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.

Life Drawing at Clapham

I've been going to the fantastic life drawing sessions in Clapham. After looking at Tegan's recent life drawing, I realized how much I missed it. I also like all the life drawing that Emilie posts, wonderful stuff.

So here's some of my stuff. There's loads more but scanning is a real pain...

The Christmas LUSH commercial

I worked at Karrot Animation on this commercial. We used old Victorian etchings, and meticulously cut them up into animatable parts. Here in this video are the parts that I animated. Follow the link above for the full commercial.



Working on this was an absolute blast, and I hope to return to Karrot to continue work on their children's series when production starts

Lush credits
Directed by Tom Werber
Production Team:
Harj Bains
Rufus Blacklock
Ricky Earl

Lift in Maya

Been a loooong time since my last post, I've been very busy animating at Karrot Animation for an advert for LUSH. I'll post my bits on that as son as it's done. In the mean time, here's a short animation exercise made in Maya

JULY 11 SECOND CLUB

Julys competition was a toughie. Very subdued dialogue and not much scope for gags....

Scrap Brain Zone

The sixth in my level pieces for website Zone: 0 


The final artwork I'm doing for Sonic 1, onto Sonic 2 now.

This is the furthest I've deviated from the original designs so far. But seen as though the music from Scrap Brain is so obviously inspired by Bladerunner, I wanted to pay a little homage too, though hopefully it's still recognizable as the original level.

EDIT: Doryan in the comments asked to see some sketches that led up to this. So I dug through some old hard drives to find the original PSD. Under all the layers was my original sketches underneath! UNFORTUNATELY, they are not very different from what you see. I settled on this idea immediately. This was early in my career as an artist and I had not yet been convinced by the importance of thumb-nailing  loadsa ideas! So all you see is this one idea evolving slightly.

Sorry, Doryan. If you were looking for cool images, you wont find them here. All you'll find here is poorly drawn compositional sketches!
In fact the only thing that really changed was the curve..


I initially started with this composition. Much closer on Sonic, and an exaggerated curve to the landscape.

Here you can see I zoomed out a little, but kept the curve.


Here's where I lost the curve...

And this is the final sketch I used as a basis for the piece.

Thanks a lot to Doryan for asking! It was fun to look at this one again, and I was very glad to see that there was loads of stuff I'd improve on if I was doing it today.

The grad film that never was...S.E15 STORYBOARD

Before I pitched Badly Animated, I was also toying with the idea of making this. It's about living in the city as a kid, and how the urban jungle becomes a playground. It's is also about how an event can end your childhood. The former is semi-autobiographical, the latter is not.

Corfe Castle

My ladyfriend's parents are visiting for a week, so day trips abound! During one to Corfe Castle, I ran off and drew this.

I added colour later, but I prefer the ink-only one. I've included both here just to justify spending time on it!

More Zone:0 artwork! SPRING YARD ZONE, LABYRINTH ZONE and STAR LIGHT ZONE!

I am doing one piece of artwork for each level in the Sonic games for the website Zone:0. Here's Spring Yard Zone recreated in 3D!


Here's the actual level



And here's Labyrinth Zone...

And Star Light Zone...

The Making Of Badly Animated

There's work in this "making of" by myself, Tegan Jephcott, Mark Storer and Alex Cameron

Artwork for Zone: 0

Zone: 0 is a Sonic the Hedgehog website, a pretty well made one too. A real labour of love for what at the moment is one guy. I thought I'd offer my services as site artist. I am doing a piece for each level. So far, Green Hill Zone and Marble Zone!

P.S I painted the far backdrop on green hill, but completely lost interest in doing the same for marble zone. So I ripped it from the game instead

CG Showreel

Still a work in progress, needs a little more polish....

Saturday Night at the Movies

Drawing from the flicks

Shawshank, Full Metal Jacket, and Ol' Jimmy Stewart, Rear Window

Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom competition

I really really really wanted the joystick for this game! So I entered the competition to win one. I had to design a character for the Capcom Vs. series fighting games. I figured it'd be judged by men so I went with the hot chick angle. Most of the entries thus far are all generic anime guys with troubled pasts looking for some kind of revenge, some even with big swords. I knew I didn't want to take this route.

I always loved the idea of Gen from the Street Fighter Alpha series and Street Fighter IV. You could hit all three punches or all three kicks and he'd change his stance, giving you access to completely different movesets. I wanted to extend this to 3 stances, one for offense, one for defense and one to take the piss out of your opponent (like Dan. It's such a great idea, having a character to show off how good you are that you can win with such a weak character with more taunts than actual moves)
That got me thinking, what kind of person would have these three separate fighting styles? Someone with a split personality! The mask idea was to give a visible cue to the change. I originally had her store the spare masks on her back, but after a conversation with a friend I came up with this far more pervy idea. I didn't really want to do the whole sexy girl thing, but was talked into it! I WANTED TO WIN DAMMIT!

Well, I did win, came third, meaning I got the stick, a copy of the game and a signed poster. Pretty damn awesome, there was some stiff competition

Mini sketch dump

Sketch Dump...soon?

Maybe a sketch dump is overdue...I'll do one soon...probably.

Lip Sync CG animation to music

I love this song, so decided to animate part of it. The Matches, "Between Halloweens"
CG animation done in maya using the MooM rig, everything else done in Photoshop and After Effects.