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!

Flow Lines

Here are a few photos I saw in the paper recently, i thought they were a good example of flow lines, and how they lead our eye to a particular point. I also love the line of action on the tiger and the way the water also creates the sense of motion and flow

It's Been Too Long

Hi Chaps

Yes, time flies, finnished working on Where the wild things are, its gonna be a great film. Now animating at Spider Eye, very nice place.

Here are a few animations I have been pottering with over the last year, gulp. and stil WIP? oh my golly. anyhow, better archive them now, incase they never see the light of day, doh!

Sarcastic Squirrel from sneakysquirrel on Vimeo.

Skateboarding Moom from sneakysquirrel on Vimeo.

LifeDrawing - biting the bullet

I post these examples in the hope that it will motivate me to attend more classes, and be able to look back on these and acknoledge my growth. wish me luck, 'cause I freaking need it.

Primal Fear

I loved this photo in the newspaper. Such a good example of a person in the climax of fear. I found a better quality image on the net. I really like how the one guys has that really classic fear pose with his hands up near his face, not coving his face but more like cowering. Like a mouse. Or is that just because I'm surrounded by mice at work?

Breaking Joints

OK we're back by popular demand (yeah right, Paul)

I've found my niche! Some people upload high quality pics from expensive books, I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm going to upload dodgey photos from poor quality tabliods (eg london lite).
At least then I'm garanteed that no-one else has this cr&p on their blogs, and Whallah! Instant originality. I seem to keep finding the odd interesting pic in the paper, and because after a while, the pages get all brown and old, I actually contemplated buying a laminator just for paper clipings. Then I realised the blogoshpere is just as good a place as any to imortalise these images.
You see I've been thinking, and I've learnt so much from blogs latley it''s time to give a little back. But I don't always like reading alot, so I'm gonna assume you are the same, and focus on adding more pics than text.

So here goes, an interesting example of the 'breaking' of joints in a perfectly real human being. I've been trying to bend my arm this way, can you do it?
Don't ask me why I have a building collection of africans throwing things, I can't afford a psychologist to find out.

But it's interesting how far back his arm goes, don't you think? Give me your thoughts.
On an off note, it's gkinsa funny how that fire/smoke ball seems to eminate from his hand

More to come: some interesting notes and lo-res tabloid pics on walks, and a few pics of people under extreme pressure