Cheese and wine all the time

Bonjour!

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

Ghost towns

Here’s another sketch from a trip we took further North in Nevada. We visited Goldfield (with it’s derilict, haunted Goldfield hotel and weird locals) and stayed over in Tonopah at the Mizpah hotel (also haunted, but very nice!) The hotel was renovated back to it’s 1920′s mining boom charm and the 5th floor supposedly has a lady in red wandering the corridors at night.

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

Grand Canyon sketch

The colours of the rock were really amazing, even on a cloudy day.

Here’s another sketchbook entry. We took a helicopter flight from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, landing in the place itself. The flight was pretty breathtaking, along with seeing the Colorado river and Hoover Dam along the way. We returned over the strip all in time for lunch!

On a different note, I’m currently working on a project with Plastic Animation Paper. I’m not sure if anyone who’s an animator has used it before or is happy with their set up, but it’s free and pretty good for classical pencil test-type animation. You can download it here (windows only)

Liffey to Las Vegas

Time for an update!

The past few months have been busy what with the holiday season and New Year. It was a particularly exciting time for me as there was a lot going on as I moved back from Dublin to England and then off to the States. I’m here in Las Vegas for 3 months….so far it’s going great!

Back tracking slightly, the project I was working on (a pre-school Irish show called Planet Cosmo, releasing 2013) is in its final stages of polish. I finished my last scene earlier this week and am looking forward to seeing it (and how the kids react…it’s a lot of fun!) I really enjoyed my time in Ireland and the last few weeks were no exception. We had a great Christmas party which served as a fond farewell to my second family for 9 months. All in all a brilliant experience.

A watercolour sketch for my fair lady to remember our time on the green isle

I arrived here in Las Vegas to be with my girlfriend over Christmas and New Year. My brother was also around which was a bonus, giving us a chance to play a few rounds of golf and wander a few Vegas hotspots.

The first few weeks were holiday and party time, including food, road trips to California, casino bingo (it was real serious), a stay on the Strip and an amazing helicopter ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon! Lucky boy indeed.

A few snapshots from my time here so far. From top left to right:
Flying over the vast American landscape, Downtown Las Vegas, Myself at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, My brother and I playing golf at TPC Las Vegas, Mexican skulls in San Diego, Sunset at Laguna beach, Casino chips at Circus Circus, Stefanie and I on New Years Eve

Hope your year has started off well, and if not…things can only get better!

Trinity college

Last weekend I went for a walk into town via the grand canal docks and into the grounds of Trinity college. The leaves are all nicely spanning the colours of autumn now so even though it was a bit chilly I did a quick sketch whilst watch the hordes of Spanish tourists (where do they keep coming from?!) take photos of the same thing. I wonder if they print them out at all.

One old chap had the right idea and just left the group to come and sit near me on the steps. He just gazed at the brilliant red leaves and into the cloudless blue sky as though he was deep in thought, although secretly I think he had just had enough of being guided tour sheep!

Dunguaire castle

Here’s a watercolour of Dunguaire castle from the weekend trip. Sketched on location with colour added whilst watching Paul (the film not just a person) on lunch at work!

Dunguaire Castle near Galway, Ireland

Seasons Greetings!

I hope your ‘tasks’ are all done and the tick boxes ticked. People seem to be a bit stressed out in the city centres. I’d rather be somewhere like here.

Original illustrations for sale

I’ve got some of my illustrations available on Etsy now. You can check them out here. These are all original watercolour pieces, so only one of each. 25 in this series.

Get one while they last!

The film…

So to start this film production blog, I’ll explain how I fixed upon my idea. I’ve had lots of things floating around my brain in the past few months (with regards to films, animation, etc) and this hasn’t let up since actually working on some of them in more depth. The more time I spend on an idea, the more other offshoot ideas I seem to get. So as you can imagine, choosing something to go with was a tough one. This wasn’t made any easier due to the fact that I have several ideas already developed and ready for making, they just need the final tweak.

But…as I got further into the process, the main obstacle loomed up in front of me…time. I really don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, especially with other work commitments, and if not just because I always end up adding to the pot anyway. I wanted to do this project because I know I have learnt alot since my last real bash at making a film, the test will be to see how much will manifest itself in production! The litmus test.

I settled on the final idea (and kept the others I had worked on up until now shelved) just because of their time required to fulfill the idea properly. I have several short-short ideas, but this one seems fun and is fresh in my mind. I want to keep the narrative under wraps, although the basic idea is based around a street scene, with a focus on character animation with a chosen subject. It is a specifically simple set up to allow me to get quickly to the performance questions I’ll be presented with and develop an uncomplicated yet personal aesthetic.

The idea is based on a real situation I quickly sketched on a busy street in New Orleans. Here’s the jump off point:

Beach huts

Watercolour sketch on a rather cold day at Southwolds, Suffolk.