Annecy/Youtube Competition Open

Annecy International Animation Festival and Youtube have announced they are launching the second edition of their online competition which is open to all. I am a little late hearing the news, but the competition is open for entries on Annecy's Youtube channel until May. It is a good opportunity for animators to get their films seen by a huge audience, and will hopefully act as motivation for some of us to get together and collaborate. Read the press release after the jump.

Barry's Ices Wins First Award

I'm delighted to announce that Barry's Ices has taken home 2nd Prize in the category of Best Student Animation at Animated Exeter Festival!

Congratulations again go to Dan, Ibs, Rachael and Jonathan and the staff at AUCB especially Anne.

WIP: Portrait 2

More WIP

WIP: Portrait 2

Here's the new sketch for the portrait. Looking like a proper Gaddafi

Barry Tours the World

Barry's Ices has been selected for a number of festivals:

Animabasauri-Animabasque Apr 2011, Bilbao, Spain – In consideration for Karratu Short Film
Section
REDCAT International Children's Film Festival Mar-Apr 2011, Los Angeles, USA – In consideration (category TBC)
Stoke Your Fires, Feb-Mar 2011, Stoke, UK – In consideration for Best Student Animation
Animated Exeter, Feb 2011, Exeter, UK – In consideration for Best Student Film
Children's Film Festival Seattle, Jan 2011, Seattle, USA - Screened
Aniwow! International Student Animation Festival, Oct-Nov 2010, Beijing, China – Screened

Well done Dan, Ibs, Rachael and JD and everyone from AUCB who was selected too, fingers crossed!

WIP: Portrait

More WIP with a detail of the head - the hair needs more work, needs to look more greasy. Perhaps a combover.

WIP: Portrait

Ok, so here is another WIP from the portrait, I'm going to try and throw together all kinds of materials and textures in here to give myself a challenge. Here I have used a polished silver breastplate and blocked-out sash, obviously it needs more form, I'm just trying to nail the pallete at the moment. My aim is to really give convincing textures, I really want to nail satin, but I'm not sure I can put that on this kind of character. I think I might take it in another direction and make it more of a faux 19th century portrait.

Also the right upper arm (his right) is too long.

WIP: Portrait

Okay, I'm doing something a little different for the commission, but I'll continue on this as a personal project. Here's a WIP for the face, with a detail from the high-res version below.

WIP: Portrait

This is basically same as the last WIP but with the sketch on top, I don't know how most of you do it, but I often prefer to block it out before sketching. I guess that's kind of backwards. I'm trying to draw the fine line between Fascist and Pirate here, it turns out that line is mostly in the choice of collar and cuffs (no innuendo intended).

WIP: Portrait

This is a work in progress of a portrait I'm doing on commission for a friend. Initially I did a couple of pencil sketches to work out the costume, then did some small thumbnail sketches on photoshop to get the pose and composition and here I went straight into blocking it out in grayscale. The first time I did this I actually started on the background first to get the colour and lighting right, I even spent about an hour doing the flag in the background using a lot of ciaroscuro - but unfortunately I managed to accidentally pull the plug on the mac before saving it. Boo.

As for the proportions it is quite chariacatured (sp?) with big hands and limbs, but I want the lighting and colouring to be fairly realistic. I will talk about the colour and style more in later posts.