Saturday 7 March 2015

Boom... the L-Bomb... Among other things...

Hello everyone who visits my blog!
I haven't touched this page since finishing Uni! Crazy! That is almost a year! (How is that possible?!)

Any ways, A LOT has happened since my last post, so I'm going to try and update you! Bear with me.
Those of you in the know, know, you know? But meh, I'll tell you anyway!

Basically, I've had a bit of a crazy time since June, I graduated from the University of South Wales with a 1st, and with help from a very kind and generous animator from Aardman, (to which I owe EVERYTHING TO) I got to visit the very studio that has inspired me since an extremely early age.
I got to spend a couple of weeks alongside the professionals that were wrapping up the Shaun the Sheep movie!


Whilst at Aardman, I was situated with the assistant animators. Here, I was set the task of sculpting replacement faces for the Farmer and Bitzer. I then moved on to the test units, where I was given a puppet from The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
 The brief was simple, just animate a sequence of your own choosing. So like always, I was feeling silly and made a serious serious scientist do a flirtatious dance. 
I won't put up the animation just yet, but here are some stills...


NSFW right. 


 Anyway, Once my time at Aardman was up,  It was on to the next thing, which for me, was:


Wahey! That's right, I got my first animationy job at Rastamouse!
I have to say, that the people making this show are just brilliant. All round just fun. I made some (hopefully) life long friends, and had the best first animation job I could have wished for straight out of Uni. So much fun. Here's the puppet department in our crew t-shirts! Miss you all!





So yeah, whilst working with these furry creatures for couple of months, (the mice, obviously) I set up up a little studio of my own at home, here's a sneaky peek:


Here I did some tests whenever I could, just to keep up the practice. :) 


So, after Rastamouse was all wrapped up and in the bag, I went on to the next venture!

First of all, I had the privilege of travelling to a shiny, brand new Bridgend-based animation studio to pop in to see Mike, Ben, Jody, Sam and all the other great people at Immortal Pictures as they start their amazing journey towards making the new butt-kicking, adrenaline fuelled, action-fest feature film: Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires.


Believe me, I didn't see anything of the film, but I just know that its going to be an amazing, hilarious, 80's throwback masterpiece! All you have to do is watch this trailer for the short that its based on, and you'll see!

Oh, and anyone who's younger in the audience, no clicking and cover your ears/eyes.


Chuck Steel : Raging Balls of Steel Justice - Trailer from Chuck Steel on Vimeo.

I wish Mike and the rest of the team the best of luck with the project, I have followed their work ever since my good ol' art teacher Mr Latham introduced me to Mike and Jody's animation in the early years of high school. Also it goes without saying that you obviously can't grow up in the 90's in Wales without knowing what a Gog is!


Would be an honour to see the studio and people again! Hopefully one day! Aaargghh!


Anyways, on to the final bit of news. Some of you may know, but as of January, I moved to America for a year! For a very specific thing...


Can you guess what?


;)

It's Amazing. 
Every day I get astounded by the limits these professionals break through with ease. I'm inspired every second of every day. 

And I'll tell you this, you're going to love 2016 and it's Two Strings...