Blaghhh!

So this is how I'm feeling at the moment

hahaha mannnnn I've had a crazy hard week that is now going into the weekend. I'm still working on this videoclip which is taking longer than I would like.

(a quick colour test)

oh and this happend

My kitchen ceiling just gave way. My brother (that dude in the photo) and I were trying pretty hard to save it but it was a lost cause. I did manage to do a last minute dash to save a bowl of fruit but all my cereal (that everyone keeps telling me to put away) is pretty much written off. There's a thick layer of dust all through the house but we did manage to move all the ceiling pieces outside. We'll have to get someone in to fix it next week. Of course it being so close to christmas we shouldn't have a problem surely???

Sigh...

I did do some scribbly ipad paintings this week. They're ok, nothing that special but it was a nice waste of time to get my mind off things for a while

Speaking of some good time wasting I've been catching up on some comics. I really enjoyed the Marvel 'Fear Itself" crossover. A surprisingly great story that focused more on the characters and how they reacted  to the disaster(s)  than actually being about fighting the disaster. Some of the issues were even just the heads of the characters just talking about what happend, which I thought was pretty ballsy. I think one of the architects of this crossover was the guy behind Secret Wars and that is possibly my most favourite crossover (Doom rules ballz in that). Oh and the art in the 'Fear itself' series was really high across all the issues. I don't think there was an issue I didn't care for art wise. The few issues Chris Bachalo did were my highlights

I have been trying to read these new DC 52 comics but mannn they are not as fun. Some of the issues are ok in a pulpy comic sort of way but I don't know some of the writing is a bit iffy. The Green Arrow comic tries to stay relevant by adding in mentions to youtube and other pop culture sort of things but they do it in an awfully ham fisted way like they really don't get it. What was great about a couple of the Marvel comics was how they used twitter tweets in the story. It gave a feel of the public mood and it fit quite nicely into the comic narration box style format. I did find it funny instead of running for their lives they were tweeting what was going on although that's probably how it would play out. There were some things I liked in this new DC 52 like Greg Capallo's art on Batman. I used to love his work on Spawn when I was a kid. This work on Batman seems a lot cleaner/clearer and more focused. I also love the work on the controversial Catwomen comics. The dude drawing that draws great expressions it reminds me of Neal Adams stuff.

Ha that's enough comic nerding for now. I think it's time to call it a night and check what those crazy SAMCRO dudes are up to in Sons of Anarchy. Last time I saw them it wasn't looking good.

Break achieved!

Woo Roseline and I finally had time to take a break.... actually no we didn't have time and now I'm working 3 times as hard to catch up... freelancing sucks.

Anywho I'm jumping the gun a bit. Before I left I hammered out this animation for loopdeloop in about 3 hours



Basically I had finished packing and I had a spare few hours and the deadline was that night so I came up with this short. The theme was 'spooky' and this is something that really bugs me(scares the crap out of me) when in a horror/suspense film a character walks backwards down a dark corridor.

"I KNOW SOMETHING IS GOING TO JUMP OUT JUST DO IT ALL READY!!"

I hand drew all the animation frames and background in separate layers on my scribble pad (10x15cm white pad). The wall was a google image search wall. I scanned and cleaned the drawings and set them up in photoshop and then brought them into toonboom animate. I also for the first time imported the images and vectorised them and I was very surprised by how clean toonboom handled that. Once I timed out the animation I added some after effects gloss to punch a little more mood into the animation. I then hit my 'Existence' sound folder for the sound track.

Next months loopdeloop theme is 'Condoms' to tie in with World Aids Day on December 1st. I'm wondering what to do with that one haha

The day after I made this loop Roseline and I were on a boat headed to the WA holiday island Rottnest. Named after these guys who inhabit the island which they thought to be rats ('Ratnest')

These bros aren't rats though. They are quokkas and they are so gentle and innocent. I've never met such a mellow wild animal before. They were very cool

Also what was cool was how beautiful the beaches were.

Our beaches in WA are really something special. It's only when I go away and visit say Hobart with it's dirt grey sand and ice waters or St Kilda in Melbourne with it's polluted smelly waters and beaches that I realise how lucky we are over here... although I should point out the first day we were there all the beaches were locked down due to a shark attack and we had shark hunting helicopters flying all over the island.. SO THERE'S THAT...haha

What was great was we hired bikes (as there are very few cars on the island) and rode around the whole island. I haven't been on a bike in years and boyyy it took some getting used to and awww man there were some hurt muscles that haven't been used in years. It was good to feel that pain again since the last few years I've been trapped trying to make this animation thing work. Roseline has done a better job at keeping her fitness up (she killed me on the bikes) and I only seem to get a good walk in every now and then. A lot of my friends do the gym thing but that isn't for me. I definitely have to work and keep up my fitness though. I've been having the worst kind of trouble with my back over the last few years and honestly once your back goes animation is the hardest thing in the world.

Well enough old man Merks gripes. While I was over there I found some time to get some drawings in. I posted a bunch of these on my twitter (facebook and g+ as well) via my xperia play smart phone which was a new fun experience. My younger self loves all this new technology. I'd love to travel back and show the super mario world game that awed me as a kid that I can now play on my portable phone I carry in my pocket. I did at one stage flirt with being a purist, antitech, prefer it all original person but seriously this stuff is amazing. Take a smart phone, how many minds, how much history, evolution and genius is behind the technology it floors me.

Enough with the words here's some of the pictures I drew

I wanted to do more studies of the environment but I was enjoying just being there. Roseline has done a whole bunch of great ones and a lot of the time I just loved watching her work

This was her late at night doing a water colour pass on a sketch she had done.

I wanted to loosen up my drawing arm and draw some full scenes. I only drew 2 pictures but I'm pretty pleased with them.

I drew that last mountain scene picture at the dome cafe on the last day we were there. 2 cups of coffee (you can see some coffee stains at the bottom) and a whole bunch of time to spend on it. I thought of it as a platform game and just started from the bottom left and worked up.

and one last scribble featuring the Bacon Bros

Well the rest was great and as soon as we returned home we had work phone calls and emails immediately to take care of. It's good to be a busy freelancer I guess but dang that Quokka life looks appealing.

animation in 48 hours?

So last weekend was WAMBAM, a 48hour competition run by Wanimate to produce a short animated cartoon based on 3 words.

My team from last year was sick, busy and interstate.  This was the film we made last year



So this year I decided to try and make a film by myself using toonboom.

I did have a story idea that Rose and I were kicking around for the operahouse Graphic competition and I thought what the hey, "2 birds one stone" and they even shared the same deadline. Both had theme words the Graphic comp had the words 'escape' and wambam had three words 'photograph, blue and love'.

So here's the film (it looks pretty great at 1080 over on youtube)



now here's how it all went down...

On friday night I was late to the event where the words were drawn (the event happened in Joondalup which is nearly an hour and a half drive from my house. As far north as our freeway goes). So I missed all the speeches and the organisation of groups. I could have joined a group which was an all female team but I kind of liked that they were an all female team and I wanted to see what they came up with. I was also thinking about this 'graphic comp' and since I was late I didn't want to try to take over another group and push them in that direction.

So I got my three words and I thought about the story Rose and I came up with and how the words could fit into it. The original idea was there were 2 soldiers in a 'terminator judgement day future'. One was a girl and one was a cat. They fight their way to a time machine and travel back into the past but they inhabit their past selves bodies. So the girl becomes herself as a baby (the baby was based on Roseline's niece 'Sophie') and the cat soldier as a devolved cat (based on a stray cat that we looked after in Hobart named 'Milky'). The idea is they still have the same memories just not the intelligence or the same motor controls as their future selves.

The graphic comp had a time limit of 30 seconds so the main story was they teleport back in time into their new bodies inside of a cot (which looks like a prison at first) but so does the nemesis that was chasing them who inhabits a teddy bear. They're trapped with the teddy-nemesis and they struggle to escape the cot (being the comedy).

Now since I had to work the three words into this story "Blue, photograph and love" it actually helped a lot in the shaping of the story. I'd use blue to stylise my colour pallet, photograph meant the girl became a war photographer (added some depth to her character) and love... This actually is what gave the idea heart. They're escaping a holocaust where everyone has been killed or is running for their lives so if the girl is transported back in time and she see a lost parent, that would be a pretty moving experience.

So on that friday I had got the ideas together and I started doing some scribble ideas of design, shots and backgrounds. here's a few

One good thing about working by myself and is that I didn't have to explain jokes like some of the other teams around me were doing (this was the ONLY positive thing) and could jump right into those designs. I really liked the cats gun, it was sort of a tetris block. I was able to use that city scribble as the final design.

So with all my basics done I decided to take the long trip home (yeah I'm going to go on and on about how far it is haha). When I got home I decided to give myself a head start and draw up my backgrounds in photoshop. I was working a bit too slow on these and only got 3 done.

As I was drawing them I thought what if I used toonboom to animate in. The computers at the event had the adobe suites so I could have used them and animated in flash but I thought this would give me a good chance to skill up and play a bit more with toonboom animate pro.

My computer case is a small black box that is quite portable (it's been great when I have been travelling across Australia working) my cintiq 21 is not. There were wacoms to use there so I thought just bring my computer case over plug in and BAM! I'm away and animating.....

and....

....for some reason I could not get toonboom (and just toonboom, photoshop and flash were ok) to recognise the wacom tablet, which meant no pen pressure. I wasted over an hour trying to reinstall the wacom drivers but I couldn't win. Eff it I've wasted too much time I have to start animating and of course my first shot got over worked (animators know what I'm talking about) and a lot of time was wasted. It was that satellite image of Perth exploding (my Akira and Perth tribute).

At this point it was evening and I jumped right into the next shot. This came together really well. Doing multiplane setups in toonboom animate pro is the best!! It looks hot and the focus effect blends the colours perfectly. The animation is a bit hard to see but I thought on a projector it would work really well. I did mean to add in flashing arrows above the characters but I forgot. I tried to render that scene but it looked like it was going to take awhile so I decided to head home earlier and continue working on scenes and try to make up for wasting time getting the wacom to work.

An hour and a half later I'm home (haha I can't let it go) and I'm digging under my table and reconnecting all the unplugged usb cords (I have no idea why there is so many), thankfully everything works fine. Toonboom likes my cintiq and pen pressure is back. At this point I decided that all the future scenes would be done in toonboom and the past scenes would be done in flash (how's that for a subtle opinion? haha) that meant I could do the toonboom stuff at home and then use the 'event computers' to do the last half of the story. I was able to finish one more shot (the landing behind the box and firing focus pull scene) and then decided to call it a night. I set my alarm for 8am the next day.

The next day, the final day for the competitions I was up working on the last shot that I would do in toonboom. It started out all right but then it fell apart. I couldn't get the timing or the movement to work right, I had somehow forgotten how to animate. It's a form of writers block, it's a bitch when it happens and you just have to power through it and rely on techniques. It does cost time though and time wasn't something I had. that shot took till about 2pm so I was pretty screwed at this point and I had to think about how I was going to wrap the story up with the minimal amount of animation.

The second part of the story I had some loose boards that Rose drew when we were planning to enter the graphic comp.

Rose had over the weekend cleaned up a few of the drawings so looking at what I had I decided to end the film as I did. It wasn't great but it was done

A few 11th hour computer problems (that's just a given) but animation is all done at 4:30pm and everything is in premiere with a very rushed sound mix... Now to get it out of premiere

I've used premiere enough to know all the work arounds and I don't hate on it as much as my friends do (with the exception of that cs one that had the flash file memory leak) but I just had all kinds of crazy problems with the exporting. It randomly changing the frame width and height being my main problem, but lots of messing around and all I ended up with was an HD mp4

It is now 5:45pm I'm not going to be able to have my film there in time for the 6pm WAMBAM deadline since Joondalup is....ok ok I'll let it go.

I wanted to at least make the screening and see what everyone else made (there were some great groups so I was pretty excited) so as I was leaving home I set the film uploading to youtube and drove over to Roseline's house to bring her along. It of course took too long to head out to Roseline's place (no luck today) and we quickly made our way off the Joondalup (sigh)... there was something nagging me...something I was meant to do. We reached Joondalup and there was roadworks and a detour. We then get lost into that black hole of a suburb.... DAM YOU JOONDALUP!

We finally work out where we are and reach the college that the event is at. This is one of those colleges that is environmentally conscious and doesn't waste electricity... IT WAS EFFIN DARK THERE!!! Rose and I walked around for awhile, but we were there very late and we were starting to see people look like they were leaving the screening so we gave up (also since Rose was recovering from a bad flu, I didn't want her getting too cold) and decided to go home.

Rose saw I was feeling a bit down so she said that we should go check out the latest Harry Potter movie. I thought that sounded like a good idea... I still couldn't shake the feeling I was forgetting something. We went to the Inaloo cinemas and grabbed something to eat at retro Bettys. While we were sitting there I remembered what I forgot. The dang Graphic competition! I tried with my new phone to work out how to submit my film (all I know what to do on my phone is play sims 3 and take photos and tweet them) but I was dammed if I could work it out. Well no big deal... after the movie I'll submit it at Roseline's place on her computer.

Harry Potter... that movie was crazy. The wizard war thing was mental. Giant spiders, stone statues come to life, giant ogre things, wizards doing the pew pew with their wands. I've always found it funny in Harry Potter everyone is amazed when they do magic or when they watch people who do magic. It never comes natural to anyone, it's always "Holy shit I can do magic!" "Whoa you totally did magic!". Also all the magic is pretty impractical, there's a scene at the end that sums up the entire Potter world (don't worry it's not a spoiler) with this guy trying to sweep up a giant amount of rubble with a normal broom. hah it will probably make more sense when you see the scene. It was enjoyable though and great to complete the Potter films.

After the movie we get back to Roseline's place and I decide to check the graphic comp andddddd I have missed the deadline. 11:58pm sydney time. DOHHHHHHH! So I killed myself all this weekend and missed both competitions.

hahaha goddamit oh well. I made something new and there's some ideas in there that Rose and I are thinking of developing. So not a complete loss but definitely not a win either. So no birds but something that looks like a stone.

Well that was my adventurous weekend of animation...
...
...
...
...and Joondalup.... we are not bros

Woo Tron!

I saw Tron on thursday and I really enjoyed it. Visually it was fantastic and the music by Daft Punk was top notch. The story was full of holes, there were some awkward lines and poses for the camera (it was a hit and miss affair) but the design heavy world and concept were strong enough to make it a super enjoyable movie (for me).

With my mind overflowing with Tron imagery I had to get a picture out of my head.

It was fun drawing this since it gave me a break from the Simon/Dash Dashing style of squished/compressed bodies and let me do super stretched. Her face doesn't look anything like the actress and more looks like 'The Major' from Ghost in the shell (I've been watching the 2nd gig series recently), so it's funny how another influence came into the drawing.

Their suits are really well designed in the movie, they all have subtle differences. I think what I like is that most of the film is in black and the little light strips on their suits are what give you their body shapes. That's pretty brave design and I dont think they could have made a tron movie without their being a tron movie already made.

Well now I've removed Tron from my head I can go back to making Simon

shenanigans

Roseline and I just got back from our friend Clays wedding. Instead of giving everyone almonds they spent the money on a photo booth with costumes. It was a great idea and a lot of fun

Influence Map

Well there's a whole heap of artists doing these. It's just a collection of what influences you as an artist

This is only a small portion of my influences but definitely some of the important ones.

Richard Scary
When I think back to who inspired me as a kid, it has to be this guy. Even now looking at his stuff it still inspires me. I always loved the big pages of detail, but simple detail. I loved seeing what all the different animals were doing. Take this image for example, that x-ray view into the house, sooo good! The cats were my favourites.

Earthworm Jim, Doug Tennaple
This is what made me start drawing and love drawing. I used to read a lot of comics but this was what made me want to draw. It just looked so much fun to do. All of Doug's following works were just as good such as "The Neverhood" and "Gear". I may not subscribe to his world views, but I cannot deny this is the guy that started it all for me.

Akira
I dunno where to even begin with this film. To me it's just perfection that has never been topped for me. Craft at every level.

Chris Bachalo
Joe Mad may have been winning all the Wizard comic artists of the month, but Bachalo was where it was at. I have loved everything that this guy has drawn and for me, the Steampunk series was one of the best comics ever made. When that series was cancelled, I just stopped collecting comics for about 3 years. Nothing held my interest as much as that series. I find it hard to enjoy his work back at Marvel with him rarely doing a whole story arc. Still how he captures movement and action in a comic book, I dunno who compares.

Masaaki Yuasa, Cat Soup
I saw a few pictures of this film and I managed to track it down and was blown away by the imagination and the accessible surrealism. Since then I've tried to find everything that he has done and each new project I've heard he has been involved in just amazes me and makes me love animation. Here's a few things "Legend of the dog Warriors", "Mind Game", and "Kaiba"

Neon Genesis Evangelion
This series made me really think. Not only about the themes and characters being portrayed but also about how to make a movie. I know most of us laugh about how either the director went crazy or that they ran out of money at the end but what came out of that was something more satisfying and rewarding and like I said it made me think about it more.

Cowboy bebop
As soon as this series starts with the opening song "Tank" you know you're in for a hell of a ride. This series felt grownup, which was a breath of fresh air from all the other series and shows that were out there. It was both something new and something quite classic.

Wong Kar Wai
Back when I was studying film a friend was watching fallen angels on one a tiny little editing tv. Despite the tv being small the neon visuals attracted me like a moth to a ...well a neon light. "In the mood for Love" is probably my favourite film, but all of his films are pure magic. Fantastic characters, costumes, art direction and heart wrenching stories.

Casablanca
What I love about this film is how everything weaves so great together, how every character is important and could almost have a film of their own. The story and the setting, it's all just perfect. This to me is what I want to aim for as a film maker.

The Big Lebowski, Coen Brothers
Ok what really influences me are characters. I can watch terrible films (which isnt this) as long as there is one great character in it. This is probably the best collection of odd characters ever assembled in a film. The story is hilarious as well. All of the Coen Brothers films have great characters but this is probably my all time favourite.

Jim Mahfood
FUN DRAWING! There are other artist that fit this, Jamie Hewlett and Robert Valley and they should be on this map but I ran out of space. That Generation X underground comic he did made the characters seem fun and full of life, which was quite the achievement because these were Bachalo characters and to deliver more than Bachalo that's a heck of an achievement. One great thing about Mahfood was he really introduced music and pop culture in a friend giving you a mixtape sort of way. There's quite a bit of music that I was introduced to by this comic. One really important moment I had with a Mahfood comic was the comic he did in 9-11: Artists respond. In this comic he gave sense and reason to the events unfolding and I also found out his father was an Arab and that gave a voice to what was missing from the media. It's hard to explain that well but after reading that comic I felt less angry and more hopeful, that not everyone in the world is crazy.

90s Xmen comics
These are what I grew up reading, that and spiderman comics (expecially Romita Jr stuff. At this time there were many great artists drawing the comics with a real craft behind their work. There wasnt that much money in what they were doing and they all seemed to be doing it for the love. You had Joe Mad doing the Uncanny Xmen, Andy Kubert doing Xmen or Wolverine, Bachalo doing Generation X, Jeff Matsuda doing X-Factor and Adam Pollina doing X-force. With Joe Mad leading the pack (with fans) with his Japanese inspired style, the other artists started pushing their creative skills and trying new techniques. Looking back at the comics now, there was some great stuff going on then and it felt more creative than now which feels more writer driven than artist driven.

The Maxx
The art style just flaws me. It finds that nice balance of a cartoon stylised reality. It dealt with quite heavy and dark issues with a sympathy for the devil sort of way. The comic was really the perfect balancing act, it would make you laugh out loud when the Maxx talked out loud, it would scare you when characters were trapped and tortured and the visual would astound you when the dream world and the real world would cross. Sam Keith (the creator) put everything he had into this comic and it shows.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin
Mannnn when I first got a copy of this it blew my mind. Before Scud all I knew were superhero comics and Mad Magazine comics. This guy, Rob Schrab, knew what fun drawing was and he really took it to the next level. Super strong and funny poses, epic monster and villain designs and no holds bared, unforgiving violence pure pulp MAGIC! Still too this day there will always be some sort of scud reference and drawing in everything I do. After reading Scud  who wouldn't hold a gun with their pinky finger extended. I assume that's how they teach the CIA to do it.

Nightmare before Christmas
The influence of this film was so strong that I had to fight not to be taken over by it. From the amazing visuals, characters and story to the technique of stop motion. All I wanted to do was make Nightmare before Christmas films for the rest of my life. The film is just so dam good!

Ninja Turtles
This is something I never want to go back and watch because I know its going to be awful. There's just a magic something about the whole concept. I swear the live action film I've memorised word for word even the music. All the turtles have strong individual personalities and individual fighting skills/styles. It's very clever yet dumb and funny as well.

Ok well that's my list with some really glaring omissions. I just ran out of space. Some of the missing ones are:
Chuck Jones
Jim Henson
Satatoshi Kon
Koji Morrimoto
Jamie Hewlett
Robert Valley
Peter Chung
Astroboy
Robotech
Star Blazers
Yoshitaka Amano
Akihiko Yoshida (Vagrant story)
Scott C
Graham Annable
Kate Beaton
Takeshi Koike
Hiroyuki Imaishi
Secret of Mana
Another World
Super Probotector

I could write even more but I should sleep for the 24 hour comic challenge tomorrow. I'm terrified of it but it should be a lot of fun.

You can find the template and make your own influence map here

My Workstation

Ok you may need to click to enlarge to see all the details but this is where I work these days since my contract on Dogstar series 2 has finished up.

I always found looking at other peoples working areas was interesting so that's why I photo-merged mine together. I wrote some notes over it to give a little more insight.

It's very clean and organised at the moment. Hopefully over the next few weeks it will look well used.

Dust mite POV

This sucks a bit, but I've been trying to get back into just drawing and trying different things. This top picture is a point of view of a dust mite of me when I step over it.

This one is a little better. It's a self portrait (since there's a giant mirror next to my computer) of me after I've just finished a freelance job. I'm going to try and do more of these and try to put a little bit more feeling and expression into them and try some drawing techniques.

Tahune Airwalk

Well on Saturday Roseline a few of our fellow Blue Rocket friends took a trip out to the Tahune Airwalk.



It was about and hour and a half out of Hobart. So It was good to see some of rural Tasmania.



Richard (Toonerfish) had to turn around at one point and we came across this large lot of blackberry bushes. All these little grey rabbits rushed off and hid inside them. They were too fast for my camera so I drew an angry little rabbit.



Along the way we stopped by Geeveston Bakery. They had these hand carved statues out the front. They're kinda creepy. The good news is the food was great and so was the coffee. All the people working there had to dress in old timey clothes which was a nice touch.



The air walk was worth the long journey. There's one of these type walks out in Warpole. I haven't had the chance to visit that yet, I'll probably do that when I get back home. I didn't manage to take any photo's of all of us running from the constant attack by bees (no one got stung they were just welcoming bees).








On the way back we visited 'The big tree'. Suprisingly it doesn't seem that big. Anyway here's the whole group infront of 'The big tree'



It was a nice day that finished up with me eating pizza and the others eating fish and chips. We started watching 'felix the cat' but that was crappy so then we watched 'Thumbsucker' which was pretty dam good.

Interviews

Both Roseline and I have done some interviews about working on the TV series "Dogstar"

you can find Roseline's interview here
and mine here

Check out my long, long hair. Also despite that being a picture of 'Dash Dashing' in the background, that is a scene from 'Porcelain'.

On other news, Richard (The Toonerfish) has been kidnapped by the evil Viscount Marko. I shall try to launch a rescue opperation but it doesn't look likely that I will succeed. So this may be farewell to Knight Richard.

Yeah I'm playing Knighthood on Facebook. It's pretty funny. Here's a picture that I did of Cat as a evil knight.

EDIT: Well my rescue mission just got Jamie captured. DAM YOU MARKO!!! (check out his blog)

Myer on Fire

This just happend like a few hours ago. I wonder where Roseline is going to go on her lunch breaks now.



And here's Dash Dashing on fire.

GAH it's me!

Sorry about blurtopia. But here I am downstairs reading some new Ashley Wood comicness. It's him doing Tank girl (you know that comic originally done by that Gorrilaz designer guy). It's muchos awesome.

And here's me wearing a dorky hat. I think it suits the retro house and I can wear it quite comfortably in the house but as soon as it leaves the house it becomes very dorky. I realised this when I went to bring in the washing and I heard people laughing at me. heh

Oh check out fellow BlueRocket employee Richard (the Tooner-Fish) blog. He's got some more photo's of the Mt Wellington climb.

Some brilliantly written and animated fims you must check out.

Paprika

Girl Who lept through time