Post Christmas ramblings

Well Christmas has come and gone. I was required to spend Christmas with the family and I performed dutifully. Flying down to the coast for Christmas eve and day. As much I enjoy observing people splurge on useless items and listening to racist relatives, I found myself remembering an episode of  the animated series 'Invader Zim' by Jhonen Vasquez. Indeed the image of a humongous Santa attacking a domed (and quite possibly doomed) city pleased me greatly, and I dutifully produced this sketch over breakfast on Christmas morning.

Now that Santa was in my mind (a horrible thought indeed) I could not resist sketching another attack on the dome while waiting for relatives to sort out their quarrels. I did some quick marker colour on it. Yes die hard fans, the dome should be purple. I didn't have the colour so sod off...

Lastly, as Christmas drew to a close. I sat in the airport terminal waiting for my flight home. I started sketching some creature thing. To keep in the Christmas theme I added the obligatory fluffy hat. I have now decided that everything creepy looks better with Christmas props. I may have freaked out the people sitting next to me in the terminal but hey, what ya gonna do?

Happy holidays to everyone!

I stepped in a poodle!

I'm part of a doodle project with a few other people. A word is given roughly every two days and people make sketches or paintings to represent it. I'm very thankful for it as it slaps me in the face and reminds me I need to draw more often.

This is from a recent one. The word is (you guessed it) poodle. I liked the twist of the old joke: It's raining cats and dogs outside! I accidentally stepped in a poodle!

Wordplay is fun!

Kung fu and a field of moose

I recently became obsessed with a certain practice movement I was shown in Kung fu. Probably because I couldn't get the arms right when I tried it (It's harder than it looks).

It then occurred to me that it is a perfect example of arcs in movement. Indeed one of the martial arts main principles is using the natural arcs of movement to defend and attack. So I did a quick line test thing to try and capture the flow.

The smoke was for a bit of flair. You GOTTA have flair!

Then there is this. Ummm... It stems from a conversation about the cliched 'run across a field to embrace your lover' moment in films.
The friend who I was having the conversation with is a huge fan of moose (Yes that is the plural) and insisted the scene would not be complete without it.
So I did a quick speedy paint thing. Well...um... here you go.

The Panda! It walks

So in an effort to say thanks to my friend Stuart Coutts for inspiring me to get my butt into gear, I decided to model and rig a Panda he designed. I decided to teach him how to walk as well. This was all done in one weekend so a lot of tweaking needs to be done.

Thanks for inspiration Stu!

Yes, the rig broke. Yes, I will fix it. No, the panda did not receive any injuries.

The phases of layout

Continuing the layout theme I did some quick basic modelling of a building. The idea is to eventually have the complete layout done and then texture it! So this is a start to bigger things.

New anim reel

Like I said in a previous post, my old reel was hideous. Most of it was from 3 years ago *shiver*.

But now I have this. Still need to tweak but it's a start, and a start is all we need sometimes.

Quick layouts

I decided to just doodle some layout sketches. I decided I might use them for animation later if I get round to it.
This first one is a quaint little town. The proposed camera move is shown on the second image.

Next is a Savannahish scene.

Here is a quick pre-vis for the first pan. I used my friend Stuart Coutts's Houdini rig again just so I had a character in scene.

The cat! It jumps!

My friend and colleague Stuart Coutts decided to have a go at rigging a basic quadruped in the form of a boxy cat. I decided to test it yesterday by creating this simple animation. I spent a couple of hours on this so no major polish but was fun to play with the rig. Check out Stu's blog here. It's cool, I promise!

Line tests

Because I have spent the last year and a half stagnating in my previous job, I realised I have very little animation that I have done recently. To remedy this I have embarked upon a quest to create some animations to replace the old (and very crappy) stuff on my reel. 

This is the start of a walk cycle. I plan it to be a Ben10 walk cycle because I love the original show and his name is Ben, so we have a connection already. Hopefully I can add a transformation or two in there eventually.

The second test is something i'm playing with for maybe an intro animation to my show reel or something. Just a round creature thing doing a flip. Yay for round flippy creatures!

It's ALIVE!

Well looky here. The first post of a new blog and similarly a new phase in my life. To comemorate this event I thought I'd chuck up a few sketches from a drawing group in Jo-burg. Let it commence!

These are from the first group I attended. Just trying to feel out poses...

 I don't know why but I like the flow of this one.

Some other sketchy quick ones. Yoga people are so damn stretchy.