October 2008

It's been a few months since my last post simply because I have had some lovely, great big commissions come my way from Oxford University Press, Richmond Press, Pearson Educational Publishing, and Spec- Savers(!!)

Apart from the spectacles gig, it's all been work for children's educational titles (maths and english), adding funky little characters to the school books etc. It's good fun to do, relatively easy and seems to be a regular thing now...KEEP 'EM COMING!!

JUNE 2008

I have been working with Phil Menni at Gravy Media to create the website for One EskimO. Phil's the genius who constructs and programs the whole thing but I was asked to illustrate and animate the home page and a few other bits!

 Click HERE to check out One EskimO's website!

Gravy were the also producers for 'Hometime' and are currently putting together another team to create the next animation for One EskimO and their track "Kandi".

I am committed to quite a few other illustration commissions, so unfortunately won't be working on the next animation but I'm very proud to see my characters come to life in the hands of someone else!! Good Luck my little Esk ..."sniff'

March 2008

I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!!

WE WON A BRITISH ANIMATION AWARD!!! 

Lucy Sullivan and Myself won the award for the "Public choice: animated Music Video, 2008" category for our work directing and animating One EskimO's track  "Hometime"!

We had to go up on stage to collect our award and got a cuddle from the event's host: Joe Pasquale!!!!!!!

A heartfelt and Massive "THANK YOU" to everyone who voted for us.

UPDATE- Here's some concepts that I couldn't show before:

JAN 08

Happy New Year!!

Some announcements:

 Following on from the news that our animation for "Hometime" has been nominated for A British Animation Award 2008, I have some important dates for the preview of our animation :

We are on at the National Film Theatre, London Programme 2, showing Fri. 8th and Sun 17th Feb 2007.

There are quite a few other venues around the UK which you can check out at the BAA website.

Above you can see the official guide to the nominees and my subtle response!!

"Hometime" has also been nominated for an award at Festival Du Clip, France. It's the 2nd time our collective Smuggling Peanuts  has been nominated at the festival. In 2006 we were nominated for 'Best music video' (see an earlier blog) for our work on Coldcut's promo "Just for the Kick".

i was very Kindly asked to talk at a "Creative careers" seminar, a 2 day event for all the schools in the Thames Valley area. I was part of a group of three and we each had to talk about what it's like to earn your daily bread by being creative!!!

there were Dj's. musicians, dancers, actors and actresses, landscape gardeners, artists and many more!

We got a great response form the kids (hats off to them for managing to stay awake!)and their teachers plus it was a great way to network!

DEC 2007 part b

A great way to end the year....Firstly, a nice bit of exposure: The Xmas edition of the Big Issue (no.775) has a great article on One EskimO and features one of my concept sketches of the band (page 10 in case you were wondering!!!!!!)

For the 3rd time this year I have got a little bit of space in Computer Arts (Dec 2007 edition).

I was asked a few questions on how I thought "fine art" influences modern designers, so I gave them my 2 pence worth. Check out pages 76-79!

I've also been messing around with Zbrush a bit more. I've posted another image of some random creature for you to check out. 

Finally, I have also been informed that mine and Lucy Sullivan's animated promo for One EskimO's "Hometime" song has been nominated for "Best Music Video" in the Public choice category for the British Animation Awards 2008!!

Happy XMAS!!!

Dec 5th 2007

Today is "International Ninja Day"!! So have a great day somersaulting over things and disappearing into a cloud of smoke!

xx

Dec 2007 part A

Thought I'd have a bash at some 3D art. 

These are my first tentative steps into the wierd world of ZBrush. The UI is like nothing I have ever used but it's got plenty of potential so when I have time I want to mess around with it a bit more.

This is actually a bit of a cheat because I had to add all the colour in Photoshop afterwards!

October 07

I had been asked to take part in the shoe-painting exhibition "Pimp My Sole" but sadly it was cancelled at the last moment. Sadly a lot of us got our shoes dressed up for nothing so I thought I'd show off my effort on here:

Sept 2007

WONDERFUL NEWS! I've just been signed to the great illustration agency ADVOCATE ART! I've been pushing for more illustration work so this is the break I have been waiting for!

August saw me complete another commission for The Independent and their web promotion for the Rugby World Cup (see above) and I also completed a job for the lovely chaps at SODA for a print and web-animation based promotion.

July 2007 part b

Here are some images of the "Let the Music Speak" festival! By all accounts it was a great day and the Promo for One EskimO went down a storm!!! It was shown a couple of times, on a packed "Fun Bus" kitted out with two large flat screens to show both inside and out!

JULY 2007

Hi!! It's been a while!!

Over the past 4 months myself and fellow peanut, Lucy Sullivan have been working hard creating and co-directing an animated music promo for the band One EskimO and their song "Hometime". 

Check out some of my concepts for the characters! It's been a great commission and we can't wait to get it out there. The vid will be premiered at the "Let the Music Speak" street party on July 21st 2007!

March 2007

Hello and welcome to my March 07 entry! Here's what's been happening:

My (old) agency Jelly got a great four page article in this months Computer Arts. They asked me to write a few words about what it's like being on their books. It's great exposure as I get a nice little profile box on the Job I did for Honda (see above)! Feb 07 also saw the 1st anniversary of Jelly's launch so there was a little birthday party at the Conningsby gallery, London.

This month also saw me trekking up to Soho to spend a few days animating at TH1NG animation Studios to work on a new series of Kwik-Fit "weather" adverts the feature before and after the Channel 5 news. I spent 3 days animating a washing line and the pants swinging on it!! 

Just finished a concept design for Hasbro too but dunno if it'll ever see the light of day (see above also).

Finally, this saturday sees our animation for "just for the kick" playing on the bill for the Birds Eye festival. It's actually a festival for women-only film makers and because 2 of the 3 of us who made the animation are female we made it in!

FEB 2nd 2007

Already Febuary?? It's been another busy few months! I've enjoyed some tasty exposure in January's edition of Computer Arts, finished another Manjelly animation and worked on a couple of large pitches for a Krispy Kreme job. Check out the doughnut balloons!

I also received another commission from The Independent newspaper for their annual sales conference. I had to design a couple of large "Brighton Boards" ( you know the things..old English seaside entertainment...you put your head through a hole of characters face and you look like you have a funny body!) 

Dec 2006

What a year it's been, what with music video nominations and illustration commissions for Honda, book illustrations and TONS of flash animations for the web! I've just finished a Flash animation for a well-known London-based cockney soap opera!! It'll probably be on for about 4 seconds but I was very proud of the finished effort. Sadly I had to sign a "contract of silence" and hand over all ownership and copyright of the work. Hence why I can't show you what show it'll play on!

Those of you who are familiar with my work may have recognized it but I doubt it..."sigh", the things we do for money eh? Hey don't judge...Xmas is fast approaching!

NOVEMBER 2006!

It's been a busy month with lots of deadlines arriving at the same time. It also saw the beginning of a new collaboration project between myself and Dave Thompson at  Pigeonpress. After being handed a few storyboards, my job was to bring to life his little characters to life. Check out the malicious green bean and his long suffering "friend" in the 'media' section website .

Festival du Clip, 2006 Aix en Provence OCTOBER

October saw the Smuggling Peanuts crew in France at the annual Festival Du Clip competition. For those of you who don't know us yet, Smuggling Peanuts are a small collective of illustrators/animators and we recently were nominated for the music video we created for Coldcut's track 'Just for the Kick'. 

We were also invited to attend this years RezFest  at the National Film Theatre for a Q+A session, along with the Coldcut chaps...which was nice!