Saturday, May 24, 2014

Riding the rials on Chuggington

Well I've been so busy this last 6 months, I've been a bad blogger, but one of my most exciting projects since October has been storyboarding on the 5th series of the hugely popular and Annie nominated series Chuggington. And as I've now started my LAST episode of the current series, I thought it was high time to get a post up! For my money, for cinematics and it's one of the biggest and most exciting challenges children's series on TV, brining action adventure genre to pre-school CGI animation. The team at Ludorum are amazing, and it's been another opportunity to work with supervising editor Jane Hicks. What's been really fun on this, is working with new pre-vis software Redboard and going much further in boards to define CG layout. It's really brought storyboard and layout very closely together, which has been a huge challenge, but a really satisfying one. Look forward to being able to share some storyboards soon.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Lego Break-in Barnsley







I had SO much FUN producing and directing this commercial advertising a new series of children's animation workshops which I was also asked to devise and write, I can not begin to express it. Paul Couvela, who animated this using real LEGO, is also helping me train the education staff at Barnsley Museums who will run it. If you know children in the Barnsley vicinity who like animation - let them know about it. It's going to be so special, it makes me want to be a kid all over again!!

Here's a few pictures of Paul playing (animating) with Lego and the sound Mix. From left to right, Dave Dunn-Birch (music) myself and Dave Aston (Sound Desing). AKA The 3 Daves.

Must also give a big shout out  to Vylius Antanas Leonavicius and Rosario Rivas Leal, two of my students at Sunderland University, who we brought out of lessons for some professional paid up work experience, and did wonders in a very tight schedule. 


Rather excitingly, the whole commercial was filmed using a web camera and Animate It from Kudlian Software - the same equipment the children will be using on the workshops!