christopher james wright

Skulls Galore!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Skulls from Christopher Wright on Vimeo.

Here's a little something that I might end up using on a new version of my website as buttons (if I can learn how to do that) just imagine hovering the mouse over a skull and it animating in the way you see in the video. They were based off of some sketches (if I have time I'll put up the original drawing) I had done back in uni and since I had a lack of inspiration the other night I thought I'd see if I could reproduce them and then add some life to the lot of them.

Trunk have put up a few of the pieces that I worked on this past year and a bit about what I actually did on each, so take a look at them, enjoy!

1. Whistleless (Extract) - animation, composition, design.

2. Big School (Titles) - animated doodles and typography.

3. Major Lazer (Music Video) - rotoscoped monster tongue, matte work, animated bats.

4. The World's … And Me (Series 3) - background elements and men in suits animation.

Now this is not the end.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:21:00 +0000

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Nine months of experience and good times has come to a close, for now, who knows how soon it will reignite, but for now I'll be getting on with my own work, putting together a new showreel to let you in on what I've been actually making and maybe even a bit of a revamp of my website.

In the meantime I will encourage you to watch District 9, play Batman: Arkham Asylum, listen to Goldmund and look out for UP when it finally comes to cinemas next month!!

Found stuck in trees...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:21:00 +0000

...birds with antlers often find difficulty with the branches.

There's nothing we can do but if you feel it might help visit this new and exciting blog... http://birdantlers.blogspot.com/

Even if you only look at the images then at least you will feel some sort of achievement.

And that's what counts.

As seen on DA

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:23:00 +0000

EDIT 2: Here it is, I've actually done a few more frames now so the bending down and back up looks a bit smoother, also did some work on a wobbly-armed robot and just about to do a sneaky sasquatch who might lose his hair.!

Alien Exit - WIP from Christopher Wright on Vimeo.

I have now worked on several projects at Trunk in London, expanded my portfolio, including a short film using potato print textures, Show Me Show Me for Cbeebies and a music video for Wave Machines' "I Go I Go I Go" and integrated nicely into their small core team.
A few months ago I was offered a job as technician/animator for Trunk and since the short film was completed about a fortnight back I've been helping out with a variety of tasks, including backing up the countless projects and organising their archived material as well as doing odd animations for other projects.
Last week for example I traced, cut and folded six lots of 'Trunk' from card for a little stop motion piece we might be doing and also made some Vegas style lights flash and chase each other for a Channel 4 documentary series.

At the cinema I've seen the latest Harry Potter (IMAX), Transformers 2, Moon, The Hangover, I Love You Man, Bolt 3D, Monster Vs Aliens 3D, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Watchmen (IMAX) and Star Trek. There's probably a couple more but can't recall them right now, I want to see Star Trek again but at the IMAX this time and Harry Potter would be great to watch twice on the big screen too.

Thanks to the wonders of eBay I have now been the proud owner of a PS3 since April and have ten games to go with it including the fantastic LittleBigPlanet, Guitar Hero III and Motorstorm Pacific Rift. The games all look fantastic and having an HD screen for my computer makes them appear even better.

EDIT: That video's framerate is clearly not right and since the tentacles took so long to do I'll upload it to Vimeo in a bit, stay tuned!

Until next time!

Oh (Hell)boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:53:00 +0000

It's been quite a while since I last posted anything on here and having drawn this version of Hellboy after seeing the various interpretations of different superhero costumes at Project Rooftop and I love Mike Mignola's artwork so much (I wish I could work with shadow like he does!) The other bits and pieces are the initial gun sketch and the original left hand, the BPRD symbol and a skull thrown in at the end for good measure!

Recently I've not had so much time for my own work as we've been very busy at Trunk finishing Siri Melchior's latest children's short film 'Flojtelos/Whistleless', as well as a party for showing the latest showreel and a couple of never before seen animations, also caught up with a few ex-NSAD people at the NUCA animation graduate screening held in the Framestore basement.

A few weeks ago I got to see the first episode of Show Me Show Me, a new Cbeebies show that I worked on (at a BBC screening), animating the title sequence, five short story segments, nine 'wipes' and the credits, it was really great seeing it all put together and meeting all the other people who had worked on the live action side of things; it has been on since 6th July and if you missed it then catch up on the iPlayer!

Now I'm continuing on at Trunk helping out on the more technical side but still animating too - a new title sequence is a future possibility, I also hope to do more of my own animated and illustrated work.

CHUCK

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:38:00 +0000

My quick little sketch for tonight is of Chuck (right) and his best bearded friend Morgan!
Chuck is an hilarious, geek-spy show with a cool cast and soundtrack, check it out if you haven't done so already, (Season 2 began on Virgin tonight).

Close Covers of the Book Kind

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Back in February I made some Saul Bass inspired posters which were in part as a reaction to seeing Spacesick's "I Can Read Movies" fake book covers, and shortly after then Olly Moss and others made imagined Video Game book covers. A couple of nights ago I went back to my posters and after a quick look for a book cover image I augmented it with a few of my images and a new one for Close Encounters (above) which admittedly I've not seen but quite like the imagery of the rock formation and the lit up like Christmas spaceship. The Jurassic Park one is a bit simple and didn't change the look of the original book scan, but the Memento one is a bit more like a gritty poster in my mind.

The Menagerie of the Bizarre.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:17:00 +0000

A while back Bianca and I went to London Zoo as you might have read when she blogged about it here - Bianca's Blog. I made a couple of drawings the animals, including some monkeys, a fish, a tiny emu, an iguana and some birds. Afterward we sat in the park next to the zoo and did some more little sketches as well as of some random made up creatures including this odd little creature.

More recently on a few of my commutes to Trunk I've been sketching out a couple of dragon like creatures. The first one was based more on the iguana that I had from the zoo and originally was only going to have fore-arms and tail but then I made it a bit less tadpole-like! I also tried out a few eye types. I was really pleased with the roughly sketched out dragon-lizard which I think worked well because of the way the head is pointing backwards like a cat or dog. The other page came from starting to draw a skull-type object and that evolved into a tribesman who worshiped dragons, and these are the symbols that represent the giant beasts in their temples.

Cat and Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Bouncy, bouncy!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:58:00 +0000

Here's the start of something I've been working on to keep on learning Flash as I've picked up the basics better now at Trunk then I had done before. It's Fat Wolverine bouncing towards the screen, I first did the yellow outline, then added the blue, I'll keep on at it when I have the time free, but I'm pretty pleased with the movement and I didn't even look at reference of animated bouncing balls!

NB: Blogger seems to have squashed the video so I'll render out another version soon, but you get the idea, at the end it's just the outline and yellow on white is hard to see - he stops, looks about then jumps off again, in case you couldn't make it out.

Sackmonsterboyskineface!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Where The Wild Things Are inspired sketches.

Sackboys - How many can you name?

Seabird monster + observer.

Train people.

Monsterskine

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Bianca bought me a moleskine sketchbook which I have been drawing in with my new mechanical pencil on my commuting to work.
Click the images to see larger versions of them.

(If anyone can show me how to do the show/hide/read more thing in blogger so I don't have one post covering the whole front page I would be grateful, I found some tutorials but this layout seems to be missing certain lines of code and I can't locate where it should go in to work properly.)

A tentacled lizard creature.

Sea Creatures and a tiny diver.

City monster destroying + a clawed monster diagram.

Evolution of the creature?

In space, no one can find the last brick...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:23:00 +0000

The Doctor
(Spacesuit - SB6)
(Original pencil sketch/Photoshop lines + colours/Reference photograph)

Trundling along!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:06:00 +0000

Animation

Here is a short preview (without sound) of the sixth segment of my ongoing adaptation of Tom Gauld's 'War'. It was actually made back in December of last year and unfortunately due to working at Trunk amongst other things I simply haven't done any more work on that project since this was rendered out of AfterEffects.

Hopefully once I put some more effort into it and complete it I can then contact Cabanon Press (Tom Gauld/Simone Lia's company) about showing them and perhaps persuading them to finance more little bits, maybe even the Guardian newspaper would like them for their website as his one panel comics appear in their Saturday Review every week; a simple animation of each one would be a nice weekly task.

Films

In the past couple of weeks I have seen four different films at the cinema,
- The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Bolt 3D
- Watchmen (IMAX)

They were all really enjoyable in thoroughly different ways, Button being a slow but intriguing story that was slightly hampered by a plot-telling device, that interrupted the flow for a minor story thread, but the performance capture used to make Brad Pitt age backwards is truly incredible and he plays the character from the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story very convincingly.

Slumdog had been hyped up by so many places and when I saw it it had already won several Oscars but I had avoided jumping on the bandwagon and having unrealistic expectations, however in the end I enjoyed it and think that having no real western 'stars' in the entire cast and entirely Indian locations gave it a different feel to many films that Hollywood are used to seeing on screen.

Bolt 3D was intriguing to me as it was the first Disney film under John Lasseter, responsible for a lot of Pixar's fantastic story-telling and animation, and to see it in 3D was impressive - things have come a long way from when I saw a Michael Jackson space film in Florida when I was 10 and 3D meant things flying out of the screen constantly, in Bolt 3D the technology (now with sleek plastic "sunglasses") was used primarily it seemed to add depth to the world and only once towards the end did something poke your eyes out (incidentally it was a syringe!) Even the trailers for forthcoming releases were in 3D which was something of a novelty and it looks like the vasst majority of animated films from this year on will be in 3D in some way or another, including Monsters Vs. Aliens!

Watchmen at the Bfi IMAX cinema in London was a sold out showing filled with comic geeks and people who were drawn in by the exciting trailer and more adult approach to the superhero genre (can it be classed as a genre, really?). Nevertheless, I have not read the graphic novel/comic/picture book/whatever you call it, and still followed the story well enough and as a special-effects laden film it truly stands up on the big screen (and with IMAX I really mean big when I say it) and in particular Rorshach's mask and Dr Manhattan being amazing feats of CGI helping to build the world, not take you jarringly out of it. I've heard mixed reactions from people who have read the source material but for what it's worth I loved the experience and look forward to seeing it again at some point in the future.

PS: I will scan in some drawings I've made recently in my new moleskine sketchbook, mostly odd looking creatures in pencil.

PPS: I bought an action figure with over 25 points of articulation for £2.99 the other day of Beast from X-Men and plan to do some sort of stop-motion with it inspired by Patrick Boivin's incredible work which I highly recommend you check out.

Inspired Posters

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:55:00 +0000

Saul Bass (1920 - 1996) had a very recognisable style of design in his many animated title sequences and simple, yet striking, posters. This evening I have designed a few of my own minimalist film posters with his style in mind depicting some of my favourite films as well as one future release.

The first design was an obvious choice if you know anything about my history with cinema, Jurassic Park has influenced me and became a slight obsession in the wake of its release in 1993. The simple white teeth of a dinosaur framing the title, in the hand drawn lettering that made Bass so iconic, over a blood red backdrop.

My next reinterpretation was for Memento, a film that I find simply incredible in it's story-telling and the visual look that Christopher Nolan achieved.

In designing this I went for a monochromatic scheme in keeping with the black and white sequences of the film, I also played with the text a bit more - using the T to extend and subtly becoming the outline to a Polaroid picture (imperative to the main character's existence).

Sunshine is a fantastic science fiction film by Danny Boyle (director of recent Oscar-heavyweight Slumdog Millionaire) - featuring a limited cast, superbly designed spacecraft/suits and stunning views of our sun. The idea here is simply 'the sun is very big' and to be fair it is possibly the one design that bears some resemblance to its official counterpart.

Originally this was going to be for X-Men but since the character has his own film coming out soon I decided to go with Wolverine for my next effort. Starting with the hair, then the eyebrows I decided to add a question mark over his head - if I had stuck to doing this as an X-Men poster then this would have linked in with the plot revolving around him trying to find out about his lost past - as it is the film will actually reveal his origins, at least within Marvel's film continuity. I kept it in and went with a slightly more varied and what I thought of as a bit of an unusual choice of colour scheme, I guess it was perhaps a reference to the brightly coloured costumes often found in comics but not always in their film adaptations.

The final three are variations on a theme of The Dark Knight, with deep dark blue/purple tones I tried to make the title almost vanish with the background like Batman hiding in the shadows. At first I wanted to keep to just showing the hero but in the end I couldn't resist drawing red scarred lips and that led to straggly green hair framing the poster. I particularly like how the red can be seen coming through the eyes of Batman's silhouette.

In the future maybe I'll mock up some animated title sequences for these films, in the mean time I will continue on with my Trunk internship and sketchbook work.

aLL WRiGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Animation

I did a couple of days at Trunk Animation at the end of last year and since January I have been going in several times a week working for the director Siri Melchior on her latest 'potato print' film. I have been doing cutting out and touching up prints in Photoshop, making a train and carriages follow a track in AfterEffects and finally learning Flash and animating a series of bugs dancing/walking/laughing and now working on this centipede.

I haven't done any work recently on my own animations (Tom Gauld's 'War' and Fat Superheroes) but hopefully I will do more on these soon as well as try and do some stop motion (having been very inspired by Patrick Boivin's staggering work) with highly articulated X-Men figures I recently bought for a few quid.

Since Bianca has started at NFTS in Beaconsfield this year I have been going in occasionally with her and getting to know her classmates on the Animation Direction course. I have also done a bit of colouring work for Toby Jackman (an ex-NSAD student like myself) and his final year film 'Today Only', including a bicycle crash, a pigeon flying off and four people looking up to the sky in an overhead shot. I look forward to seeing the final film and wish him luck with completing it soon.

Illustration

Here's a silly picture of the FOTC guys that I slightly altered with some outlines in Photoshop.

A little preview from what I'm working on in my sketchbook at the moment. I hope to learn Maya and aim to recreate my designs in 3D.

Films

I'm looking forward to seeing several films this year for various different reasons.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - David Fincher/Brad Pitt's well reviewed adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, featuring stunning CG to age the titular character.
Bolt - Disney's newest animated feature since John Lasseter moved back partly while still working with Pixar.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - Terry Gilliam's fantasy film that will be Heath Ledger's final performance after his award-winning turn as the Joker.
Monsters Vs. Aliens - Funny CG animated film with some great voice actors including Hugh Laurie (House) and Seth Rogen (Knocked Up).
Push - Looks like an interesting take on superpowers with normal people with Chris Evans (Fantastic Four/Sunshine).
Role Models - Two words: Paul. Rudd.
Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen - Big robots are always cool and the first one was pure popcorn fun, this looks much the same but even more ridiculous.
Watchmen - Visually this looks amazing and I'll be seeing it in IMAX like I did for The Dark Knight.
Where The Wild Things Are - Spike Jonze's (Being John Malkovich) delayed adaptation of the classic children's story.

Music

Here are a few artists I've been listening to over the past couple of months that I think you might enjoy too, the tracks next to them are a few I particularly enjoy, you can preview them by clicking their names.

1. Bon Iver (Skinny Love/Blood Bank)
2. Good Old War (Coney Island)
3. Florence & The Machine (Dog Days Are Over/You've Got The Love)
4. Tim And Sam's Tim And The Sam Band With Tim and Sam (Put Your Slippers On/Join The Dots)

Word of the Day - RIDONCULOUS.

Flickering into existence.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:40:00 +0000

Scaling mix-up

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:11:00 +0000

Alone from the pride, the sheep creep in...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:24:00 +0000

Clouds (with legs and faces).

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Eyepatch not included.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:00:00 +0000

I want to be a Star! (Elephants optional)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:17:00 +0000

Twittering (or "Worms, eggs and death").

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:50:00 +0000

What's all this then?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:02:00 +0000

Painting it old school!

Walking (to) Work

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:25:00 +0000

Since of course in the War animation the men are part of an army they will mostly all be walking the same walk, nice and regimented, but that doesn't mean some of them mess it up from time to time, hence I have to draw a few more walk cycles... good practice!
I'm wondering if I will have this piece finished by the New Year as originally hoped (but not planned) certainly the sound will take time to do as I'll need to reacquaint myself with Logic.

Trunk are a lovely little animation company, and last Thursday as I was in London I stopped by their attic-based white washed studio and said hello to two of their directors Siri Melchior and Steve Smith. It is possible that they have a position for an intern and I will hopefully hear back soon, they are both lovely people and their studio space was delightful.

In other news: Bianca's moving over Sunday 14th and coming skiing with us!