More Etta Art

Time for some more Artwork from my time at Ettamogah.
As I have previously mentioned, I was initially hired as a Storyboard Artist on the new series "Wakkaville" which followed the adventures of a young girl relocated from the city to live with her Aunt in a small country town. Basically, a fish-out-of-water story.
Midway through my first board, the Director quit, and I was asked to take the reins. What I had noticed on my board was that a lot of the setting was at best loose, we had about six pieces of concept art for locations for the entire show, and some of these required amendments.
Following is some of the art I created to help lock down key locations within the show.

Business card narrow down

It's been a while since I've printed personal business cards. Well, the last time I had some done email was unheard of and telephone numbers in Australia consisted of seven numbers instead of eight, and mobiles were a luxury item.
Anyway, the time has come to do a new set and I figured I'd showcase some of my artwork with what the fine folk at Moo can do. I thought I'd go for a selection of ten images and need to narrow down these 15 that I'd settled on.

Wanna help? Thoughts?

Wonder Woman Pin-up

At last, she's finished.
This piece was going to be for a fanboy exhibition with a comic book theme. Unfortunately from when I heard about the upcoming exhibition to the submission date, I only had a couple of weeks and with fulltime and freelance work, this one fell to the backburner. But I wanted to finish it anyway, so it became a not-so little lunchtime activity.
With the comic theme I thought rather than do an almost literal fan image of a comic book character, I'd give it a bit of a twist and do Wonder Woman in a pin-up style.
This was also an opportunity to try a different technique with rendering in photoshop.
As this was going to be a piece in an exhibition I was going to have a high-res print done on fine art stock. However, if there is sufficient interest from this post I will do a limited run of 16 x 12 prints on the same fine art stock (sans watermark).
Hope you like...

Stitch for Ash

A girl I work with is apparently a big fan of Stitch from "Lilo and Stitch" and a few days ago after learning I worked on the sequel dashed over to ask for a pic. Despite it being seven years since I worked on the film I'm surprised how well I remember how to draw him. He's a lot of fun too.
This one will become a tattoo...

Here's the couple of roughs I did exploring some ideas and working up to the final image.

Endamogah

This article from The Age a couple of weeks ago reminded many of us former employees of Leigh O'Brien, CEO of Ettamogah Entertainment that for many, the saga is still not over.
For a number of us union members, last Christmas heralded a double celebration as we received cheques for 80% of our entitlements some fourteen months after being unlawfully "stood down" from our jobs. This constituted a payment of 90% of our entitlements to solicitors acting on our behalf less 10% in legal fees.
But it wasn't without a protracted and frustrating fight. After months of unsuccessfully seeking a resolution through Fair Work following being "stood down" in October 2009 so that the company could sort out story and production issues on its second animated series "Li'l Larikkins", the MEAA took the matter to court with Mr O'Brien agreeing in July 2010 to pay all outstanding entitlements. A premature cheer of celebration rang out from the union. Premature because the stalling that had delayed progress previously continued until a payment of 90% of our entitlements was made in September '10 with the remainder to follow a couple of weeks later. Well, that never happened. Other creditors were lining up and on November 16 the company was placed under external administration. Paperwork sent out to creditors by administrators Hall Chadwick detailed amongst other things a debt of over $6 million, curiously $3 million of which Mr O'Brien claimed he owed himself. Additionally the day beforehand, the company changed its name because of an apparent "breach of licence agreement" despite operating for 11 years and owning the rights to Ken Maynard's cartoons.
In December, the union in light of the amount of creditors chasing unpaid debt conceded that the remaining 10% would not be forthcoming and proceeded to disperse funds held in trust by the solicitors.
On February 2, 2011 following the granting of an extension to prove that the company was indeed financial, creditors met at a hearing with administrators Hall Chadwick and voted to have the company wound up and placed into liquidation.

With the saga now well and truly over for me and given that several episodes of both series have aired on TV thereby nullifying any NDA, and given that there is effectively no company to threaten legal action I thought it about time to share some of the artwork I created during my time there.
I was originally hired back in March of 2008 as a storyboard artist for their new series "Wakkaville" and in my first few weeks, prior to starting any storyboards was asked to create some character artwork.

Sneak peak

Here's a sneak peak of something I'm working on at the moment for an upcoming exhibition.
More soon...

Oh, and that last post was my 200th post, how about that?

Something really different

A couple of months ago I was asked to contribute artwork to a rather unusual project. A young Perth boy had passed away from cancer, and as he had been part of a large fundraising campaign a rather large funeral was arranged. I was asked to create some artwork in the style of E.H. Shepard famed for the original "Winnie the Pooh" books, which the boy loved, for a funeral booklet. It was a very tight turnaround, but the family were very happy with the result.

Poised to strike

And another one... I am planning something here, stay tuned

Water girl

Here's a pic I did a little while back as a tryout for a freelance job.
The client thought she was a bit too sexy, but I got the gig nonetheless.

Dressed to Kill

Too much fun.
I decided to spend a bit more time adding colour to this one

Armed and Dangerous

Another lunchtime doodle with the brush pen and a bit of photoshoppery

Another gun girl

Another lunchtime doodle with the brush pen

Gun girl

Stepping away from digital and back to old school traditional drawing, here's a lunchtime doodle with a new Brush pen I picked up on the weekend...

Another Astro

Well, the last Astroboy was so much fun to draw that I had to do another one, and what self-respecting Astroboy fan can resist a pic with those arse-cannons ablazing.

Banana A-Peel prints

The other week, a friend at work invited a few of us to participate in an Art Auction she was also involved in to help raise funds for victims of the Queensland and Victorians floods of recent weeks. It's called the "Banana A-Peel" and opens tomorrow Feb 24 at the Old Bar in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Whilst I didn't have time to create anything new for the auction, I suggested a couple of pieces that I'd put up here on the ol' blog. I'd also never had a print done of any of my artwork before, so a little nervously I sent these two images off the print unsure of what I was going to get back.
Well, the result was fabulous...
The photo doesn't really do it justice, so you'll just have to take my word for it, or come along to the auction. They're printed 10x8 on 310gsm fine art stock.
And here they are hand-signed, numbered and framed-
Come along and support a great cause.

Astroboy week

A former workmate of mine, Tim declared the other day that it was Astroboy week and invited all of his friends to contribute.
I used to love watching this show as a kid.
Here's my effort...

Max

This is an old pic, it's actually half of the original drawing that featured both of my dogs- two Pomeranians. I had been considering reworking it for this particular occasion, but haven't gotten around to it.
Anyway, I lost this one to kidney failure last month. It came on very quickly and was quite a shock despite him being 14 and a half. It was a very sad time around our house, and I still can't believe he's gone-I keep looking into the back yard expecting to see him trotting about or lying in one of his favourite spots. He was a cheeky bugger and was with me through some bad times, good times and numerous adventures; I'm thankful for the 14 and a half wonderful years of companionship he gave me.

...still alive

Sorry for the lack of posts, I am still here, just very busy.

More posts coming soon...

Ho ho ho

A bit of Christmas cheesecake to wish everyone all the best for the festive season and an even better New Year

Astro Yuki

Finally gotten around to finishing this one.
On a side note, I was very surprised and flattered to receive and email a month or so back from Kevin Dart, creator of the Yuki 7 concept complimenting me on my interpretations of her. I hope this one does justice to the collection.

Something different

I haven't done anything like this for a while and I've only just received back a copy so I can finally share it. This is a piece I did at the end of last year for my Father-in-law as a present for his birthday. It's of his parents house in Lorne, Victoria on the Great Ocean road. The house was built by his father high up on the hill looking out over the bay and my father-in-law grew up there with his four brothers and sisters. His father passed away a couple of years ago and the once family home, a popular spot particularly during holidays has since been sold. My wife had suggested this as an idea, and it was reinforced earlier in the year after seeing a similar effort done by someone else for another of his siblings.
The original, in pen and ink hangs, framed in pride of place on one of my parents-in-laws walls.

Stealth Yuki

Another for the Yuki collection

Ranga Nation

It's taken me a little while to get to do this one, but I couldn't resist doing our new(ish) lady Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Sketch dump

Haven't quite gotten around to finishing these, but in an effort to keep things ticking over here's some ruffs.
...and a sneak peak of a job I've been working on the last couple of months

Hendrix Pig

Here's my contribution to Guy and Stacy's brilliant Dueling Banjo Pigs blog

Scooter Yuki

This is too much fun to quit just now...

Yuki again

That last pic of Yuki 7 was so much fun I had to do another...

Yuki

I don't know why I never tried this earlier.
It was quite fun and it's a great concept- Kevin Dart's Yuki 7

Footy Girl

My daughter has started playing Auskick- a kids version of Aussie rules football- and loves it.
The team colours she's running around in aren't my choice but I've got an uphill battle on my hands there. I haven't seen her run around yet either, but thought I'd have a bit of fun with the idea

Fairy

Just a bit of a play around with and old rough drawing and photoshop

My Apprentice

Time for a more positive post
For the past few months I've been working from home on an animated Feature Film. It's been something of a nice safety net post-ettamogah and has also given me the opportunity, even if remotely to work with some of my old friends and colleagues from my time at the Disney Studio in Sydney. I can't say much about the project except that it's a film that will be out later in the year, and at that time I'll be able to show some of my work from it.
In working from home I've been able to see more of my family which has been great, and I've also been able to share what I've been doing on a daily basis with my kids. My daughter in particular has been quite fascinated, climbing up the ladder into my attic where I've been working in the mornings before school and having a look at what I'm doing and wanting to have a go. The project has been done using digital animation software where I've been drawing directly on a tablet monitor which has been interesting. It's left my old Disney animation desk sitting to the side collecting dust, well, except for when my daughter comes up for an inspection. She's been making herself quite at home climbing into a seat and drawing away, even grabbing model sheets from the production to practice on. A junior animator in the making.
Here's her latest effort of the main characters-