Sonic 2 escape ship reimagined in 3D

Fake Comic page illustration

This was a monthly drawing challenge at work, where the promt was as follows:

Beyond the cities, the fields and marshes, beyond the forests and abandoned towns, a wound had slowly opened. Perhaps if we had listened closely, we’d have heard the crows, seen the dogs, or otherwise noticed the restless strangeness in the air We may have heard the sound rising from the sealed caverns in the depths; the muffled pounding as the flood began to rise. And the flood changed everything.

Birthday Card in Silver Age style

I referenced an image of Uncle Ben for the image of my dad on the right.

Coming Soon; Shuffled (short film)

I've been working on a short film for some time now. I approached local filmmaker Markus Helmersson to collaborate. He wrote it, we developed it into this project. Markus is the writer/director, and I was the storyboarder/animator.

I mainly wanted a project so I could learn how to model and rig a human character in Maya, and this was that!
It is nice to have a project that I animated by myself, now its done!

Short film competition entry, Cine15. Theme: Motion

 The rules for this local film competition were simple, keep it at 15 seconds, and with a "motion" theme!

A few more birthday card illustrations for the wife and sister

Sonic 2 HD, Character Animation

I have been the lead character animator on the fan-project Sonic 2 HD for some time now, but I dont recall posting anything about it here, so here's some stuff!
This is the rough animation for the end-act pose. This is a new feature for the game, An end of act pose originally appeared in Sonic 3, but we've put one in Sonic 2, and here's my animation for it. I wanted to have the Super Peel Out in the game somewhere, and this was the perfect spot as it woudn't interfere with any gameplay.

Another Birthday Card

Here's the most recent birthday card for the missus

Tim Minchin's Storm, the graphic novel. A cover...

DC Turner and Tracy King invited me to draw an image for their graphic novel version of Tim Minchin's STORM. Having already worked on the animated version, I was already a huge fan of the project, how could I refuse?

Here's the book in all its hardback glory! 

I only really had 1 evening to complete my image so there wasn't as much time for exploratory design as I would normally allow, but here's some of my initial Tim character designs.. There was no time for Storm, I settled on her design immediately! 

Here's a blocking phase, trying to get work out were the main shadows in the image would fall .

I highly recommend the book. It's one thing listening to Tim recite it or watching the animation, it's another to have it in this format where you can really linger on each word and adsorb DCs wonderful illustrations. The hardback has some great behind the scenes content at the end too (although good luck getting one, there was only 2000 printed.)

I hope you liked my fake cover :D

New Chiptune for Ted Ed

We at Karrot made this Ted Ed video, which was directed by Henry Chung. I did a tiny bit of animation on it but I was also asked to compose a lil chiptune for the background music. You can't really hear it fully in the video so here's links to both things in their entirety! Enjoy!

3D photo capture of Chilli chilling out

Chilli Chilling by RickyEarl on Sketchfab

I've posted this before, but the texture disappeared so I deleted it. It's back again now so the blog post returns! This was made from 40 or so photos

Short chiptune, Dip Switch

Here's a short chiptune I composed as a theme tune for a podcast I was going to make once.

Winter 2013 Cartoon Network idents

Cartoon Network Winter Idents 2013 from Karrot Animation on Vimeo.

Here's the new set of idents we made at Karrot Animation for Cartoon Network!

More artwork for the Sonic website; Zone Zero. Aquatic Ruin Zone

I wanted to spend some time on some projects over this winter holiday but my brain wouldn't let me concentrate on the projects I wanted to do. That's always the way, isn't it? You can concentrate on anything except what you need to. So I found myself returning once again to my duties as the illustrator for the website, Zone Zero. Im working through all the levels in the 16BIT Sonic games. I'm currently upto Sonic 2, level 3; Aquatic Ruin Zone.

Dreamworks Puss In Boots: The Game. Some of my work for it....

I wasn't able to post about this for ages, and then I totally forgot about it. And now Blitz games has shut down, I think the time is right.

This was the second time I worked with DC Turner and Kershoot (after Storm, and it wouldn't be the last time either...). Myself and DC did all the 2D cut-scenes in the game. Blitz wanted them in a similar stylization to the Storm vid. I remember I found it quite nerve racking sending off some of my storyboards to Dreamworks and waiting for the feedback...They approved them with only tiny changes which was very relieving/satisfying! Getting the OK from Dreamworks? Feels good!

SO here's some of the stuff i worked on. I only have the files for the first cut-scene, (which is a shame cos I was rather fond of some of the later art). These were designed to be animated, and some of them are just the backgrounds without any characters on them, but you get the idea anyway.

Put your foot down and DRIVE!

I was playing a lot of Driver: San Francisco when I started this, even though it has been out for a few years. Still some of the most satisfying car physics around.

You like dags?

Phew! I've been super busy recently which for some reason meant I started loads of projects without finishing the previous one. This means I have a folder of unfinished art, all begging for attention. Slowly, but surely, the folder will be emptied! This one had been sat in that folder collecting digital dust for some time, I thought it was about time it saw some attention.

Some time ago I bought a Praxinascope and had been meaning to make my own animations for it. One of the reasons I have less time these days is because of this asshole so I thought it pertinent for her to be my subject.
Where's the challenge you ask? Why bother repeating an exercise from the first year of uni? Well, I couldn't find any reference on dog runs with 10 frames (the amount in the praxinoscope), and I really didnt want to adapt a reference of a 6 frame run to a 10 and just add more tweens, because there's no logical place to add them, without favouring an abitary pose. An dog run has no real keys, they're ALL keys cos everything happens at different times. So, I made my own 10 frame cycle. I hope you like it, I'll add footage of it in the praxinoscope as soon as I can get a printout of it to stick in there. Hi-res but slower version here

Some mentions...

Sarah And Duck.

Karrot Animations very own show, Sarah and Duck, is now being shown on CBeebies in the UK. You can see it on BBCiplayer. I animated on the episode, Cake Bake.

Scooby Forever.

Here's some work for Cartoon Network that we did at Karrot Animation. They wanted Scooby Doo set into Scandinavian landmarks. I did some of the concept/design work as well as some modelling/texturing/animation.

Cartoon Network Scooby Forever Promo from Karrot Animation on Vimeo.

Embarrassing Self Indulgence

This will be the only post I do of this sort, I promise :)

I have loads of drawings from when I was growing up, and here is a small selection. I think journeys are fun so here we go...

British Animation Awards super winner!

Heads up....

Here's a sting we animated for the British Animation Awards. After we did that, it won best sting! I animated sheep, but all the good stuff was done by Ruf.



I don't live here anymore, so Ruf does all my blog posts.

Love from Ricky RUFUS!

(This post was blogged by Rufus, who temporarily gained control of my motor functions. I was able to shake off the Blacklock parasite that time.)

Jekyll and Hyde redesigns

In this new (non-existant) animated series of the literary classic, Jekyll is a genius schoolboy who can temporarily alter his appearance making it devolve into a neanderthallic state using only the school science lab. He was inspired by the London riots of 2011 and goes on rampages.

Hand, nose, ears, and eyes studies

Cartoon Network idents

Here's some idents I worked on with the talented team at Karrot :)

Cartoon Network Idents by Karrot from Karrot Animation on Vimeo.

Post one...

I wasn't actually going to post any of this stuff (there's going to be a lot of it incoming). But Tegan told me to. It's probably a good idea...there's hopefully going to be a steady progression of improvement!

Quick life drawing!

A few quick sketches from the final life drawing session at Karrot Animation. The studio has grown so much that we no longer have the room for it!

Chemical Plant Zone

My newest illustration for the website, Zone Zero. I'm working through one image for each level in the 16BIT games. 

Just Chillin'

This was probably for something at one point. I dunno. I forget.

A Badly Animated Re-post

An image for the AIB jumble blog, the topic was GRAD FILMS. THIS IMAGE IS SO TOTALLY LOADED WITH MEANING! OH MY DAYS! See? See? Sally is trying to coax Wolf into improving himself via the ol' animation pencil, and Wolf is showing off, going for it, holding a wilting rose representing what he was and what he will become. OH MY STARS THAT IS SO DEEP.

Sonic CD fan art competition

The Sega Blog just ran a Sonic CD fan art comp. The rules were simple, depict a scene using the Mega CD game, Sonic CD, as a basis. Here's my entry which won me a copy of the game (which has just been re-released on XBOX XBLA) and a soundtrack CD.

NEARLY a pitch...

Whilst working with the wonderful team at Karrot, I thought it'd be a good idea to throw a pitch their way. It was an idea for an animated kids series.
It would've been a series with the same tone as The Animals of Farthing Wood in the way that main characters would actually die and it would be quite dark in places.
It wasn't a full blown pitch, it was more of an opportunity to see if they guys at Karrot liked the idea enough for me to develop it.
Then the movie Attack the Block happened...

My series would've focused on the adventures of a group of kids making their way across London under a full blown alien invasion. The similarities between my idea, dubbed SE15, and Attack the Block were pretty superficial. But they both feature teens against aliens and they're both in London.
I wanted mine to be a pretty real London, with council estates and everything, but UNLIKE attack the block, my characters were not assholes. They were just innocent kids trying to reach their parents on the other side of a semi destroyed London.
The main draw of my show, was that the kids were practically invisible to the aliens. The aliens saw pretty much as we do, i.e relatively poorly, but on top of normal vision they could "see" brain patterns. Brain patterns that only existed in adults, making them far easier to kill. Once night fell, the kids were basically invisible. The overall story would've depicted the kids being the ones responsible destroying the aliens.

In order to have enough images to show the guys at Karrot, I enlisted the help of Tegan (to design the girl and the kid), Rufus (to design their car and alien attackers), Marc (to paint a background of London) and Ibs (to creat a fox for me) (everything else I did on the weekend before). Everyone did a fantastic job, and I'd like to again thank everyone for their work, I really appreciate it.

Here's the pitch slides I used which you can click on to view. There's more after the break...

Making a graduation film...

My graduation film is now live in slightly higher res on youtube now too.

Instead of talking about the whole process of making this film, I thought it'd be easier if I just made our team blog public for all to see. From there you can go back in time to our first posts when the project was just a concept. I started the blog over the summer before term in order to get a head start. I knew we had a lot to do on the film so I wanted to invite the team to start early if they wanted to. I think everyone did. I wanted to get the storyboards and animatic done before term started, which I did. But as you'll see, the version I planned over the summer was almost entirely unused (mostly because it was utterly arse). SO we mostly went back to the version that I pitched in the 2nd year.
I haven't edited the blog in any way, and it was never meant for public consumption. As a result it's chock full of bad language and insults, and some pretty bad drawings (mostly from me). I hope you enjoy it!

My grad film; Badly Animated now live

Here's my grad film which I directed. I made it with a team at the AUCB, full credits in the video link.



You can read more about it here

More Storm

See previous post first.

This was it's standing on the first morning...

After only a few hours, I thought this was pretty amazing, but it went on to do much more.
There was a time when it was the #1 top favourited video in film and animation for the month, and at one point, it had over 50 honors (unfortunately I failed to get a screen grab at that point).
the film now stands at way over half a million views, with over 17,000 "likes" and over 3,000 comments. I think that's pretty good for a 10 minute long beat poem!

I still find it absolutely amazing that we are living at a point in time when you can make a respectable looking film at home. A few of the shots that you see in Storm I made on my crappy old PC, that threatened to choke and die every time I tried to preview what I'd done. The space shot and the one that precedes it for example.
DC asked me to make it look as appealing/beautiful as possible. As he asked this, I knew I wanted to include a penumbra, which also meant working out how to do it (luckily I'd already been thinking about it for a while and wanted an excuse to try it out)

Its actually really easy (create a duplicate of what ever you want to cast a shadow, make it black, then add a radial blur (on zoom). There. That's the only trick I've got up my sleeve. Now everyone knows how I did it. I guess I'll be unemployed now.)

I'm still working with director DC Turner at the moment on something new, which I'll be able to post about later in the year.

Until then, I'll try and post some blog posts that I plan to do for fun...

Storm the Movie, online in the morning!

For those that don't know, Tim Minchin is a comedian (a fantastic one in my opinion), and he recorded a beat poem called Storm. I've been working on the animated version of it for a few months now and it's finally on youtube (2014 EDIT: It is also now a graphic novel. You can read about my small involvement here)


 I was heavily involved in the making so it's hard to quantify what my actual job was, but there was some animation, compositing, storyboarding and a bit of character design.

T'was directed by DC Turner, and produced by Tracy King. Making it has been an absolute joy and I'm so happy that iot's finally going up for everyone to see. It was one of those projects where the end goal was never far from sight, but there was ALWAYS that one more badnik jumping up from that final bridge to prevent you making it. And yet, it was never anything less than a delight to work on. I am very grateful to have been a part of this project and I'd like to extend my thanks to DC and Tracy.

Clapham Life Drawing 2

A second helping of some of my life drawings from the Clapham sessions. It seems I can't seem to settle on a style...

UPDATE 22/8/2011: This class no longer runs. 

Emerald Hill Zone

Being so busy at work has meant I may have neglected my duties as site artist for the website Zone Zero. Well here's my next piece, Emerald Hill Zone. The first from Sonic 2 and so my first to feature the deadly parasite, Tails.