MERRY CHRISTMAS

SHIRLEY WALKER

I heard some sad news today. One of my favorite television and film composers, Shirley Walker, died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 61.

My first memory of hearing Shirley Walker's music was on the wonderful Batman: The Animated Series in the episode On Leather Wings. This is a score with height (opening with a lofty flute accompaniment to urgent violins) and depth (trombones join in a quarter of a way into the title track); it has urgency, danger and excitement stamped all over it. Man-Bat flies across the Gotham skyline to the snared shrill of trumpets.

Shirley also provided the music to one of the classic episodes of Batman; Heart of Ice. To summarize the plot, Mr. Freeze seeks revenge on industrialists responsible for the death of his wife. Michael Ansara provides the voice for Mr. Freeze and delivers his lines in this wonderfully cold monotone voice, utterly devoid of emotion. Around this plays Shirley's delicate score bringing enormously emotional warmth and depth to the entire story, lending tragedy to the otherwise sinister.

Other Animated Series composers include: Michael McCuistion, Stuart V. Balcomb, Carlos Rodriguez, Lolita Ritmanis, Steve Chesne & James Stemple, Carl Johnson, Kristopher Carter, Harvey R. Cohen, Beth Ertz & Mark Koval, Todd Hayen, Brian Langsbad, John Tatgenhorst & Peter Tomshek, Richard Bronskill. There's an absolute wealth of wonderful music to be found in Batman and later Superman, Batman Beyond and Justice League shows. Most of the links in this post link to Toonzone's The Animated Batman: An Unofficial Guide website. I urge you to go and have a good look around, it is a wonderful site and one of the few, likely only, places you will find the music from the show itself. I only wish WB would bring out some sort of mass collection of all the incidental music and title scores because it really is a library of great music.

Shirley's last superhero outing is yet to come and will be heard on the direct to DVD release of DC: The New Frontier in 2007.

EDIT: Have updated the links in this post and added two new ones: snared shrill of trumpets and cold monotone voice

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

For no other reason than it's Friday!

Ave Maria

Here's the second part to Wilfred Jackson's contribution to Fantasia. I think this is utterly beautiful. The tall, elegant trees and the light reflected on the water's surface. No character animation here, instead the whole piece is about composition and the wonderfully rich depth of field created with the simplest elements.

Night On Bald Mountain

I love this sequence. Wilfred Jackson also directed the Ave Maria segment which is wonderful. What I love from this is the skeletal horses and their riders weaving along the backgrounds. The wraith like ghost waving it's arms and the pained reaction of the devil as the church bell tolls, and slowly the ghouls return sleepily to their rest. It's all powerful and amazing and inspiring stuff. They don't quite make them like that anymore.

I'M STILL STANDING!

Still plodding on with the novel whenever I can. Drastically behind on word count, however, quite pleased with what I've done so far and the story I've discovered as it were. The drastically behind bit is not due to not affording the time, rather the time being spent researching the story quite thoroughly, as it has rather a lot of background detail. But I may make up the numbers just yet. Never say never, after all.

Been working furiously during the daylight hours. Currently helping develop Biteneck Beatniks, working on Grimmwood (I have a still from the pre-viz on the trailer for a 3D animated sequence where the camera moves through the trees following what will be 2D animated characters, they're just markers at the moment for where they appear in the shot etc... being able to fly a camera around in 3D space is wonderfully liberating... like I say, it's very much pre-viz, but I'm happy to say the trailer and the film itself are coming along, albeit slowly, but hey...), and Animex (more 3D shenanigans there), and have been pitching for a commercials contract (can't say what for at the moment) and various other bits and bobs that have kept me out of trouble. Busy busy busy. All work and no play makes Jack ... no, no we won't go there so you can put that baseball bat down thank you very much, I'm just fine.

Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

AND SO IT BEGINS...

Hit 1,929 words yesterday as I started writing my NaNoWrimo motivated novel. So that's clear of the 1,667 daily minimum in order to hit the target of 50,000 words in one month. For those that don't think they have the time.... it took me a little over an hour to hit that word count. My working day was divided into two currently running projects; Grimmwood and development work on Biteneck Beatniks, they presently take half a working day each (in a couple of days the Animex trailer will take the place of the Grimmwood work for a few weeks). So I fit the novel writing around it by hitting the keys for an hour at about 10am (till 11... I'd already been working on Grimmwood at this point, animated a 360 camera spin through woodland), and then coming back to it (not to work over what I'd already written but to add some more) at the end of the day for about twenty minutes. A busy day, but nothing timetabling didn't sort out. I managed to fit in an hours exercise (a half hour brisk walk followed by half an hour on the dumbbells). The weirdest thing though that I found having a structured target like that each day made me really motivated and organized about everything else I was doing that day (including the exercise). I suppose the key reason for this is because I'm doing it for myself.

The sequence I'm currently animating in Grimmwood involves a pursuit through woodland. So I built a 3D set in Swift3D of all the trees, with dangling leaves, flowers and fallen leaves on the forest floor and animated a stand in for Red Hood and a few wolves (which will be animated over in 2D. Currently 'dressing' the set as it were by going in and ensuring all elements are the right colours, that gradient's shift with camera pans etc. It's quite a laboured process, but I'm really enjoying doing it. Each day I run off a quicktime to see what it looks like. All the while I'm developing a working process so it's taking longer than it normally would do as I explore more time effective ways of doing things. Slowly, but most definitely surely.

FACTOR FICTION & NANOWRIMO!

I'm currently getting things together for a story that I'm hoping will appear in "The Girly Comic" and possibly something else for "Violent", both titles from Factor Fiction. Oh, and in November I'm planning to write a novel in one month... well, 50,000 words at least.

A while back, my good friend James told me about National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo as it is known for short, and on Saturday last weekend I was all set to meet with Jay and Selina of Factor Fiction to discuss producing a story for The Girly Comic and Violent. Jay mentioned that he and Selina would be attending a Nanowrimo meeting that day (as they're both having a stab at it too). So, thinking this almost to be some sort of prothetic lure of destiny, I decided right there on the spot I'd go for it too.

After the meeting Jay and Selina gave me copies of The Girly Comic and Violent, which I've since had a read of and thouroughly enjoyed and am quite excited at the prospect of getting involved. Likewise Nanowrimo. Met some self proclaimed nutters (they're nice really) at this Nanowrimo meeting and am really looking forward to Nov 1st. I hope to use this as the impetus to get a novel written and then will see where that road takes me.

NOT MY SMALL DIARY!

Late on Saturday night, I produced a one-pager for Ian Carney's "Not My Small Diary" contribution.

ANIMEX

Not so long ago I was asked to create the logo and intro sequence for Animex 2007. I start work on the intro sequence towards the end of this month -- due to complete early December.

From the "about" section on the site:

The Animex International Festival of Animation & Computer Games takes place every year in Middlesbrough in the North East of England. The festival has its roots firmly planted in the creative side of animation and computer games and acts to provide animators, directors, students, artists, designers, writers and educators with a forum in which they can share their knowledge and skills and promote the art of animation and games.

The Animex site is up (with new logo and character designs by me in place), so go check it out.

THE END IS NIGH

I'm writing and drawing a story for the next issue of THE END IS NIGH, a British Fanzine dealing with the impending Apocalypse, due out summer 2007 (in time for various comic conventions, I've no doubt). The theme is "when nature runs amok", which has me sat here wringing my hands and laughing maniacally already.

Not sure how many pages I've got just yet, but this next issue promises to be bigger than the previous issues so I'm presently working on the idea of a story that can be broken into chapters and dispersed throughout the issue (naturally, this depends on the story). We shall see.

THARG THE MIGHTY SAYS: "MONSTERS" IS IN THE MEGAZINE THIS WEEK!!!

Just had word from THARG THE MIGHTY that "Monsters" is being published in the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE (Meg 250) THIS WEEK!!!

Be sure to nip down to your local newsagent or comic shop and get your copy. Run, don't walk, run!

THE HOUSE WHAT I BUILT.

There's an update over at the Grimmwood site. Go check it out.

Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

"Gather wood and I will light a fire ...

... so that you may not be cold."

Things are coming along. If all goes well then I should have a trailer (consisting of test footage) up in about two weeks from now).

Building Red House has proved a fun challenge. Having never worked in three dimensions before, it's been quite an experience and a huge amount of fun. These are a couple of test frames built in Swift 3D, exported into Flash.

I'm playing around with lenses here (and haven't quite achieved all I want to achieved with lightning, but I'm getting there). the building is based on an earlier design. The first image, the aerial shot, is an early mock up of the building, not quite complete. The second image is the completed model. I found that once I'd started building the house that I began to make various changes, notably with the shape of the main building's roof, and with the facade, changes which brought it to a better point of realisation. It's a great feeling to have such a dominant component in the film built and ready to pose in every shot by just dropping it in and angling the camera. Quite liberating to be working in three dimensions after all these years of working in two. There's a sense that this broadens the scope of what I'm aiming to achieve so I'm rather excited about the process. The wonderful thing about Swift is it intergrates the elements seemlessly into Flash because it's also speaking the same language. Vector.

It's also helped me determine a number of aesthetic factors. Notably the trees. A lot of the trees are going to be flat 2D elements, but there are a number of sequences in the film that require movement through trees. Characters will be leaping from branch to branch and the camera will be following them. The animated trees produced in Swift will have a silhoutte appearance about them but still move in three dimensional space. These will be off set in tone to the rest of the background for purposes of definition. This is just one element of what will make up the trees. The Grimmwood itself is as much an element as any of the characters. It will be one of the test elements that will appear in the trailer.

Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED ...

Okay, been a while since I last posted. Just finished a string of commercials. Firstly for the previously mentioned Travelodge for Doner Cardwell Hawkins. If you follow the link to Picasso Pictures (a flash site) you'll see my name in a list of Directors, follow that little road to my work and you can watch the ad right there if you haven't seen it on TV (in the UK). I got to work with the immensely talented David Semple, so go check out his work. He was responsible for the look of the ad and is the illustrator for the campaign.

Just last week I wrapped on a string of Flybe commercials and am now putting together some test footage for Grimmwood. So, it's been one heck of a busy summer, which is good because that gives me a more time to focus on Grimmwood and certain comic book projects which I'll be talking about over the coming months.

Grimmwood is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

He lived the rest of his life a beggar ...

... which was perfectly just.

It's been too long since I last posted, but a great deal has been happening. I was looking at possible funding from certain sources but decided against it for various reasons (one being that the project is too far beyond certain stages to suit certain aspects of a certain funder's remit). So that's eaten up a great deal of time (none wasted however as I learned a considerable amount in the process). The quest goes on, but I shall not let it halt production, it just means that by and large this production is funded by the commercial work I do. I'm just finishing a small hand full of commercials for Picasso Pictures which should pay the rent a while and allow me to continue with Grimmwood. However, if there are any rich Kings or golden egg laying geese out there, do call.

Secondly, a learning curve has kept me occupied. I recently acquired Swift 3D, which, as stated in one of my initial posts on this here blessed production blog, was of the software packages mentioned. Various camera shots and backgrounds will incorporate 3D assisted elements. As I'm used to working in 2D rather than 3D, this has meant I've spent quite a bit of time sitting through tutorials in what spare time I've had (whilst not earning keep). I must thank a friend at this point, Colin Fawcett, who, when I explained my dilema of thinking in three dimensions suggested I get my head around modelling by downloading Google's free "Sketchup" and practice on there first. And that worked a treat, so, many thanks Colin. It's a remarkable programme and takes about three or four steps to learn to use. I highly recommend it for getting ones noggin around the third dimension.

Production shall resume shortly. In the meantime, above you will see the final model for Red.

Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

COLD HARD FLASH

Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard flash has been kind enough to mention me over at his glorious Flash site. In Aaron's own words, the site is:

a collection of thoughts on the recent swell of Flash-animated TV production. Over the past half-dozen years, Flash has expanded beyond the web and into broadcast TV and even feature film. Only 3 years ago, there were no more than 5 or 6 Flash-animated shows airing on TV. Today, that number is closer to 30.

I've been using Flash for many years now. It's a great tool and I think it's possibly the most used application on my dear old 'pooter. I stumbled upon Aaron's site quite by chance, and I'm very glad I did. Any Flash users out there looking for 'hints and tips' (and I'm assuming there are given the volume of people who emailed me or posted comments regarding the albiet brief tutorial I gave of how I created my Zombie Kong image), go check out the 'community' section on the site where there's a regular exchange of ideas. Also check out the Links the site has, quite a list with some excellent resources. Aaron updates the site daily (Mon-Fri) with great posts highlighting some of the many thing going on in the world of Flash, so be sure to check in on a regular basis. If there's one thing that world leaders agree on more than anything else then it is that Flash absolutely rules.

Well? What are you waiting for?

IN OTHER NEWS: Have just completed a commercial for Travelodge through Picasso Pictures (I mention it here because Aaron spoke about an Ad I couldn't talk about. I'm a stickler for non-disclosure so I don't talk about live commercial jobs till they're out the door). So if you're in the UK and you see an ad for Travelodge on TV, I did that. I somehow manage to miss everything I do when it goes on air. That may have something to do with the fact that my television isn't on very often, and when it is it isn't on for very long, I don't know. Anyway, keep 'em peeled. Shall have to see if I can get some stills up from it. What I do know however is that it will soon be on my reel so you'll be able to see it there as and when. Important point to mention about the commercial is, I got to work with the genius that is David Semple who was responsible for look of the ad.

MONSTERS

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

So here it is. "Monsters". Don't know when it'll be making it's appearance in the Megazine, but when it does I'll be sure to alert people as to where they can get a copy.

I based the lead man in this story very loosely on Terry Wogan (circa 1982). A sort of Kung Fu fighting all action Wogan if you like. The over all world this is set in was inspired by shows like The Avengers, The Champions, Danger Man and maybe a little Jason King. I really got into drawing sideburns and dodgy hair styles and it's safe to say (as I drew this back in February and am still drawing sideburns and dodgy hair styles to this very day) it left its mark.
Monsters ©2006, Ian Culbard

I AM THE LAW!

It's official, I AM THE LAW!

Got a mail this morning from Dave Taylor with a page from an Anderson story he's doing for the 2000AD Megazine in which I cameo as a Judge. So, technically speaking, I'm in the Megazine before my work is (no news on "Monsters" yet). Anyway, go check out his site for much goodness and detailed artwork that will make your eyes bleed or my name ain't Richard Dean Anderson.

Other cameos include Craig (cool as) Conlan, JAke (man of) Steel, Jonathan (for the love of) Edwards, Woodrow (like a) Phoenix, Will (World of) Kane and Curtis (hairy as) Jobling.

DEATH METAL

A short animated film that started life as a smoke test in Flash (wanted to use the blur tools). So, this is really a by-product of experimentation. A happy accident.

I started it last Friday afternoon. As I extrapolated from the smoke test it became a limited animation test (I wanted to work on staggered timings like you get in Saturday morning shows).

It took roughly one working day to make from scratch (ten hrs). Hopefully that doesn't show.

I made a 30 second film back in Uni in about 15 hrs called "Death by Misadventure", so this would be part of that 'sudden death' series I suppose given how long it took to make and the theme. It's kind of nice to sort of vent this stuff every once in a while.