Brand New Everything...

Greetings fellow bloggers (Bloggerteers??) As well as the new look company website i've created a new blog to run alongside it. I've ditched blogger in favour of wordpress (just seems like you have more control) Some of you may be interested to know that i have already linked your blogs from my new one.

New projects mentioned on the blog include a short film for Ridley Scott (kinda) about a goat who has ate his own legs. The christmas commercial i made for Robson Brown and the Metro Centre and lots of news about Twilight Avenger which is currently being shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Future news soon the be added includes the next music video i'm making for New York based band Camphor. So if you would like to read more about all of this the new blog is over at www.quaystudios.com/blog

A newsletter with the option to subscribe to an RSS feed will follow shortly (once i've figured out how to do it (with help))

Finally, if this is to be the last comment i make on this blog it seems some what poetic given the name of this blog that i am about to become a Dad. Our son is actually due today, not sure if he's going to be on time....but in a season ending cliff hanger stylee you'll have to start reading the other blog to find out what happened next...

Quay Animation Studios website up, well kinda

Quay Animation Studios has a new grown up looking website and i've finally learnt enough about dreamweaver to make regular updates to the news section. So more than likely i'll be putting less posts on this blog.

I will of course be making regular checks back to see what Glazy has come up with next!

And see how Farmageddon is getting on.

And look at Uli Meyer's latest lunchtime doodles.

And...who am i kidding, in between this and facebook it's a miracle i get any work done, but somehow i do and if you'd like to see examples check out www.quaystudios.com

Tentaclaus online

Here's some stills from the final film. Learnt loads that i want to build on with future projects so it's been a good learning experience even if this film is a bit rough round the edges. It's online on NFM's website www.northeastmovies.co.uk

Sketch and Toon

These stills from a quick render test are the most faithful to the original drawings. I'm going to have a go at really going for a hand drawn feel to the model next but if all else fails i'm pretty pleased to fall back on this...

Adventures in 3D land

so after several trips back and forth to my new best friend, the C4D manual i'm starting to get somewhere with this modelling malarky. Style wise it most likely will go towards something similar to the original drawings with a cell shader but at the moment i'm just happy choosing colours and not having to do the shading by hand!

Tentaclaus

This project was first mentioned on the blog over a year ago. I dusted the cobwebs off the original storyboard and started to work on it in my spare time but once work started to build up it got shelved. Jump forward to now and Northern Film & Media put out a call for submissions for 60 second scripts with a christmas feel. I gave the script a bit of a polish, got shortlisted and was one of five lucky enough to be commissioned. Funnily enough forgot to mention on the application that it was going to be an animation. I was wondering why they were looking a bit skeptical in the interview until they realised i wasn't really intending to hire a gaint octopus for a 3 day shoot.

I'm dabbling with the idea of doing the whole thing in 3D. I was planning on building the parents in 3D anyway to pre-vis (yes i watch a lot of special features) and then rotoscoping the footage. But now i'm thinking about just sticking with the 3D. I'll keep the character animation fairly basic. I'm not quite ready to learn how to rig and all that mumbo jumbo and i'm thinking one step at a time. i'm fairly confident using the camera and all the stuff i needed to learn for Theory and then LTW so now it's time to learn how to model i reckon (it's mostly just pouting anyway isn't it?)

Examples from Sally the Sat Nav

Since Shoofly were putting the project together in Flash and i would need to supply them with swf files i was introduced to the voodoo vectorizing skills of a brilliant free piece of software called inkscape. The artwork was then coloured up in Flash which proved to be a really quick neat way of working and something i intend to do more of...

Love the World stillz

Sally the Sat Nav

The learning resource was designed by Toby Quibell of the Learning Challenge (is that just made up french like Bouquet and his real name is quibble??i think so) Toby was the researcher on board for the Glendene project and my work from the Reading Challenge basically got me the job. Shoofly Publishing came on board to do the Flash based stuff and the branding. Hopefully will ge tto work with them again some day as they are a really great bunch of people.

Both stories were split into ten chapters to coincide with the 10 week learning resource with three illustrations per chapter.

The Lemming Family

Earlier on this year also illustrated two children's stories to be used as part of an interactive DVD whiteboard learning resource. These illustrations are from the Lemming story aimed at the younger age range. I did this one last since i thought the older one would take up more time. But in fact this story turned out to be harder to illustrate. I think deep down i just wasn't into it as much as the other story. I think i was so happay with the way the character designs turned out for the other one that i found this one a bit dull. Which if anything isn't the fault of the story, i should have found something in there to really motivate me. Anyway, everybody was very happy with them

oooh shiny!

It's not a midlife crisis i tell you! it's just really pretty and very, very fast...

Karoshi Bros promo Love/F**k the World

The Burt Bros formerly known as Letrix have been developing Karoshi Bros as a side project and asked us to animate a promo for the first track to be released next month. Karoshi ironically in Japanese means work to death!

The track itself is basically a rant at everything thats wrong with the world from the state of music, America's involvement in the war to, well you get the picture, it's a rant. Sung by a manipulated voice to sound like a young girl. Our interpretation of the track was to look at the impact of putting an opinion out there and showing a visual representation of that. Oh yeah and we managed to put some skulls in there again!

David Hails foolishly came back for more, this time bringing on board his partner Sarah Jayne Claydon/SJ/Clayders to supply us with a never ending supply of crazy characters to animate.

The photos in this post show the incredibly high-tech setup i built for some dolly shots. All those years of watching MaGyver finally paid off. I'm particularly proud of the elastic bands holding the camera onto the train. I used the increments of the train track to measure out the moves. It kinda works and is something i think we'll implement more on a future project.

WTF?

That's been most people's response to the film. Looks great but nobody got it. Good, we like it that way.

But for those of you who really wanna know it was all based originally on an aboriginal story of creation. Tiddalick to be precise, the one with the toads under the ground being woken up by a spirit and the water from their stomachs forming the rivers and oceans. We added the lamposts firing laser skull beams before you ask.

At the moment the film is ten minutes long and about three minutes too long. We intend to do something about that in the short term. Ideally for reasons which will become clearer by the end of this month. It's been pretty hard finding the time to put it into festivals with a relentless workload so we err didn't. Okay well we put it into Pictoplasma which was the only one we really cared about and got a big fat nein. The carrot has been dangled in front of us now By the Independant Cinema Office who want to do an industry screening to programmers. Struggling with what to do. Would mean we can't put it into festivals anymore but would mean we can blitz the internet.

So where it's at now is i think once we have a fresh tighter edit of the film which we'll be very excited about and i think it will be the film it was always meant to be that version we'll use to blitz the festivals and hold off on the ICO.

Adjust your tray tables and return your seat to an upright position

Where the hell did a year go thats what i want to know! Been meaning to post recent work on here for quite some time and when i finally do i realise it's been a year almost to the day that i last put something up. So, basically been working like a mad man for the last 12 months. Ironically having read the last post i can jump forward to now and put up some images of Theory of (R)evolution in it's finished format.

Here's some stills from the film...

National Film and Television School

I was invited down to Beaconsfield last week for a 3 day intensive course in film making as part of the Digital Shorts Scheme. I can honestly say it was one of the best things i've ever done. The three days covered everything from contracts and all the legal side of things, getting clearances etc. Festivals, Producing, Post Production, Sound Design and Editing as well as a whole day dedicated to animation in which all our projects were scrutinized.

I went along wanting to learn as much as possible. I'm happy to say i was pleasantly suprised by how much i was already aware of but still it was a fantastic overload of information from the industry professionals.

Theory of (R)evolution was put under the microscope by Hugh Welchman who has just finished producing Peter and the Wolf (stop-motion epic) Having listened to the grilling some of the other projects received i'm relieved to say even though our script is epic on an almost biblical scale, once i had explained how we were going to go about making it and what we had already done it received the royal thumbs up.

The 3 days was not just about learning though. I met a fantastic group of animators, it was fascinating to hear about the other animated projects being produced. I still think us animators are a much friendlier bunch of people than those live-action weirdos! I think we were all suprised by how strange it felt saying goodbye to each other once the course was finished as though we'd known each other for three years, not three days. Oh well, if the first day of training pays off, i look forward to catching up with them all on the festival circuit.

P.S. The photos is blurry cause it was bloody freezing when i took it.

Theory of (R)evolution

The short film is going well. Character Designs, check. Script, check. Storyboard and animatic, check check. We've finalised an overall style and look for the film, see image attached. We have 10 weeks of animation and 6 weeks of post production ahead of us. But with the style of animation we're using it should move along quite nicely. When i get a chance i'll develop a new blog featuring all the cool concept artwork that Ross and David have come up with as well as some animation tests.

Media Overload

This article appeared in last weeks Journal Culture Magazine. It's also going in the NECC yearly directory. Most of it is true, some of it is being very kind (i didn't write it) I hope i never have to write my own press release as i reckon it would be something like "excuse me, would you like to know about what i've been up to, okay never mind then"

Quay Studios has left the building...

I'm very excited to announce that Quay has relocated to within Mushroom Works in Newcastle's Ouseburn Valley. Now that i have a few months of business know how ninja training behind me and work is starting to come in it seemed inevitable that i would need my own space out of the open plan office i've been in. I've been on the waiting list for a few months not expecting to move out until around christmas but an opportunity came up two weeks ago and i took it. I moved in on Monday, painted the walls and floor (it's now whiter than white and i need some Willy Wonka style shades for the glare) and moved the equipment in yesterday. I'm sharing the office with Bethan Laker, a fellow illustrator and as far as office buddies go i couldn't ask for a better one.

My commute has been cut from just under an hour (in bad traffic) to about ten minutes! And i'm a lot closer now to the other guys in the team and several clients it looks like i'll be working for in the next couple of months.

If you are ever in Newcastle feel free to stop by. If you have a look on the mushroom works website www.mushroomworks.com you'll discover that there is a lot of interesting arty stuff going on here. I may have to figure out a way to merge my wacom tablet with a paint brush to truly fit in.

Streetcat

I finally had an opportunity to make some more progress with the Streetcat tv concept and met yesterday with the two writers we have involved. I'm pleased to say they are locals and are Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood. They are currently carving out a very successful career as theatre writers but also want to work within kids tv.

They originally wrote some sample outlines and reworked the character descriptions 3 months ago but with everybodys work commitments over the summer this has been the first chance to meet up.

The time away from the project has been very useful. When i first read what they had come up with i was very close to mine and Glenn's original ideas. I try not to be too precious about my work but you have to be to an extent otherwise if you didn't care why bother going through all the hard work?? Anyway having had 3 months away from the project i re read their ideas with fresh eyes and was delighted to discover how much more i liked the new material.

We bashed out a few more ideas yesterday and the project is becoming a much more sellable concept i think. A lot of the ideas are being refined and strengthened and it's actually becoming quite dark. The designs are going to need to be revised and there's two new baddies i can't wait to get stuck into designing.

Artwork to follow in the coming weeks....

I'm back...

Not posted in quite a while. Reasons include travelling around Croatia for two weeks, turning 30, coping with turning 30, recovering from going to four weddings in one summer! and generally being quite busy at work.

The 10 minute film is coming along well. We're in the thick of storyboarding and the plan is to have an animatic by the end of the month. The testing phase has come up with some great results from Ross and David. In the coming weeks we hope to have a blog dedicated to the film up and running.

I'm currently trying (and failing) to find production insurance for the film. I managed to go from "we have this much money!" to "yes, i realise it's not a very big budget" within three phone calls. The search continues...

Thumbs up, thumbs down?

If anybody has had a chance to have a look at the studio website i'd appreciate some feedback. I've had several nice comments and i've had it totally ripped to shreads. The latter in a weird kind of way is more useful. So if you have any comments on it, i'd appreciate your thoughts. Although the website is up it's still in development so feel free to make comments.

The website cometh.....quaystudios.com

So here it is finally. The company website. The one project that got shoved to one side everytime something else came up. I went through loads of design styles since the original idea so if it had happened in the original space of time it might have looked a lot different. Hopefully having more time to mull over it has had a positive impact.

Thanks goes to Dylan Baker from Really Clever for taking all my photoshop files and putting them together (and doing the hard bit basically)

www.quaystudios.com

new toy...

This is slightly unrelated to illustration (unless you count the fact that i used the prize money from the recent award to buy all of this stuff!) but i finally went out and bought a surfboard and wetsuit and everything else i need. I've been wanting to do this since i got hooked on surfing whilst out in Australia and it's taken me three years to get round to doing it. I christened the board at Tynemouth yesterday. I managed to stand up more times than i didn't so i was happy.

Only incident was when i accidentally managed to make the board shoot out from under me and launch vertically into the air like a rocket. Which to begin with looked really cool until re-entry when the board came down at me nose first. The words skewered and accident emergency spring to mind. Luckily i moved out the way in time.

Pass me my ointment, i've been stung!

Wow, it's been quite a good couple of months in the land of Quay Studios. If i wake up in a shower to discover none of this has actually happened i'm gonna be really put out.

Just found out we got the green light from Northern Film and Media to make their first animated 10 minute stinger. There will of course be lots of work in progress artwork in the coming months so feel free to leave comments and advice.

Creative Activities

Sid n Nancy will soon be making their debut but not quite how i expected. That Nancy is just so damn impatient she'll do anything to get noticed...

Stinger

There's not many reasons i'd wear a suit in the boiling heat but for an interview at Northern Film and Media i was prepared to get nuclear hot.

I wrote an animation script for a ten minute film that myself Ross(co) Cuthbert and David (i need a creative outlet!!!!!) Hails have been developing. It was submitted to the Stingers scheme and shortlisted, hence the interview today.

I'll find out on Friday if we were successful. There were 150 applicants and they only comission 8 films (i think) so to get this far was pretty good going. They've never commissioned an animated film before, it's always been live-action. So hopefully if we get it and do the idea justice we can pave the way for others.

I'd like to thank the academy...

I'm proud to announce that at the Blueprint Awards last night Quay Animation Studios won the Arts Council North East Creative Industry award. I've never been given so many business cards in the space of ten minutes in my life! Thanks goes to the team already on board. Now all we have to do is show them what we're really capable of...

Second from last Samurai

Having finally ditched his little sister Sid finally gets a chance to play with himself.

Development Work

Here's something i'm working on with Ross Cuthbert. It's for a project in development hence the dodgy watermark (no pun intended) Check out Ross's work by clicking on the link for Rossco.

Reading Maze characters

Just found these two drawings. It was these that basically got me the illustration work for the Reading Maze project. From what i can remember some very unfortunate circumstances led to the role of illustrator on the project needing to be filled and these characters caught the clients eye and seemed to fit what they had in mind. The lack of regular skin tones made it even more perfect as (we thought) there would be no issues surrounding ethnic backgrounds. The pink mad looking character never made it in to the final gang although i snuck her into a background on the poster i think. Going back to the skin tones not being an issue. I rounded off the spikey bits on the green characters head (who was later affectionately referred to as Spud) unfortunately for Spud his new hairdo seemed to look like cornrows as far as the bigwigs (no pun intended) were concerned and i had to make numerous revisions to the artwork.

P.S. If anybody out there has kids who collected the stickers for this project look carefully at the sticker of one of the characters holding a fishing rod. Thats right...Stuntfish makes his first appearance in the world of print. I knew i'd have to come clean eventually.

Sid n Nancy - Dinosaur Theme

Here's some more sample artwork that has been used in the development of the books. I like them black and white over some of the stuff i've done in colour. Some of my artwork for the Reading Maze was printed in B&W and used for colouring up pullouts. It's bizarre for me to think of loads of kids colouring in my drawings. There's another set of artwork somewhere but i can't find them, i'll scan them in again and put them up soon.

Icecream Van Man

This is the start of an idea for a crime fighting icecream man hero. Dairy based weapons ahoy!

Tentaclaus

Got this idea from a trip to visit my good friends in Byron Bay who were getting married. Much to the amusement of myself and Todd, Jodie's little neice was forever accidentally calling her Auntie Dodie...or maybe it wasn't an accident?

Hairycopter and Egg Race

I drew these whilst teaching part time in an infant school. The stories could be adapted for the Sid n Nancy characters maybe. I can imagine Nancy's hair in some propellor-like action...

The Reading Maze

Here's some artwork i did three years ago! I really need to put some recent work up but i still have a fondness for these characters. If you can be bothered to read the press release there's more information about the project. But basically this was my first freelance project as an illustrator that i did on my own. So in at the deep end, go big or go home and all that.

Sid n Nancy pt2

Here's some artwork featuring the two lil' rascals...

The office setup

Here's the office setup! Somehow managed to collar three desks. So now we have an animation department. A scanning and ink and paint department. And finally a compositing department.

Stuntfish and Rocket

The name Stuntfish actually came from a cheesy joke i made in self defence. Imagine the scene if you will. Your midway through your time at University living in a room you've decorated with mostly free posters from the local cinema. Yet behold on one wall we find a throw usually at home covering a second hand sofa. Yes interior design fans. I was using a throw, not on a sofa, but on the wall...instead of wallpaper...as you kinda do when your at Uni. The throw in question, a charming indigo print containing hundreds of little fishies had been displayed on my wall for almost a year. That is until some bright spark noticed that they were all upside down. In a futile attempt at making it look like a deliberate choice i proclaimed that they were in fact... stunt fish.

Sid n Nancy

Sid n Nancy are a brother and sister i designed quite a while ago now. Ironically at the time, Sid was supposed to be the focus of the storylines. Pretty much modelled on myself at the age of err, well i probably haven't changed any actually. An inventor wannabe who spends more time in his head than in the real world with an overactive imagination. However Nancy's hair and attitude made her the star of the duo and as soon as Simon & Schuster Publishing said they might be interested in developing the ideas further with her as the lead, the storylines began to flow. I'll put up more pictures in due course. For now here's a typical example of who usually wins the sibling rivalry.

Son of Quay

The quay studios website may be up and running by the time you have come to read this. Originally this was going to be a stop gap but now i'm thinking i'm going to dedicate this little space on the net to my illustration work. The stuff that may never see the light of day along with a lucky few that did.

As soon as i figure out how this setup works i will add more.

Until then...