Happy Holdiays

As the crazy season fast approaches, I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank you all for supporting the blog over the years. I'm constantly amazed and humbled by the wealth of talent that stops by and leaves their comments. Although I may not always respond, I appreciate every single one of them.

So whatever you choose to celebrate at this time of year, may it be a happy time for you all. Hope to see you back in 2010.

Thanks for stopping by.

Illustration Friday "Entangled"

"Pesky Kids"

A common problem for this fur monster is that after a busy night on the scare, he would often come home to find stray children entangled in his hard to manange hair. Poor guy.

Illustration Friday "Music"

"Music of the future, and Music of the past"

Just a quickie for this weeks Illustration Friday. I went for a loose Jazzy feel for this, though I'm much of a Jazz fan to be honest. Sorry all you real Jazz fans, nothing personal.

Monstroville

Recently I was asked to contribute to Von Kreep's project Monstroville. Considering the talent attached to this project I was extemely flattered and accepted immediately!

Due to other commitments I wasn't able to help out as much as I'd hoped, but I was able to put together some Character builds and mouth/eye charts for some of the central characters. Miah Alcorn did an amazing job in the character design (below) which made them great fun to work on.

Here are 2 of the Full builds I did in Flash

I also created Mouth and Eye Charts which I arranged into some key expressions for the animators.

If you haven't visited the Monstroville blog before, head on over now and check out some great artwork by a talented and generous bunch.

Illustration Friday "Unbalanced"

"Choose your friends wisely!"

It's been a little while since I posted anything on here. After an amazing (and tiring) 4 weeks away visiting friends and family in the UK, the blog got a little bit neglected.

Coming home I hit the ground running and there's lots of exciting stuff on the horizon. Most exciting of all will be my own Children's book which will be due for release in 2011. Still got lots of work to do yet, but hopefully I'll be allowed to post about it soon.

If there's anyone still out there, thanks for stopping by.

Holiday Card "Thanksgiving"

Another one for American Greetings. This time I designed everything and storyboarded the action. We went through a few options with the style (see below) until we finally settled on the Retro 50s kind of feel. I think they made the right choice.


The animation was handled expertly by Heather Dunn who did a great job capturing the whole feel of the piece. Go check out her stuff.

EDIT: The link is working now hope you enjoy!

Holiday Card "Halloween"

Seeing as I won't be posting much for a little while, I thought I'd share some of the upcoming holiday cards I've worked on with American Greetings. They're a little early I suppose, but nevermind.

This one is a Halloween card I designed and animated. It was storyboarded by the clever Chris Kawagiwa although I was able to add my own litttle gag involving an egg which I was quite happy with.

Illustration Friday "Welcome"

"Good to be back"

Its always nice to get a warm welcome after you've been away for a while. In just over a week I'll be heading off to England to visit family and friends. Its been over 5 years since we were last there and to say we are looking forward to it is an understatement.

My daughter (4) has never met her Grandparents and my son (5) was only 6 months old the last time we were there. I'm sure they will be welcomed with open arms, so this weeks topic seemed quite appropriate.

Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day here in Australia and I was finally able to take the family to see Pixar's "UP". I realise for the rest of the World this is old news, and why its taken so long to get here I don't know. Anyway the film was great and lived up to all the hype I've been reading.

I guess the fact I was watching this on Father's Day made Carl and Ellie's situation all the more moving and its probably up there with my all time fave Pixar movies. So I couldn't help but draw a little portrait of Carl for the blog, I hope you like it.

As well as spending a nice day with the kids, my wife also gave me this cool little statue of Betty Boop doing her best Marilyn Monroe impression. She now sits on my desk looking at me with those big green eyes. If only every day could be Father's Day.

Donald Hulk

The guys over at Cartoon Brew invited artists to make a visual comment on the recent merger between Disney and Marvel. This is my take on how Donald's fury just might, one day, consume him.

I know Donald doesn't usually wear shorts, but I had to cover him up for modesty's sake!

Monster Sketch

Just doodling today and the doodle turned into this. I've recently had an idea for a little story/poem about a monster and this is how I thought he might look.

Mimi Mee Cards

Copyright ©AG.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

Mimi Mee was a character I created for Kiwee.com a couple of years ago, to be used as part of their Winks collection. She ended up being quite popular, so last year I wrote and animated 3 ecards based on her too. I'd forgotten all about them until Abz left me a nice comment about her.

So here are some links to her 3 ecards. Size Matters, 2nd Best Friend and Brat 2 School.

She's annoying, but I like her.

Illustration Friday "Caution"

"Proceed with Caution"

When your Grandmother starts giving you suspiciously sinister and cryptic responses, chances are a wolf's eaten her and is currently masquerading in her undies. Wolves ay? You just can't trust em!

Geeky Duck

Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty is a fantastic blog site showcasing the art and imagination of 3 young kids. The site was put together by their Dad, illustrator Aaron Zenz, as a way of cataloging all their hard work.

To mark the blog's 3 year anniversary, a call was put out for artists to create their own versions of the kids art, as a way of celebrating their work. One piece by Lily aged 4, which she titled "Geeky Duck", made me laugh, so that's the one I chose to recreate.

Actually looking at them side by side, I prefer Lily's.

Please go check out thier site and leave a nice comment.

Pitches and Woes

I've just had the great opportunity of pitching some show ideas to Nickelodeon International and while my attempts were unsuccessful (this time) it was a perfect chance to try something new and even learn a little bit in the process.

So although the overall ideas were not quite right, I was still happy with the artwork and character designs, so I thought I would share them on here.

These guys below are from a Pirate show I've had bubbling in my head for a while now. Guess its time to put them to bed, or maybe a burial at sea would be more appropriate.

Thanks for stopping by.

Illustration Friday "Hollow"

"You say Good Buy, I say Hollow"

I remember as a kid always feeling disappointed that chocolate Easter Eggs weren't solid. Of course, as an adult, I can see how impractical (and expensive) a solid egg of chocolate would be. Still as an ungrateful and selfish youngster you can't help but feel a little cheated when you hear that unmistakable hollow crack as you try to stuff as much into your mouth as possible. Kids huh?

It's been a long time between blog drinks(or "blinks" if you like). Works been a bit crazy, which is always a good thing. Hopefully I can share some more stuff soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

Illustration Friday "Craving"

"Star Craving Mad!"

I must admit I came to the Mario party a little late in life. But playing Mario Galaxy has turned me into a star hungry fiend! Outta my way kids, it's Daddy's turn again!

Illustration Friday "Cracked"

"OK! Who invited the elephant?!"

Seems like a perfectly logical scenario in which cracks might occur. Don't you think?

Swimland Web Award

Congrats to my friends at Paul Sadler Swimland who, not only do a great job teaching my kids to swim, but have also picked up an award for "Best Swim School Website". I had the fun job of bringing their mascot "Swordy" to life, for some brief animations along with some hints and facts about the school.

You can view the site and story here (HINT: Click Swordy when he's floating in the corner).

Well done to Get Started who came up with the site design and a big thanks to Jason for being the first person EVER to describe me as a "guru". Not sure I'm quite there yet, but thanks all the same.

Rosie's Fairies

My daughter's 4th birthday is coming up soon and I wanted to create some Fairy characters to appear on her party invitation. This is what I came up with.