My Top 20 Films of the last decade.

In no particular order:

1. Gladiator

2. Downfall

3. 28 Days Later

4. The Worlds Fastest Indian

5. God Grew Tired of Us

6. Black Book

7. Pans Labrynth

8. Signs

9. Zodiac

10. Up

11. The Descent

12. Avatar

13. A History of Violence

14. No Country for Old Men

15. Adaptation

16. Blow

17. Hangover

18. Jurassic Park 3

19. Catch Me if You Can

20. Band of Brothers (had to be included)

A New Year and new opportunities!!

Just like to wish everyone a happy New Year! Lets hope as we move away from the noughties, we find more peace, fun and excitment for our future.. that or we discover how to travel to other planets!! Yes please!

On another note, I’ve successfully landed a role as Junior 3D Generalist at The Mill! I’ll be working on a host of British TV series and hopefully the occasional film. I’ll keep the blog updated with my adventures moving to London and starting out at The Mill mid January.

Featured in 3D World Issue 124

Make sure you all go out and buy a copy of this months 3D World issue 124 Christmas 2009.. my work has been published on pages 14 + 15.
Note: There’s a small printing error – the title and Artist name are the wrong way around. Doh!

Very exciting to see my work in 3D World again, lets hope it generates a little bit of buzz on the job front!

Prosthetics

I just stumbled onto this video on YouTube and it really got my heart pumping – when you see the face blink and look around, oh wow that was impressive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Z9jmEulcM&feature=PlayList&p=44C5988924A967AE&index=13

and here’s another – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y78EotzZhY&feature=related

I have to admit I’m a sucker for anything that’s done on film this way – it still looks so much more believable. If things don’t work out with CG and Visual Effects, this is definitely a path I’d like to learn more about.

Clash of the Titans Teaser

Wow this is definitely worth watching!
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810081563/trailer

I think its time I went and rented the original 1981 version.  That said I’ve always been fascinated with Greek myths and legends and have many books on the matter.. however it shocked me recently when my girlfriend decided to dress as Medussa for Halloween – nearly no one was able to say – ahh yes Medussa, most just showed a blank face of unsure. Lets hope this movie serves as some sort of education you swines!

Review of A Christmas Carol

Jim Carrey as Scrooge

So, just caught a screening last night, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good this movie was! I’ve seen most of the animated films of recent in their 3D format, and before this one, Coraline stood out as the most impressive (successful) 3D movie. However that title definitely goes to A Christmas Carol now.

Firstly I want to address the concerns people had about the film looking like it was made using an old computer console. I too was disappointed with the first trailer but when I saw the extended trailer in 3D in front of another movie I was gobsmacked. It looked ten times better – the depth and lighting really came to life.

What impressed me most about the 3D was that it was finally being used as a tool to tell the story, you did indeed feel like at times you were on a ride and you were right there taking part – some might dislike this though, personal preference really. The snow ah man the snow was so good! Like to hear what others thought of the snow Actually I came out thinking ohh Zemeckis is getting more creative, he’s actually doing things which I doubt everyday cinema goers will like, some stuff felt really surreal and this was helped by the use of the 3D.

Another memorable element to the film was the use of ambient noise in numerous darker scenes, so few films give you the time to appreciate whats happening but this film didn’t speed along (other than a few chase like scenes that is), it took the time to explore a moment and then all the ambient sounds came to life as though you were in a theatre. I noticed this during spooky moments and in most of the conversations in Scrooges office.. this worked to great effect!

The animation is 10x better than Polar Express, finally the characters feel apart of the artistic world Zemeckis has designed – no more stiff motion here. I also thought that the hair and skin was beautifully rendered. There was the occasional scene where I thought the bump/disp maps were too heavy which made me think they were all dried up, but this was only evident from time to time. The lighting was one of my fav parts, the guys at Image Movers really paid attention to the original sketches I think and when you see the street scenes, I swear it looks like a moving painting from ye olde days. Great Work! Very pleasing to the eye. Jim Carrey was well cast and I have to say that he really helped sell the Scrooge character. It was great to see such extended character scenes, this seems a rare thing these days in animation – there were some really lengthly conversations which I loved!

I’m still not convinced this film will go down well with the younger audiences – cheap ride tricks aside. It is NOT light hearted, in my opinion its quite close to Dickens book. There are some very dark and scary moments and the dialogue is very close to the books thus some might find parts hard to comprehend. 5 stars to Zemeckis for deciding not to modernise the story in any way or form – period piece indeed. That said, I really wish I could have seen it from a kids perspective rather than an adults.

Christmas is coming!

Whilst the job hunt continues, I thought I’d start working on a new rendered still to test my mudbox-maya workflow and to improve my 3d hair/fur skills.
Here’s the concept piece I am working from…

Coca Cola Santa 1950's

I’ve always had a thing for the coca cola commisioned artwork from the 1940′s and 50′s and so this was a no brainer when deciding a style for my santa.

Here’s a mishmash of current work in progress:

Click to Enlarge

Invictus Trailer and New Moon TV Spot

Ok, I’m really hyped up to see Clint Eastwoods Invictus. It looks to match politics and the game of rugby very well together. The game scenes look very real given I grew up playing rugby
http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/invictus/

Also worth noting, I just stumbled on this clip for New Moon – the wolf work is excellent, the hair is bar none! I wonder how many man hours went into grooming
http://tinyurl.com/yzzy4kq

New Wolfman Trailer

Wow, I’m so hyped up for this film. The wolf transitions and the forest shots are outstanding!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/thewolfman/

3D World

Just finished preparing a 300dpi print of Atomic Robo for 3D World magazine. So make sure you go out and buy the next issue - number 124 I believe.  Thanks to the team at 3D World for considering my image!! I do love their mag

I’ll upload it to the blog as soon as 3D World hits the stands.

In other news, my Atomic Robo artwork has gone down well with the comic creators, I’ll spill more on that in a later post

So finally I have some time to work on some new/unfinished work. I’m gonna do some more camera tracking to build up experience and I really wanna finish my Santa in time for Christmas.