"TERRIBLE, I know"...

I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...
I must never again in my life neglect my blog...

x 1000... 00000000000000000000000.......... 0






Wow, so it's been a good few months since I posted.... TERRIBLE, I know. My only excuse... [which now I think about it, really isn't a valid one...... so let me not bother explaining]. Anyhooow, on the UP side, I have actually been keeping up my creative productivity [just haven't blogged about it]. Below are a few doodles, illustrations & digital paintings done over the past few months. Browse through & I hope you like.


As always feel free to comment = )
More to come...
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BELOW: A few caricatures I've done over the past month as part of a weekly 'just for fun' quiz I recently set up for friends of mine on FaceBook... I usually throw it up on Sunday evenings [8pm UK time]. If you're in the neighbourhood, stop by, add me & feel free to join in the fun! Who knows, you may be the lucky winner & receive a FREE caricature of yourself too! It's all good clean fun >= )

BELOW: Line Art...


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BELOW: Some doodles...
   

Captain's Log.....

Star date.... 2, 4, 6... 8??...... I've been a real fan of the original [Gene Roddenberry] series for years now but actually only just managed to get them all on DVD, including the feature films. Such a shame the series only made it to 3 seasons but for how cleverly creative the storylines are I guess it makes them that much more of a collectors item. I remember watching episodes on TV as a kid & being totally mesmerized by the adventures Kirk, Spok, Bones McCoy & the rest of the crew went on. The costumes, makeup fx & [almost pantomime] lighting were great; even the now not so special "special effects"..... & on top of that I had my phase of absolutely believing Cptn Kirk was the coolest man in the galaxy...... I believe he still is!

Anyways, will be working on a series of Star Trek themed illustrations over the next few weeks. Here are some roughs I've worked up so far. I know there are other fellow secret 'Trekkies' out there so hope y'all like [more to come over the next few weeks].

A.T.A Development Work...

Thought I'd post up some of the concept/ development stuff I did for the 'Tag Attack'...... I didn't actually explain before but one of the main things I was hoping to achieve in my piece was the overall look & feel of a movie or mystery series made back in the 1960's. It's a very specific style of editing & acting; down to little details like editing mistakes, damaged film frames during transitions or cuts to a proceeding shot, even also to the way d.o.f is used [love it!]. Main inspirations on this were James bond flicks [Sean Connery] & believe it or not, cheesy Elvis movies from the late 50's. Also a piece of work that caught my eye last year sometime was illustrator Kevin Dart’s trailer/ titles for “A Kiss From Tokyo” animated by Stephane Coedel. Won't go into it too much right now but I absolutely loved it! Anyways, below are series of stages I went though leading up to the finished sequence.

///CHARACTER RE-DESIGN/ ROUGH SKETCHES///

Early on I knew I wouldn't have the time to put as much into the animation of the character as I would have liked, so dint spend much time designing him as a whole person. I knew he wouldn't move much at all so once I was happy with getting his face the way I wanted I just worked out his main pose & that was it; animating only his breathing motion & hospital gown umm... draping in the wind.

///COLOUR THUMBNAILS/ BOARDS///

Again I didn't really have time to get too bogged down in detail with the development process so decided to just use these somewhat detailed thumbnail sketches as a final storyboard... [they made sense in my head]

///FINAL BACKGROUNDS///

Photoshop- digitally painted 

///BACKGROUND 05 time lapsed Artwork///



///BACKGROUND 04 time lapsed Artwork///

The Begining of Something... Hopefully Good!

Ok so I've kinda hit this point where I feel I'm not doing as much as I could be creatively so thought "hey I know!" I'll start up one of these blog things since it seems EVERYONE but me has one!

WELCOME: I'm Max by the way. A 27 year old freelance animation director/ animator based in rainy ole London Town. So I guess the main reason for me setting up this blog stems from the 1st sentence of this post, but to put it more specifically... "I'M NOT DRAWING ENOUGH!!!"... well at least not as much as I would like. It all began after I was speaking to a friend of mine who's also a fellow animator about how I was feeling. After listening to me rant on for a few hours he suggested I watch a few video casts on YouTube of Digital artist guru Bobby Chiu. I'd heard of him before & knew he was an amazing artist but honestly, without sounding like I'm an actor from one of those fake ass anti depressant/ weight loss ads; after listening to him talk about going through the same things I was & am still going through too, I was like "Wow! So it's not just me? So other artists also occasionally get a little too comfortable where they are?" Anyways in short I found his experiences very inspiring so I've now decided to push myself even more to reach new heights in my career & life in general I guess. Not gonna list all of them of course but one is def to draw a heck of a lot more.

So as you can now see setting up this blog is a way of me... & I guess in a very scary way 'you' (whoever/ wherever you are in the world reading this) to monitor me & my progress. Well, hope someone actually found this of some interest & inspiration too. Feel free to comment on my posts/ artwork or ask questions (not that I'll have the answer but... you know).


I'll do my best to keep this blog consistent!
Let's Go...