Day Eighteen

I've been away for the weekend, so we've got two posts in a day.
Day 18's challenge is "just a doodle"
Given free range, here's a girly...

Day Seventeen

Day 17's challenge is Favourite plant
I'm rather partial to Bonsai, although I don't seem to have much luck in keeping them

Sneak peek

Here's something else I'm currently working on. Not a job as such, a potential submission piece but nonetheless I've only got a couple of weeks to finish it. Nothing like a deadline hey?

And here I am in the middle of this 30 Day Drawing Challenge as well.

I figure posting some progress sneak peeks might just motivate me to get it finished in time.

Day Sixteen

Day 16's topic is Inspiration
Whilst I'm inspired by many and all sorts of things, I'm probably seen like this searching for it

Day Fifteen

Yay! I'm halfway there...
Day 15's challenge in the 30 Drawing Challenge is Family Picture

Day Fourteen

Day 14's drawing challenge is favourite Fairytale
I can almost draw this one in my sleep- Cinderella

Day Thirteen

Day 13's drawing challenge is Favourite comic
"Calvin and Hobbes" without a doubt...

Day twelve

Day 12's challenge is most recent accomplishment
Well of course I'd have to say my baby daughter Jade

Day Eleven

Day 11's challenge is "turning point in your life"
I'd have to say being selected to go to a specialist art school when I was 12 is the turning point that stands out for me

Day ten

Day 10's challenge is favourite Candy.
Chocolate is, of course my sweet of choice

Day nine

Day 9's challenge is Favourite TV show
Well, as much as I despise reality TV I'm a sucker for "The Amazing Race"

Day Eight

Day 8's challenge is Favourite animated Character
It's practically gift wrapping it for me.
Here's Stitch...

Day seven

Today's challenge is a weird one, favourite word.
I can't really say that I have a favourite, but one which I think is pretty cool is atelier
...look it up

Day six

Day 6's challenge is favourite book character.
Well, probably not too many surprises here, this one would have to be my most read- Harry Potter

Day five

Day 5's challenge is best friend.

I've opted to go for "Man's Best Friend", my dog

Day 4

Day 4's challenge is favourite place and what could compare to a Daddy sandwich from his kiddies

Day Three

Day 3's challenge is favourite food and whilst I'm partial to a nice steak I do have a sweet tooth.
So, today's drawing is Ice cream.

Day two

Today's challenge- Favourite animal.
I passed up drawing my pet dog when how could I resist drawing a Dinosaur!

30 day challenge

A friend posted a link to this online the other day and what better to flex the old drawing muscles and start off the month. I haven't done a meme in a while...Here's my day one...

A couple of Santa scenes

I finally got around to seeing "Santa's Apprentice" just before Christmas with my eldest daughter and we both enjoyed it. She was very delighted in seeing my name at the end and remembered several of the scenes that I had animated. It was a fun little film that we and everyone else in the cinema enjoyed.

Anyway I thought I'd share a little bit more of my time on the production. As I have previously mentioned, we animated this using Toon Boom software drawing digitally on tablet monitors thereby eliminating paper and the need to dash off every few hours and shoot a linetest. Here's a screen capture showing what the interface looked like and our digital lightbox.

This made it very easy working remotely as I was. I was able to easily export a movie clip of my scene and upload it for the Character lead and Director to view and critique.

And here's the linetests of a couple of my favourite scenes. This first one is my favourite.

And this one is my daughter's favourite scene

RIP Ronald Searle

It's a bit of a downer to start the year on, but revered Cartoonist and Illustrator Ronald Searle passed away at the end of last year.
His influence has been felt the world over but aspiring illustrators everywhere.
Plenty of others have said it better, so I'll just post a tribute to one of his best known creations, the "St Trinians" girls

Naughty or Nice?

A bit of Christmas Cheesecake for the Holiday season.
All the best, and may you all have a safe and Happy New Year's

Sketchdump

Donald Family Pic

This one's been on the to-do list for a few months, but I've been a bit busy with fulltime work, freelance and parenthood. My son's kinder teacher and her husband are big Disney fans and asked me a few months ago upon learning that I used to work for the House of Mouse if I could draw them a picture of Donald Duck and his family.
During my time at Disney I never actually drew Donald, the only classic character I touched was Mickey, but hey, I'm up for a challenge. It helps that I've got a nice collection of model packs from my time there and Donald and Daisy were amongst them. What I was surprised to learn was there's very little in the way of model sheets for the nephews.
Anyway, I've finished this pic just in time, as it's my son's last day of kinder for the year tomorrow. This should make a nice Chrissy present.
Here's the rough below for those who're interested. Initially roughed in pencil, then assembled in photoshop and a second pass done, before redrawing in pencil for the final piece. I did a little adjust on Daisy and Donald's heads in the final version above.

Santa's Apprentice experience

The French-Irish-Australian Animated Christmas movie “Santa’s Apprentice” that I worked on has finally been released.

For me, to work on this film as an Animator was an opportunity to reunite with some of my ex-Disney colleagues and to extend the Christmas spirit for about six months.

The film achieves a hand-drawn animation look with digital software Toon Boom Harmony so that we were creating paperless animation. This was a new experience for the twenty or so of us Animators who were used to animating pencil on paper now drawing directly onto a tablet monitor. I’d used the software previously at ettamogah but not in the same way. It was a great experience and chance to update the skills- no longer did we have to collect all of our drawings and head over to the linetest machine, we could do it instantly at our desks. Repositioning or adjusting drawings was an ease with instant feedback. The transition from traditional to digital was a relatively smooth one with useful tools available to us in the software.

Whilst most of my colleagues were Sydney-based, and I did spend some time in the studio there to acquaint myself with the project, I was able to work from home with a VPN connection and Skype to communicate regularly. Ahh, the wonders of the internet.

The work-from-home experience was a new one for me, well as a fulltime gig anyway- adjusting to the freedom of working my own hours, not having to commute or be in a studio and dealing with the distractions that come from working at home; and all the while still having to meet a quota. Once I set myself a routine, everything fell into place. It was a fun experience to share with my daughter and see her taking an interest in what I was doing. She would come up into my attic in the morning before school and ask and look over what I was working on. She would come up again at the end of the day and see finished scenes and get a great kick out of seeing these drawings I was making come to life before her eyes. That made it such a special experience. Oh, and she never considered it work for me.

Check out more on the film at the official "Santa's Apprentice" website.

Following are a collection of coloured stills and linetest frame grabs from scenes in the film that I animated.

Even more Etta Art

Back to some artwork posts...
More here from my time at Ettamogah. This is all pre-production artwork from the series "Wakkaville". At the top there is a hero pose of the four main characters which was then inked and coloured and used for promo material.
Following is a bunch of episodic character and prop design artwork done initially for the storyboard artists as they commence boarding their episodes, but also for the character builders and background artists who need to create the assets for each episode prior to animation beginning.

Pink Bundle

Sorry, been busy with our new addition to post an update (and picture).

Yes, the stork brought us a pink bundle, a little girl, Jade born on September 20 and she is being adored by everyone, particularly her now big brother and sister.

Sorry, no photos to share here- I have facebook and private email for that. It appears though that I've had one rather persistent visitor looking for just that, and if it is who I think it is then she really has no business looking here.

Stork

The Stork pays us a visit tomorrow. Whether it's a pink bundle or a blue one we haven't much longer to find out.

Santa's Apprentice

I've just learned that the last animated production I worked on, the Feature film "Santa's Apprentice" has finally announced a release date- November 10, 2011.
I worked on this film as an Animator in Late 2009, early 2010 with a bunch of ex-Disney work-mates and it's great to see our work finally hit cinema screens.
The film came out last Christmas as a French language release (as it was a French co-production) and faired quite well from all reports.
Also, at the Annecy animation festival in France this year, the film won the special UNICEF award.
More about the film here
Check out the teaser trailer here-


I'll discuss it some more shortly...