It's like your amazing unit was meant to lead us all to the promised land!

Its almost been 2 weeks since my last blog post, shame on me!

Now where was I last time, ah yes, I just started working at my new job. Well, it may come as no surprise but im still working there, making banner ads and lead capture pages. Some jobs are really fun to work on, others are complete bastards, just like any other job in the world I suppose. I do prefer working on banner ads then the lcp's, but im sure with practice as I become more proficient doing lcp's it will all balance out. You can check out my desk space below. Those drawings on the right aren't by me but another animator, who also happens to be called Daniel, you can check out his work here. He has come from a TV background and ended up in web banners because times are tough in the Australian animation industry. Sounds like the opposite of me, starting off in web banners with the hope of eventually making my way into television commercial animation. Maybe one day the animation industry in Australia will actually become... you know... an industry. Im not holding my breath tho.



Also during my lunch breaks at work i've had a chance to chill out and do some doodling and work on vectoring some illustrations I drew last year. You can find the vector piece i've been working on below, its concept art for a project id like to do after I finish The Telescope, which I fingers crossed will have finished in the next 2 months. Anyway, me and my friend Mark Schneider plan on rebooting Out There, with a new and more dynamic animation style then the pixel based original, and we hope to start when he visits Australia later this year.



These are some other doodles, the first two are just basic old doodles, and the last 3 are character designs for a 40/50 second animation I need to do for a collab on TheBackalleys based around the idea of the end of the world in 2012. My concept is a faux 50's sci fi styled movie trailer.











In non animation based news, this weekend I went to the Queen Victoria Markets for the first time, my partner Maya guided me around all the sites, and I ended up spending quite a bit of money. I ended up grabbing a nice ankle length leather jacket, and a Clockwork Orange poster since its one of my favorite movies. I also got what was quite possibly the biggest sausage roll I have ever seen. The pastry was incredible, shame the meat was pretty average... or below average.





Also this weekend, going back further into time and space, when I had my mate Felix over and we watched some films of the animated variety. First up was Fantasia, which is one of my all time fav films. But everyone is familiar with that film.

What was more interesting was the second film we watched, a Japanese film called Dead Leaves, which is another of my all time favorite movies, and some what of an inspiration.





What I didn't realise was how much of an inspiration it actually was, when I look at my work all I can see is how slow, and methodical it tends to be, with little in the way of action or dynamic camera camera angles. BUT that didn't stop Felix from pointing out similarities in character design and color theories.



I felt rather good after the conversation actually, now if only I could make my work as visually exciting as Dead Leaves.



Other then that, not much else to report this week. Check out this gorgeous morning sky and lovingly restored Indian Motorcycle.





Ill close with this Dead Leaves shot because I want to leave an impression!

Back to work

Yes, its been a busy few days, that is for certain. As you have no doubt worked out from the title of this post I got the job at nds creative. I started officially yesterday, its been mainly banner amendments and re sizes so far. Ive also had to learn Fireworks on the side since a lot of banners a just gifs, and Fireworks is apparently what everyone likes to use now days, what happened to Image Ready? I also started to work on a whole new creative this afternoon, very detailed brief as far as animating the business logo is concerned, I hope what I have created impresses them, as I'm pretty damn proud of how the logo came out, and at only 3kb. Unfortunately I seem to be getting sick now, I've had an odd and unpleasant feeling in my stomach for the last 2 days now, and its been followed with a sore throat as of this afternoon, surely im not working too hard already? Ha ha...

I also had my cousins wedding last weekend, it was great catching up with all my family again. Should have taken some pictures of Newcastle while I was there, it holds NSW largest KFC, it looks like a shopping center.

On the down side, what this all means is that I haven't had a chance to update The Telescope since my last update, so instead here's a bunch of photos of insects and spiders I've taken over the last couple of weeks.





This here is a Mayfly, I haven't seen many around the last week or so, from memory they have a really short life span.





And here is a decent sized Dragonfly, I found it in a web outside the window of my office. I untangled him and tried to set him free, but his wings were too damaged from struggling in the web for him to fly, I felt quite sad for him... or her...



This is the spider who's web ruined said Dragonfly. What sucked most about the whole thing was that it had happened during the day, so the spider wouldn't even come out and put the thing out of its misery.





And while I'm on the topic of spiders, I found these two separate huntsman shells on the front veranda. If you look closely you can see that both are missing the abdomens. No idea what happened to them, or how they got here.



This is just a spotty moth, nothing all that exciting really.





Recently the weather has been quite wet, so all the millipedes have come out of hiding, normally you can find slugs on a nightly basis at this place, but this is the first time I've seen millipedes here.





Lastly, the other night on the way home from the cinema (which I will get too soon) my girlfriend pointed out to me something odd buzzing around the flowers. It looked allot like a hummingbird, and turns out she wasn't far off.



Apparently they are often called hummingbird hawk moths, because having one birds name in your title isn't enough for these insatiable moths. Was fascinating to watch, and really hard to photograph because they moved so much, and so unpredictably.

Aside from these insect photos all I have really taken lately are just a couple more shots of.. well, Melbourne.





These were taken just outside of my new work office. Pretty nice area actually, some great shops in the area.



I can't remember where I took this, but it has the moon in it, so that's cool I guess?



This motorcycle was parked outside of Flinders Station, now I'm no expert, but that looks pretty well mostly hand made, right down to the oil leaks... The welding marks on the tank gave it a lot of character, or at least I thought they did.



Also, one afternoon walking my friend Felix home from the city with partner after... coffee and cakes I believe, we found this large umbrella hanging in the power lines. You don't seen that every day.

But yes, the cinema.



I'm sure many of you have already seen this film, or at least read a lot about it. Personally, I loved it. The animation was gorgeous, the voice acting was great, I didn't have any problems with the pacing, which I have heard some people complain about. Ive also heard people complain about the character designs being to ugly, personally I thought they looked more rugged and worn then ugly, and each one was just bursting with personality. It also had an amazing score which I need to look into. Honestly, the film goes so hard against the grain of modern animated movies that I'm surprised it exists.

Also, after all the Oscar buzz and hype I finally got around to seeing



I enjoyed it a lot as well, once I got my head around the way it was edited. I guess I'm so used to American movies treating me like I have the IQ of a mango that the way the movie jumps back and forth between the past, and two separate court cases in the present disorientated me, after my brain got around that fact tho it all came together.
The acting was great for the most part, the twins were a bit iffy. It used CG in a way, well, I didn't even know about it until I started watching the special features. It was definitely used in a subtle way that enhanced the movie, which is how CG should be used. It also had some fantastic dialogue and one liners. All in all, much I highly recommend it.

That's about it for now, I have a back catalog of Blu Rays I need to get through, and will no doubt leave thoughts on here. Those been Moon, Escape from New York, Fantasia, No Country for Old Men and Kick Ass.

Hopefully in my next update I will get to include some new screens from The Telescope too, wouldn't that be nice.

Back to the start

Yes, back to the start, of The Telescope. Why you ask since my last post was about how I had finally finished the animatic? Quite simply a lot of the earlier scenes needed to be touched up, since the film was started over a year ago, what I thought looked decent back then and what I think looks decent right now aren't really the same thing. So I've gone back and added in a bit more detail to many of the earlier shots. I only have one other shot that I think needs touching up and then its onto all new stuff, which is exciting.













I also recently got a chance to sit down and watch the 1962 sci-fi classic, Day of the Triffids.



At first, I wasn't really impressed, but that was just because the DVD transfer was the worst I have ever seen. I guess thats what happens when you pay $4.00 for a DVD. Turns out that the movie deserved a lot better treatment. The effects were pretty neat for the time, at least from what I could tell, I guess they probably wouldn't have held up so well if the film had been restored, but you never know, but what really stood out was the pacing. The movie just moves along at a quick pace, from location to location, usually with no explanation, but for some reason it never really feels like it needs one. You know the worlds in crisis and people just do what they have to do, and much like real life, you never really know all the facts. The way they show how society crumbles once a large portion of it looses its sight is also quite fascinating, especially for the time it was produced. If your into old sci-fi movies its well worth checking out, just be prepared for the poor restoration of this film to grate on the eyes.

I gave a go at doing a caricature of a Triffid from the film but it came out looking like ass...:(

The animatic is finally finished

And I couldn't be happier.



























Ill start cleaning up some of the earlier scenes this afternoon, before heading into the city of dinner. I guess since the rendering process is so long you wont be seeing another image dump like this in a while. Still, it feels great to get this much finished, im hoping I will have the movie almost ready for release by the end of March, fingers crossed.