BAH, HUMBUG!

WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

Haven't put any of my own work up in a while so here goes. The Joker. Tis the season to be jolly.

WEDNESDAY'S CHILD IS FULL OF WOE!

But I was born on a Friday, which makes me loving and giving - but not according to the 1887 original version which had Wednesday's child bestowed with such fortune and Friday's child saddled with woe. Which brings me to another bit of Trivia. Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family took her name from 'Wednesday's child is full of woe". Her middle name was 'Friday'. All bases covered.

It's actually the early hours of the morning here in Blighty. I'm up working late and evidently talking gibberish so here's some music instead.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE & GOODBYE TO THE NORMALS

I moseyed on over to the BBC's film network today completely by chance and found, much to my delight, the work of writer George Kay and director Jim Field Smith. The first is a film called "Where Have I Been All Your Life?":

A young man's personal search unlocks a series of revelations and recriminations that escalate from the emotional, via the darkly comic to the plain farcical.

And the second is "Goodbye to the Normals" which can also be seen on youtube and concerns a young boy leaving home.

'TWAS THE DARK KNIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS ...

DOCTOR WHO: VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED TRAILER

It's almost that time of year again ... no, not Christmas, the other thing ...

THE GOLDEN COMPASS

Took my niece to see The Golden Compass at the weekend (finally got my weekends back). The cinema experience when going to see films with children is sort of akin to Christmas being reinvigorated with magic once again now my wife and I have a son.

I have to confess, in hindsight I thought the film was okay, but at the time I thoroughly enjoyed it (fueled somewhat by the novelty). Whilst wonderfully realized visually I wasn't too certain it had been wonderfully executed in terms of adaptation, but for the most part performances were fine, the casting fitting almost perfectly with how I had imagined the book. I was however perplexed by the film's ending (in contrast to the book), and shocked by a certain fight scene for it's moment of startling but bloodless gore. I had to explain to my niece there was going to be another film as the fade to black prompted her to ask "is that it?". After the film an in depth conversation ensued concerning Daemon's (the familiars in the film) as we waited in the lobby for my sister to come and collect us. I picked a hare after Lee Scoresby's Daemon - Hester the Hare (I was particularly fond of its ears) and my niece rather impractically picked a Killer Whale. That said though, it had been raining rather heavily all day so I suppose it wasn't so impractical after all.

FAREWELL NOVEMBER 2007

It's been a hectic month. I could almost write the whole of November off as one long endurance test. And the fun is far from over yet. I haven't had a weekend free since the beginning of November. I've been working on three commercials back to back and a comic book (more info on that as soon as I'm allowed to tell). Been looking forward to December as the next couple of months is all comic book work which makes for a nice change of pace. Oh, and I get my weekends back. Yay!

Now for a little music. Two tracks from the outstandingly excellent Akira soundtrack. Never mind that it's an amazing manga and an incredible anime, listen to the score!

TO DAYS TO COME, ALL MY LOVE TO LONG AGO.

A change of desktop theme indeed. A touch of nostalgia from Doctor Who in this special for Children in Need. Note how the score changes to the eighties style fifth Doctor era midway through. Great stuff.

BAF 07

It's been a while since I last posted. I've had my head beneath the parapet and have been working hard on three commercials back to back. I've not got any weekends off for the whole of November. Needs must when the devil drives! Looking forward to December when things slow down a pace and I get my weekends back. On top of all these commercials I managed to prepare a powerpoint presentation of my storyboard work and comic book work for the Bradford Animation Festival. Jim Walker hosted a panel which consisted of Ginger Gibbons, Kevin Baldwin and myself.

It was my first ever presentation/talk so in the days leading up to it, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm so busy at the moment and thinking about half a dozen other things at once, I would most likely have been quite nervous, but I just didn't have time to be nervous. So I just got on with it. I arrived about 45 mins before the talk and had to leave 45 mins after I'd finished because I had to get back to HQ. Busy busy busy. As it was it all ran smoothly. The staff at BAF 07 where lovely and incredibly helpful, the Q&A with the audience went great with people asking interesting questions; the whole thing went off without a hitch and I had a thoroughly good time. Oh, and Bob Godfrey was in the audience (even more reason to be nervous, talking in front of such a luminary of the animation industry).

ZUDA GO FOR LAUNCH!

Zuda comics launched today and already there's some pretty interesting entries plus a rather stunning winner in Jeremy Love's 'Bayou'. Zuda Comics is DC comics' web comics site where people on a monthly basis compete to win a year long contract producing a weekly comic for the site. I've been following news on this eagerly since June as it's an excellent opportunity for anyone who doesn't have the chance to attend the US comic cons and DC folio reviews to stick their work under DC's nose and say 'how do you like them apples?' They have rolling submissions 24/7 which is excellent news, and with each pitch/submission creative teams provide 8 pages of art. I'm going to go for it.

BEBOP ALULA

Haven't updated this blog much of late as I have been frantically busy. I'm currently working with Ian Edginton on something special, more about that much later. I'm also going to be submitting six pages of story and art to Zuda.com as soon as its doors open so I've been preparing for that. And I have three commercials on my plate to boot. Oh, and I'm going to be making an appearance at the Bradford Animation Festival this year in a panel discussion to do with storyboarding, which I've just read has sold out! eek!

So, busy busy busy.

'OVER THE HILL' WON BEST ANIMATED SHORT AT THE AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL

More great news for 'Over The Hill'. We won best animated short.

THE REAL DAREDEVIL - via Major Spoilers

Spotted this over at the Major Spoilers, where Stephen Schleicher calls this kid "The Real Daredevil". Seems Marvel need to rethink Matt Murdoch. He doesn't need radioactive substances, just good old fashioned echo location.

Best Video Of The Year - video powered by Metacafe

BITENECK BEATNIKS TEASER TRAILER ON YOUTUBE

Now in glorious YouTube-O-Vision

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE PAINTER X

I have some possible comic book work on the horizon and have been experimenting with painter cross platforming with photoshop and it's been fun. The way I'm working is starting projects in photoshop (which I'm familiar with), blocking out colors, and then opening psd files in Painter and hopping between the two. What I love about Painter isn't so much the brushes, although the brushes in Painter are many and fantastic, rather it's the extended possibilities of manipulation and the palette for mixing up paints (taking me back to mixing up paints on a tile at art college).

I used a little bit of Painter in Grimmwood, but only for the canopy. I hope to use more.

INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL!

The title for the new Indiana Jones movie has been revealed. More info about the Crystal Skull itself can be found in the above clip from Arthur C Clarke Mysterious World episode.

As is traditionally the case with Indiana Jones, the MacGuffin is the artifact. What the Crystal Skull is reportedly said to be able to do could be an indication of the movie's plot:

The Maya people said it was used to will death or to heal. And if like an older medicine man or witchdoctor was getting too old to perform a ceremony a young man was chosen and both laid in front of the alter and the high priest would perform a ceremony and the old man's knowledge would go into this young boy and the old man would pass away peacefully and this young boy would get up as a very knowledgeable young man. This crystal skull has tremendous power, but it also gives you a warning that something's going to happen.

Which is all pretty interesting stuff. Could Labeouf be the young man? And could John Hurt, allegedly playing Indy's mentor, Abner Ravenwood, be the old man and via this method passes on his knowledge to young Labeouf? Face it, John Hurt dies in practically every movie he's been in.

BITENECK BEATNIKS TEASER TRAILER!

Here's some of the background art I recently produced for the new Biteneck Beatniks teaser trailer which can be seen over at the Sardine website.

Sardine Productions in Canada did a fantastic job of combining Curtis Jobling's character designs with my background designs. Sardine not only put in some terrific work but an incredible amount of enthusiasm and love for the project so it was a lot of fun to work on.

GRIMMWOOD UPDATED

Now these blogs have labels, I am considering whether to shift all the stuff I have over on the Grimmwood blog (what little of it there is) to here, given how intermittently I work on that project. Anyway, here's 15 seconds of Grimmwood, just to show there's life in the old girl yet.

The wolves are what I call 'spider-weasels' due to the way they move. Their legs move like spider legs and their bodies slink like weasels.

No audio.

Here also are the full backgrounds from the segment ...
Grimmwood and all production work is © 2006-2007, Ian Culbard, All rights Reserved.

SONG FOR JEDI