Some of my concepts below.
rendered shots coming soon.
These are screen grabs with a basic Maya light. (However the final renders will be painted with no cgi lighting).
I’m getting my head around Maya as I go, so its great for that, although the hardest thing is remembering how to do certain things if its been a while.
This guy is built to an extent, I intend to rig- animate- texture him in 3d with elements of 2d over the top. I’m aiming to get a very painted look for the film, this guy is going to be the biggest challenge.
Backgrounds will be a mix, some completely 2d and others 3d
Please come back for more updates... but probably not soon!Last week I was fortunate to attend a one week oil painting class at Central Saint Martins, the class was taught by Mike Major.
I really had a great time. It was a small class of about 8-9 people, all working in oils.
We had the same model all week - 4 poses. 3 one day and a two day to finish off.
First day,- - free to do what we wanted 
Second day, as it was a small class we couldn’t move our easels around the room. At first I hated my view. But was pleased with the end results. For this we used earthy colours, basically we couldn’t use any strong colours.
Third day. No brushes, no fingers, only pallet knife. For all these paintings we put a wash on first, for this I used a strong pink.
The first of a two day. Only four colours- Light yellow, dull green, dark red... and black! Sorry can’t remember the exact names.
The final canvas after two days, sadly not yet finished on the bg.
big thanks to Uli
I drew these for a friends wedding dinner - animals instead of table numbers , makes the day a bit more fun.
Indiana Jones 4… 50% excitement - 50% curiosity. Spielberg re-visiting his popcorn film making, and with a new take on the characters. The cgi special effects shunned… and we get a new drew struzen poster!
sketching with the wacom
life drawing at uli's.
More recently I visited the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka, which was sweet and charming.
The project I’m cooking away on my desktop.
Uli kindly lets us take over the studio once a week to arrange life drawing, these were yesterday’s creations. Thee sculpt was from a 45 min pose. The first photo was the angle I set myself up. As you can see from the second photo I was to lazy to move around. But it was great fun.
I hate my laptop screen, strong word 'hate' but I do, it lightens everything. I colour something... am happy with it, have a look on another monitor and I can barely see the thing especially dark pictures (obviously). its really frustrating, but I prefer drawing on the laptop to the pc. portability is great!
Via the magic of the curves tool... we have this!
so the sounds a bit out-of-sync...
Does anyone know how to get a youtube in sync? i uploaded a avi and an mpeg, both rubbish!
Mr Cosmic and his chin
After a bloging pause I finally got some motivation to post some new artwork. the picture above is from a quick doodle which I later coloured on the pc. Somewhat meaningless, but part of my new years resolution is to sketch more... and watch less big brother! 
I have updated my Airship blog, not much but a bit. I should have better things to do with my time... actually I do have better thing to do...unfortunately I cant stop developing the chronicles and thinking about stories. Meanwhile hope you enjoy the blog. 
This was my last entry for Eurovision, (Giants) sadly only 6 entries this time. 
Baby one-of-those is growing up fast! Celebrating his first birthday,
Mother tells him to make a wish.
Yesterday I read over on 'animated-news' Warner brothers are planning a remake of Clash of the Titans. Instantly I mumbled and cursed in annoyed grunts. I grew up watching this film... all Harryhausen movies.... why remake it!
I hope they rework the story based on the mythology and not recreate the Harryhausens film with cgi.
My blog’s moving along at a slow pace at the moment, been busy.
Please stop by my air ship chronicles blog.
Mountain - sea - lake... inspired by watching endless Bob Ross videos when i was at school.
This was my first go with a wacom tablet at Uli’s.
Made with real genuine paints!
This was a Christmas present painted end of last year for my cousin.
This background, i did a few years ago for a uni project, when i first started playing around with layers in Photoshop. The texture on the walls were scanned from a small paper bag out of an art shop. You can find great textures all over the place, but now i collect these bags whenever one looks interesting. I'll post up some more examples soon.
This little guy is from my film. I originally made just his head as a drawing reference then added the body later, he’s modelled out of air clay and painted with oil.
Computer games may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this very original game is perhaps the most inspiring game I have ever played. The scenery and scale is just remarkable, so much talent appears to have been poured into the building of the environments and levels, but not just that… the animation (of the horse especially) is just fantastic. if you have a PS2 check it out, a visual treat!
These guys were flying around my desktop asking to be bogged. They were quick sketches drawn up for a project that unfortunately never progressed. I believe it was intended for nickelodeon again.
These are designs made for Matts cd and website, the top is printed on the cd and the second a variation of the cover, check out his website here....
These are stills grabbed from a 30 second and a 20second we did for Nickelodeon. I got to design and direct, and had good fun animating with Cako Facioli. I created layers in Photoshop and we animated in After effects. 
"Eyes off the cookie!"
Relating again to a previous post, above are images I did for my college project, which screened in the Edinburgh festival 04. It is just a student film and as I watch it again now there are many things I could change and improve , but hey, we must move on !
Continuing from a previous post 'work in progress' this is a Photoshop picture; put together more as a concept layout rather than a background piece.
