Horse with no name

Well, I didn't make a post last week, shame on me. BUT! I have been very productive. Not only have I just finished working on my very first proper TV commercial, but I also got a few quick illustrations done and managed to finish of my entry for this months Loopdeloop. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

First of all the commercial, I wish I could post it here, but I cant, so you know what, im going to stay quite  until its up on the companies Vimeo account. What I can say is this, I animated it in Flash, which I shouldn't have, and it still somehow came out pretty great, or at least it was until the client told us to "tone it down" and make it less fun. Ah well.

Second of all is my loop! This loop marked the first time I had done a number of new things. It contains painted backgrounds done in Art Rage with oil paints and the spade thing that people use to mix them, I dont know what its called. Anyway, the end result ends up looking something like this.

And then there was the way I rendered the animation, which was the same process im using to animate Gerkinman returns, so the animation came out looking like this.

So once you mix these two things, and throw in some sound and some special effects courtesy of Final Cut Pro which im now learning to use for work, you end up with a final product similar to this.

And I couldn't be happier with it, or at least, not much happier. You can vote for it on Loopdeloop HERE if you feel the urge.

In other news I did a few quick doodles.

Here is Mr Kermit The Frog. For some reason I have been drawing frogs a lot lately.

Here is an Uglysaurus to celebrate Friday because... well... why not?

And lastly here is an angry man bursting through a door. A friend asked me about how she could make a shot in an animation my dramatic, the shot being a guy bursting through a door. I suggested a low angle shot and then for some reason felt the urge to color the original sketch.

And thats it for this week... or the last two weeks. Whats going to happen next time? Who knows! Tune in to find out.

Orange Crush

A couple of days late again, tho I do have an excuse, Friday was a big day for me. Yup, thats what it was. Also I went to the Melbourne Aquarium yesterday, so it didn't seem to make sense to make a post until I could talk about that.

First things first, ALL the episodes of Bricks Are Fun are now up on Youtube, you can find the four remaining episodes below.









So im glad I have that out of the way. Im not going to be putting anymore older cartoons up until at least Gerkinman Returns is finished, altho all I really have left that I want to put up is a short called "King Dodongo" and the 5 episode series I worked on called "The Martian Saga" which im planning to cut down a bit and put into one film.

I also managed to find the time to do 3 quick illustrations, only spending around 10 minutes on each.

It felt good doing a little bit of drawing again, even if they were only quick doodles. Hopefully I will find the time to do more of this sort of stuff.

It was a busy week last week, working at two different advertising agencies, and next week is looking much the same, if not busier.

As mentioned above, me and my partner went to the Melbourne Aquarium yesterday, and it was quite a bit of fun. While it had many of the same displays as other aquariums, they had a few animals I hadn't seen before, at least not in captivity.

Naturally the first things we saw were the Penguins. They were smaller then I expected, and also pooped more, I mean I expected them to poop plenty, but you never see any stains on the ice in documentaries...

They also had a neat fresh water display with things like fresh water sting rays and fresh water sharks in it, part of the display also had a fake plane crashed into a tree over the water which was a nice touch. One of the most interesting things we found in the fresh water spot was a fish called "The Glass Catfish" which has completely transparent flesh.

Much like Underwater World they also had a Japanese Spider Crab, but I never get tired of seeing those things, despite the fact that this one was quite small compared to others I have seen.

Something that this place had in spades that other aquariums i've been too haven't were Jelly Fish, they mainly had moon jellies, but they also had these cute little ones. I was too mesmerised by there movement to even look at what they were called.

Lastly, they had not one, but two living Nautilus, which was very exciting. I had seen them in videos and my mum was lucky enough to stumble upon a shell once, but I had never seen a living one close up before.

Of course thats just a small amount of what we saw on our visit, I took my camera along so hopefully when I get some free time I will be able to do something fun with all the video. 

And thats really it for this week. With next week looking the way it is I dont know if I will get much if any animation work done, I guess we will just have to see what happens. So until next time...

Skyrim Atmospheres

Wow, im sorry, 2 weeks without an update, I was going to update last Friday but ended up having a massive day freelancing from home and then seeing Happy Feet 2...

ANYWAY, It has been a big couple of weeks, let me tell you about them.

Since this is a creative blog, ill only be talking about the creative stuff, that said, I spent a week up on the Northern Rivers, back on my home turf some might say. While I was there I took quite a lot of time lapse and surf footage. I shot quite a lot of time lapse footage at my parents home over the span of two days and spent another full day at Lennox Head filming, I was even lucky enough to catch a storm going by in the distance. The surf footage I took was also from Lennox Head, and while I wasn't doing anything too dangerous most of the time aside from wearing a silly hat...

But when I wasn't standing safely up on nice green grass I was in stupid places like this hoping that a big wave wouldn't come along and bowl me over...

To give you an idea how big that wave was in this photo, im standing on top of a storm water drain that came up at least a meter and a half out of the water. The end result tho, I like to think was worth it, I put together a lot of the footage I took to the song Il Fiore by Trash80.


But thats not all I have done, while I was away I also managed to finish tweaking all 8 of the original 2005 series of Bricks are Fun. So far I have been uploading one a day, and as of today I have 4 more to go.  Im happier with some more then others, but obviously since some are funnier then others thats to be expected.




Now that these are finished and out of the way I can get back to focusing on Gerkinman Returns and this months loop.

And thats pretty much it for this week, I leave you now with the track Skyrim Atmospheres which is what im currently listening too, and is 42 minutes of peaceful ambience. For those who have been wondering as well, the title of my blog is always whatever song is playing on my playlist at the time. True story.


And dont forget to follow me on Tumblr. I need the love...