The Little Wolf

Canary

2012-01-24T10:13:00.001Z

Bangladesh International Children's Film Festival

2012-01-16T21:40:00.004Z

And so we have our first festival of 2012! I'm very pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for the International Children's Film Festival in Bangladesh. The festival takes place 21-27 January, if you're around then please come along.

A plan

2012-01-16T01:00:00.005Z

And so 2012 has begun! This year I plan to practice drawing environments and architecture and hopefully introducing a little more colour into my work (fingers crossed). I'm not sure where this will take me as I've yet to get the chance to do anything towards it but it's always good to know in which direction you want to head.

In the meantime I'm still busying away at Aardman and hopefully soon some of the commercials I storyboarded last year will begin to appear on television so I can talk about them. Until then here are some quick sketches that admittedly have nothing to do with environments or architecture...

Damned featured on La Gaîté Lyrique

2011-12-15T21:01:00.003Z

Wow! Damned has been featured on 'La Gaîté Lyrique', a French design website, in an article about character design! To quote:

"Characters create stories, extending beyond design for design's sake and bringing deeper meaning to narrative work."

A big thanks to Claire Cook who wrote the article, which can be found here. Exciting!

Life Drawing at Aardman

2011-12-01T15:45:00.007Z

This week I begin storyboarding at Aardman! It's such an amazing place, literally every shelf and bookcase is stacked with props and models from films I grew up watching, I've already spotted Feathers McGraw, the penguin from the Wrong Trousers, complete with getaway train!

I can't talk about what I'm doing at the moment but in the meantime here are some studies from my first life-drawing class here.

Paddington

2011-11-29T01:33:00.003Z

Leuven International Short Film Festival

2011-11-29T00:58:00.002Z

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for Leuven International Short Film Festival in Belgium. The festival takes place 3rd - 10th December so if you're around the please come along.

Henri Langlois

2011-11-27T01:44:00.003Z

I'm very pleased to announce that Damned will be screening at the 34th Rencontres Henri Langlois Festival International des Ecoles de Cinema in Poitiers, France. The festival takes place between 2nd - 11th December so if you're around then please come along. Damned will be showing in the special screening for little ones called 'Piou-Piou'.

The (enjoyable) Morning Commute

2011-11-24T17:35:00.006Z

Ah London.. How I missed you and your unbelievably crowded tube trains! I'm currently back at Nexus this week storyboarding so it's been a good chance to do some underground sketches.

I've been going through a bad-patch recently and have pretty much filled an entire sketchbook with nothing but false-starts. I know that sometimes that's just the way it goes but when they start to pile up it doesn't feel good. I think I've figured out the problem though, I've drained all the fun out of sketching and been over-analysing my drawings too much.

It's good to be aware of why something didn't work and to try and build on it but too much analysis and the suddenly the pressure is on for every sketch to be perfect (which they very rarely are). So today I decided to switch off and just enjoy drawing.

Bus Station

2011-11-19T00:21:00.003Z

Animax Skopje Animation Festival

2011-11-14T23:39:00.002Z

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for Animax Skopje Animation Festival in the Republic of Macedonia. The festival takes place between 24-26 November so if you're around then please come along.

Bradford Animation Festival

2011-11-06T13:22:00.003Z

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for Bradford Animation Festival in the UK. The festival takes place 8-12 November. We'll be screening in the Official Selection: Student Films 1 so if you're around then please come along.

Resume

2011-10-31T22:30:00.005Z

I finally got round to setting up my new scanner so I can get back to posting sketches.

I've recently just finished storyboarding a commercial pitch at Nexus Productions directed by FX & Mat. The pitch was loads of fun and featured some amazing concept art by Bjorn-Erik Aschim so I really hope it makes it onto screen soon. I'll see about posting some panels from the storyboards but in the meantime, here's some recent sketches from London and Bristol..

Cinanima International Animated Film Festival

2011-10-31T10:35:00.002Z

Pleased to announce that Damned will be screening in the Children's Programme at Cinanima International Animated Film Festival in Portugal. The festival takes place 7-13 November so if you're around please come along.

Uppsala International Short Film Fesitval

2011-10-17T10:40:00.003+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for Uppsala International Short Film Festival in Sweden. The festival takes place 24-30 October and we'll be screening in the Children's Film Festival. If you're around the please come along.

Damned at PictureHouse Kid's Club

2011-10-14T12:41:00.004+01:00

This Saturday Damned will be screening in 24 selected PictureHouse Cinemas all over the UK as part of a special 'PictureHouse Kid's Club' event organised by LIAF. For full details of screenings close to you click here.

Encounters International Film Festival

2011-10-12T16:19:00.002+01:00

I'm very pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for the Encounters International Film Festival in Bristol. I've been going to encounters for many years and it's such a great festival so I'm honoured to be screening there. The festival takes places between the 16th - 20th November and Damned will be screening in both the International Competition 'Animalis Anima' (Wednesday 16th at 4pm & Sunday 20th at 12pm) and the Children's Jury (Saturday 19th at 10am). Full details can be find on the website here.

Balkanima European Animated Film Festival

2011-10-03T13:52:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for Balkanima European Animated Film Festival in Belgrade, Serbia. The festival takes place 4-8 October. If you're around then please come along.

Shhh..

2011-09-28T12:14:00.008+01:00

Not had chance to post much artwork recently but all for good reasons. I've just finished work on a commercial (I can't talk about it yet) which is set to go on tv and cinema release very soon. As soon as it's out I'll post a clip. I'm working on another project right now which I also can't talk about but hopefully will be able to soon..hooray for promoting secret work!
In the meantime, here are a couple of sketches of people from my travels.

Damned screening at BAFTA

2011-09-28T10:26:00.003+01:00

I'm very happy to announce that Damned will be screening at BAFTA tonight as part of the 'NFTS' Stars of Tomorrow 2011' showcase!

Festival du Film Britannique de Dinard

2011-09-26T10:15:00.006+01:00

I'm very pleased to announce that Damned has been selected to represent the National Film and Television School at this year's Festival du Film Britannique de Dinard. The festival takes place between the 5th and 9th October.

Canterbury Anifest

2011-09-09T00:17:00.003+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been selected for the Canterbury Anifest. We will be screening on Sunday 2nd October in the 'British Shorts' category. If you're around then please come along!

Tindirindis International Animation Film Festival

2011-08-28T13:50:00.004+01:00

Damned has made its 5th festival! We will be screening at Tindirindis International Animation Festival in Lithuania in October!

Raining in London

2011-08-24T19:22:00.004+01:00

I saw these two from the bus. Good old English summer weather.

Commute

2011-08-19T19:07:00.004+01:00

I'm busy working on a commercial in Soho at the moment (amongst other things) but there is always time for sketching!

Floating in a most peculiar way..

2011-08-17T14:26:00.002+01:00

London International Animation Festival

2011-08-05T23:15:00.004+01:00

Damned has been selected for the London International Animation Festival. We will be screening in the 'British Showcase' section in the Barbican on 1st September so if you're around then please come along!

Film Festival Della Lessinia

2011-07-29T21:36:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been officially selected for the 17th Film Festival Della Lessinia in Italy! We are screening on 25th August at the Teatro Vittoria in Bosco Chiesanuova so if you're around then please come along!

Honourable Mention at Vila do Conde

2011-07-19T21:05:00.006+01:00

I'm very happy to announce that Damned received an 'Honourable Mention' in the Curtinhas Competition at Vila do Conde International Film Festival! A huge thank you to everybody involved at the festival and for all the people who came along to watch the film :)

Puppet Design

2011-06-18T17:44:00.003+01:00

I did some work on a stop-motion project recently, designing the main characters. I can't post any of the finished designs yet but here are some of the exploratory sketches for one of the characters (a retired dancer). This character underwent a major script change before settling on the final design which is why the designs are so varied.

The puppets are currently being made so as soon as I'm able I'll post a picture from the film. I can't wait to see how the designs translate from paper to 3-dimensional puppets.

Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival

2011-06-11T23:24:00.008+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been officially selected for the Curtinhas Competition of the 19th Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival. The festival takes place in Portugal from the 9th to the 17th July so if you're around please come along.

Here is a link to the Curtinhas section of the Festival.

Very exciting :)

British Council Short Film Promotion Scheme

2011-06-04T14:28:00.007+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that Damned has been accepted by the British Council for their Short Film Promotion Scheme. The scheme is setup to provide a platform for promoting short films to international festivals around the world.

You can check out Damned's listing here.

Damned Facebooking and Twittering

2011-05-30T16:51:00.011+01:00

Damned now has it's very own Facebook page so please stop by and check it out (don't forget to 'like' it). We're also now on Twitter so if tweeting is your thing then come and follow us. A HUGE thanks to everyone for all their support!

Click the images above to go to the pages.

TV Sketches

2011-05-23T23:49:00.012+01:00

TV sketching is really great because you never know how long anything will stay onscreen for so you've got to get it down on paper as quick as possible (if you're lucky they might cut back to something that you only partly got done so you get a second chance to finish it off).

These are from the first episode of a new series called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by the documentary filmmaker, Adam Curtis. I'm a big admirer of his work and I recommend all of his former films, The Trap, The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares to name a few for an interesting perspective on how the modern world has been shaped and how in turn these forces effect us all. His new series explores the idea that Humans have been colonised by the machines that they have built. Cut entirely from interviews and found-footage, using all different types of music (film soundtracks, old pop songs) the films have a really interesting narrative structure that somehow holds together in spite of the sometimes abstract leaps from one subject to the next.

DAMNED WORLD PREMIERE

2011-05-15T13:44:00.013+01:00

I'm very pleased to announce that DAMNED will have it's World Premiere at the 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival! The film will be screening on Sunday 26th June as part of 'Family Shorts' so if you're around then come along!

The Royal Wedding

2011-04-29T20:37:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton!

I've never seen London so busy and full of excitement! It took me all morning to make my way around the police barriers to get to Buckingham Palace, and I feel like I've walked all over London (which isn't far from the truth) but I finally made it onto the Mall just in time for the balcony kiss.

ahh..

An estimated one million people lined the procession and everywhere was just a sea of flags and happy faces. The whole day has been amazing!

Damned Trailer

2011-03-05T18:50:00.001Z

Master

2011-03-04T20:51:00.002Z

Today, strong am I in the Force.

Finished

2011-02-20T05:29:00.007Z

It is Finished.

Twelve Months in production, Tens of thousands of drawings, countless cups of coffee (mmm coffee), and a generous sprinkling of sleepless nights, Damned has finally reached the end of production! The film was onlined on Friday and will soon be released upon the world.

The graduation screening takes place this Friday at the BFI in London and then it's time to start sending it off to festivals! Exciting!

In the meantime here's an early design of the hero of the story. Now that I have some free time I plan to post designs and images from all stages of the filmmaking process.

DAMNED Music

2011-01-20T19:12:00.002Z

Last week my composer, Jon Wygens recorded the music for DAMNED and it sounds amazing! Sadly I didn't take any photos but made a list of how many instruments there were..

It's all coming together now :) so exciting!

Ta Da!

2010-12-10T22:01:00.003Z

Ta Da! There we have it, hot off the press...
The first publicity still for Damned.

Not long to go now..

Location, Location, Location

2010-11-30T19:37:00.002Z

Greetings

2010-11-11T10:49:00.003Z

I have returned! Apologies for my disappearance over the past months but it was all for a good cause, my graduation film is now entering the final stages of editing, colouring and post-production!

It's been the best of times (yay!) and the worst of times (boo!) but I think in the end it's all been worth it and the finished film is going to be lots of fun. Roll on February!

In the meantime I'm going to post some bits and pieces from the production over the coming months to show what we've been up to.

Life Drawing, one minute at a time

2010-06-25T01:15:00.004+01:00

A few 1-minute quickfire sketches from life drawing today.

Drawn with my 'wrong' hand.

Life Drawing

2010-06-03T21:02:00.005+01:00

5 minutes

10 minutes

Lions, and tigers, and gorillas?! Oh my..

2010-06-03T20:54:00.003+01:00

Had a quick trip to London Zoo over the weekend and managed to get a bit of sketching done amidst all the rain.

Life Drawing

2010-05-27T21:24:00.005+01:00

5 mins

5mins

10mins

15mins

Sunshine

2010-05-21T12:44:00.003+01:00

The sun has finally arrived in England but at the NFTS no one is distracted and work continues as normal..

Greenlight

2010-05-14T11:22:00.004+01:00

And so Production begins! Coming in 2011...

Sketches

2010-05-07T16:33:00.000+01:00

Van Gogh

2010-04-21T11:08:00.006+01:00

I went to the Royal Academy last week to see the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition that's just come to an end.
The exhibition was a collection of Vincent's original letters and artwork that spanned his entire career as an artist. It was so inspiring to see his earliest pen and ink work and the letters that went with them. He spoke of his frustration at drawing people, then the introduction of colour and how this lightened his mood. There were letters about his love of Japanese art and how this inspired the vivid colours and warm energy of his later work. Each room of the exhibition captured a different stage of his life and it was fascinating to see the detailed illustrations and watercolours he would include on his letters with little descriptions of his paintings.

I had a look through my portfolio when I got back and found a very small study I did in Biro pen and pencil crayon when I was at University based on an early Van Gogh painting 'A Peasant Woman Digging'.

It was so inspiring to see so much of his work that I could forgive the 2 hours (crazy!) queue just to get inside. Now back to developing my film!

Ronald Searle

2010-04-02T18:37:00.004+01:00

Having managed to crawl from under the mountain of storyboards I've been making during the preproduction of my grad film, I took a little trip into London last week to see Matt Jones give a talk on Artist and Cartoonist Ronald Searle at the Cartoon Museum.

The museum is currently hosting a collection of Searle's work, in particular his reportage work, as Searle himself entered his 10th decade last month! I love the quality of his line and how it all seems so simple and effortless yet the pictures are so layered and complex, and most importantly, so full of life. I can't really do his work justice in words but instead I can recommend the online tribute full of fantastic sketches and illustrations put together by Matt Jones here.

When I got back from the talk I went through the folder of artwork I've been gathering up to help inspire the look of my film and lo and behold, Ronald Searle artwork!

I love the expression on the face of this character :)

It was so inspiring to see so much great work. I can now get back to storyboarding feeling fully recharged!

Prairie Dog

2010-03-19T20:04:00.004Z

And so Grad Film development is now fully underway. I won't be able to post much about the film itself just yet as I don't want to spoil it, plus it's already undergone several major changes so anything I write about is likely to change. However, I will try to post sketches throughout the production and so first up, prairie dogs. I came across a documentary on them whilst researching for animal calling sounds; apparently prairie dogs have an intricate language of 'chirps' for different predators. So not only did I get to draw loads of them I also learnt the difference between the chirp for a badger and the chirp for a coyote!

Laika, Stanley Pickle & The Hen House

2010-03-02T11:44:00.009Z

It's that time again, this year's NFTS graduation films have just been premiered at the BFI in London. I thought they were all amazing and I'm proud to say that I got to work on three of them so it's time for some shameless promotion!

Laika - Directed by Avgousta Zourelidi

Stanley Pickle - Directed by Victoria Mather

The Hen House - Directed by Elena Pomares

Coming to festivals around the world so look out for them!

Sketches

2010-02-21T13:18:00.004Z

It's been a busy few weeks getting my And/Or trailer completed and working with Gareth my screenwriter on developing the story for my Graduation film but in spite of all that there is always time for sketching! These are all quick studies based on stills from the BFI monthly catalogue.

Next week I begin concept art for my grad film so hopefully lots of messy thumbnails and paint and pastels! I can't wait!

Terry Gilliam

2010-02-08T10:54:00.003Z

The final week of production on my And/or Book Trailer has begun. It's been a really interesting project; I've taken the opportunity to learn a lot more in After Effects and also to explore using colour and how it can influence the overall tone of a piece. When I pitched the idea of an Art-Deco Busby Berkeley style short I imagined lots of gold and silver but the And/or logo uses only blue and orange so it's been a fun challenge to use such a limited palette.

I've also got lots of development meetings this week for Grad Film so I'll be spinning lots of plates trying to get everything sorted whilst sifting through my ideas to see which ones might have some potential and which ones are just plain duds.

On a totally different note, the amazing Terry Gilliam came to the NFTS last week to give a masterclass. He was fantastic, he talked about his career after Monty Python and how he works as a director. He was full of great advice and tips but I got so carried away just watching him talk that my notes afterwards didn't make a great deal of sense. The only two sentences that I could make out in my sketchbook were:

'Too much imagination can lead to madness but too much realism can cause depression.'

'Offence is an important thing to maintain!'

I made lots of quickfire sketches of him (none of which look a thing like him, I just loved how animated he was whenever he was talking about filmmaking). I've included some sketches below and also a photo taken by Vicky Mather (who I think went pretty much crazy meeting him).

Reopened for Business

2010-01-06T20:15:00.005Z

Belated New Year wishes for everybody! I hope every one's 2010 is off to a great start.
Things have been a bit hectic over the holidays so I've not been able to update my blog at all. I'm currently doing some concept art for a project which I can't talk about just yet (once it's up and running I'll post a link) and I'm also trying to finish off my book trailer for the And/or Book Awards. It's a mad dash to get it all done before development on my grad film consumes all my time! (it never rains but it pours!) I've included some pictures from my book trailer below. The first one was an early concept when I was thinking of going for a more 'realistic' look but I quickly abandoned that for the much more fun slightly rougher look beneath it. This is the colour script for my trailer. The award logo colours are orange and blue so I tried to run that throughout the whole commercial. The concept for my trailer was an Art Deco Busby Berkeley style big Hollywood musical number.

Production Design

2009-12-16T10:42:00.005Z

For our final workshop of the year we had Stephane Collogne and Barry Purves come in to discuss Production Design.

Barry Purves

Stephane Collogne

We saw lots of animation films and also some clips from live-action features and musicals to study how colour and staging are used to create mood and tone.

Quick studies from 'An American in Paris'

We also had to team up with the Production Designers and put together a pitch for a retelling of the Biblical story of Noah's Ark. My Production Designer Toni and I had to create a story from the perspective of the Dove who brings back the Olive Branch and the Raven who is sent out before but never returns.

I had a lot of fun figuring out the story and coming up with the types of characters they would be and together we began exploring how the film would look. In the end we settled on a woodblock cutout style on multi-plane cameras so we could play around with depth and also use negative space to show the soft-edged tenderness of the Dove which would contrast with the more angular Raven.

During the week we also had a screening of 'Mary & Max', the new stop-motion animation feature from Director Adam Elliot. It was amazing, the story was so tragic and yet at the same time uplifting and the characters were so endearing with how they both struggled but managed to find comfort in each other. The whole film was just beautiful to look at. If you get a chance then go see it!

Until next time, it's back to developing ideas for my graduation film..

Concentration

2009-12-07T21:07:00.002Z

And/or Book Awards

2009-12-01T16:35:00.004Z

Things have been a bit busy these past couple of weeks. At the moment I'm currently working on a trailer for the And/or Book Awards. The award is the UK's leading prize for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image. They are currently celebrating their 25th anniversary and so they've asked us to create a 1-min animation to commemorate.

As well as this we're also beginning the development stage of our graduation film. I'm just going through old sketchbooks at the moment looking for ideas so pretty soon the whole process will be well underway!

I also went to see Russian animator Andrey Khrzhanovksy give a talk on the avant-garde composer Alfred Schnittke with whom he collaborated on several films. Khrzhanovsky stated that he would often plan out the flow of an animation so that Schnittke would have a guide to begin composing the music. I thought it was interesting to hear how animation (something that quite often is painstakingly slow) collaborates with music (something that is so flowing) I'm in a similar situation at the moment myself for the And/or trailer so I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Khrzhanovsky has the distinction of creating the only animated film (The Glass Harmonica) to be banned totally during the time of the Soviet Union. I managed to make a few sketches in the dark during the talk and also a couple on the journey. Until next time..

Journey Time

2009-11-09T19:46:00.003Z

Sketches made during my travels to and from school.

KO

2009-10-31T13:31:00.005Z

And it's finished. My boxing film, now titled 'Grit' is complete. It's been a crazy dash to try and master After Effects and get it all done in such a short space of time but in the end I'm pleased with how it went. There were a few shots that, if I'd had more time, I would have liked to tweak but I feel that overall I learnt a great deal about composition and staging and trying to get the maximum amount of story out of just a few shapes and lines.
The film got good feedback from my tutors at our review and I hope that my Sound Designer George was happy with what I did with his soundtrack. I've included a mixture of stills below from different stages of the film: from storyboard to finished frames to an interesting visualisation of how my soundtrack looked. I hope they give at least a small sense of how it all came together.

Cherry wins in Chicago

2009-10-19T22:52:00.004+01:00

One of the films I worked on last year 'Cherry on the Cake' directed by Hyebin Lee has just won the Golden Plaque for Best Student Short Film at the Chicago International Film Festival. The film was selected for its: 'striking storyline, Moving metaphors and indelible imagery.'

The film is also being screened this weekend at the London Film Festival so if you're around go and check it out!

Congratulations Hyebin! :)

Round One

2009-10-11T11:18:00.004+01:00

Production of my short film is now fully underway. I would have liked a few more days to settle on an overall look for the film but the process of finding it whilst working is bringing up some interesting results. I've included a rough concept for a shot in the film to show the slightly angular look I've been working on, followed by a mid-way image to show the multiple layers of charcoal and paint that are being used. The last image is an 'almost' completed still.. A former student from the NFTS has been in last week to teach me how to use After Effects so I'm still getting to grips with 3D levels and how to use the cameras to create a greater sense of depth so fingers crossed.

Till next time, I hope to have a few more shots done by tomorrow.

Legend

2009-10-03T15:30:00.002+01:00

Old Boxing Pictures

2009-09-30T23:10:00.005+01:00

Looking through my portfolio for some work I might be able to use in my new film I came across these pictures I made whilst I was still boxing. The first one I drew when I was 15 in my free time after school using pen and ink. It's made up of thousands of tiny dots that when viewed from a distance hopefully give the illusion of tone and form.

The other two I did a few years later whilst at college studying Graphic Design. They were for a project in my first year but I can't remember at all what the brief was for. The first one is chalk on black paper and the other is acrylic paint. I don't think they will be used in any part of my film they're more just to get a feel for things. My pre-production stage is coming to a close now so I'll begin production on my first shot very soon!

close-up detail of dots

Toshiba

2009-09-28T10:22:00.004+01:00

As well as roughing out the structure for my boxing film I recently did some animation work on a commercial for Toshiba. A few months back some representatives from Toshiba came to the school and asked for pitches for web commercials. One of the second year editors, Una Gunjak successfully pitched and asked if I could get involved in animating part of the commercial.

The commercial is currently titled 'Can You Draw Me an Arrow?'. It revolves around a young man travelling all over the world gathering arrow drawings in his little sketchbook. At the end of the commercial he flips through the collection and the arrows become animated, ending up as the Toshiba logo (that's my contribution to the short). I haven't seen any of the live-action elements of the commercial yet, I just got to draw lots of arrows but as soon as it's online I'll post a link to it.

Until then, back to concept art...

Concept Art

2009-09-25T11:05:00.005+01:00

The first batch of concept art for my short film is complete. The project has roughly 5 weeks of production so all my pre-production will have to be crammed into the next couple of days. I'm hoping that this short burst of intensity will help to come up with a look that perhaps having more time to think about it might not have the same energy.

The soundtrack I received is very dark and distressing so I've decided to make a film about boxing. In particular a single round in which everything starts to go wrong for one of the fighters. Throughout the year we've been taught to try and make our stories more personal, conjuring up moments from our own lives with which to make them more sincere and original. I spent a great amount of time in my teenage years boxing so I'm hoping to capture some of that in this short film. Also, this project is an opportunity to try out some new techniques we haven't really done before so I'm going to use this opportunity to get my hands dirty with lots of paint and chalk and charcoal to capture the hazy, thick-air of a boxing arena.

Danny Boyle

2009-09-23T23:35:00.006+01:00

Our final film project of the year is now underway. For this project the sound design students have all created 1-min soundtracks which we will interpret as short films. We're not allowed to discuss with the sound designers what their influences were as this may affect what we end up creating, so for now it's all hush hush. At the moment we're just listening to the tracks and gathering materials and ideas for creating a mood animatic to see in what directions we can go.

On another note we had the brilliant Director Danny Boyle come in to give a talk last week. He was amazing, so passionate and enthusiastic about film. He talked about most of his work and discussed the craft of working with writers and cinematographers and the vital importance of sound and all his experiences from different types of films. I asked him about animation and he talked about the train sequence in Wallace & Gromit's The Wrong Trousers as being one of the best action chase sequences ever put on film. He also told us how he was once going to direct an animated version of Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad Trilogy (I can only imagine how cool that would have been!) but in the end it just never came together.
Meeting someone who so clearly loved film and filmmaking totally inspired me so now all I want to do is get straight to work on my next film!

Until then, here are some more sketches..

Experimenting

2009-09-13T19:21:00.011+01:00

Schools back and Project 3, 'Working to a Soundtrack' has begun.

For part of this project we got the chance to make some short experimental sequences with our tutors, Stuart Hilton and Robert Bradbrook.

As a group we filmed a very short pixillation sequence of a chair spinning and falling over and then, using that as our base, we had to visualise it in lots of new and exciting ways..

Take 1 Chair

Using a pin, meticulously poke holes in black card around outline of chair

Discover that the Camera Department is closed so build the bizarrest rig ever seen!

Pray for sunlight and... Voila! Shiny Sparkly Chair!

we only had 4 days of experimenting but I still have a list of ideas to try out so will have to fit them in whenever a quiet moment pops up..

Until then..

Marylebone Station

2009-09-03T23:34:00.001+01:00

Watercolour Studies

2009-09-02T23:09:00.004+01:00

More watercolour studies. The dog studies are of my Sister's dog: Tilly, made using a watercolour pencil and then just running washes of water over it and the other two are just using minimal brush strokes to see what sort of impressions/environments I can create.

Mountains and clouds? The rolling waves of the sea?

Dead Birds, Foxes & Sketching

2009-08-24T00:24:00.006+01:00

I've been doing a bit of work with Vicky Mather, one of the 2nd year Animation Directors at school, on her graduation film OSCAR these past couple of days. I got to help out building a model house which looks fantastic and also go on location to help out with the shooting of some pixilation animation. I can't say anything about the story but the visuals are just magical to look at. The performances by the actors are so painstaking, watching them move frame-by-frame but the finished results are so graceful to see. I only had time to help out for a few days but hopefully the rest of the shoot went just as well.

On another note I've also been doing a bit of colour work for another of the 2nd year directors, Elena Pomares (check out her blog and also the blog two words, two illustrations and a coffee she works on with Toby Jackman for some of her great artwork). Her animation work is so cool! Again, I can't say what this film is about but it's all being animated using traditional 2D methods :)

And finally to my own work... I'm slowly making progress with my character animation project but due to the untimely demise of the PC I was working on I'm currently getting it all setup on another machine which is taking a little while but hopefully next week everything will be up and running again smoothly..

And with the little time left over at the end of the day there is always time for sketching!

Yellow Belly End in Stash Magazine

2009-08-17T11:59:00.003+01:00

One of the films I worked on last year, Yellow Belly End, Directed by Philip Bacon, is featured in this month's copy of Stash Magazine! Stash magazine is a fantastic collection of all the latest animation and visual effects so check it out if you get the chance.. here's the spread from the booklet that accompanies each month's DVD.

In other news my time at Illuminated films has come to an end. It was a great experience seeing the process of how animation series are put together. I really enjoyed watching all the animatics and getting to grips with how it moves from pre-production to layout to animation. Another highlight was getting to see Jane Horrocks (the voice of Little Princess) in recording and watching it all come together. I'm back at school now ready to crack on with my own animations :)

Tz

2009-08-04T23:45:00.003+01:00

Colouring

2009-08-02T12:37:00.005+01:00

Some more colour attempts made over the past couple of days. I sketched the pictures during my lunch breaks at Illuminated so have just been waiting for some free time to practice colouring them in. I'm really enjoying trying out the brushes in Photoshop and seeing what sort of results they can make. Next time I will have to attempt some more traditional mediums and see what sort of things I can come up with.

Until then..

Illuminated Films

2009-07-27T22:33:00.010+01:00

Schools out and summertime has finally begun for me (though it seems I missed all the sunshine stuck in the animation base at school). As part of the course we all get the chance to go on work experience, so for the next 2 weeks home is going to be Illuminated Films! Home of Little Princess!

As well as Little Princess Illuminated has also made some great short films, such as T.R.A.N.S.I.T, a murder mystery about an upper class socialite, War Game, about the legendary 1915 Christmas football match between the German and British Forces during WWI and the classic children's story The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I only started today so I'm just getting settled back in to using CelAction but I also got to sit in on a review screening for a new episode of Little Princess and hopefully by the end of the week I'll be off to attend some voice recording sessions.

On another note, my character animation film is still in production. I wasn't able to attend the review for it at the end of term due to unforeseen circumstances but I heard back that it was well received all around so I'll be spending the rest of the summer finishing it off and putting all the final tweaks and corrections to it. Until then though it's Illuminated all the way!

Sketches

2009-07-06T00:13:00.004+01:00

The deadline for our character projects approaches but the sketching never stops! Will post some WIP stills from my film soon... Until then

The Daily Commute

2009-06-29T23:55:00.004+01:00

Some sketches from my daily commute to and from school. Enjoy!

Annecy 2009

2009-06-21T00:36:00.004+01:00

I'm a bit snowed under with work at the moment so this post is little late in arriving..
As part of studying at the NFTS we get to go to an animation festival and this year they decided to take us to the biggest festival of all: Annecy!

Annecy is amazing! The weather was fantastic and the view of the lake and mountains was breathtaking. The town itself is made up of lots of historic buildings all crammed around little canals with lots of cafes and market stalls to explore, I never wanted to leave. Oh and the festival wasn't too bad either :P

There was a great buzz of excitement at the screenings, everyone throws paper aeroplanes at the screen and those that manage to reach the stage get a big cheer from the crowd. Another highlight is the trailer before the screenings; there is a tradition of a rabbit being hidden somewhere in the trailer so when he appears everyone screams 'Le Lapin' which was great fun. The films themselves were a great mix of stories and techniques, my highlights were...

Chainsaw Maid dir. Takena Nagao, Stop-motion Zombie horror! With a chainsaw toting maid, fantastic!

The Tale of Little Puppetboy dir. Johannes Nyholm, Bizarre stop-motion about a man waiting for a date to arrive, a flute playing imp and a VHS of Ivanhoe.. (no words can do it justice, you just have to see it)

The Mighty B! dir. Erik Wiese, Larry Leighliter, I'd not heard of it before but now I'm hooked! Hilarious 2D animation series

For Sock's Sake dir. Carlo Vogele, Winner of the award for best graduation film. My former classmate from Bristol, this was his graduation film made at CalArts, about a sock who escapes from the washing line to go to a nightclub.. (if you visit his blog in my links you can see the film)

And that was Annecy! I want to go back straight away. I now need to work extra hard on my own projects so I can hopefully go there with my own film one day.. In the next couple of postings I will try to show some of the designs for the character animation project I'm working on, until then...

Barry Purves

2009-06-03T19:33:00.005+01:00

These past two weeks as well as designing the characters for our animation project we've also be training with the fantastic Barry Purves.
You can check out his work at http://www.barrypurves.com/ (he has a brilliant forum as well where he posts a lot of great advice).
Barry's work is very fluid and theatrical, he talked alot about liking animating to ballet and dance and I can really see this influence in his work. All of his characters have very graceful yet powerful movements.
We've been working under the camera with Barry, animating simple cut-out characters we designed ourselves and instilling them with personality. I've never animated cut-outs before so it was great to have so much time to really understand how we need to 'feel' the movement instead of just putting keyframes on timelines and letting the computer figure it out.
Barry's motto for the weeks was if we're going to move something then we have to be bold and really go for it and 'LET IT READ!', something I will strive to do from now on.

For the last project we each selected a type of movement randomly. I got 'someone marching' so I had to design a soldier with very rigid, ordered movements. I've included some of the sketches I made and the actual puppet itself (just bits of card and blu-tack) and also the finished 10-second clip (animated in 1 day). Barry was full of great advice so I hope he will come back soon to teach us again. Until then..

National Portrait Gallery II

2009-05-29T19:02:00.005+01:00

I've managed to scan in all my sketches from the National Portrait Gallery so here are a few more highlights. I also made another attempt at painting, this time just using the pastel brushes in Photoshop, which turned out a lot better than I hoped. At the moment I'm currently storyboarding my character animation project and, as if their isn't enough already to do, tomorrow I'll be animating on one of this year's graduation films, a fantastic pixillation film called 'Oscar' directed by Vicky Mather (you can check out her blog in my links). So exciting!

National Portrait Gallery I

2009-05-24T15:20:00.004+01:00

As part of the prep for our character animation project we recently took a trip to the National Portrait Gallery in London to do some portrait studies and some 'people watching'. I drew a load of sketches so I'm just in the process of sorting through them now and scanning them in. I'm really pleased with how some of them turned out so I'm going to try and add some colour to them at a later date. Until then..

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc

2009-05-23T10:49:00.002+01:00

Every Monday there is a screening at school, a chance to see films we often have never seen and sometimes never even heard of. This week they screened Joan of Arc, Directed in 1928 by Carl Dreyer. It tells the story of the trial of Joan of Arc after she was captured by the English during the 100 years war.

The film is completely silent but was accompanied by a composition called Voices of Light by Richard Einhorn which was amazing. It contained a libretto based on excerpts of ancient writings which gave the film a very spiritual atmosphere and only served to heighten all the moments of Joan's muted suffering against her captors frustration and anger.

The whole film consists almost entirely of close-ups so all emotion is internalised, expressed entirely by the face. All the actors wore no makeup so it has a very raw feel to it (especially compared to other silent films of the time where everything seems very theatrical).

I've included a couple of screen grabs from a very emotional scene in the film. At the moment we're currently in pre-production to begin our character animation projects so it was fascinating to watch just how much emotion can be communicated to the audience using only muted close-ups of characters.

Character of Place

2009-05-06T00:13:00.003+01:00

For the past two weeks we've been working on a pixilation workshop (if you've never heard of pixilation then check out Norman Mclaren's fantastic film 'Neighbours' on youtube for the best example I can think of). Each of the animation directors teamed up with a cinematographer and a production designer and we had to build and light a set in one day then animate in one day then strike the whole set! It was fantastic, the production designer Chloe did an amazing job building the interior of an old wooden boat, and the cinematographer Stil lit the whole set with just ONE light! (and a crazy amount of flags!).
It was great to collaborate with such a brilliant team. Everyone had such enthusiasm and we all tried to be ambitious and push ourselves with the little time we had to do everything. The finished set was better than anything I imagined and I was totally gutted when we had to take it down after only one full day of animating.
Pixilation took a little while to get used to animating on such a large scale and I wish that we had just one more day to capture even more footage. I had the idea to have the boat 'rocking' as if in a storm so we animated both the camera and the objects on set to create the illusion of the whole stage moving which worked really well but took ages to plan and setup.
I've included a couple of stills from the set to show the final setup..

Through the video monitor: The interior of an old wooden boat.

The set in all it's magical movie glory!

So many flags to create the great lighting effect.

Busy as a busy thing doing something busy

2009-05-02T22:05:00.005+01:00

I've just finished working on a 2-week pixilation workshop with the production designers and cinematographers at the school and am currently in the process of sorting through all the footage and production stills so I'll write about it in more detail very soon. Until then here are some more sketches. I didn't have chance to do much drawing being on set directing but the train journeys are always a great opportunity for doodling. The colour pic is a quick paint study I made based on a costume from an opera.

CelAction

2009-04-15T22:12:00.004+01:00

CelAction has been the name of the game this past week. We spent 5 days training on how to use it for digital cut-out animation. I found the software really easy to get into and lots of fun once you figured out the processes for how things have to be setup.
As part of our training we also had to build, rig and animate some characters of our own in just 3 days. I decided I would try and create characters with lots of ball joints and paint them all in Photoshop to see how CelAction would take to textures.
I only managed to animate about 3 seconds of the two characters walking which has no real emotion to it but it was more an exercise just to see how CelAction would cope. I'm really pleased with how it turned out so I now that I have my characters I want to go back and animate it properly.
Here's the clip I made and also a still from the animation so you can see more in detail and one of the Eskimo character. Both characters are made of roughly 20+ pieces each to them and a few replacement faces.

Boards, Boards and more Boards

2009-04-05T21:40:00.003+01:00

After the hundreds of drawings and amendments and complete overhauls the storyboard project is finished. I really enjoyed working with my editor, Eduardo. He brought a whole new perspective to the story I had written and he helped to push it in ways I just wouldn't have thought of on my own.

Overall I think the project went really well. The finished animatic still needs a lot of work but I learnt a great deal about cinematic language and the importance of how different camera setups can strengthen the motivations and thoughts of a character or help to create a sense of space.

I also learnt a lot about building relationships between characters and how composition can help to show their underlying feelings and emphasise the type of people they are. This has helped me gain a better understanding that a character should be the one driving a story along and not the other way around. I'm looking forward to our next project so I can explore this further.

I've not had chance to do much drawing this week that wasn't storyboard related so instead here are a selection of all the different boards I've made. Next week we'll be training on CelAction animation software learning about digital cut-outs. After 4 weeks of non-stop storyboarding, getting immersed in a new software feels like a pleasant exercise..

the hero of my animatic: ROBO-MAN

From my Adaptation exercise

Deleted sequence from ROBO-MAN

ROBO-MAN in action

Storyboard from an existing film.. I love Sopranos :)

Life Drawing

2009-03-27T19:28:00.005Z

Things are pretty busy at the moment with all the storyboards we're making for next week's editing exercise so instead here are some of the sketches I drew from our bi-weekly life drawing class. There are no tutors at the class and the model is one of the students from the school (this week it was one of the second year animation directors, Magda) so it's an opportunity just to draw for the fun of drawing.
The poses range from several 5mins poses up to one 20mins pose.

15min pose

20min pose

15min pose

5min pose

Luis Cook & The Pearce Sisters

2009-03-15T12:36:00.005Z

Last week Luis Cook came to the school to show us his film ‘The Pearce Sisters’ and also to give us advice for developing our own projects.

As well as his film he also brought along his brilliant sketchbooks for us to look through. Luis told us he’s a big fan of collecting things so his sketchbooks are full of strange collections of clippings and oddities. He also collects ‘thumbprint portraits’ so we all had a chance to make one for him (dip your thumb in ink, press it down on paper, draw your portrait inside the print). His sketchbooks are full of hundreds of these little portraits and we have the honour of going up alongside Ray Harryhausen who was the last person to do one!

As well as Luis visiting we’ve also been working on storyboarding for the past 2 weeks; doing lots of different exercises involving floor plans, viewfinders, shot lists, adaptations, etc. as many ways as possible of approaching a storyboard before we begin our own projects next week.

I’ve scanned in a couple of different things I’ve done.. First is a panel from our floor plan exercise, the entire board is too big to show but I really like the expression in this panel. The next image is breaking down an already existing film sequence into storyboards and last is a quick sketch I made at Marylebone station.

NFTS Graduation Films

2009-03-07T16:00:00.003Z

It’s that time again. All the animation films I worked on last year at the NFTS are finally finished so it’s time for some promotion! I managed to pick up some postcards from the screening at the BFI in London yesterday so here they are..

Cherry on the Cake Directed by Hyebin Lee

Yellow Belly End Directed by Philip Bacon

Today Only Directed by Toby Jackman

All the films looked amazing (it’s always great to see how they develop from animatics and storyboards through to finished shiny polished films) A big congratulations to all the directors! If your planning on visiting any animation festivals soon then keep an eye for these films.
Also, you can see stills from the other brilliant animation films over at: http://www.nftsanimation.org/departments.htm

Production Basket & Roald Dahl Museum

2009-03-01T22:07:00.003Z

I've not had chance to do much this week as we've been working on a live-action film set with the producers at the film school. It's been great fun trying out all the different roles on set (camera assistant, sound recorder, props master, etc.) but I'm glad to be going back to the lightboxes next week.

On another note we went to visit the Roald Dahl museum yesterday in the village of Great Missenden. Great Missenden is a quintessential English village, with lots of teashops and a tiny post office surrounded on all sides by rolling hills and fields, very relaxing and peaceful. Roald himself used to live there and you can see the influences for lots of his stories in the buildings and countryside. The museum itself is full of memorabilia from Roald and also lots of illustrations from Quentin Blake (another of my heroes) so very inspiring. On top of all that all children over 5 get a free 'Story Ideas Books' full of tips from Roald on how to write stories and technically since I am over 5 I got one as well!

Next week we begin our storyboarding workshops at school so lots of drawing and redrawing to do, I can't wait!

Sketches

2009-02-20T23:05:00.003Z

A couple of quick sketches done over the past week. The last one is of our life drawing model at school during a 1min pose.

Caroline Leaf Sand Workshop

2009-02-18T23:32:00.002Z

It’s been pretty hectic these past few weeks at school so I haven’t had chance to do much posting. The reason is we’ve been doing a workshop with the brilliant Caroline Leaf all about Sand Animation.
Sand is such an expressive medium for animating that it has a life all of its own. Caroline showed us all about morphing and moving through space and then we just had fun experimenting and trying different things out. We also had to make a couple of short films over the two weeks so I’ve included some storyboard panels from each film and a frame from the finished piece for comparison. The first sequence is from a one-day exercise where I made a 20sec short about a greedy diamond miner and the other panel is from a four-day exercise where I experimented more with camera moves through space and also a little character animation to see how it would look. The great thing is we now get to hand our films over to the first year composers so pretty soon all the films will have their very own soundtracks! I can’t wait to hear what they come up with. Till next time..

Cross-Spec Week

2009-02-02T00:29:00.006Z

Cross-Spec week is a chance to try some of the other specialisations at the school and see what everyone else does before we get settled into full-time animation. There are too many things to try out over the week so it's sort of raffle depending on what you end up doing. I ended up with the animation, documentary, sound and cinematography workshops which have all been fantastic and really make you appreciate how much skill goes into every aspect of a finished film.

On top of all this there has also been loads of seminars and masterclasses from all different people from the industry deconstructing their specialist areas of film making and explaining how each one relates to telling stories.

My first sketch is of visiting Director, Sarah Gavron (on the left), who came to discuss her film 'Brick Lane' with her producer. The next few sketches are people I saw around London and the last sketch was for my animation workshop on creating character. Using simple lines and an emotion we had to create a mask then create a small scenario involving the characters we made. My character was 'grim'.

Journey Time

2009-01-24T19:05:00.003Z

Some of the interesting faces I saw on my journey to and from school this week.

Directing in the Studio

2009-01-13T23:55:00.004Z

We’ve been taking turns Directing, Acting and being Cinematographers this week so here’s a few panels from the storyboard I directed. A very simple setup: 2 characters, 1 object and 1 emotion as our starting point.

Playfulness and Inventiveness

2009-01-11T12:50:00.005Z

So week 1 of Animation Direction has drawn to a close. It’s been fantastic, so inspirational and fun just coming up with ideas and bouncing them about to see how they could be developed. Our lecturer for these first few weeks is animation director, Marjut Rimminen. She’s so engaging and full of passion for animation. This week has mostly been about ‘where do ideas come from’, we talked about inspiration from other peoples work, finding the essence of an idea through performance, music and sound, archive material and our own experiences. Lots of workshops and quick-fire idea sessions just to see how we respond to different influences.
One of my favourite lectures this week had to be our masterclass with Osbert Parker. If you’re not aware of his work you should definitely try and see it on the big screen (his most recent film is called ‘Yours Truly’) he gave a workshop on style and technique as part of storytelling. Showing us how style is crucial to animation storytelling and how it can enrich a story with another layer of meaning.
I was hoping to upload some of the mood boards I made during the week but I need to scan them in first (they're too big to scan all in one go) so instead here is a quick sketch of the school canteen I made in between classes. The big red wall at the back is some sort of sound dampener for the other classrooms (I think). Until next time..

Watercoloury Pictures

2008-12-30T20:54:00.003Z

Well I hope everyone had a nice holiday. I'm still practicing with my watercolours so here's a few more of my 'attempts' for you to squint at and try to see what they were meant to be, and I've thrown in a pencil sketch to boot just to show that I've not given up on the pencils! (the truth is, out of about 10 pages of sketches over Christmas these are the only ones I'm halfway pleased with).

Anyways, next week I begin my Animation Direction course at the NFTS so I'm just getting ready. I hope this blog will become a report of my time there and if I can share any of the knowledge they give me then this will be the place I'll do it.

Until that time then, Have a Happy New Year!

North Face

2008-12-19T17:42:00.004Z

Yesterday we got to go to a preview screening of a new German film called 'Nordwand' (North Face). It's all about two German mountaineers and their attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger Mountain in the 1930s. I had no knowledge of the history of this event beforehand so I didn't know if it was a successful attempt or not so I don't want to give away anything of the story if you haven't seen it.
I would like to talk a little about the other aspects of the film making though because I thought it was beautifully shot and the performances really drew me in.
The cinematography of the Eiger was both beautiful and grim. At moments it would appear peaceful and serene and then it could completely change and become unforgiving and uncaring. For me it was almost another character on screen.
The two main performances of the German climbers were also totally engaging. You really felt how difficult it must have been to scale every metre of the mountain and their endurance and skill as mountain climbers were both stretched to the limits during their ascent. There were a few white knuckle moments for me particularly when they had to 'traverse' round a difficult section of the mountain.
The sound effects and make-up were also excellent and only helped to build an extra layer of reality into the story. The howling of the wind and the creaking of snow against rock really built an atmosphere of isolation and the effects of the freezing weather on the men and how quickly it took it's toll on them was frightening.
If you get a chance to see it then I totally recommend it.Here's a quick sketch I did afterwards..