Merry Christmas One and All

Tommy, 1975 (dir. Ken Russell)

Movies In Frames

Star Wars Uncut: Scene 248

Here's my second submission to Star Wars: Uncut project, inspired by The Beatles film, Yellow Submarine, directed by George Dunning. It was great fun to re-design the characters in the style of the film, especially Chewbacca in the part of Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. There's a bit more movement in the figures as opposed to my last submission, but I've yet to graduate to any fully-fledged acrobatics. All of the interiors and backgrounds are taken from the film and 're-imaging' in Photoshop and the whole thing was put together in Flash. Sound effects where obtained from the rather marvellous Soundsnap.com and the voices where provided by myself (with apologies to any Liverpudlians out there wondering why the cast have Birmingham accents!). Not sure just yet if I'll take on another scene, but I have a few ideas on how I'd like to render it, so watch this space.

Star Wars Uncut

Busy on my second animation for Star Wars: Uncut. Here's a sneak preview.

Star Wars: Uncut

Star Wars: Uncut is the brainchild of Vimeo and Boxee creator Casey Pugh. The idea is to re-create the film, fifteen seconds at a time. How does it work? First, you claim your scene, there are 473 to choose from, you then have thirty days to make it in whatever fashion you want. Viewer's can then rate the videos with the Vimeo's 'Like' system and the most popular will be edited together to form an entirely fan-made version of the film. Here's my submission.

I chose to base my animation on the manga comic adaption by Hisao Tamaki to reflect the close relationship Star Wars has always had with the comic medium. From the original Marvel adaption by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin, to the current selection of titles published by Dark Horse, Star Wars comics are often as cherished as the films themselves. I selected and loosely re-drew various figures from Tamaki's books and then created individual background's in Photoshop. For the TIE fighter, I sourced a 3D model on the excellent Google SketchUp and re-drew the desired angle. The animation was then put together in Adobe Flash. To abide with the submission rules I recorded all the sound effects and speaking parts myself (please forgive my Alec Guinness impersonation). It's been a really rewarding project to create and I've already bagged my next scene, which I promise will be something completely different.

New Portfolio Website

My new portfolio website is now on-line. This is the first website I've designed and built and I'm not shy to admit that it's been an intense learning curve. The site concentrates on my commercial work as a creative artworker with a smidgen of personal stuff. It's not all there yet but now that I'm free to concentrate on other work, I'm intending to update it with new projects regularly.

A Patchwork of Flesh

Paul Cooper has posted my tribute to Ken Reid's Frankie-Stien, along with my daughter Eden's SpongeBob Frankenpants, at his wonderful blog, A Patchwork of Flesh. It was fun sitting with Eden on a rainy afternoon and doing some colouring in, but I prefer the original pencil and inked versions.

Exterior

Spent a couple of hours today experimenting with colour in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Kirby-Vision out-take

As you know, I curate the Jack Kirby tribute blog Kirby-Vision over at The Jack Kirby Museum. I've contributed a number of photoshop collages to the blog and here's one that I didn't think was strong enough for inclusion. It's based on the Italian one-sheet for Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West using scans from a Kirby issue of The Rawhide Kid.

Original one-sheet here

Hello and welcome...

...to Between Clark and Hilldale. My intention, for this little corner of the blogosphere, is to feature a variety of inspirational work from comic artists, illustrators, graphic designers, musicians and film-makers. I will also be posting my own artwork and discussing the progress of new and continuous projects.

This is not my first time on Blogger. Back in March of this year, I set up The Kirby Project blog to showcase creative artwork inspired by the art of 'The King of Comics' - Jack Kirby. After a short respectable run, I accepted Rand Hoppe's kind offer to host the blog at The Jack Kirby Museum and moved over to WordPress. I must admit I've missed Blogger's simple functionality and have been itching to get back.

The aforementioned Jack Kirby tribute blog can now be found under it's new moniker, KIRBY-VISION.

I also post regularly at my Tumblr blog, Ancient and Forever, which is a celebration of the art of Doctor Who.

A selection of my Artwork can already be found at my flickr page, which includes my contributions to Kirby-Vision and the Tumblog - moviesinframes.