Friday, July 28, 2006

Camping


I finally got the chance to enjoy the amazing heat wave by going camping for the weekend with some friends in Scarborough. I have a ridiculously romantic notion of camping which is probably entirely myth as I haven't been camping for years. Apart from the shock of trying to sleep through outrageously loud snoring and waking up to outrageously loud bird-song, we enjoyed it so much we are making plans tocamp some more later in the summer. I may just have to get ear plugs.

Susan is a graphic designer and drew this quick sketch of me as a romantic camper, which I thought was so funny I should share it with you. Susan and Graham are a wonderful couple who have the enviable position of being able to work and live together. They just returned from their honeymoon in Italy.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Animating the Zidane way

Well, I was working at St Mary’s college last week with artists from Creative Partnerships on a scheme funded by Arts Council England. I was mainly teaching year 10 pupil’s animation for their websites. There are lots of good methods to introduce animation principles, but I couldn’t resist using the Zinedine Zidane head butt as an illustration. In fact it’s amazing when you study the motion, how many principles it shows - Newton’s laws of motion, anticipation, action and reaction, weight – all of that. It always amazes me how well students apply these principles when they are taught well. We even got a couple of Zidane animations!

Sunday, July 09, 2006

What a week!


Hi. This is a flying post, as it's all so incredibly busy at the moment with so much great stuff going on. On Tuesday I started my first job with Creative Partnerships at St Mary school in Hull, taking a cartoon illustration class for the students web sites. I'm just about to get the train up to Hull to spend a week with them doing storyboarding and animation. Can't wait!On Thursday I was back at Bricknell School doing voice recording for "The very Hungry Caterpillar". The girl who recorded the French track was just five! I've got so many nice comments from people about how the Hungry Caterpillar is shaping up and I’m looking forward to delivering it tomorrow.

Saturday was an awesome day. I had my own tent at the Northalerton Youth Festival, running a flipbook workshop. We had everyone from children to adults come along and try their hand at animation. As well as everyone being able to take their flipbooks away, we managed to film most of them and build it up into a little film. The festival catered for 4000 young people and had everything from live bands, painting, music and film tents, to skateboarding, rock-climbing etc. It must be the summer! Brilliant to be part of. Big respect to CYC for organising it all. Hopefully, I'll get the chance to do some more good work with them before long.