Another Year

I can't believe that the first month of this year has nearly gone and I haven't posted anything since last year. Don't worry I haven't been sitting around the beach all summer. I've been doing some work too.

Currently working on a new project called Toon Packs. The will provide a range of resources for illustrators and animators. Here's the current logo below.

The site should be up by mid February but if you go to http://www.toonpacks.com/ you can sign up to the mailing list for updates and special promotions.

Merry Christmas

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas everybody!

Apple and Pear

Character designs for fruit product packaging

Road Kill Hats

They have to be used for something. You can't eat them and why throw them away. It's recycling isn't it?

It's the 3 B's, a bear, a bunny and a beaver.

New Moleskine Notebook

Finally got a new Moleskine to write and draw all my ideas in. My previous notebooks have been either too small to draw in properly or too big to carry around everywhere. So the Moleskine was a perfect choice and the paper is so nice too. But getting the Moleskine was a major mission I had to go to 5 different stores to find one. That's one problem living in NZ, it's always a mission to find things. Anyway I'm happy now and it's back to drawing new stuff in my new Moleskine.

Robot Versus Rabbit

Just working on an animation project which has the more traditional painted background and characters. Which is a nice break from all the normal vector work I seem do. In fact I have an idea for a short film I may do in this style. For the process of this particular animation just I scanned the cleaned up linework and painted them in Photoshop before importing them into Flash. The animation for this project it quite limited but it seems to work nicely.

Who do you think will win in a fight between the robot and rabbit?

Before and after shots

Before and After images for a beauty enhancement business ;)

Now represented by Lemonade

Some good and exciting news for you all. I'm now being represented by Lemonade Illustration Agency. They represent an amazing bunch of talented illustrators, designers and animators. So it's great to be part of the group and looking forward to work with Lemonade on some interesting projects.

You can see some of my work on their site here.

Regarding new projects and quotes you can either contact them here or contact me directly

AnimFX 2009 was fun.

Just came back from windy Wellington after attending the Animation Development Master Class hosted by Sander Schwartz and Rita Street at AnimFX 2009. The landing into Wellington was pretty interesting, with the strong northerly wind it felt like a roller caster and my stomach was in my throat half the time but the Air New Zealand pilots got us there in one piece so two thumbs up to them.

Hearing Sander and Rita was amazing, they were funny and were happy to share their experience and knowledge. Which is just wonderful to see their passion for animation. Incidentally I have discovered I've been approaching animation development and pitching the wrong way. So I'll be taking a different approach to that side of things now and hopefully achieve some better results than my previous attempts.

We also had the opportunity to see the first episode of Fanboy and Chum Chum. I've been following the development for this on Frederator for a while now so it's really go to see it come together as a final product. I really hope it comes down here on New Zealand tv. Fingers crossed.

Fanboy and Chum Chum in Trading Day (EP105)

Animfx NZ 2009 Conference

AnimfxNZ is New Zealand's best conference for the animation, visual effects, games & digital film industries. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to attend the whole conference, which is a shame because they are many interesting people attending. Including John Stevenson the co-Director of Kung Fu Panda and a bunch of guys from Weta.

But I did get tickets to attend Animation Development Master Class which is run by Sander Schwartz (Emmy Award-winning producer of such hits as The Batman) and Rita Street (Executive producer of the upcoming Cartoon Network series, Hero:108). So that will be very interesting and I'm sure we'll learn a lot about animation production and development. I have lots of fun little ideas I would like to produce.

So I'm quite excited, I've got all my flights and hotel sorted for next week. Just need to remember to bring my lucky pen to take down heaps of notes.