Mclaren letter racers

A little high speed car concept I did the other day.  I was pitching an idea I had where cars that were also letters were racing around a track and formed a logo. It was for these folks:

They didn't like the idea and went for something more cartoony. But hey. It was fun turning around an idea in a day!

Home Territories

I have started a new blog. It is called Home Territories and its a junkshop for a personal project. It's intended as a short film, a sort-of-semi-auto-biographical story which exists all of the place and I will be using the blog to collate bits of artwork and references. 

I cant tell you much about this project. These are animation pitch concepts for a literary project.  I worked on it over the summer last year. Mucking in with the oil paint brushes in Artrage was a total gas! 

Rabbit Madonna

Thought I would update with a strange old picture I did between jobs in 2004. It was a personal thing and as I recall I had a thing for rabbits back then.

Foxie

My wife and I have long associated each of our children with animals. Kinda silly I know. My second son Ruairi, adorable as he is can be quite a contrary little bugger. Magnanimous and cuddly, but do not cross him when he's grumpy - like a bear! When he was a baby he had a cute lil bear eared hoodie. And so he was Ruairi Bear.

Now Finn, our eldest son seems like a fox. Wily, smart and lithe, his cunning intellect will leave you wondering. He likes to play on the edges where he constructs fantastic worlds. And also, he is a bright shining light with a heart of gold. There ya go - above is my vision of this Fox, perhaps there will be more.

2011 sketchbook pages part 1

Ok. Some sketchbook pages from earlier in the year, I think around May or June.

A little concept sketch (just realised how much he looks like the Fat Bastard from Austin Powers "Ooooh eeeeh, ah got a turtle 'ed comin'" something like that :) )

some guy in the park while my boys played tennis one Saturday afternoon:

my lovely, watching telly:

and there's always a sprinkling of these:

Self Portrait sketch

Have been wanting to do one these for years. It's my first stab at a self portrait painting. Used the computers' camera rather than a mirror - which, if you'll excuse the pun, upon reflection, was not a great idea. Colour values kept shifting which made me constantly second guess observations - and the auto-exposure did the same for tones. Still, I enjoyed the exercise. Did this in ArtRage and took around an hour.

new toys...

...which I am very excited about. Thanks James Gurney for letting me look "what's in your bag". I thought those fill-able brush pens looked nifty and they are! Here they are and some late Friday afternoon doodles in my sketchbook. There's some animators from Framestore (Arda, Vincent and Karl) - a doodle reminiscent of my son Ruairi who has a very cute little form right now - and a fellow from the train on the way home.

Animators vs Earthquakes

This is a 290 x 260mm watercolour, colour pencil and acrylic painting on watercolour paper painting that I made to contribute to the "Animators Vs Earthquakes" exhibition organized by: Paul Nicholson & Sylvain Marc in aid of 'Artists Help Japan', a charity created by Pixar's Dice Tsutsumi.  It is being hosted at Cafeand in Shoreditch. 07 - 22 May 2011 Cafeand 77 Redchurch St London E2 7Dj OPEN 10am-7pm, Wed-Sun. Closed Mon/Tues.

Daisy Lola

My daughter Daisy Lola O'Brien Newton. Born 18th April 2011.

ancient spider god

A rather dark drawing around my current insect obsession that emerged while playblasting turned into something even darker...

Insect Life

Well, some spaces have finally opened up in my work schedule and for the first time in many years, I'm able to do some constructive work in a loose sketchbook! Hoorah! We'll see how long this lasts though...

Here's one from the train journey this morning. A very amenable subject who never glanced up from his paper in 15 mins!

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Three Brothers animation. Death's design.

The Three Brothers animation was directed by Ben Hibon and executed with the Framestore London commercials team. I worked with Ben and supervised the project for Framestore. Ben Hibon, concept artist Alexis Liddel, and myself brought designs to the table. Here's the Framestore PR.

Here's a progression of designs for the Death character. The three explorations below are quite different in their fundamental parameters. Bony and gaunt hands found even at this early stage.

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The following drawings found the overall idea - how his robe would work, a little about his transparency / ethereality and facial structure and detail ideas.

and there was something about this one that we liked that spoke loads about his character. He became even creepier than this in the end. We took him far away from human characterization, he was a much more primal creature than this image suggests.

Here I tried to nail down more of the specifics, the hood etc. and started to touch on the all important look.

These were the final concepts which laid out in more detail the lighting and look, textures etc. Also how exactly shadows were to suggested and create forms.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Three Brothers animation. Colour Keys.

I guess 'tone keys' rather than 'colour keys' would be a better way to describe these. I made for them as a spring board for the compositors on the show, Adam Rowland and Russell Dodgeson, to build on. They did a beautiful job compositing on the film and their work oozes the sort of subtle tonal work we were after.