, well I've been busy recently and have neglected my poor blog.  Lots of sketches and new software combined with a new job have left me lacking in spare time :(. However this does mean I have a "back log" of material for the "blog" so it should be a good month.  Here's a penguin.

I have a few exciting projects on the go:

• Chimney Sweep
• Little Light
• Showreel 2010
• Monster Hunter (with Mr Andrew Leeke)
• Teaching  Animation Workshops at The Phoenix (also with Andrew Leeke)

August has arrived.

an EP cover for "Two in a Boat"

I have recently finished the EP cover for my brother's band Two in a Boat's upcoming single.  The musical duo recently won a county wide competition to play at Glastonbury Festival 2010 and asked me to produce some cover art for their promotional CD release this summer.

There are elements I feel could have been improved with a little more time such as the bracelet, the caricatures and the overall colour correction but for a first attempt at something like this I feel things went OK.

Two in a Boat's music can be found at http://www.myspace.com/twoinaboat
and anyone attending Glastonbury 2010 can find the pair playing the BBC Introducing stage on Saturday 26th of June.

Life Studies

Well after 6 months of blogging animation theory from my moleskin journals I felt it was about time my creative work had a blog of its own.  I've jumped back into life drawing to exercise the doodling skills, its incredible how alien a pencil or even graphics tablet feels after an overdose of Maya.