John Carter Wrap

All VFX work on John Carter is now complete and the wrap party was held last Saturday in London's prestigious Natural History Museum. Unfortunately I was unable to attend due to being on a different continent, however someone from Double Negative made a movie of the event which has enabled me to get a taste of it, I've borrowed a bit from it below.



It's especially pleasing to to hear the director, Andrew Stanton's appreciation of all the hard work the many visual effects artists put into the film. Congratulations to everyone involved, I can't wait to see the finished film.

Angle and Curve Promo

Here's a little something I worked on before leaving the UK. It's a promotional video Craig Bardsley, Julia Goehle and myself were commissioned to make for Angle & Curve - the company that I've been told by the unbiased owner, makes the best headphones on the globe.



From start to finish it took just 10 days. We were only able to work on it for a few hours each evening so unsurprisingly it is a little rough around the edges. Craig and myself devised the story and did the animation. Julia came up with the character design as well as some key-drawing clean-up.

Due to the tight deadline it was created as simply as possible, without using colour and drawing straight into the computer using the excellent free program Plastic Animation Paper.

As my day job usually has a focus on realism and detail it was refreshing to try and tell a whole story as simply yet clearly as possible. It was also a chance to try and rejuvenate my rusty drawing skills. Hope you like it.

New John Carter Trailer

The latest trailer for John Carter, the film I worked on for most of the last year has been released and I think this gives a much better sense of the scale of it. Hope you like it.



I'm also fortunate enough to have one of the shots I worked on feature, albeit very briefly. It's around the first ten second mark where two characters are forced into an areana at gun point.



The theatre release is scheduled 100 days away on the 9th March 2012.

Update

It's seems to have been quite a while since I last wrote on this blog, I have been pretty busy of late. Firstly, there was an intense few months at Double Negative as we finished work on John Carter but I'm happy to say animation has now wrapped and what I saw of the film is looking very good indeed.



I have since relocated to Canada and started work at Sony Imageworks Vancouver animating on The Amazing Spider-man which is due to be released in June of next year.



As I'm now settled in over here I'm hoping I should be back to updating a little more regularly.

Me by Marlo Meekins

A little while ago Marlo Meekins was offering to do caricatures in return for donations to help her get to a Caricature Convention in Japan. I took her up on the offer and this is result.



I'm a big fan of her work and find her style both mercilessly unique and very funny. If you're not aware of her blog you can visit it here.

Emanuele's shots

Fellow Double Negative animator Emanuele Pavarotti has some great comparison reels on vimeo. Amazingly, I haven't seen them posted anywhere else so I'd thought I'd give them a plug here.

They show cycles and playblasts of his animation followed by the fully rendered shots from VFX projects. They give a very interesting insight to how some shots were put together, also the quality of the animation is brilliant.

Night at the Museum 2



The Wolfman



The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian



And the bizzarre 'Pigmy Puff' from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince



More of his work can be found on his website here.

New Showreel

The same old stuff in a slightly different order!




There is also a higher quality quicktime version here.