Wolf Animation

Wolf Anim from sneakysquirrel on Vimeo.

Elephant Animation

Elli Anim from sneakysquirrel on Vimeo.

Lovely Photo

What an amazing photo, taken by Romain Golbenko. It reminds me of one of those elaborate paintings in the National gallery, where each character is reacting differently, some bored, some inquisative.. the anticipation, the resignation... amazing...



here is his official photographic website

The Wild Days

I thought I'd take the time to collect some neat things I gathered from the Wild Things production. This is IRA, the character I got to animate. He was played by Forrest Whitaker, I saw so much footage of Forrest, I felt like I knew the guy!



Even the production toilet was a creative experiance!



Here are Sketches done by the amazing animator, Tim Watts (The thief and the cobbler,Corpse bride, Despereaux)He drew little sketches everytime he came to my desk to discuss shots.



Here is my sakteboard, that Spike was kind enought to sign for me... What an awesome character he is, gosh!


Here's Spike fighting off all the Framestore staff looking for autographs





Heres a great photo of the Wild Things Production with Spike



Here is K.W. advertised at our bustop, woohoo! Roumer is that K.W. may stand for Kate Winslet....



Here is the crew shirt.I thought it'd be nice to take a pic before it fades... Thanks to Daniel for organising these...


Here are the awesome skateboards that Spike released though his Girl Skateboards co.


Here are some of the different posters and covers that were released





It turned out that it was during production that banksey's famous artwork was removed from the wall near the Royal Mail buildings. The company that owned the building said that it was a routine painting schedule, yeah right!!!

Being an Animator

I'm always reluctant to carry on about how exciting it is to be an Animator, as Animation Mentor have pushed this idea to the extreme of sounding like used-car salesmen. I dont want to do that.

But i can say that there is alot to say about being an animator. One thing is that the situation is constantly changing, ie, you work on several projects that are often nothing like the last, so theres some sort of variation, which is so pivotal in keeping life fresh.

On the other hand , it can mean that some of the best animators in the world end up doing really mundane tasks at times, like cleaning the mocap data on a dogs jaw for 3months, or animating 300 books opening. I dunno, you get my drift.

But there are other things that make animation a great art to immerse yourself in.
here is one of my favorite:

I HATE the tabloids. Always realeasing disturbing vague information each morning, like the one headline 'Killed by half a paracetamol tablet' in huge black letters in the front of the paper. read further and it says in small print....'the victim took 16 tablets, which was one half more than her body could handle'

But , because I am an animator, I can still find use and joy is skipping through the badly written tabloids, because I get to see unusual characters, unusual poses, stages in a walk cycle, line of action, flow lines, the list goes on. Another good example is looking through the sports pages. I enjoy some sports, but I dont reach for the sport pages in the morning, and i dont care for football, but wow! When I go through the sports pages, i see human bodies being pushed to the extreme, I see action poses, bodies out of balance, and hand poses, man , do I see some freaky hand poses. When a person is concerntrating so hard, and pushing themselves so hard, that hands really do interesting things.

The train can be a dismal place in rush hour. But seeing such different folks arriving an leaving always creates enough observationnal entertainment. One of the animators at work told me how he train was delayed and detoured and he was an hour late, but it was the best train journey ever, because he saw some kids that inspired him to make a short film, and he wouldnt have thought of it ohterwise.
I thought that was an interesting idea, because i know for sure there were several people standing on several platforms, waiting for a train that was late, standing all defensively, arguing with the platform staff, and peering down the incoming railway track every five seconds, as if that somehow magically makes the train arrive sooner.
Definitely not animators.......We're watching them!