Illustration Friday: Worn

when i was a teenager, i obeyed the strict, unspoken code that was handed down telepathically for generations.

new shoes = lame
worn shoes = cool

scuff those shoes on the pavement, immediately!

Screenings: Dungog and Little Big Shots

Crooked is screening at Dungog Film Festival this week, in the Mini Flicks session on Friday afternoon.
Dungog sounds like an amazing festival, running over 4 days in a small country town in NSW. Wish i could be there! Check out their cute festival trailer


Back here in Melbourne, Crooked and Lucille are screening at the Little Big Shots Children's Film Festival, which is kicking off next week. The festival screens here June 3 - 8, before touring to over 20 venues around Australia including the Adelaide Festival Centre (July 16-18), the Sydney Opera House (Sept 9-13).
I'll be popping in to some of the screenings at ACMI next week, to check out some films and do some Q&A's (eep!)

Please Say Something

Set in the distant future, David O’Reilly's 'Please Say Something' is a 10 minute short about a troubled relationship between a Cat and Mouse. The film is told in 23 episodes of exactly 25 seconds each.
This won the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlinale. Not best short animation, best short film! O'Reilly is a brave film maker, and the way he plays with narrative structure is refreshing. Ultimately, this is great storytelling. Watch! watch!

Contagious

That old lurgy's going round again.
For Illustration Friday

Married!

Yep, we've gone and done it!
Thanks to all our awesome family and friends who partied with us like there was no tomorrow!

The Playground

Last year I got to animate on a great project for ABC Kids Online. The Playground is an interactive world for preschoolers, full of colourful characters and games to play.
It recently won an AIMIA award for best children's website. Well done to the ABC Kids Team and all the talented people who designed, animated, coded and created that crazy music :)

Flickerfest - Best of Melbourne Screening

My film Crooked is showing in Melbourne this week, as part of Flickerfest's 'Best of Melbourne' Screening.
It's on at 7pm this Thursday the 26th, at the Kino Dendy cinemas on Collins Street.
Check out the program.

Legendary - For Illustration Friday

Here's a quick watercolour of Bob. With a name like Bob how could you not be destined for greatness?

Illustrator Profile: Jon Klassen

Every so often I see an artist that makes me want to throw down my pencil, throw out my sketchbooks, and pursue a career in accounting.
Mrs Black, my uninspiring year 9 maths teacher made sure that would never happen. Thanks a lot Mrs Black!

Melodrama aside, the work of Jon Klassen is rocking my socks at the moment.
And rather than making me want to commit career suicide, it's making me want to plaster his beautiful works all over my walls.
He was an artist on the soon-to-be-released stop-motion animated feature, Coraline, where he worked on visual development of props and sets. Check out the development drawings on his website - interesting!


He also blogs, and sells his prints at Nucleus Gallery, just incase you all want to buy me a print, wink wink!

bear for a baby

One of my friends just had a baby, so I decided to make her a little painting to hang in her nursery.
I’d been doing digital stuff for so long, I forgot how much fun it is to actually paint. With a real paintbrush! Paint! And paper!

I don’t really have a space set up for painting, with my desk space engulfed by the all powerful iMac. So here’s my messy set up on the kitchen table.
Yes, that is an ice-cube tray that has rediscovered life as a palette.
I soon found out that round tables were not made for painting, as I kept on nearly knocking the paint off the edge of the table.
First sketched, then painted a few of the teddy’s little limbs with gouache. This was the first time I’d used gouache in years, and I like it! It’s dries so clean and flat.
Well, I painted the rest so quickly, I didn’t stop to take another pic. And here he is framed and ready to go.

Hope you like it little Luka!

Lucille Screenings update

The Adelaide Film Festival is starting this weekend, and they've kindly invited my short, Lucille, to screen as part of the Animation Passport program. Curated by Eddie White from the People's Republic of Animation, it looks to be a killer program! I'm pretty humbled to be screening my film in such good company.

If you haven't seen these films yet, here's your chance! There are some real gems in this animated mix-tape
The films screening are: Skhizein, KJFG No.5, A Coffee Vending Machine & His Sword, I Met the Walrus, Lucille, Madame Tutli-Putli, Oktopodi, and Western Spaghetti (which I recently featured right here)

Festival screenings for Lucille have also just been confirmed at:
BUFF International Children and Young People's Film Festival in Malmö, Sweden, and Tricky Women's Film Festival in Vienna

Thanks adelaide, Malmö and Vienna!!

Illustration Friday: Time

A late entry for Illustration Friday's 'Time' topic. Even I can see the irony in that. Perhaps i should've drawn something about lateness.
Anyway, here's Public Enemy Robot. In the house.

Victorian Bushfires

Sad times here in Victoria. It's hard to even imagine the scale of the devastation these fires have caused. Please give to the Australian Red Cross Victorian bushfire appeal if you can.
Read news and eye-witness accounts at ABC News

Western Spaghetti

Do you like spaghetti? I like spaghetti. Especially this very clever
stop-motion animation cooked up by PES.

Flickerfest Screening

Flickerfest, Sydney's summer outdoor film festival, is starting this weekend, and my very short short, Crooked, will be screening in Australian Program #3.

If, lovely reader, you happen to live in Sydney and want to check it out, it screens at 9pm on Sunday 11th and Monday 12th. I will be at the Sunday night screening if you want to say hello.

Munich

Here’s a bunch of photos from my week at the Munich international Festival of Film Schools, where Crooked was screening.

Beautiful Munich!

checking in at the festival lounge – the festival staff were awesome

The audience at the Film museum, where all the screenings were held

After every film, there was a Q & A with the director. I think we were all really nervous at first, but the hosts were fantastic, and asked great questions.
I don’t know what the hell I’m saying here… I must be talking about my great boxing skills.
Tour of the Bavarian film studio, of which the most interesting part was... wardrobe of course!

Apparently, most of the wartime uniforms were originals from the time. creepy!

Nothing remained of the pancake with almonds and apple mousse,apart from memories and an oily pan. Yum!


Of course, the real highlight was meeting directors from all over the world, and seeing some damn good films..
one of my favourites was a film called And Thou Shalt Love, by the talented Chaim Elbaum. Check out the trailer:

Kids and Lucille at Fed Square

I forgot to post this pic up earlier, but here is the screening of Lucille at Federation Square.
Just before my film came on, a huge crowd of schoolkids swarmed in and sat down to watch, which is great, as they were a good audience.

It's interesting what they laugh at!
One thing's for sure, kids think bums are very funny! :)

Screenings in Beijing, Bradford and Munich!

Is it really November? How did that happen?

'Crooked' is showing at a bunch of festivals over the next 2 weeks.
So, if you're reading this and you just happen to be in Beijing, you can catch it at the International Student Film & Video Festival.
It's also screening at the lovely Bradford Animation Festival in the UK, where you can see it this Thursday and Friday in the Short Shorts program.

But the most exciting news is that this weekend, I'll be flying to Munich to attend the Munich International Festival of Film Schools. It's one of the top student festivals, and will be screening 44 films from around the world.

That is damn excitement! :D

Now.. what am I going to read on that 27 hour flight from Australia...

Ecstatic City

My animated film Lucille is currently screening as part of Chris Doyle's installation, Ecstatic City, for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, on until the end of the week.

You can step into little "miniplexes", built right over the water outside the National Gallery and check out some works by local filmmakers.

Here's a blurb from the festival website:
"Part temporary architecture and part video projection, Ecstatic City is situated in the moat of the NGV International. Designed as a kind of 'miniplex marina', viewers can explore the site and take in some remarkable and refreshing video works that have been created by some of Australia's great moving image-makers."

Strings

The topic on Illustration Friday this week is strings! Beloved strings!
So, how could i not "cheat" and show a few stills from my animation Lucille (about a girl in a guitar shop)?

I always like seeing other people's process, so here's a few before and after shots, comparing the original rough storyboard to the final animation.







There's something in the immediacy of a rough sketch that sometimes can't be recreated. I like the rocker's face in that last storyboard sketch more than the final shot. It's much more menacing! But I ended up going for a more deadpan look. (It went better with the actor's performance)

Any Melbournians reading this? You can see this animation on the big screen at Fed Square this Thursday (the 16th), with my other film Crooked and all the other films nominated for ATOM awards this year. They're on 7:30 to 9pm, and it's FREE. See you there!

happy weekend! :)