100 Facts About Pandas

A good while ago while I was working at DADDY, I did a picture for Mike Ahern for a book he was working on. So this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to get a copy of 100 Facts About Pandas in the post. I checked the back pages of it and was very pleased to find my name credited for one of the illustrations. Thanks Mike.

So when you're shopping for Christmas, you should totally pick up a copy of 100 Facts About Pandas. Noel Fielding said that it was 'a breakthrough in panda literature.'

All in all, a really good coffee table book.

Cinema 4D - The beginning!

I wasn't sure if I should post this but, it took so long to render I thought I may as well make the render worth it. Next time I'll think of something more imaginative to say.

Behold, my first endeavour into Cinema 4D! (Thanks to an Andrew Kamer tutorial)



Also I'm thinking that this should probably be my new career move in terms of getting work in animation. Motion graphics... that's where the jobs seem to be.

And so, it begins...

Macbeth

About three weeks ago I agreed to do a bit of animation for a rendition of Macbeth in England in the Seagull Theater. They were kind of in a bind, due to time constraints and lack of budget, but I said what the hey and gave it a go. Also, when I heard that Abi Titmuss was playing Lady Macbeth, I was sold!

So here it is minus the proper sound track.



Because I was doing this pro bono and since the piece was for theater, I was a bit more experimental than usual. I was given some reference footage from John Hales who is playing Macbeth.



Originally I tried to rotoscope it in Flash. After a while I figured using After Effects was the best way to go about things. I rotoscoped some of the footage in Photoshop as opposed to Flash and just messed around with the filters in After Effects.

I feel that though the course of making this piece, me and After Effects have become buddies.

Signs on the Horizon

Once upon a time, myself and Billy were asked by Vinnie Gallagher to animate on his movie, providing we got funding from the Irish Film Board, though the Virtual Cinema scheme. Actually that was the other week and the other day we had a nervous interview with the Irish Film Board people, and a while ago we got the all clear to go ahead and make Vinnie's film Signs. Hoo-rah!

So that means that I got me a job for a little bit in the future. It'll be a mix of Flash and After Effects and Photoshop stuff. So it'll be a good way to improve my After Effects without getting too out of my comfort zone.

Here's the test me and Billy did for the interview. Billy did the chic and I did the dude.

Après Darklight

Just about recovering after the Darklight film festival. It was my first trip to Darklight and it was awesome. I learned a lot, was pretty entertained and felt more focused on film making. I'll definitely head back year after year.
 
On Friday I attended a talk by Hunter Weeks which, for me, was the highlight of Darklight! Hunter talked about his low budget film making (He made 10mph, the first ever feature documentary on YouTube), but more importantly, what to do after your film is made and how to use the internet. I've heard for a while now that, now-a-days film makers have to also be marketers and market themselves and their films with an equal intensity as their film making. Hunter was the first person I've ever seen that actually does this.
On the verge of finishing his third feature length film, he was still really passionate about what he's doing. He seemed like a sound, reasonably happy guy and which made the world of film making and following your dream seem pretty optimistic, until he referred to himself as an impoverished film maker. Hopefully he was just being self-deprecating.

Also on Friday was a Synth Eastwood; Animators Anonymous night. On the night were talks by the amazing DADDY, Lovely Productions, Fergal Brennan and Chris Judge.
Fergal Brennan premiered his music video (can't recall the name), which honestly was one of the best short pieces of animation I've seen, ever.  It was a music video that isn't just a music video, it's a cohesive piece of film you just have to see. I'm dying to see it again. Hopefully on a later post I'll be able to link it.

Also, Chris Judge's film, Desert, premiered and was well received. (I helped a little with the animation).

Saturday's highlight was the Mark Romanek Masterclass. I wouldn't strictly call it a masterclass. More like a casual talk about his work to date. It was really good, like a live version of 'special features' that you'd get on a DVD. It was extra nice to see him critique a couple of the audiences' films at the end of the talk. For only a couple of minutes we got to see his ability to analyze a film and make concise and accurate criticisms in an inoffensive way. It was amazing.

So yeah, Darklight... it rocked.



(And I didn't even get into the free schnacks and booze!)

Little Man Walk

I've been a bit quiet on the posts but that just means that I'm either really busy doing loads of work or doing nothing. To be honest, it's actually has been half and half.

But what am I up to now a days?

Working on an ad for Love Irish Food at the moment that should be on telly in a few weeks.
I had to get back into classical 2D animation, which was scary stuff, being used to the comforts of Flash for so long. The plus side is that I don't spend ages wasting time editing vectors points no one'll notice, but the down side is the lack of ctrl+z (or I should say command+z).... the world would be such a better place if ctrl+z worked on everything... That sounds like a film idea.

Anyway,

For the Love Irish Food ad, I did a walk cycle that wont be used, so why not shove it on the ol' blog log og.



The character design is a Mike Ahern special. I accidentally saved over my stick man walk cycle so here you only get to see two of the passes that I did; rough and then a little bit cleaner before he got scrapped. The bottom fellas are on ones and the top fellas are on twos. This was animated in Flash.

New Website

I've been pretty busy, getting my showreel together, finishing off a few projects and making a website. Major props to Karl my homie for getting it up and running. Basically the idea is that the website is the showroom and the blog is the workshop.

So without further adooooo go to Gracechan.ie