vikings

alessandra just posted some pictures from the viking dream sequence she and alfredo animate in flash on her blog http://pandaleina.blogspot.com/

alessandra is one of those all round good at everything animators
and shes way too young to be so good
and she has nice hats

Check out her short Marla which she made with some friends in college - its awesome

belgium photos

line testing - I'm pretty sure thats Nora animating in the background...

Camille took this picture of an ad for some weird foreign cartoon from a studio in America where she used to work
sure they are always having parties in Belgium.
look at that feckin sunshine. it was probably raining here that day. bah.
lionel
hermienne
caroline
elie
dani
see?
amazing detail , the perspective is so well done.
Marie Laure and Vannessa
A bit more impressive than High Street Kilkenny. Just a bit, mind.
Eve, flippin' them pages.


just to break em up I put the hungarian photos in the last post and the Belgian ones in here.

belgium and kecskemet

equipment from the days when men were men and boys were boys and cels were painted....



truth in advertising is refreshing.
nice studio

Martin Fagin shows em how its done.
No school like the old school.
Hungarian Zoetrope.

Candle lit Edit and Vera
hmmmm
Camille has a strange penchant for dummies.
Foreground - Fabs , Darko, Martin, Monkeyman Moore.
This Nicht will last for a thousand Beers!
Darko, Martin, missing link.
Monkey man tries to look like he is capable of inteligent thought, Edit and Hungarian animator converse politely in background.
Cool door handle in the Hungarian studio.


Camille gave me these photos she took in Kecskemet and in Belgium for the blog.
Nora spend the last week and a half with the crew in Belgium working on the animation, sounds like she had a good time and certainly the stuff id looking good from there.
She even animated a few scenes there too...which is nice.
Man, its only in photos I realise what a hairy monkey I am.

another day in hungaria

just for kicks i thought i'd write a post here in the airport in budapest ,
i'm enjoying the air conditioning and free wireless access!
its crazy hot here - 46 c !
and yet its been raining for weeks in ireland.

Camille joined us on this trip to help us sort out the approval process and Martin Fagin was here to help the clean up artists get off to a good start. I think Martins drawings are really inspiring them a lot!

Fabian and Darko are working very hard with the animators here , helping them get into the film.
its great to have them both on the project, Darko is even managing to animate some very nice small scenes in the mornings which is great, and Fabian is working hard teaching the crew the style and character models.

We had a long tough week going thru' tons of scenes that have been backed up in retakes here. we saw some lovely stuff from Jano and Nsuzi and other animators whos names i cannot spell(!) as well as superstar Andrej Radka, probably the best animator i've ever worked with just about. i'm kind of a nerdy fan of his scenes...he did beautiful stuff in Kilkenny and now hes working from Poland for Kecskemet and doing beautiful stuff.
the style is simple but tricky and some people have a hard time catching it...even experienced guys...so its great having animators like Andrej, Jano and Nsuzi to point to as an example.
as well as all the nice stuff from belgium that we are recieving now.....

we have recieved some nice composited and ink and paint scenes this week too and I have a long list of bgs to check tommorow..so its nice to be busy!


heres a work in progress panel from a comic (the bg in this panel is'nt finished yet) I'm working on right now that shows a bit of the back story to the film......not much time to work on it but its fun to have this ticking away .... maybe people who know something about the film can guess who these characters are....

news

Well, here are some lovely Bgs from the last few weeks.
The guy surrounded by Vikings there is a cartoon version of me. I get mashed. yeay.
The bgs above are painted by Lily, Adrien and Ross . Storyboards for all of those ones were by me , layouts by Telman Morina. Character posing by Barry Reynolds and Jean Baptiste Van Damme.

Things are getting quieter here in Kilkenny now, tommorrow Alessandra and Alfredo , our two Italian friends are finishing up the last sequence to be animated in Kilkenny.
They animated seq 042 where Brendan and Aisling first meet in traditional animation and then moved on to the Flash animated sections - the dreams, nightmares and so on. A classy job they did too. The Vikings made of Ink and the chalk drawings taht come to life are really cool already and with all the efx and stuff on them , I think they will look really classy on the big screen.
Martin, the clean up supervisor in Brazil sent them an email thanking them for doing such tidy and well marked up work on those traditional animation scenes, which was a nice boost for them. I think they will be happy to see that sequence all coloured up and completed.

All the Clean Bgs are finished and colour Bgs are being supervised by Adrien and Lily now until the end of July. The overseas studios are busy though and its great seeing nice stuff coming in everyday via Hobsoft. The animation in Hungary is going well, and the Belgian team are rockin' on as ever. We hoped they would visit us last weekend but a strike in the airport prevented it! Hopefully they will make it another time.
So thats it really... things are ticking along ....


BTW - watch out for the first episodes of SKUNK FU on BBC1 this July....hard to believe its actually starting to air!!! I have some documents in my desk beside me about Brendan and Skunk from 2002 ! Its amazing how long these things have been developing.