I recently managed to successfully clock another year of my life, which reminded me that I still hadn’t got a card for my lovely lady’s birthday. Despite it being a couple of months ago, there was absolutely no way she was going to let me forget. So here it is.

This is a test scene that illustrates how depleted uranium weapons can be deployed. It shows a missile with it’s outer shell (sabot) falling away revealing the dart at the core. The dart is made of extremely dense depleted uranium and is used to pierce armour. Apparently.

Beware, potential innuendo!

Right!

I’m currently in the middle of making a film, about the use of depleted uranium weapons, and the implications they have upon people living and working in those areas that have been contaminated by them. It’s for the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) and you can find out more about the situation and what depleted uranium weapons are at their highly informative website. Alternatively you can wait for the finished film and learn about it then!

Here are some early motion tests that I made for the film. The film is likely to change from how these look, but some elements may remain. They were created in Cinema 4D and After Effects.

First up is a sketch for an early scene in which two tanks are having a battle on the surface of what could be a little planet earth, or it could be a uranium atom. I’m undecided.

So…. been away for a while. Got stuck in New Zealand when that Icelandic mega-mound got all angry. If it wasn’t for our ability to just change safety guidelines I’d still be over there. Not a bad place to be stranded, I must admit…

First post in absolutely ages! Been knuckling down to some hard goddamn sitting action. Kind of. Anyway, thought I’d post this up, as it was the last proper thing I finished. It’s the latest in a long line of commercials Aardman have been producing for the Department of Health for the Change 4 Life initiative.

I composited, polished and generally tidied up a few scenes in it (with After Effects). I spent approximately 19,000 times longer working on the last scene than it’s actually on screen for. Sob.

Think it looks great though! Everyone on the team did an amazing job, even the clever animators with their dirty fingers….

A while ago I uploaded an illustration I did of a fat man in a leotard. Now that I’ve been learning a bit of 3D stuff, I thought he would be a good little chap to have a go at modeling. I’ve done a few tutorials on modeling, but this fella’s my first attempt at my own character.

I modeled him in Maya, then exported him, then textured, lit and rendered him in Cinema 4D. I think the model still needs a bit of work, but I really want to get on and rig and then animate him. Which is what I’ll probably do!

Being mucking around with some watery experiments. Pretty cool stuff. Here are my first two attempts. I really wanted to get Milky and Orange Juice looks. I’m not sure if I succeeded with either. Particularly the OJ, which just looks like paint.

The final Spanish commercial I composited at Aardman has shown up on Youtube. Here it is in faintly crappy-vision. Despite that, I think it’s my favourite. The challenge for me was to animate all those layers in unison to create the illusion of the “world” rotating on it’s different axis. But hopefully it looks alright in the end.

I’m also loving the new singer on the soundtrack! Sounds like he’s making it up….

Did some illustrating! Crikey.

Me girlfriend is off trekking around the Himalayas next year for some World Challenge thing she’s doing with her school. Meanwhile, I’ll be watching football. This is for a friend who’s going with her. I can only imagine the Himalayas will be nothing like this.

Recently went to the lovely Lake District. Utterly beautiful. Walked and sweated all over them mountains!

Here’s an experiment with camera mapping in Cinema 4D.