Still alive… just.

Gosh, I've been gone so long Blogger's all gone and changed itself, well, welcome new followers - don't worry even without posting I've noticed I'd magically acquired a few extra ones this past month or two. The reason for the absence is a happy one; work!

I've been doing a short animation as well as several design projects that have come out really well with everyone involved being pleased with it all, alas until I get the go ahead I can't show anything from any of it and since they've all taken so much time (16 hour work days are normal, right?) I've not had a lot of time for my own stuff but hopefully that will all change in the coming weeks, I even have a couple of ideas for some personal pieces in my head!

I'll leave you with this video that came out recently as part of Sony's new advertising campaign, trying to get over the whole hacking debacle and I can honestly say I got shivers from watching this, it's a great love letter to the great back catalogue that the PS3 has, how many characters can you spot??

5 Graphic Novels

Since I've been living in Canada I have taken full advantage of the well-stocked graphic novel section in Waterloo Public Library, today I got out five that I have never read before...
Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
- I had been meaning to read this one for a while because I'd heard so much about it's depiction of a Holocaust survivor but with mice and cats standing in for humans, it is also the only comic-book to have won a Pulitzer Prize.

Fray by Joss Whedon
- I've been reading Season 8 of Buffy (which directly follows on from the end of the tv series) and while I wait for Volume 5 to come in I thought I'd check out this as I'm a huge Whedon fan and Fray (a Slayer in the distant future) had appeared in Volume 4 due to some time-travel shenanigans involving Buffy.

Tank Girl: Visions of Booga by Alan C. Martin
- I also recently started going through the Tank Girl series (created by Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz fame) and having finished off three volumes of the collected TG comics I saw this one on a different shelf (since Hewlett wasn't involved) and liked the look of the artwork by the bizarrely named Rufus Dayglo.

The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way
- Yes, that is the Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance (a band I am not overly familiar with) but I had heard good things about this graphic novel (it won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series) so thought it was worth a shot.

100% by Paul Pope
- The other day I finished off a Batman: Black & White collection and one of the artists had stuck out to me, with a rather manga-esque look to his depiction of Batman, so straight away I had to look up to see what else he had done and reserved two more graphic novels that he'd worked on (100% being ready for collection today). Incidentally, Paul Pope has won the Eisner Award three times throughout his career and the manga look to his work is in part down to working for Japan's leading manga publisher for 5 years.

Finally: Today over dinner I read When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs which was rather brilliant and another one that I had heard about for quite a while now but not got round to checking out, it's a sad but sweet tale of an elderly couple preparing for a war that's just about to start, reminiscing about how it was during the other World Wars and dealing with which instructions to follow to build a bomb shelter, the Local Council's or the Governments?!

What are you reading at the moment?
Any more suggestions on what I should get next?

Woolly Allen

The other day while talking about "Midnight in Paris" someone stumbled on their words and said Woolly Allen, and thus the image of a neurotic sheep with thick-rimmed glasses was born. It was too fun an image to pass up and also acted as a good practice of my rather unused lip-sync skills, I have a few more vocal clips that could lead to a few more Woolly shorts.

Original voice from "Love and Death" at dailywav.com

Walk Cycles

Here are some of the many walk-cycles I've created for my adaptation of Tom Gauld's A Noisy Alphabet, a personal project that has been in the works for quite a while now, might start showing some more of it in the near future.

Chaffy: FOUND

Find Chaffy is a creation of Jamie Smart and to celebrate the release of his second Chaffy book he threw a Chaffy art contest, which I decided in my infinite wisdom to enter the night before by animating a bunch of the little fluffy critters.

This morning after some well needed sleep I awoke to find that I had won the contest!
You can view all of them at the Find Chaffy site now!

PS: Last night, Edgar Wright for a moment suspected I was his father on Twitter. I am not.

Linkage Time!

This week has seen my graduation film, Phobias (2008), featured on not one but two sites leading to a little boost in it's views on Vimeo, it's always nice to get some recognition so thanks to everyone who has watched it recently, especially as it's been around for a few years now.

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Nathan Bulmer (aka Eat More Bikes) makes great comics practically everyday, based off of random records, wikipedia articles or whatever else takes his fancy and I thought that he deserved some recognition too, now I just need to convince him to teach me this technique and I might stand a chance of updating a little more often!

GO CHECK HIM OUT!!!

Status Update (2 months late)

I'm in Canada now, thanks.

T.V.Z : Katana

That ladder's a bit of a safety hazard.
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T.V.Z : Nail-bat

The early undead catches the bat.
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T.V.Z : Paddle/chainsaw.

Trying to keep the peace.
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