An Audience with Andy Serkis

If you're interested in Motion Capture, I was lucky last year to be able to attend an Audience with Andy Serkis at teh Bristol Brief Encounters Festival. And kept us all entertained with his vision of where motion performance in now and where it might be in a few years.
Here is the link, there are some insightful comments and questions put forward by teh audience and you might recongnise one of the voices as yours truely.
Enjoy
http://www.dshed.net/bafta-presents-andy-serkis

Comic Heroes Magazine

For those interested in All things cartoon and comics and cartoon and their associated worlds (Such as TV & Film) I would recommend Comic Heroes magazine. It is initially once every 4 months but there is talk to it going Bi monthly!! This month it looks at the 4th book in the Alan Moore series of League of Extraordinary Gentleman which is based in the 1960's! It features all the old favourites from Allan Quatermain (rejuvenated from the fountain of Youth) to Mina Harker (Count Dracula's first victim!) It also bring you up to date on the other books in the series.

Above is an image from the new League book which I love. Seeing as it is based in the 1960's they have been very clever with some of the iconology in there! Panel 1 starts it off with clear reference to "Steptoe & Son" and is that Hitler alongside? And is that Alfred Hitchcock making a guest star appearance? Panel 4 has a subtle reference to "Monty Pythons Flying Circus" because I swear that is the "Ministry of Silly walks!" so there is some thing for everyone hidden inside these images and you've probably seen a few more than I mentioned!!

Paul Gravett writes an excellent piece on the double life of Moebuis and Jean Giruad the two sides of one of France's most brilliant geniuses

Britain's Forgotten Heroes by Lew Stringer had me saying out loud, I remember them etc as well who?

21 Years before Bob Kane put pen to paper and created Batman, there was another caped crusader "Batsowl!" appeared in Illustrated Chips in 1918. By day this British hero was meek Desmond Devance, 20th Earl of Batsowl, and by night he became a masked being who flew with huge bat wings that folded into a cape.

Strange but True! Anyway go out and buy and more importantly....Enjoy

The story continues, just to get to grips with doing a few cartoon strips and developing a strip. I still haven't officially named the characters yet, but I'm sure about how they will develop and interact with one another in the next few coming pages. I was trying to give the appearance of claustrophobia in these few panels, using tight shots to make it look as if the characters were on top of everyone. (Click on the image for a bigger view by the way!) I really started to like how the 2 images played off against one another in the final panel, white against black, I should really go in there and start to darken the character, make it look as if she is appearing from the shadow too!

This is one of the best 2 page strips I've done to date. I think the dark black is really working and more important is I'm getting slightly better at the cross hatching, things are starting to come a live by adding a bit more detail in the background , so I'm happy with this. 

New Year.. New Ideas

A New Year has started an I've been sitting at home filling up sketch books left right and centre!

Above is an image I sketched a little off the back of "Primeval" the ITV series. I wanted to do something similar but  I was calling it "Time Holes" and it is basically a story of all these strange creatures that you've all heard of, from the Loch Ness Monster to Big Foot & the Yeti, how come they keep getting reported and yet no one has ever managed to capture one. This is one of the ideas that they may have come through a time hole and then escape back into them.

Above is some rough sketches I did for the Loch Ness Monster and how they were going to try and capture it!

The cast is made up of a young woman who is a zoologist, a Doctor type character who is the brains and a military guy (mercenary) whose is the unknown, we don't really know whose side this character is on as he is in the employment of the mad bad character whose aim is to create a zoo in which these creature will reside.

I know it is a bit of a rip off, but sometimes you've got to just start to do something to get your creative juices flowing and also give me a bit of practice, drawing and in layout. I'm basically experimenting in public here. The one things I don't actually like is the use of boxes in which you have to work, so I seem to spend most of my time reverse engineering the boxes as I'd rather draw the image unhindered by space. I suppose if this was in the real world, I'd draw free hand and then scan the image and scale it down to fit into a box!