Tuesday 20 January 2009

Blur-ing my face




Here's a picture that a good friend and I knocked up a few months ago. The image is using the simplistic style of British artist Julian Opie, who created that iconic LP sleeve for Blur.

I wanted a picture of myself for the wall, but didn't want either a posey pic or painting. So went for this style as a happy medium. The image was produced by tracing a photograph in a combination of Photoshop and Flash and then printed onto a square canvas for my front room!

Sunday 18 January 2009

A True Inspiration...


My heart sank today when I heard the news Tony Hart had sadly passed away. With my own craft show launching this week, I feel we've lost a true great. This guy wasn't a Michelangelo or Leonardo, although a very talented artist, for me and other British kids, his work was a lot more inspiring. As a child in 80s Britain, I never got into art from looking at the Mona Lisa, it was from seeing this silver haired gentleman using simple lines to create artistic wonders.

Being a stop motion animator, the influence of Morph is obviously a massive reason I wanted to start bringing plasticine characters to life. But Morph wouldn't of worked as a 60 second animation thrown between Blue Peter and News Round. The thing that made Morph was the relationship with Tony. Today children's television is dumbed down and patronising, with presenters dramatically interacting with their puppets. The relationship between Tony and Morph was different, there was a genuine chemistry between them. Tony's mild manner and authoritative voice made you believe that if this great man was talking to a clay figure, then the clay figure was real!

I mentioned before in a previous post, but during filming for the show, I realised how tough it is, to be friendly, informative, remember lines and be entertaining. Tony Hart seemed to do it with ease, and this made you feel you could do everything he made. I'll post the series up this week, but feel they aren't a patch on a genre he really made his own.

There's a really nice video produced by the BBC online, it shows how creative he made his shows and reminds you what children's television is missing today. I love the pixelation of Tony on the cart with a paintbrush in his mouth, and wonder how the director broke that to him. I guess Tony felt if children would find the demonstration entertaining and engage with art, then it was worth it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7836142.stm

I was planning to send him a copy of the series, and tell him how inspiring he was to me, and how much respect I have for his work. I won't get to do that now, all I can do is try and inspire kids to be creative in the same way he did for me, passing on what he did for me.

Friday 2 January 2009

The 3 little Piggies build a Studio Set

Note* In this story there is no big bad wolves and no sets were huffed and puffed down...

Here is a short piece of time lapse footage I produced showing the Set being constructed for the animation series. I used Stop Motion Pro 6.5 and set the counter to capture every 10 seconds. The set took roughly two and a half hours to finish, and here it is...






By the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Hope it's a good one!