Guardian Angel

I am really sorry that I haven't posted in such a long time. You would think that now im studying film making at TAFE I would have lots more to post about... and you would be right. Since my last blog post I have released 6 shorts... oh dear... Well I guess I better start at the beginning.

First up we have my loop for Aprils Loopdeloop. The months theme was "Rock" so naturally I decided to make something about tan asteroid colliding with the earth and wiping out the Dinosaurs. The idea started out rather differently, I originally wanted to make it more of a comedy, but after watching a few documentaries on the meteor crash I felt sad... This was easily the biggest loop I have made so far this year scale wise. In fact, I dare say due to other commitments it will be the only loop I make on a large scale this year. I really need to start planning smaller loops that take less time to make... I called this one "The Last Supper" since all the Dinosaurs are eating just before they die.



Then we have Mays Loopdeloop entry. This time the months theme was "one" to celebrate Loopdeloops first birthday. I pretty much new exactly what I wanted to do from the beginning and this was one of the few times that my idea didn't change at all through the creative process. This was also the first time in quite a while that I used this particular rendering style. I am rather happy with the end result.



The theme for this months Loopdeloop is "Play" so I hope I can bang that one out in a single sitting. Im planning on going back to the Nimbin character models, but why im going back to them is a story for another time.

OH! And speaking of Nimbin, I also released a trailer for Gerkinman Returns! Im on holidays from TAFE for all of July so I HOPE to finish the film during that time.



In non animation news, I finally got around to finishing a video using all footage from The Melbourne Aquarium. It was really little more then an experiment in editing using FCPX. Happy with how most of it came up, really made me realise how badly I need a better camera tho.



On the TAFE from I have a couple of projects I have released. The first was an editing exercise using FCP7. It was kind of strange going back to 7 after using Premier and FCPX for so long, it did feel a little backwards and things didn't necessarily work the way I thought they would. For the exercise we had to cut a trailer to one of three public domain movies, I chose Plan 9 From Outer Space. Its an interestingly terrible film.



And finally, I have 3 short films which were shot in sequence by me, and some mates from TAFE. Namely Jax Sunny Pappas and Jayde Taylor. Jayde shot the first sequence which was called "Peel Me", it also had me acting in it... badly I might ad. Jax shot the second one which was called "The Adventures of the Travelling Old Shoe". I also starred me along with Jayde. The final part was shot by me and I titled it "Glider". It also has Jayde and a brief appearance by Jax's feet. The point of the exercise was to get us to use a tape based camera and make a 1 minute short film about an object being transferred from one place to another with all in camera editing. Editing in camera requires a lot of rewinding and frustration. Of course this version was done after the assignment was finished and was edited in Premier.



Damn this is a big post. Im going to try to stop this size post from happening again...

Hopefully I will remember to blog again next week with the release of my next loop.

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...