I am currently working on a few larger projects which may not be eligible to show online when complete, but I do have a few smaller ones that I can offer insights into.

Firstly, I made a fast turnaround animated video about English as a foreign language for the education sector. With the audio provided, my job was to create engaging visuals fitting to the context and enhancing the message (whilst adhering to the client’s preferences). This was animated and put together in around 4 days.

The second project was storyboarding a music video set for release this Christmas (I know, it flies around!) I worked from the provided script to board 2 minutes of the soon-to-be animated video, keeping to references requested by the studio. It does feel strange drawing snow scenes when it’s (occasionally) warm outside! Here’s a compilation of a few images.

You’ll notice the images are somewhere between production and presentation boards at this stage.

The next month should be quite busy with an animated video to complete and several pitches to work on…plus Glastonbury festival! Sketchbook updates to follow. Enjoy the summer!

Pictures drawn whilst in Paris. I went a bit crackers with the colours on the second one, a bit of an experiment but the paper didn’t hold up as well as I’d have liked. P.S, Paris is BEAUTIFUL and the people are not at all rude (they mainly laughed at my fantastic French). It’s warming up in England now, we had a BBQ this evening although I’ve mainly been working so not a lot of chance for sunning! After the long winter I hope you all are getting that much needed vitamin D  :)

A quick sketch whilst having a sit down en route to Tour Eiffel

Our small but loveable apartment

Work is busy although I have a few jobs finishing soon so time to FINALLY update my animation show reel. It’s crazy for me to think back how much has happened in the past 12 months..this time last year I was in a pub in Dublin, just starting to get to know that fabulous city!

So web site updates to come soon and a few pictures (including one drawn on the plane) in the meantime.

Sedona sketch

Goodbye Las Vegas

I’m very proud to have worked on the show, especially due to the compact crew meaning even more chances to get something special in there!

The studio I worked for (Geronimo Productions formerly called Monster Animation) have just released a sneak peak for the first episode, based around a family outing to planet Mercury! Sounds fun? It really is! Wait until you here the catchy songs…

Anywho, I’m rather pleased as all the character animation in this clip is work I produced. I’ll be adding more clips when I get the nod I can put bits on my showreel, probably in a few weeks when I’m back in the UK.

And as a sign off, a tip of the hat to a very talented Ciaran Lucas who did a sterling job on the layouts & backgrounds for the WHOLE SERIES (super human effort). His work can be found here: www.ciaranlucas.com

It’s got lots of independent cinemas (with micro breweries inside..!), good coffee and food trucks dotted about. There’s also an active art scene (but not the flouncy kind of conceptual stuff, more illustration and art where you can see a direct link to talent. My personal preference!) lots of places to buy prints and handmade goods.

We were lucky with a sunny first day too, so a walk in Washington Park and trip up the aerial tram to sit in the sun was a bonus.

Anyway, here’s a few sketchbook extracts. There was no short supply of crazy people, including a nutty foodtruck vendor who made us a crepe whilst ranting about fluoride levels in drinking water and convincing me ‘my’ queen runs the western world… Still, a good crepe!

Waiting in the airport before flying out. All kinds of emotions going on

Some of the interesting characters Portland has to offer. Featuring the crazy Chinese lady serving crepes and a dose of politics and a hipster barista who put me in my place

Sunday coffee girl spotted in the hip Hawthorne district and a sketch near the Pearl district waiting for a tram

Hopefully videos like this make you feel as fortunate as I did after watching. Take a minute and think how ridiculous this is! Okay, introspective moment over

Here is not the final version but the animatic. I wanted to post this mainly for the interest of anyone considering animating and planning projects on an iPad…it can be done! And what’s more, it’s very easy to pick up and do a little more when you get the time. I made the whole of this test on an iPad, then using it as a guide I animated as normal on the computer to finish it off. I’ll post the final version at a later date but for now here’s the squiggly rough one

Either way, it was very cold the day of leaving, with a snow storm moving in over night and a low of -16 celcius ahead of us. So we drove down from the higher altitude to warm Vegas, glad to have the cold behind us.

This guy was selling his precious wares from a roadside wooden shack on the way out of Goldfield. He told us to tell our friends and bring them on a road trip out just so we can buy his stuff. ‘I don’t want them to stay!’ he said, as though we couldn’t wait to move to a ghost town with a handful of occupants and not a full set of teeth between them.

Anyway, he was a bit of a character and when he tried to get us to enter his SAW building I knew I had to add him to the sketchbook (it was a gallery of sorts with more of his precious junk on display, built from corrugated iron and rusty salvage).

This guy was like something from a horror story