Toonbrain

Studenting

2009-05-24T13:30:00.002+12:00

Ah, neglect. Such is the way of life at times, and so it goes with this blog. Like all good folk, I locked this blog in the basement with naught but a bucket and some rats, there there it waited for my return.

Moving on. I've not really done much in the way of animation recently. A few practice Flash things last summer but nothing else, I think. There's not really been time. After thinking about it for some weeks after the New Year, I sent an application to Auckland University. 3 months on and the end of my first semester is nearing, exams are coming, and my grades are (so far) good. Mostly studying Linguistics and Japanese.

The purpose of my decision? I'll eventually have a nice university qualification, speak a business and tourism language, and be qualified for language teaching. Creating wider career opportunities is awesome.

Holy Poop!

2008-11-15T21:27:00.002+13:00

That is all.

Reel life

2008-11-11T12:34:00.002+13:00

It's time for me to put together a show reel. Another contract over, my 2nd year at Firehorse and my 3rd year working after graduation, and I think I finally have enough work to put together into a reel. This year I was fortunate to be working under Luis Limaco who reintroduced me to the principles of animation after I fell into a "just get it done" mentality through 2007. His patient guidance and mentoring really helped me improve my craft.

As I mentioned earlier, another contract is over and it's time to put together a showreel. As I don't think there'll be another season of work at Firehorse, and what seemed a general shortage of 2D work this year, I'm considering looking for a regular retail job and continuing with animation as a hobby or part-time thing. Let's see how work is like after the Summer Break ends and studios start new projects.

Hamburg in Auckland

2008-06-06T12:14:00.000+12:00

Huzzah! I have been invited to an event celebrating the Auckland entrants of the Hamburg Animation Awards. Sponsored by the Auckland City Council, it's an opportunity to show my student film, and network with representatives from local studios. There will also be a couple of prizes, of which I doubt I'll win any but it'll be interesting to see what they are. Nibbles provided, and a cash bar.

Remodel

2008-06-04T12:31:00.001+12:00

New look. Combination new header I made a few weeks ago + new layout. Old one was poo-bum. Inspired to change by Podgypanda's redesigned blog.

The cat was sick on a pile of drawings and blank animation paper I hadn't put on the shelf :(

Pigeon Problems completed!

2008-05-22T23:58:00.000+12:00

Well, it's done! 2 weeks ago I rendered out the final version of Pigeon Problems, a short animated film I had produced in 2005 as my graduation project at Freelance Animation School and now soon to be seen at the Hamburg Animation Awards in Hamburg, Germany. I'll post some screenshots later when I get around to hooking up my external HD.

At some point I'll also go work a way to lower the file size so I can put it online in the future.

I really should do more...

2008-04-30T11:50:00.000+12:00

Well, I started this blog for sketches, but I just don't seem to really do much outside of silly things based on whatever it is I am working on at the time. Registered years ago on deviantart so I could display my work, only it isn't exactly an inspiring place. The other day I registered with a forum where just knowing I could "talk shop" is inspiration in itself, so maybe we'll see some actual work on here now, huh?

I pulled my old student film out of storage a couple of months ago, intent on finishing it off for an event later this year. I've also started working on my own short film thingy that should be fun. I love working in a "flat" style, but this will be something much looser, and hopefully have a much more "natural" feel to it. I've written the script, and have done a couple of pages of storyboards, made a near-final modelsheet and have pages of concepts for the background content. Once I move forward I'll see about putting something up (without giving too much away) ;)

Of course, I should be starting a new contract soon, so all this will be around earning an income. As I often like to work long hours in studio, I have a feeling it'll be another 6-8 months of forgetting I made a blog.

Batman - The Dark Knight

2008-04-26T21:57:00.001+12:00

Really looking foward to this movie. This trailer looks amazing.

Books.

2008-03-31T12:17:00.000+13:00

I found a copy of John Grant's "Masters of Animation" at the library. It's full of good biographical information about animation masters. I had no idea that Tex Avery was so self-critical, and while I knew (anecdotally) that Ralph Bakshi was difficult to work with it was insightful to see how often it was related to the frustration of dealing with producers who would butcher his work. Still 80% of the book left to read, should be enlightening.

Last week I bought an anatomy book. At times my grasp on the shapes in a human body is shocking, so I need to start studying form and function again. It's surprisingly hard to find an anatomy book that is actually informative and helpful. In any case, I'll be looking to attend some life-drawing classes later this year.

In retrospect, I should have bought the Muybridge "Human Motion" book I saw in Borders. The animal one would be more helpful though.

Sebastien

2008-03-27T19:51:00.001+13:00

Neat. Goeblins does it again. 'Sebastien' features a neat little guy perfecting the art of the paper plane. Simple and sweet with Goeblins' usual level of excellence.

Staines Down Drains clip

2008-01-07T16:25:00.001+13:00

Here's the opening sequence to the show "Staines Down Drains", a program that I worked on in 2006. Enjoy!

Kappa Mikey? What the hell?

2008-01-05T08:27:00.000+13:00

In what appears to be the beginning of a tradition of posting things about bad animation, here is something I happened to catch on TV today: Kappa Mikey. It was terrible, and I may actually be generous in that evaluation.

Premise and Humour: The premise of the show is that an American boy has won a competition to be a character in a Japanese show, and plays the character Kappa Mikey in the fictional show LilyMu. Any attempted humour is derived from parody and satire of Japaneses culture vs American culture, something that HiHi Puffy AmiYumi succeeded at but this show... miserably failed or failed miserably.

Animation: There is no animation. No more than an animatic. The whole thing is nothing but a series of short loops and key poses with "swish" sound effects everytime a character switches to a new pose. The designs are poor- "anime" characters look like poor fanart while "american" toons have no personality.

Really, I felt I was watching a terrible terrible fan-made web cartoon. I know this is probably more a case of a low, low budget but this just wasn't the quality I would expect to see on TV.

Colin's Bear Animation

2007-12-14T09:32:00.001+13:00

I'm quite glad I did not go to this school if this is all they managed to teach... :)

Use your lightening bolt...

2007-12-10T23:31:00.000+13:00

... and win the treasure!

It's been a while...

2007-11-19T22:32:00.001+13:00

.. but I'm back. For the past 8 months or so, I've been working on the NZ animated TV comedy "Bro'Town" at various stages in animation, scanning, Ink+Paint, and compositing. It's been quite an experience. Hopefully I'll be able to get back on track with this. In the meantime, here's a walkcycle I finished this afternoon :)

28 Principles of Animation

2007-04-15T20:34:00.000+12:00

Apologies to all. I've been neglecting this blog. A bit of doodling, a few walkcycles... and a lot of time spent revisiting old RPGs :)

Animation news and other assorted things of interest sort of fell under the radar a bit. While 'catching up' on things, I came across this over at AnimationBlog: The 28 Principles of Animation. A little light reading for y'all while I'm mucking about here.

Oscar news is enough to animate studio boss

2007-01-25T18:16:00.000+13:00

'An Auckland animation company got an Oscar thrill yesterday - its work is part of a documentary in line for one of the Hollywood awards.

The Grey Lynn-based company, Flux Animation Studio, worked with former United States Vice-President Al Gore on his global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which is a frontrunner for best documentary at the Academy Awards on February 25 in Hollywood.

The feature-length film follows Mr Gore's campaign to spread the word about the effects of climate change and the dangers of global warming.

Flux created two animation sequences for the movie. The first, directed by Andrew Newland, is about a polar bear searching for a piece of ice.

The other, directed by Fraser Monroe, shows what happens to a frog when the water he is swimming in is heated to boiling point.

Company founder and creative director Brent Chambers was excited to find the movie was among the nominations yesterday.

"We're absolutely rapt because it was a bit of a punt initially but it seemed like a good cause," he said.....'

Source : NZ Herald

I'm really happy about this. I did some contract work for that studio on another project and thoroughly enjoyed working for them. It's good to see people's hard work being recognised.

Power of the Dark Crystal

2007-01-05T20:05:00.000+13:00

Nothing I can write here can really do justice to the original Dark Crystal. It had Jim Henson's signature attention to details, an involved story and vibrant characters. The puppetry was excellent and even the jungle and swamps looked appropriately alien.

I couldn't contain my excitement when I first heard a sequel was being made, and anticipation doubled when I heard that Genndy Tartakovsky was tagged as director (by far one of my favourite directors and creator of cartoons..)

According to Variety.com, "The Power of the Dark Crystal" picks up several hundred to a thousand years after the conclusion of the first film, with Jen and Kira as rulers of the land. A myserious girl appears, trying to save her world, located within the centre of the planet. The sun of her world is dying, and the only thing that'll save it is a shard from the Dark Crystal.

Like the original film, this production will star puppets crafted and operated by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. However, the backgrounds will be CG. Normally I'd be against this (personal preference: I like the look of old fashioned sets and animatronics) but I think it'd work for this one.

I'm really looking forward to this. Release slated for Spring 2008.

In related news, it sounds like a Fraggle Rock movie and a sequel for The Labyrinth are also in preproduction.

Made a list. Checked it twice.

2006-12-26T23:05:00.000+13:00

I have indeed made a list of things. O, the things on the list! Many may be too out of date to be called "news", but certainly it's mostly interesting stuff. Not only does it have a few new things, but it has old things that I never posted and even a notation for the entry that disappeared.

Enjoy your Festivus.

My first Flash.

2006-12-17T23:46:00.000+13:00

I've only been trained in traditional 2D animation, so I'm very proud of making a(very simple) Flash animation.

This is the protagonist, Chuck Grimes from my 2005 student project "Pigeon Problems". He's actually quite out of character in this, he's hardly tranquil. Has a thing about cleaning windows: He likes to clean windows. Has another thing about pigeons: He doesn't like to clean pigeons. He doesn't like them at all.

I had never entirely finished the film. All the animation was done, but there's still at least 20 seconds of clean-up remaining. Recently I brought it out of storage to work on until my next work contract.

I put up a post a few days ago, but it seems to have vanished into the nethers of the internet instead of appearing on here, so I'll see if I can find it. Until then, a floating Grimes. :)

Tim Biskup

2006-12-11T13:55:00.000+13:00

It'd been a few days since I had read through the Drawn website, and I found this neat link to an article by Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing.net: 7 Things You Should Know About Tim Biskup. It's a very good read, gives a lot of insight into Tim Biskup's work history, some of the people who have inspired him, and his sleeping habits.

His paintings have got to be seen to be believed. Find more about Tim Biskup here

Tenacious D-Classico

2006-12-05T13:26:00.001+13:00

This may be the funniest thing I've seen all year. From John Kricfalusi, and Tenacious D's movie "The Pick of Destiny", comes "Classico". It was released on October 30th. Be sure to go see the movie, buy the album. If we don't support the artists, we won't see gems like this. This vid does contain mature content so if you're easily offended, or a prude, I recommend you watch this anyway.

Dark Fury

2006-12-04T22:25:00.000+13:00

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury.

I've had this sitting around for a while, meaning to watch. I wish I had watched it sooner. Directed by Peter Chung (creator of the Aeon Flux animated series that a later movie was loosely based on, he also directed "Matriculated" for the "Animatrix" collection of short animated films set in the Matrix universe.), this is a made-for-DVD movie that takes place "Pitch Black" and provides the setup for it's sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick".

The plot follows the characters of Riddick, Abu, and Jack (aka Kyra in CoR). Riddick and Co. are picked up by a mercenary ship run by the creepy art-loving noblewoman Antonia Chillingsworth and her numerous hirelings. The catch: her taste in art is death, and Riddick is the perfect artist. Riddick is forced to fight for her entertainment, and is forced to consider that he may be fighting for more than just his own survival.

The film is another example of Chung's directing talents and style. His characters are complicated and quirky, with a definate trend towards the surreal. Chillingsworth herself conjurs images harking back to AeonFlux, though so do the numerous minions coming to unfortunate, bloody ends. I quite enjoyed this, but I recommend using a screen that isn't burnt out as the images on screen are quite dark for the majority of the time.

It's a start.

2006-12-02T21:58:00.000+13:00

About time I set this up. My intention: To put up pictures and random interesting animation and geeky "things" I come across.

Let's wait and see what reality presents.