A weekend with Curse @ Minecon

Okay so I've been really slow on the blogging front lately. A good few weeks ago now, Curse invited me to help them cover the very special gaming event that is Minecon 2012 in Disneyland Paris.

It was an amazing weekend of Disney-Minecraft mashups, interviewing exhibitors, late-night editing and  cardboard square heads.

My favourite video from the weekend is below. It was edited like a trailer, and shows various highlights from around the place. Check it out!

Wonders of Life with Prof. Brian Cox coming soon...

Check out the teaser trailer below for the fantastic forthcoming series, Wonders of Life. I worked on the graphics for this programme for over six months. Can't wait to see the results! 

A spot of graphics for Brian Cox

I'm very excited to say that I'm currently working on the graphics for the next BBC series of 'Wonders' presented by Professor Brian Cox, with the lovely gang at BDH in Bristol. Safe to say there are some true Wonders coming up, and I get to work alongside some very talented people.

To find out more about what 'Wonders of Life' is all about, you better follow the Professor himself on Twitter.

Stock video clip picked for free download of the week...?

That's right, even though its such an extremely specific piece of content, stock media archive pond5.com have apparently chosen my shot of an M3A2 Halftrack as their free download clip of the week. Of course, it means I won't get paid for it, but for what its worth, why not!



So, if for some reason you want or need a patriotically American shot of a WWII armoured vehicle manoeuvring in slow motion through a cloud of dust, you better download it now.

It's right here on Pond 5's homepage.

Lumen Soup: Production complete!

It seems that I haven't posted on here in quite some time...however, as Lumen Soup is pretty much done, I'm making a comeback to my individual blog (but will continue to update Lumen Soup's blog too...so many commitments!)

So here's an overview...

The Lumen Soup project has pretty much taken up all of my time since Christmas, so head there to see how we've been filling up the time!

In a nutshell, we did some visual tests:

And some concept art:





Until we eventually ended up with a whole bunch of digital assets:






And after projecting, acting and filming the whole thing:





Ended up with something like this:

Lumen Soup

Follow this link to Lumen Soup to have a look at the beginnings of our final project.
Here's a clip of some of our early tests. We are creating an animated live performance piece...


First Projector Tests from Livvy Brewer on Vimeo.

Summer work...

So, it seems I haven't posted anything on here since before the summer. To be honest, most of my own creative work has been on hold during the holidays, except for Lumen Soup, which is the start of my 3rd year collaborative project with Livvy Brewer...

Other than that, I have done a little bit of community outreach (is that the right term? Probably not...), including running a small drop-in animation studio at the Basildon Festival on behalf of the Basildon Arts Collective and Basildon District Council. This was extremely successful, over the two days I introduced hundreds of people to traditional 2D and stop-motion animation.

Photography by Darren Chaplin

  
Many people popped in to my animation studio to just have a peek or to contribute a frame or two towards the 2D animation or stop motion film. As well as many children, parents and grandparents, I was visited by artists such as Aden Hynes , and also got a bit of help from Stephen Metcalfe MP.

I've been having a bit of fun with my new Canon 7D, which has replaced my 40D because of its HD video capabilities. I also grabbed some fat memory cards and a Rode mic just in time for the War & Peace show.

(The quality of Blogger-uploaded videos is AWFUL, by the way. I'm heading to Vim/Tube next time)

And, on impulse I grabbed the 7D on that night when they said on the news that there would be lots of shooting stars. Here's the time lapse night sky over Lancing for about 3 hours...

I did a little bit of standard photography in Lancing and Basildon. You get over 9000 points for correctly guessing which is which! It's not that hard if you look closely...

Combine my new camera with my annual desire to put my 1/16th army to use, and you end up with a few videos, a few gigs of strange model photography and a couple of juddery After Effects compositions that feel a bit Attack of the Cones in style, but with more Olive Drab. I hope I don't ever get in a spot of bother for telling people that I do 'Model' photography.

This is a rough source image (It was not my intention to advertise Kid Robot, but hey), for capturing a model at various angles in a stop-motion kind of way, to be composited in After Effects. That rubbish crinkley blue screen is actually my old apron from Asda, which would seem like a bad idea if it was ever actually used...

Also over the summer I have run a few animation and game design workshops which have all been very successful. So, from now on it's back to my own creative work...

IN THE NEAR FUTURE...

In the near future, the escalation of transport congestion must be countered by a new traffic control system. Programmed to evolve by calculating more effective methods of control, it concludes that the extermination of mankind is the only way to resolve the problem.
With an army of 5 billion robotic cones, barriers and bollards, it coordinates a devastating blow to human civilisation which is only the start of the massacre of mankind...

Working together with my production team and a small army of extras, we created this film in just under four months.