sousy loop

So I was working on submitting a loop for this monthly animation site loopdeloop. Every month they send out a theme (this month is rock) and people from all over submit all kinds of crazy loops, it's pretty great. I had been working on a loop (the theme was liquid), I was cramming to get it in by the deadline, but just as I was almost there Toonboom, which I was animating in crashed and the scene I was working in bugged out.

So after a bit of to and fro with tech support we got to the bottom of it and here we are. The bulk of the work was done over two days in a mad dash to get it completed. I have to thank Timothy Merks for pointing me in the right direction with the old timey film grain.




The idea just popped into my head really, I would have liked to have given myself more time but what are you gonna do hey.

Drawing Challenge - Day 5

Favourite book character


Sam Spade - man this is a scribbly mess, I have really been pressed for time today.

Drawing challenge Day 4

Best Friend

Well, my best friend is my wife. We have been together for 7 years and we got married last November. I think she knows me better than I know myself sometimes! Hope you've had a great weekend. We went and saw The Artist today, and really enjoyed it! I thought it captured beautifully the era and style, yet still used the technology we have in a sparing, but very effective way.

Day 3 - favourite food

Well this one was pretty rushed as you can see.

I love salmon, Grilled with a Bearnaise sauce on a bed of mash is just amazing. I find it to be such a satisfying meal for some reason. For some reason I lost wacom pressure in Photoshop (which is a pain in the ass) so I sketched it up in flash. I'm not really happy with it, but what are you gonna do? I have to head out. Have a great weekend!

Drawing challenge day 2

Favourite animal
It was a toss up between Bears, or monkeys. But it could have many others.

I tried to do something different with this one, it was pretty rushed so I wanted to go minimal. Bears crack me up; one minute they can look really timid and cuddly, and the next they're eating your face off. Happy Thursday everyone!

happy New Year - 30 day challenge

Well a belated happy new year! I had planned to do a 2011 review blog but was just too preoccupied  with work, and other things. I seriously would like to post more, and hopefully I will... We will just have to see I guess.

So I have seen a few people are doing this 30 day drawing challenge.

And I figured, let's see if I can get my act together and post 30 drawings in 30 days. It's a good excuse anyway. And I know what your thinking, but I don't care.

So here we go Day 1: Yourself

Amazingly I managed to convince a beautiful woman to marry me late last year. Go figure hey?

Batman Sunday

Well I've finally gotten down to posting again, I am getting married in a few weeks time and the preceding months have been quite insane.  My friend Timothy Merks  is now contributing over at the  Fruitless Pursuits Blog, if you haven't been over there I thoroughly recommend you check it out. The other week at Fruitless Pursuits was declared batman week. I was wanting to get this done in time for Batman week but unfortunately with work and other stuff could not get it finished so I figured, Batman Sunday.

A small anecdote to go with this one, I remember when I was in about grade 6, I used to bring in this Robin action figure and batmobile to school and play with this other kid at lunch. I think that most of the other kids in our year had moved onto basketball (Jordan was huge at the time) by then, so you can imagine how super cool we were. So it was the end of the school day and lo and behold, I could not find my Robin figurine.

 I had just gotten the toy, and was actually more worried about getting in trouble with my mum, because she had warned me of the dangers of bringing toys to school, and there was no way in hell that I was going to come home empty handed. So I tell the teacher about the situation, and he proceeds to make an announcement to the class that I had lost my Robin doll (I was mortified at this point) and that no one would be leaving class until it was found.

It turned out it was in the tray under my desk, it had been wedged in a weird spot. Suffice to say it did not bode well in the short term for my popularity.

I'll leave with this

I'm also trying to get a submission into loopdeloop this month, can you figure out the theme? They are teaming up with  World AIDS Day and the theme is Condoms. It is yet to be seen whether I will get it done but I will try my darnedest.

Hope everybody is having a nice Sunday.

Playing with colour

Been a while I know. It has been an extremely busy year. I made a lot of plans which essentially have been blown out of the water (not in a bad way), but that's how it works I guess. I am certainly going to try and get more work up on the old blog though. Hope everyone's having a a good week.

Cowboy

Charlie.....

The theme for the Art Jumble blog this week is Charlie Sheen and I couldn't resist. 

For Tim

Apologies to Astroboy fans.

Late night sketch

                                    Not sure why but that's what I came up with late at night.

New Year

Well here we are 2011 all set to go. I have set myself a few goals this year. First goal is to finish two films, one very short piece following up with a meatier piece. Second goal is to try and get something into the 11 second club at least a few times this year to improve my animation, and I'm going to lump life drawing classes in here as well. The third goal is going be trying to fit some study amongst all this madness. Oh yeah and I'm getting married in Perth later this year also.

I know what your saying "Christien aren't you setting yourself too many things here?" Well yes I am, the way I see it is that if I can even tick off a few things on this list it will be a result. I finally am back working on Monday (not animation but something different) so we'll see how it goes once I am back into a full working routine.

So anyhow, I got onto this artist Kaz via Cartoon Brew and really like his stuff. So I decided to grab one of his characters and have a go at that style and skew it a bit towards mine. I like the outcome, not bad for a first try but I'm going keep at it and play around with the style and see where it goes.

   

Post Mortem

Hope everyone had a great Christmas with too much food and has a fun New Years coming up. So the Toon Boom/ Myouterspace competition is over (finally) and my entry came a respectable third place. I have to thank everybody who voted for my entry, linked on their facebook and blogs, the support was amazing.

In coming third I won a copy of Toon Boom Animate Pro so I am absolutely Wrapped! I will direct your attention to a few fellow Melbourne animators who are currently embroiled in separate competitions.

Dave Blumenstein a great and prolific animator/ cartoonist who is responsible for the Precinct among other things has entered the Reel Australia film competition being run by the Australia Day council. Davids entry "Be a Man"is hilarious and I dare anybody who watches it not to laugh there ass of. If you have not already, go check it out here vote and give Dave your support.

Maik Hempel is another awesome animator, He's currently duking it out in the Movie Extra Webfest competition whereby the entrants had to come up with a 60 second trailer for an online series pitch and the winner will receive 50 grand to make a web series. Maiks entry Mollusks is hands down the best entry in my opinion and he has Bob Franklin and Dave Callan on board to do voices to add to the awesomeness! so go here and check out his entry and show your support so he can get some sweet, sweet cash to make a series!

Also Timothy Merks has made the best Christmas Greeting I have seen this year, go enjoy the awesomeness here. And read about how he made it here.

Happy New Year everybody!

Competition

So in my spare time recently I was working on a 25 second animation for a competition  to win a copy of
Toon Boom Animate Pro. Which is great animation software but really expensive and I can't afford it(unfortunatly). The competition is for a new website called Myouterspace , a social network for fans if Sci Fi to get together and come up with new ideas, concepts etc. 

They provided a few voice clips of William Shatner to animate to so I figured, why not? The key was that you had to use a Personal learning edition of the software. So I'm animating away and the software just randomly starts to crash on me, I tried a myriad of ways to get it sorted, and after much frustration just forgot about it. 

A few days later I just tried to download it again and like magic, it starts to work, so with little time left I knocked out the majority of the work in the last few days leading up to the deadline. I can see a lot of areas where it could be better, and the concept is not totally original, but I am happy to have finished something, and a bonus that my animation made it into the final 12. The winner gets the opportunity to work on a series with Myouterspace, and the top 2 get a scholarship to an online course at the  Academy of Art University. Plus the top 10 win a Copy of Animate Pro, so even if I can make top 10 I win! That's pretty Awesome.

The voting closes on December 22nd and you can vote once per day here. My entry is traveling okay at the moment so fingers crossed and will update how things go.

Bond

This is my attempt for the Bond theme on Art Jumble Blog this week. I like the Idea of just putting him in the mundane. And I would also like to take this moment to apologize to any hardcore Bond fans out there.

 

Netball Masquerade

A friend of ours who lives out on a farm in Three Springs W.A asked me to draw up a character for a Masquerade Ball that the netball team up there were having, but incorporating their uniform. Far be it from me to shirk from the challenge. She had a photo in mind of the pose she wanted so I went off that and added the teams uniform.

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It had been a while since I had sat down and drawn a Female so it was a good change from all the cartoony stuff I have been scratching away at in my sketch book. I really have to work on cleaning my work up more, I have gotten into the habit of working really fast and although it's not my greatest work it was fun to do.

Manly

A talented friend of mine Timothy Merks has set a challenge to come up with a manly image in the spirit of his new short film that he is working on. Here is my tribute to Tims poster.

Imagine if Chuck Norris and Tom Sellick somehow conceived a child. He is standing on the remains of his enemies and he also plays lead guitar in a metal band.

Time....

All Hail Squidman.