Cage face

I have a tendency to make a mess when I'm working traditionally - alot of collage, bits and glue sprawl quicky away from my designated desk zone. I have piles of cuttings and textures that I sometimes throw on the floor in a heap to see if something will come out of it. occasionally I'll see something that resembles a face or character and then I'll stick it together or take a photo. This guy was lurking on one of these mess heaps.

Another PITCH-NO-GO

Character and Ident designs for a Danish TV channel back in 2008. I think they went down a live action route in the end - ho hum.

Old doodles

Can't remember when these were done - a few years back. I definitely would like to take these and similar sketches to a colour stage. These were A3 sketches and feel nice and loose.

Some Chop Socky Chooks lighting keys

Much fun putting these together...and many more to follow. To recap, Chop Socky Chooks is a kids series for Cartoon Network, produced by Aardman & Decode in Canada - it's currently doing the rounds in the UK at some unearthly hour in the morning. but by all accounts the kids are loving it. I was Art Director on the show and spent a good chunk of time providing colour and lighting scripts for different environments. Some keys are worked over basic 3d models whilst some of the earlier artwork was created from scratch. I will try to dig out some really early character development sketches from Danny Capozzi (production designer) which I then worked up for the art direction.

More show info here:
http://www.aardman.com/tv-shorts/our-properties/chop-socky-chooks/

 

PITCH-NO-GO

Quite a few images to come in this category - artwork for jobs that didn't quite cut the mustard...it's all good for character building though.

More little fellas to colour up in the not so distant future.

Lazer Grazer doodles

Found these initial sketches for a piece posted last year (possibly the first one?). I need to get my head around tagging etc....

E4 Christmas Idents

Back in 2007 I was approached by E4 (UK TV channel) to produce a series of Christmas idents. E4 are great fun to work with - no real tight limitations - just the opportunity to make short, irreverent spots.

Here's some sketches for main characters - an old lady named Granta Clores and her low tech method of crap present distribution. The colour sketch of the old lady was by Adam Cootes,  an incredibly talented character designer and animator at Aardman. He helped out as time got tighter and tighter and he set the animation tone for the spots.

To view the animation, hit this link:

http://www.aardman.com/commercials/directors/darren-dubicki/

New York

Street sketch for a New York scene. I was going to paint this up way back - I'm now adding it to the back of the pile for a dose of colour.

Fingers crossed...

...as I've recently received the news that the 'Chop Socky Chooks' series has been nominated for a Children's BAFTA award this year - to be announced on the 29th November. The show was created for Cartoon Network and Teletoon, produced by Aardman Animation and Decode.

I was proud to be involved as Art Director for the project, which was HUGE with production teams working hard in Bristol and Toronto. A small crew were creating story and look at Aardman, whilst main production was handled by IDTE and CORE in Toronto. All crews were passionate about the show which made it a pleasure to work on. It was great working closely with Danny Capozzi (Production Designer) who's fabulous 2d design sense translated effortlessly into 3D. 

I'll hopefully be posting some artwork from the show in the near future, and give some more details on Danny Capozzi and his work.

http://www.aardman.com/tv-shorts/our-properties/chop-socky-chooks/

Bee lady

Done some time ago but it gives me a nostalgia hit every time - back in the days when I could really make a mess.

I've realised that alot of the sketchwork that I do amounts to working thumbnails, and probably won't be that interesting to look at- I think a new aim to keep myself blog-busy will be to take existing doodles and colour them up.

Alot of work I'm currently producing can't actually be posted, as it's all linked to commercial and film projects which won't be out there for awhile. I'll keep digging deep and find older work to force me to update this thing.

Book of Conversations

This was a project created by Mark Carolan and Jason Shragger way back in 2006-ish. The aim was to bring back the art of conversation. They gathered 120 Artists, photographers, Graphic Designers, Creative Directors and Illustrators to each answer a question visually - and then to publish the answers in a big juicy book.

Now after 3 years and all kinds of publishing mayhem, they've managed to complete the project and the book is now hitting the shelves, and I'm looking forward to my copy. Here's the piece that I produced for the book and link to the project. I'll post my thoughts behind the piece at a later stage but hopefully it will make some sense without.

Check out the link below for more details on the project and other artists.

http://www.bookofconversations.com

Right then....

Welcome etc.

 I've been in 'not-a-blog' mode for a long time...but I can now feel my procrastination gene withering.With that in mind:

Here's a first/ test post with an old piece from 2008. It was produced as an award for the British Animation Awards ceremony 2008, and it was won by Animator, Simon Tofield, for his great 'cat man do' short. He's now produced more shorts and they can be found here:

http://www.simonscat.com/
 

Right, I've done the blog thing, what are the kids down with now?