The circle is complete

This is a documentary made a year ago when I was working in Cardiff. The company "Cyfle" were celebrating their 21 year anniversary and had a documentary made. It goes through two animation course they were running, one which I was on, and an animation day they had with guess speakers including Joanna Quinn (Girls Night Out, Britannia), JaKE (Prodigy, Mighty Boosh), Mike Ploog (Shrek, Ghost Rider) and Richard Williams (The animators survival kit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Happy memeories, except for my hair :S worked so hard didn't even have time for a hair cut :P

Cyfle Documentary: Digital Animation Schemes from Cyfle on Vimeo.

And now after a year working in London I'm going back to Cardiff to work on a tv show called "Happy Valley" (Cwm Teg). It's with a company called Dinamo. As much as I'll miss London I am looking forward to going back to a company where most of my friends from uni and past jobs work :D

I find some time

Despite it being a very busy time in work and having freelance jobs on top of that I've managed to find some time over the last few months to do some images for myself, as well as picking up old "skills" (or lack of!).

For about two months I was without any internet, so to fill my time I thought it'd be cool to try building maquettes again, seeing as how I haven't tempted it since my first year of uni just about getting a passing grade! The photos below are off Red and Neville from "Moon Pirates", I made them over two seperate weekends. Red went alot better than Neville! I used way to much plastecine on poor old new who is now cracking and tilting under his own weight.

They're definately better than my last attempt, which isn't saying much, but they were really fun to make, might have a new hobby! In my internet down time I also did a few other drawings, vectors etc, here's a choice. I didn't want to make one long list of images you won't take in ;)

Life Drawing

1-2 Minutes

5 - 10 Minutes
20 Minutes

I've started going back to Life Drawing, these are three sessions worth. I'm starting to feel myself get into the rhythum of drawing neud models again after a long gap of not. Anatomy and theory are slowly creeping back into my mind and so far it's been really enjoyable. I'm pretty much sticking to pencils, and if I'm feeling ambitous, a pen, that hasn't changed since uni. Perhaps one day I'll cut loose and use the markers, pastels, paints, crayons, and inks I bring with me every week, but for now I'm stuck in my ways, which works for me as all I really want to do is improove my construction, sense of weight and proportions (still having a little trouble).

Test, test and more testing

I recently did a number of tests for a flash designer's job. The first was a small cowboy game, but for some reason I can't get it working on blogger but you can have a go here if you like. It took me a day to design, draw animate and program, so excuse the crappy line quality and easiness of the game. One interview later I then had to proove myself further by making some graphics with a "comedy gold" theme.

But competition was fierce and had to do another test around the theme of "Rich Jetsetters". I didn't mind as the company looked a great place to work and I liked the artwork that was being produced.

And I got the job :D Definately worth it. After months of "Great work but we're not hiring" and "we'll contact you if we get some work" I've finally got a stimulating, creative enviroment to go to and get paid for it!

Now what follows is an art dump of stuff I've done recently, enjoy.

Attempt at George

I've been reading John K's blog for a couple of years now, as I'm sure a lot of people have, but this is the first time I've tried drawing one of his characters following his instructions.



I used Flash to ink the lines on seperate layers trying to pay attention to where the line needed to be thicker/thinner as depicted by the rough and also trying to pay attention to the construction. Below I've coloured the lines to show their different layers, like Katie Rice did with her image. But when I'm animating in Flash I like to put the head in it's own symbol to try minimise the features moving around the face, so I also broke the head up into it's own system of layers. Also the feet weren't drawn on the rough, so I gave him some socks :)


I also found a coloured version of George in the same get up on John's blog so I coloured him for fun.

For a first go I don't think I did too bad. But when I compared it to the one Katie Rice did I did see some errors :S If anyone wants to give feedback, please do!

Moon Pirates Trailer

Yep, it's almost done!

Red and Nev

I've been animating almost non stop to keep on schedule! But I needed a break from it as I have succesfully found a new flat with my girlfriend and two friends to move down to London, so that means finding a new job which means updating my portfolio. Plus by doing artwork related to my current projects I don't feel guilty about neglecting them ;)

Moon Pirates poster

A poster I made with two other artist's on my course, James and Sarah. I did the background and layout. The poster is going to be displayed at Cannes Film Festival in the Short Film's Tent. Take a look at the Moon Pirates blog for more info.

Colour keys

So Moon Pirates is well into production, we seem to be on schedule but at the same time there's still so much work to trawl through! Like colour keys! I've been continuously looking at animation backgrounds and photographs trying to come up with a palette and technique that will work well with the film. So far I've put in this effort, but more can be seen at the Moon Pirates production blog. Don't be frightened by the picture of me and the other scurvy pirates!







© Allyn Thomas and Cyfle 2008

Moon Pirates - the next film

So it was decided by a panel that out of six fresh great ideas from six different artists, that mine would be the one taken forward and made into a short animated film. Weeeeeee, so the stressful journey is undertaken to get it all completed. The other four guys and one gal working on it have already hit the ground running and have improved on my ideas and artwork considerably.
These are images I put together to pitch the idea. Don't think I'll post anything else about it until after it's finished in about 10 weeks.