BAF 2010 Ident

I've been busy the past few weeks working on the new ident for this year's Bradford Animation Festival (www.baf.org.uk). I've helped programme events for the festival in the past and a few months ago the Festival Director, Deb Singleton asked me if I'd like to design the poster. This is the first bit of print for the festival - a postcard to tell people they are now open for entries.

I'm also working with the award winning animator Andy Sykes (aka Hexjibber) to produce a snappy, 20 second animated festival ident. Here's the rough storyboard:

The BAF man is working in his lab on a new experiment. He drinks one of his potions and transforms into a giant lizard monster, before being attacked by fighter jets and rampaging through the city, in true Godzilla style. I've found a piece of library music that's big and orchestral with lots of stabby strings to build the tension. I'm now working on the keyframe illustrations before passing them to Andy to work his animated magic on them. Here's the first scene inside the lab, without colour:

And with colour:
Will post the other illustrations when they're finished. In the meantime, check out Andy's fabulous showreel:

Hand-drawn Trainers

I had an unusual request last week - a friend bought some plain white pumps and asked me to doodle on them. I used a black Sharpie marker on the white canvas - fingers crossed the ink won't run when they get wet.

IF: Dip

More tinkering with Illustrator... I love nachos and dip!

Monster Monster

A little more experimenting in Illustrator.

IF: Rescue

This shirt and tie wearing kitty works in an office and needs to be rescued from the daily 9 till 5 routine, otherwise he's gonna flip out!

I've been playing around with vectors and Adobe Illustrator and had a stab at following this excellent tutorial on how to turn a quick sketch into a nice piece of vector art. I normally scan and colour my illustrations in Photoshop so thought it was about time I dipped my toe into the world of Illustrator. The pen tool can be pretty frustrating but with a bit of practice I'm pleased with the results. As you can see, I've made my cat a bit friendlier and not quite so evil as the one in the tutorial. Oh, and here's my original sketch for comparison:

IF: Subterranean

Jeff, the subterranean homesick alien.

Museum Poster

The illustration for this poster was created for the National Media Museum in Bradford. They asked for bold text surrounded by lots of TV and video game characters. In the end the Museum decided to go with a different campaign but hey ho... it's something else for the portfolio.