A Resolution of Films

I'm not normally one to make resolutions, even less so to write them down for people to bring up again in the future, but this year I turn 25 and thought that I should have some sort of goals to aim towards.

I would class myself as a film geek, perhaps even a nerd or sorts, however there are gaping holes in my film watching life which are not good at all, causing shame and open-mouthed shock at the lack of classic/older films I'm missing out on.

Fortunately I can cross off the original Star Wars trilogy straight away, something which until a couple of years ago I'd never seen altogether, apparently it has something of a cult following...

Anyway, to get the ball rolling, this is just a few of the films/directors of whom I wish to become better acquainted with in 2011:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Reservoir Dogs
Trainspotting
The Evil Dead

Alfred Hitchcock
Hayao Miyazaki

I'll update with my progress and add to the list should I see more that I have to include and I'm open to suggestions, old classics, forgotten animations, modern wonders - and I'll tell you if I've seen them or not.

Looking back on 2010's films one of the best experiences for me was Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, in addition to great performances, music and humour it started things off with a fantastic opening sequence dissected at the link by director Edgar Wright along with other graphic elements and animation used throughout the film.

Honourable mentions go to Inception and Toy Story 3, I don't think any explanation's needed there.

Gentlemen Broncos

Recently I saw 'Gentlemen Broncos' - a strange film from the director of Napoleon Dynamite, I have to say that it wasn't all that great which was a shame as it had some decent parts, but they just didn't seem to really come together to make a great piece.
An awkward home-schooled boy goes to a writing workshop where his hero (a writer of absurd science fiction struggling to come up with his next bestseller, played with a bizarre drawling accent by Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame) is giving a talk and announces a competition for the best new sci-fi novel to which the boy enters his latest work only to be ripped off and taken advantage of by some odd, local filmmakers.



There were some extra shorts created as part of a viral marketing campaign, with Jermaine Clement giving talks in character as the aforementioned famous writer, but the best thing that I saw, many months before the film is this animation with a great style, both in the colouring and the use of hand-drawn characters with digital/photographic backgrounds and wonderful voiceover too.

Some of the best bits of the film were not part of the main story, but live-action sequences from the boy's book as he imagines it would be as a film. In these the main character of the book is played by Sam Rockwell, an actor used to sci-fi; already having starred in Moon (very realistic and serious) and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (as Zaphod Beeblebrox, being much more ridiculous) using a total deadpan expression despite the ludicrous nature of the boy's story (involving the pictured rocket-launcher deer and cyclops guards).

Studio 4ºC

I've been meaning to write something about the wonderful animation company in Japan called Studio 4ºC ever since I saw Tekkonkinkreet last month. They are responsible for many animated shorts that I have enjoyed greatly over the past few years.

When the Matrix sequels came out an accompanying series of animations set in the universe of the films, imaginatively titled The Animatrix, was released on DVD. Several different studios with varying styles created and told stories that ranged from being tied to the plot of the films, to the history of the Matrix, or even just showing what happens when there's a bit of glitch.
In Beyond, one of Studio 4ºC's segments, a woman loses her cat in a crowded shanty town and stumbles across some kids playing in what they deem to be a haunted house, but is in fact a glitchy area of the Matrix. Gravity isn't obeying the laws of physics, time slows down and even more obscure things happen within the grounds of this house, it's a fun piece with a thin storyline but has very beautiful and textured visuals.

Another sequel and another tie-in animated DVD, this time around it was The Dark Knight in the cinemas and Gotham Knight at home, a collection of tales set in the Batman universe though not strictly in that of Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan's reinterpretation.
Here Studio 4ºC contributed two tales; the first "Have I Got A Story For You" being my favourite, possibly of the whole set, and shows some kids telling each other stories of their encounters with Batman and what they reckon him to be; a smoke creature, a robot or even a really large bat!

They have since also worked on a similar DVD release based on the Xbox's Halo series of games, however I have not played these a great deal and haven't been too interested in their story.

Tekkonkinkreet was a feature film based on a manga called Black and White, and follows two kids in a sprawling Japanese city who try to act as guardians when gangsters and strange ninja creatures come to town. I had been meaning to watch it for quite a while after hearing about it some time last year and then I'd spotted it and recognised the title after the local library held a Japan/Manga promotion with the usual Studio Ghibli fare. The backgrounds are unbelievable and show a staggering amount of detail, in contrast to the simple and fairly flat colours of the characters that help them to pop out of the scene, especially when they are moving about at speed performing swift parkour moves through the city.

This year it was announced that the studio has been tasked with bringing back the cult-loved Thundercats series for 2011, for now though I shall leave you with my attempt from the end of last month of emulating Studio 4ºC's style with a depiction of the Eleventh Doctor... hmm, a Doctor Who animation DVD, now that could work.

Personal Logo

Having had my new website up for a while now I figured my blog needed a new header and so I'm going to try and put up a different variation on my name or the blog title (livingsketchbook) each week, or more frequently if I find myself with more ideas and I'll add them all into this post for preservation.

1. Jurassic Chris

2. Alien Chris
3. Doctor Chris
4. AT-AT Chris5. Chicken Chris

The Benefits

...of being an out-of-work animator I can borrow CDs from the local library for 50p each, and so recently I got David Bowie/Changesbowie, The White Stripes/Elephant and Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut album, which led to me trying to do something but quite frankly I don't know what I was going for really.

Thanks to reelroulette.net my showreel has now been viewed nearly 300 times in just two months, this is possibly slightly skewed data though as each time someone visits my reelroulette page it autoplays the reel and counts as a view, nonetheless, I'm sure many more people have seen it than would have without such a site.

Last week I helped Jane out with a site for the tile shop she works for in High Wycombe, putting it together in Dreamweaver using the pieces that she'd designed prior to me getting involved, you can see it HERE.

I finally got round to reading both volumes of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (having noticed the library only stocked the second, who wants to start half way through a story!!?).
I also had the library buy in the first of the Scott Pilgrim books which was a very amusing read and now I want to get the rest of them - if you've not heard of it it's about a boy who has to defeat his new girlfriend's 7 evil exes in order to date her.

Edgar "Shaun of the Dead" Wright is directing a film adaptation of it with Michael "Juno" Cera playing Pilgrim, click here for epic epicness.

As seen on DA

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!

Trundling along!

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

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.