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!





Stoke Your Fires

We've just had a visit from Stoke Your Fires Animation Festival Who pitched their event at the end of Feb beginning of March next year. They also spoke about the possibilities of getting some Graphic Illustrators in to perform some workshops. Hopefully I wanted these to be based on drawing skills and possibly visualising the narrative. The poster above is a new one and shows the new hand in is 24th December now for short animated films, but there is also an option of entering the 48 hour film competition which I think would be excellent for animators to help them build up their speed while animating, it will stop them being to precious over the design and an over long and complicated storyline, Simple is smart!!

Paul Wells from Loughborourgh Animation Academy also did a talk at the event. I've already written a short bit on him at the Bristol Encounters and will probably expand on what he has said in future posts as I do believe in what he says about script writing and how, especially animation students don't actually understand the format that they are using. Anyway I'll leave that for the future

To get us back on track of cartoon and comics and a possible area that students over look as an area where they may actually break into the industry is story boarding. Above Curtis Jobling one of the lead storyboard artist for Bob the Builder scribbles a character down at last years Stoke Your Fire Event.

Last year saw an increase in Stop Motion Films being plugged as Coarline and the Fantastic Mr Fox were released. Above one of the lead model makers from Coraline. Below are 2 legends of British Animation Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, to show my age again, they brought us Chorlton and the Wheelies and Dangermouse to name a few.

Finally the Event will take place in the Hanley Museum and also the "Air space" Art gallery. Last year Stop Motion Students puppets were exhibited at the event 

 

The Spanish Invasion

I'm also happy to say that mark Webster from the Arts and Culture part of the university is introducing me to Nacho Casanova (http://nachocasanova.blogspot.com/) a Spanish illustrator  along with Nacho is Rosa Martí (http://www.edicionesglenat.es/) and Peri (published novelist and writer of children’s books) and his partner all of whom I'm hoping can help out on the content of Cartoon & Comic Arts Award and also build some international ties with!! So the new award is going from strength to strength and hopefully will soon have some international recognition as well.

The scribbles of a mad man

While being away for the last couple of weeks I've taken my sketch pad with me and I've been frantically drawing away and I thought I'd post some of the stuff up on line and write the ideas behind the concepts.

When I popped down Forbidden Planet in Bristol I was surprised to see Wacky Racers and I ended up thinking to myself, "Now there is an Animation due to a make over, after all they made a live action Flinstones!" OK maybe not the best choice as an example but I'm sure you get the idea!
Dick Dastardly was the main protagonist and he reminded me a lot of Graham Hill or Leslie Philips in appearance at least! I also thought about his car and thought that must be due an update as well!

Another idea basically lifted from Jonah Hex, I brought the Blue Ray disc to watch, while it wasn't a half bad film it did lack a little punch and the main characters flaws weren't really given the air time they needed. The main character is a mercenary, a hired killer not a nice bloke who basically confronts death and realises that he's heading for a nasty place when he dies. He tries to change his life, but he is what he is, a murderer and hired killer. The film doesn't really pick up that these are the skills that God has given him and there is more than one way to be redeemed, by using these skills for good.... as good as killing gets! Anyway, rant over, but in one scene he gets crucified and what really struck me was the look of the human figure hanging there, how do you draw weight in a character, I know a bit morbid and yes my feet have fallen off the bottom of the page!

I was recently on line seeing what Mark Millar of Kick Ass fame was doing, and he's running a new comic called "Clint" (Yes as in Eastwood!) But one of the things he's offering is for everyday folks to have a 4 page spread included in the Mag! The theme this week was based loosely on "The Twilight Zone" (This is where I start to feel old) as I remember these. There were one off stories not interconnected in anyway where something paranormal would happen! I was watching "Primeval" where all these dinosaurs come in from these parallel universes, and there was an hint that this may have happened a hundred times through out mankind's existence and this is what things like the Loch Ness Monster are and why we can't find them, same with the Yeti and Big Foot!

This is a quick comic strip I knocked up, I had a new pen that draws excellent lines and you can quickly colour in big areas in pure black. I'll write a bit more about that characters in time as I've got an urge to go and drink beer!

Interest in the New Cartoon & Comic Arts Award

I've just come back from London where we went to pitch and recruit people for the Cartoon & Comic Arts at Staffs University. I'm happy to say that after a slow start there were actually people there who had done a bit of research and found the award and asked some interesting questions about the award! I'm off to Manchester Monday 29th November - Tuesday 30th November for the UCAS fair there! This is the main recruiting area for the university so I'm hoping the award will take off there, though I need to get a bit more of a presence on the internet and website!
I'd just like to write a few notes down that I took about script writing that applies to both Animation and Comics, as these 2 forms of media do share a common form. Paul Wells delivered an excellent lecture that though brief was very insightful. 
The main problem that scriptwriters seem to forget is the fact that there are writing for a medium that has some many possibilities, so why animated a man walking into a room and talking when there are some many other possibilities. Our art form allows us to travel in time! We can control how fast things happen! We create incredible and impossible characters (though they need to be rooted in reality so we can relate to them!) Symbols can represent the invisible, think of a wind or a force field. An arrow on a map can represent a marching army.  Our art form allows us to penetrate the impossible, to see the internal workings of the human body or view the smallest microscopic element or the largest and most incredible construction ever. Some time people forget these basic principles and fall into a indifferent story. So bare this in mind when designing characters in future and what they do!