Party Animals: Pet Portraits

I am selling one off pet portraits via my etsy store. Love your animals? Prove it with party animals!

I know it's been a while

I've been super duper busy with wrapping up Light Thief, building aurorah.net and contributing to Eight Bit Strange I've been bad and have ignored the Blog. I have however updated my show reel, so check that out and be sure to "like" it if you like it.

Light Thief Poster: Update

Light Thief sneaky sneak peeks

You wont be able to see the film on my blog because it's getting sent to festivals and festivals dont like showing films that are already online. Soooo to tied you over here are some things I'm working on to whet your taste buds. 

                                             

Light Thief Art, non film related

When I was putting the model sheets together for the other animators I was accidentally made something that I thought looked cool. Now I've gone back to my happy accident and worked up some pretties from it. Enjoy!

In the beginning:

When I was first brought on to Light Thief as producer I was initially going to be responsible for some layouts  of the sky. Long story short, I ended up animating 17 scenes and had little time to do the layouts of the sky. However I just wanted to post some of the concept work and inspiration images for the film because they are cool and I think they should be shared.

                                          
 This first one is the first test I did in Photoshop. It could use more development but I think it was off to a nice start. The rest of these were reference images.

I love the velvety quality of the universe in this image. 

Poster Ideas

Just a concept I'm playing with for the film's poster. I'm not sure if this is too conceptual or not just yet. I'm going to have to let it sit a bit and come back to it. I think if i do come back to this idea I'm going to redo the light effects in Illustrator to get really crisp lines. The over all composition was inspired by the Jaws posters.

                                                        

Just something silly

I finished up all of the trace for Light Thief over a week ago, and found one of my favorite frames from the film. Guess which one it is.

Elmer Fudd's Bedroom Part III: Updated

This is the final out come for the animationforum.net challenge.


Oh, and I won first place.

Cloud Watching

Elmer Fudd's Bedroom Part II

Hi Hi Hi everyone out there in internet land. I've been super busy finishing up animation for Light Thief, which I can finally say with a proud sigh of exhuastion is done. Well, the animation is done. It still needs to be colored, composited, edited and the final score has to be done. By May 13th. I finished my last frame of trace today. It was weird, as I put my light box away, I got a little scared. I'm afraid I'll never get to animate again now that I'm about to graduate. All I keep hearing from people in the industry is how 2d is dead, and how I have to learn cg if I want to have a career. I'm tired of people saying "no", and I'm ready for some people to say YES!. 

Enough. 

I'm working on finishing up my entry for Elmer Fudd's Bedroom. Here are some screen grabs from my work in progress. The first two images are from Kit for Cat, 1948 directed By Friz Freleng. He later went on to produce some of my favorite Pink Panther episodes of all time, ( they are mainly my favorite because of the great backgrounds by Tom O'laughlin, and the clever minimalist design. My Elmer Fudd space concept is definitely influenced by his work.

                                             

Elmer Fudd's Bedroom

I'm trying to fit in doing some work for this layout competition to design Elmer Fudd's Bedroom. The competition is here at Animation Forum. Here is some of my work in progress.  The aim is to do the layout in the style of the classic Looney Tunes . I was hoping to find some great interiors by Maurice Nobel to reference, but instead I found Design For Leaving - 1953 Directed by Bob McKimson.  I'm personally more a fan of his later work with the Pink Panther. Any suggestions for the layout?  anything I should add? Thanks for looking!

Happy first day of Spring!

Today it's official. It's the first day of spring, which means we have all of the sunny warm days of spring and summer to look forward to. Good weather really can make a huge difference in your day. So in honor of spring I changed the blog header to something a little, sunnier. For the next two months I will be mostly shut in a dark room working on animation. I wont get to spend much time enjoying the weather until after May 13 when the Light Thief is done (fingers crossed).
I will however get to go to wonderful Annecy Animation festival this June where I will spend the week camping in the alps, watching the best of what the world's animation industry has to offer and scouting around and hopefully making a few connections. If anyone else is going to Annecy this year and wants to meet up let me know! I'm also in the process of uploading my current show reel so feed back and comments are welcome as always. I still have concept art up for sale over on Esty, and I'm working on an idea for a collaboration for one of the stories. I want word suggestions. Basically, leave a comment with one word. I'll have to come up with a way to use the word in the book. (Please, be more imaginative than cuss words. Everyone thinks of those first  so I know you can do better than that.) The book is a bout birds. So go from there.  Oh and whoever leaves me a word first gets a free piece of concept art based on the word they give me.
 Umm, ok well I think that's mostly it for now. Yay for spring!

Portfolio Page Up!

Go click on the portfolio tab to take a look and see what I'm capable of.

Rough Character Animation

Rough Character Animation from rory animates on Vimeo.

I might finally be getting some where with my animation. Or at least, it's starting to look a bit more respectable. This is the animation that inspired such kind remarks from the Aardman animator the other day. It's all traced now, and I've started the effects animation to go with it so the scene should be coming together soon. Cross your fingers for (no pun intended) Hopefully it will come out looking something like the concept paintings.

A visitor from Aardman Animation.

Today was a pretty interesting day. An animator from Aardman came down from Bristol to chat with us about the industry and take a look at our films. He spent a nice bit of time going over the animatic as well as quite a good lecture about his own career, ( an alumni from my own uni ).

He said my animation was beautiful. I don't think anyone has ever said that about my work. I don't think I've ever made anything beautiful, but I do give it a go. I'm still learning from everything.  He had a lot of really interesting and helpful input for the film.  Here's a line test of some rough animation in progress.


rough animation from rory animates on Vimeo.

I'm still workin on it, I dont like the last few drawings, so I'll get around to fixing them before I do clean up.

I think it's amazing that anyone would ever like anything I ever made. Someone from Aardman liked my stuff? I think I could ride this high for years, like Tom Waits when he didn't kill that guy with the plumbing snake whilst he worked at the pizza shop ( listen to Tom Waits : Story Tellers " I can't wait to get off work" here  at 7 minutes into the video to get the full impact of just how hilarious and alternative I really am. ) ...Other wise, uhm,  I'm working damn hard and damn fast to get this film made. Oh by the way I'm going to need a job soon, after I graduate. Preferably in the animation industry. So, who want's me? I work for peanuts. Then, cashews, then Brazil nuts. I'm considering offers.  I just like to eat.

Portfolio Work

I'm developing this piece for a portfolio I'm working on. It's going to be painted in a style inspired by gold and black sequins in order to make a statement between the fashion industry, and it's impact on India where the Indian Peafowl live.

Final Outcome

I think I've reached the final conclusion with this concept piece. On to the next.

character and effects concept painting- work in progress

I'm painting this up more for my portfolio than for anything else, and it's still a work in progress. This painting is a concept for the climax of the film, where the main character is stealing all the light from the city. In the actual film, he's not nearly as intense as I have painted him, but that's why it's concept art. That's also why it's fun to do. This painting still has a long way to go, but I'm was hoping to get some feed back. So feel free to let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions.