Vote for me on Threadless!!!

I put my new design on threadless, so please vote 5 for it!
CLICK HERE

Finished Cryptozoological Design

Here is the finished Design.
CLICK FOR PROPER RESOLUTION

All star cast: Mothman, Nessie, Big Foot, Fairies, Jersey Devil, Bunyip, Wampa, Mongolian Death Worm, Jackalope, Chupacabra, Dover Demon, Jesus...
I had lots of fun researching these dudes.
I am pretty pleased with it. I did like 3 colour tests, finally settling on this simplistic one. I basically looked at lots of designers to try see how they colour these complex things. Threadless.com I find is a great source to see how pros do it.

I'll be doing up the actual poster tomorrow with it.

old finished posters

p3lb0xxx requested to see the previously finished posters, so here they are.
I must note that I didn't do the text or backgrounds for these, so I'm not 100% happy with how they turned out. My new one I will be doing it all though.

WIP new poster

I'm working on a new poster for a local Chiptune event, for my buddy Dot.AY
This one will have a cryptozoological theme, because I was reading about Mongolian death worms the other day and think they are the best!

I think I am getting better at creating the compositions for these. With this one I took a step I think will be really useful, where I basically just threw some random shapes in the back ground that makes an aesthetically pleasing oveall silhouette. This one has an almost lotus flower shape.
Perhaps soon I can give one of those "image made of images" a go. Kinda like that link...

Final Year Animated Film

Hello Hello.

I have officially started the early stages of pre production on what will be my 3rd year Animated Film at the Queensland College of Art. In our first week back from holidays we have to present a pitch, because it is possible to be turned down by the tutors there... What's more I am doing mine on my own and plan to have it finished mid year so I can make another!!! Every time I tell a tutor this they roll their eyes at me, I find their lack of faith disturbing.

The main motivating factor of starting pre production was finally getting my bloody house mate Jack to email me one of his short stories I plan to adapt. I have been asking him like a BILLION times EVERYDAY FOREVER. It is very very hard to get that guy motivated to do things. Luckily he is a great writer. His story recently won a $2,000 award at his writing school so I think it should be a good one. It is very funny, in a kinda macabre way.
I'm currently emailing plenty of people over the net to try find someone who is interested in doing a musical score.... A past uni film maker managed to get the guy who did the music for Banjo Kazooie to do his!!! MADNESS!!! So to try one up that I sent Philip Glass an email. Haha.

Designs and Animation

So I am kinda in holidays at the moment. I've been both lazy and busy. The last few days I have been lying around watching movies and playing Black Ops multiplayer and Space Station 13.
Tom and I have resumed production on our Boat Murdered animation. I've tried to start my own project as well but have found myself kinda busy. I'm doing a bunch of drawings for a commission at the moment too. Here is one of them! (or rather two)


The problem with commissions is when you design something you like, you know it isn't really yours to use any more.

Composited Animation Exercises

Here is my final assignment for my 2nd year of uni. Composited animation exercises!
Animated in Toon Boom and motion tracked and placed in After Effects. I need to work out a smoother more accurate motion tracking system if I wanna try it some more. I'm considering making a short film using this kind of technique. It is pretty quick to throw together (well... not the animation part). Very fun though!

Time flies when you're shining

I made a really highbrow video edit of the Shining.
Made with After Effects.

Koala Journal Archive

Here is an archive of all my journal entries regarding our save the koala advert (for my lecturer John). Each of these is a link to the appropriate blog post.

Entry 1
Entry 2
Entry 3
Entry 4
Entry 5
Entry 6
Entry 7
Entry 8
Entry 9

And here is a low quality version of the finished advert.

Koalas FINISHED

Yay. Our koala ad is finished after FOREVER. Yolly did a great job on the sound and today I got it all together and added in the final text and did the final export. I tweaked the laser sound effect a bit, because you could tell the initial one was "totally done by a girl" rather than "a 14 year old boy" as it should be.

Drunk Animation Exercise

Here are some rough roughs for a drunk animation exercise.
I hope he seems drunk...



There are a few janky bits, like the wobble step and the reaction then fall... and the fact that his leg length changes so much on the attempted step. I'm pleased with how many frames I managed in only 2 sessions though.

Koala Update Near FINAL

We have almost finished out Koala advert!
I had to make a few tweaks with my shot and extend the explosion, and tweaked some of the transitions, it works better now. Tom, Troy and I went through and added in the quick blurry transitions between shots. Now we just need to ad the text and give Yolly the file to add sound too.

Weight Lifter Animation Exercise

Here is another of my animation exercises. A weight lifter!
I found it very challenging, the feel of the weight isn't quiet as intense as I would have liked.
I should try another one soon.



I'll be attempting a drunk walk soon! Yikes!
And here are some silly style tests for an assignment.

Koala Journal Update SO CLOSE

We have been very busy on our advert. Today we needed to basically have all our shots finished and ready. I had a bunch to fix up, such as tweaking the background I was given, do a quick lighting pass, re animate the tractor and add smoke. This all went pretty painlessly and I am actually pretty happy with my final explosion scene. I added a subtle camera shake too.

Again I ran around to everybody to get their exported shots out so that I could compile then in premiere. Some people need a few more tweaks but it's looking close to finished.
The transition between the explosion and real estate board needs to be fixed up so it's more clear. I think I will have to animate a bit more on the end of my explosion so there is space to do a cross fade or dip to black. I can just boil the explosion I reckon.
The pressure from this project is starting to lift. We have made pretty good time actually.
Had a few ups and downs with each other but it's been fine.

Mud Walk Roughs

Today I finished off my roughs for the mud walk. I'm also testing out doing my key frames without ONION SKIN! Crazy hey. I figure the less I rely on something like that the better I will become at redrawing characters. So lots of flicking between frames.
I ran into the age old problem with creating a cycle... my character pose and proportion changed a chunk, so instead of fixing it I just forced him back into the starting position. LAZY!

Animated in Animate Pro
I'm starting to realize the value of this exercise now. After looking back on that I thought "hey... a standard walk wouldn't be so hard!"

Next step is: Either ad secondary action items, like fabric and stuff to this. OR begin new exercise with a simple step, pickup and throw.

Geometry Wall

For my visual story class I need to storyboard and develop and original animation.
I randomly came up with this idea. I'm calling it Geometry Wall so far (don't know if I need a more poetic name). It's kind of like Tetris meets that really freaky manga comic "The Enigma of Amigara Fault".


So there will be more news on this soon. Dunno if I will ever turn it into an actual animation, it's a pretty fun simple story though. I'm starting to enjoy really simple design, I'm not sure if it is out of laziness, fear of detail or what. I can kid myself that it is expression through simplicity, like pixel art.

Koala Coala

Getting pretty sick of this whole Koala business. We just had our weekly meeting. I have never come away from one feeling energetic, excited, motivated or even particularly happy.
I discovered from John today that we aren't even meant to do a Blog for this... despite the fact that I have communicated to him about it like 5 times already and that it was previously fine and good to do. Some consistency in our criteria would be cool. I compiled together all the shots today and put it together into an unfinished version. Here it is.


It was tough wrangling everybody to get their shots in time.
WE sat on one of my shots for like 15 minutes during our meeting and all talked about a BILLION additions. Despite the fact that it is unfinished and that we have been doing planning of the shots for like 3 months and had plenty of time to make changes. Frustrating to change things up when I have just assumed I finished some chunks.
Jasmine has been good with her kinda... planning of getting things done. But I find she always does it in a very stressful and emotional way. We all have kinda stopped communicating with each other because I think we are all so fed up with the advert in general.
There are also heaps of frustrating discrepancies within the advert that divert from the original storyboard. But I can't really say anything now because it will cause drama.

Koala Explosion

More compulsory and assessable BORING uni update.

Here is a unfinished render of my laser and explosion. Animated on 1's and 2s'.

I'm fairly happy with the timing. I wish I had a longer shot to really let that explosion hang there. Still lots to do with the lighting, texture and colouring. NOT to mention animating the tractor and Koala too!
We have all been animating pretty late today, the sun has long set!

The other guys shots look good!

Koalas AGAIN

Here is another compulsory and assessable BORING uni update regarding my Koala advert.
We are cramming at the moment. We have an unexpected and kinda unnecessary deadline to have finished cleaned and coloured animation by tomorrow to show our client. I am animating a giant explosion so I am having some fun. I have been looking at Metal Slug explosions because they are the BEST.

YEAAAAAAAAH!

We have been having some fun though. Which is good.

On other uni news I have been fucked around by our retarded teacher Charlie. He is meant to be our script writing teacher and has only just given us our marks back for our scripts... about 4 months late thanks Charlie. He never gave us feedback for our drafts, stating that "I don't want to give you feedback so it contaminates your work." well... I received a PASS. I have never received a PASS grade. I went to see him to get some reasoning, his response was "seen it.".
REALLY?! You have seen it before?! WELL... that is strange. Seeing my script was based completely on conventions and cliches, being a 70's cop show satire.
For FUCKS sake Griffith university. Going to try get it re-marked. Sorry for my student rage.

Luke... I am your-

My housemate Jack came into my room and told me I should make this video edit. So I did.


So stupid. It will never hold a light to that boba fett gif where he uses his jet pack and slams into Jabba's ship and falls into the sarlacc. I can't find it online!

Laika to the Stars

I have this assignment for my post production class to make "something awesome". That is really our only guideline. Well I guess we have to use after effects a bit too.

I have this short film idea that I had completely forgotten about until recently, which I think I will try and see through. It is pretty ambitious for the size of the assignment.
I'm real interested in space travel and have always found the story of Laika (the Russian dog sent into space) super fascinating and tragic.

The idea is I tell the story from the dog's perspective and act like a dick and anthropomorphise the heck out of Laika by making her narrate it too. So what I need to do is get a girl with a russian accent to do it with! That is the hard part. Finding music is pretty hard too. I would love to use The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows somehow, so it is royalty free. It is the song Yuri Gagarin hummed as he went into space. I also need to work out how to make the visuals... Do I draw it all?! WHAT DO I DO!?

Here is an image for Laika I made a few years back. Says something about from the streets of Moscow to the stars.

Sonja Smoke

HEY. So here is the last image in the Bronte Coate's creative writing super hero poem honours collection! Sonja Smoke! I can never draw girls, but I am fairly pleased with this one. Well I am at the moment, I bet I will look at it tomorrow and hate it.

Art Dump 2 - Sonja Smoke and friends

Here are my character designs for my friend Bronte's honors creative writing piece. It is an awesome collection of poems about these "super heroes" who aren't quiet heroes. Hopefully it becomes HUGELY famous and I know I did the initial visual designs!
I tried drawing these really organically, just going ahead and not cleaning them up much at all. It was a really fun and quick process. Start with the structure then just add in and remove linework all on the one layer.

Sonja

Bit of a weird design this one, she may look too much like an alien/feline thing.

Heart Throb

He is a hero but he also literally steals hearts. He ended up getting real Bob Dylan meets Travolta from grease.

The Hawk

I realized after he looks plenty like Dr Weird and Harvey Birdman. Also a bit of a super hero pimp... He is actually more of an ex hero now full time hero manager.

The Monster

A Star Wars monster meets the Pyro? The monster is a pretty cool character, but no spoilers here!!!

I'm meant to be on holidays for a week but have a billion uni work things to do!
I am going to start production on a new short film/graphic animation soon, about Laika, the Russian dog sent to space.

OH AND my housemate and his GF are hardcore pokemon players so I just picked up soul silver, I used to be nuts into pokemon in primary school. I just randomly ran into and caught a shiny Rattata! 1 in 8,192 chance apparently. They are uber jealous. Man what a fucking nerd. I am.

A New New Hope

Here is my Green Screen Assignment.
This is totally official canon now.



Made in After Effects, Premiere and Photoshop. Using some video copilot tutorials.

Art Dump

I always wanted to sound like a real internet graphictition (can't say artist yet, so I will invent words till I can confidently) and say Art Dump. I don't know if it implies it's shit or what.

FIRST DUMP!

This is Sonja. Or as I like to call her, Sonja Smoke.
This is for my friend Bronte. Or as I like to call her, Bromley/Brompy/Brambrey/Braprey.
She is currently finishing off her Honors in creative writing and is doing this awesome poetry meets super hero story! I am going to be doing designs of her other characters soon, I had lots of fun working with her character descriptions.

DUMP 2!

This is for my Post Processing class. I am currently rendering out my first After Effects version. It is going to be pretty awesome and star wars themed. This is a multiplane image, so every element is on a different layer so a After Effects camera can fly through it!!!

DUMP 3!!!

This is a card for my Dad's birthday. We are getting him a zoo thing where he can go hang out in the cheetah enclosure, this is what I will assume is gonna happen because my Dad is the manliest guy I know. He once cut a horse in half with a motorcycle. I'm not even kidding on that one. One day I should make an animation about that amazing event.

Just playing

I just drew my first thing on my new widescreen monitor (duel display). Was pretty awesome!
Having so much space to work in is so good! I'd been doing all my drawing at uni, now I can do it at home too!

I also was playing around with some of the new weird 3D pressure brushes in CS5. You can see it got grotesquely out of hand.
These/this guy might show up somewhere in the future.

I'm going to be gnarly busy in the next few days. Turns out the incredibly boring and creatively barren flash animation thing I'm doing for a client is unexpectedly needed in the next few days!
Late niiiights are GO!!!

Video and Animation

I forgot to post this video up when I finished it like a BILLION years ago (few weeks).
Was for a uni thing, using only sourced visuals from google.images to create a visual sequence with some kind of loose narrative.



And here is my first go at a perspective walk. I traditionally suck at perspective anything and try avoid it at all costs. Joe Brumm got us to do it for out Post Pro. class and it turned out to be super useful. I just don't do enough animating these days (as none of our current classes actually require it!) This is obviously a very rough animation test.


In unrelated boring personal news I have finally gotten around to getting the next few Song of Fire and Ice books. Radical. HBO is turning it into a series too! Wicked.

Aesop Fable Adaptation WIP1

For one of my classes I need to adapt an Aesop Fable into a short animation storyboard.
My original test was for adapting one about 3 animals living vertically in a big old tree.
This was my test image.

I find it really useful to just get something visual put down for an idea. That way it can exist in the image and remind me when I stumble back across it.

My new idea is adapting the fable Two Frogs.

It's going to be very 2D and graphic. I think this is due to my heavy playing of Dwarf Fortress at the moment. Also I'm so busy I figure this might be a little quicker to produce than some detailed epic... I also love volcanoes and wanted to make something that would pay homage to those 2D army battleground images I drew as a kid ala Worms.

Vote YEAH VOTE

You should vote for my threadless design so I can win $2,500 plz.

Koala Group Update #3

Another compulsory Koala Community Project update! YESSS!

Things have been pretty turbulent. Now that we are properly into production and away from the simpler pre production steps it's getting more stressful and we are all running into the odd altercation. Perhaps most of it's due to me being a little controlling or feeling I have a clear picture for the initial ad (which I developed and did the storyboard for) and having issues when it seems to flippantly take a different direction from the initial plan. So Jasmine and I have been knocking heads a little bit, mainly over the timing of the sequence or the framing of some shots.

I need to start the keyframing for the Koala now. I was meant to do it today... but I purchased a sweet new monitor online and did this instead.

Squidsplosion!

Here is that finished design.


BWAM!
I had heaps of fun with this (though as always I ran into some issues with the colouring, I must have done 5 different styles until I accidentally stumbled upon this simpler one. My initial was crazy intense fluro.)
This came together quicker than I thought because of one funny/happy event. I did a really rough colour test under the clean line work. Then I started to do the overlay stuff (such as the pixels) then realized it looked pretty bad arse with the rough colouring. So if you look close you will notice how rough it is, but I like that. I might try slap it on a shirt or even submit it to threadless!

New Poster WIP

I'm currently working on a new poster for DOT.AY for a big aussie chiptune gig.
Here is my first rough template WIP.


It is in the same series as my old poster.

Koala Bloggin #2

So I am actually required (as part of uni assessment) to blog about they production of our Save the Koala advert. I think for anyone reading this who ISN'T my lecturer this is going to be pretty boring, so I apologize. So feel free not to read anything with KOALA in the title.

Production has been going pretty well, we have been breaking up our work load efficiently and getting things done. Jasmine has been thrust into the producer role and I must admit I am relieved by this as I assumed I might have been subject to it. Ha.
I believe my further work on the project will be animating the actual Koala. I think Tom should handle backgrounds and some animation and Troy in charge of the construction worker and tractor.

Our meetings every week are... interesting. I feel we had a disastrous previous one as our nice animatic got unexpectedly altered to be full of horrendous cross fades at the last second. It was pretty disappointing. We are now up to planning our layout and scenes properly. Which is kinda a pain in the arse with the amount of other stuff I have heaped onto my plate at the moment.
Stupid freelance work!!! I'm doing this one with vector stuff, a skin care advert and I HATE it.
So out of my element and so tedious.

Hi Hi Koalas UPDATE #1

Sorry for the brief hiatus of blogging! Things have been very busy around here.
Plenty of uni related stuff, house hunting and very soon (tomorrow!!!) to be house moving, colds and all kindsa fun stuff.

Boatmurdered is on a brief hiatus at the moment. It's tough getting Tom and I together to work on it. Mainly due to our uni having an amazingly spaz idea of taking all the pens away from the wacoms at uni and making us either have to buy our own or go through a delayed and tedious rental program. COOL! I'll work on getting stuff together again real soon. I've still been playing heaps of Dwarf Fortress though!

Uni news:
I'm in a cool group of 2D animators to make a non profit commercial for the Australian Koala Foundation. We had a pitch process to the client and my concept got picked! I finished the storyboard v.1 today. The whole group got to go visit proper Koalas last friday but I was in bed with a crazy fever and sadly missed it. ALMOST BETTER!


As you can see, they wanted something a little bit off beat and "virally", like this sickness I have! AMIRITE?!
I've got a BILLION other things to do, including an audio analysis of a scene from Empire Strikes Back, an abstract short image sequence video, a huge life drawing landscape with figures, a green screen sequence, this Koala advert and many more future assignments! On top of that I'm doing some freelance stuff for a Scooter Apparel brand (sticker designs) and a sequence for a skin care cream ad thing. Plus I want to start some of my own projects soon.
Jesus writing that all out makes me just wanna drop dead now.

I've finally started reading LOTR too... That has been like a life goal. I just destroyed the Hobbit and figured it has given me the momentum to dive in. I've tried like 3 times in the past.

Speaking of (Koala) BEARS (not actually bears ) This is amazing:

I wish that was my name in those credits and I had actually made it.
Instead of Eran Hilleli

Finished design

Poster art for a Manabar chiptune gig. Click for larger res.

Think I will make a shirt with it.
OK! Boatmurdered can resume again shortly.

Design

Back at uni...
HEY LOOK. Here is a rough WIP design image for a poster I'm doing.

I'm about to start working on the cleans and then colouring. Pretty happy with those Deagle wings.
And here is a little animation I did for a small chunk of a tropfest entry. True story.


Animated in 1 day. All boiled baby!

Wallpaper and pro. cont. PRO C*NT?

HEY. HI. So production is going along and all. I'm about to go away for a week to visit parents and ol friends. Tomorrow I will be working with like 30 other animators on a Tropfest entry!
We have almost finished all our backgrounds, which has been tedious and taking heaps longer than we thought. I've also picked up a few freelance little things.
HERE IS A TREAT FOR YOU. A wallpaper by Tom. It is so good. Click for full screen PLZ!

Intermission

Check this out

Production AGAIN

We are churning through making our backgrounds. Pretty tedious work. But we should hopefully be able to then have plenty of fun doing ambient animation passes and character stuff.
Here is some recent STUFF. Click for BIG:
Crude character designs

An awesome background by Tom

And a wallpaper for a dude on the Dwarf Fortress Forums


I have also been thinking about what to do next. I might just start my life goal project, which I would be working on at random over the rest of my lifetime. MORE NEWS ON THAT

animatic finished

The animatic is done and hopefully refined and readable.
Here is some backgrounds stuff by Tom.

Production Continues

Production has been going ahead pretty smoothly. The animatic is underway and a few shots have been worked out. It's still going to be tough to tell this story in the timing of the song and make it clear with no dialogue or narration. Here is a bit more concept stuff.

Above by Tom

First concept

Real basic animatic is done. We have planned the thing out further, considering shots and whatnot. Our biggest hurdle will be to create a readable silent story with an unusual plot.

Here is our first batch of concept art! I only drew the guy sitting down, Tom did the rest.

Tom from now on is in charge of elephants... for obvious awesome reasons.
It will be interesting to see how our styles combine. Hopefully it won't be too obvious when there is a switch of artist. It's a good learning experience for collaborating though!

Boatmurdered Production GO

Balls to the wall production has started on the Boatmurdered animation! It will have Dwarfs, Elephants, Magma and Madness! D.E.M.M.!
I'm going to use the amazing theme song to the Omen, composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who also scored Alien (coincidentally I've been watching them all these last few days). I actually used this song in a previous silly video edit of BigDog. I hope that doesn't make me a hack.

I created a "music-storyboard" for it. Something I have never done before, I don't know if it's common practice, but I'm pretty proud of it!

I don't tend to do such successful organization.
The animatic is about to begin production, following that music-board guide. Tom is about to come in and begin working on concept art, backgrounds and display frames.
WOO!
WOO LET'S GO! YEAAAH! ANIMATION! YES!

Holidays!

I've gone a little into holiday mode hence the lack of updates. I've been playing HEAPS of Dwarf Fortress this past week. I've tried to get into it about 4 times in the past, but it's always so hardcore that I give up. I finally cracked it this time! I've watched about 2 hours worth of youtube tutorials. Such an amazing game, with so much depth and creative inspiration.
Speaking of which, I am starting up production on a little holiday animation colab with my uni friend Tom. We are going to do it in flash to capitalise on the newgrounds.com market of hyperactive teenagers. We are going to adapt a famous Dwarf Fortress Something Awful forum game session into a short animation. Can't wait!

Here is some quick concept sketches for another idea that I was planning on doing but got bored of.

Click to make excessively large

Spike and Mudley Crime Police DONE

Woo! Here we go. After a stupid few days of animating here is my "proof of concept" Spike and Mudley Crime Police episode. So think of it as a taste of a much larger story (which I may do next year).



Music
Arkady Michalik - Parkingi
Mr Jonathan - Gerald Lee
Grant Green - Luanna's Theme

Spike - Simon Cottee
Mudley - Jack Vening

I also threw it up on newgounds. Perhaps the largest advantage of using Flash as an indie animator.
My uni mate Tom uploaded his awesome animation in unison with me.
WE ARE NOW COMPETING!

Loose Lip Syncs Sink Ship Syncs

2 More days left to work on my final uni animation for the semester. This 2 character dialogue sequence is pretty unusual. It runs for over a minute and is voice recorded by myself and my house mate. This would kill me for the week or so I have been working on it, but I'm trying to embrace limited animation for this thing. It's tough though, having previously been working on FULL animation. I think it is going ok, the line work and actual animation is pretty horrible but the end result should be entertaining.

You may have seen this but if not you should now see it:

Directed by A.F.Schepperd
Commissioned by Ninjatune Records
Music by Blockhead

On a totally inconvenient note: Our landlord is going to try sell our place we are renting. Garg!

Deep Sea and Animatics

Only one more animation project for this semester left. I've got my animatic together and have decided to use Flash over Toon Boom, due to ease of production. The trade off is I am stuck with the Flash aesthetic which I'm always at war with.
I got a hold of the new Chemical Brothers album and one track (Dissolve) mapped an entire animation out for me on the first listening. A potential idea for a 3rd year film, unsure if it's been done before but it would a fun animation to watch! Here is a little initial concept art for one of the characters. Everyone is drawing this kind of crap nowadays hey.

As of now I'm calling him Houdini, due to his Houdini Diving Suit.
HEY! Here is a very cool 2D short for you.
Second Wind by Ian Worrel

Natalie Portman the Prostitute Mime

Here is my 2D character acting sequence for uni.

From the film Closer (2004) - Stolen from 11 Second Club
I think I've come some way since last years lip sync!

Lava Level Shirt Store Live

I've finally gotten my little pixel shirt store live!
http://lavalevel.tshirt123.com/
So far there are 4 designs, I'll slowly flesh that number out.

I have no idea how to market this stuff, I guess I will just see what happens.

Wolfire Guest Blog Post

The excellent indie game team Wolfire asked me to do a guest blog for their Overgrowth game blog!

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Guest-Post-On-Pixel-Art-by-Simon-Cottee

I'm a huge fan of the blog and their awesome games.
I also just had a funny interview for a BBC podcast/radio show. Surreal.

Animation wise I'm working pretty crazily. I've been listening to a Natalie Portman dialogue clip for the past 2 weeks now. I really love the girl but I think I'm going to need some time apart from her soon. Also I think I shall be designing characters with no hands from now on, as they are such a bitch to animate and draw.
Also contemplating making a new doco about Guerrilla Animation and the Internet.
As a treat for getting to the bottom of this post here is a collection of all the scenes from my Rule Pixel animation. CLICK FOR BIIIIIG!

Zoologic

I just finished writing a 1500 word scene analysis from this great short animation.
I find the timing, design and confidence with posing and limited animation amazing.


I've recorded my dialogue with my house mate for my long dialogue animation. My uni has a pretty wicked professional recording booth set-up. Makes me have aspirations to be swearing at Robyn Williams through the glass as he acts like an idiot for my animated films.

How To: Make and Rescale Pixel Art

*** Updated to super simple method ***

I've been looking around for a way to do this for some time and last night I stumbled upon a pretty great working method. It's great in how simple and straight forward it is.

What you will need:
Photoshop (or any image creation program I assume)

1. Create a very small blank image in photoshop (for this example I'll use 40x40 pixels)

2. Zoom right in and draw your image at the pixel level. I would suggest using the Pencil tool at 1 pixel diameter for the best results. Also use the eraser in pencil 1 pixel mode. And turn Anti-alias off the paint bucket! If you want to create a sprite or an image with transparencies be sure not to do it on the background layer.


3. Then it is as simple as going to Image>Image Size and change the width and height to something large, ie 1024x1024 and set the bottom drop down menu to "Nearest Neighbor"

4. Now just save out an image version, I recommend .PNG to preserve alpha (provided it's on a clear background) AND BAM. Magic does happen, and it has happened. Right here, for you. Your magic. You are now a wizard. A pixel wizard. Congratulations.

Click to see it in full resolution GLORY!

Pixel Doc aftermath and Tees

So my pixel documentary has done really well! I'm super surprised it's travelled about the internet the way it has and want to say a huge thanks to everyone who posted it, watched it and gave feedback. Most people have been incredibly positive which I really didn't expect. The feedback also informed me of a few really silly date mistakes I made. I could re export a fixed copy but I'm real lazy and instead updated it with youtube annotations. Maybe I will fix it up properly later.

I've been getting a few very interesting emails from people who saw it. One of them was from http://tshirt123.com/, who convinced me to try my hand at making some Pixel Art tees! So over the next week I hope to make at least 5 or so decent designs to put up for sale. I've always wanted to try this out and this was a great motivation.
I have no idea if it will go anywhere, but I sure could do with some kind of income, being a full time uni student with no job!
Here is a sample of one. I've been playing heaps of Red Dead Redemption... SO GOOD.
Remember how good Dino Riders was?!

How the West Was Probably Won