Tom facial animation test

We've spoken to Mark Benton about voicing the part of Tom. This test uses a piece of dialogue from Mark in the excellent Early Doors. The animation was done by Ciarán. We've found less mouth shapes seems to give a better result rather than trying to hit every single inflection. We think the voice fits Tom pretty well, what do you think?

Rufus takes shape

The 3D model of Rufus is taking form. He's changed a bit along the way, see the artwork below, but he seems to be working well. We're trying out the copper hair as his name means 'red hair'.

Tom Walk test 2

A slightly more finished test render.

Here are a couple of still which show the detail a bit better.

Tom walk test

This latest test by Matt shows the Tom model in action. We've spent a long time getting the rigging to work, its something that will be ongoing but we are fairly happy with the results so far. We widened Tom's hat a bit too and his shirt will be getting a bit lighter shortly.

Oh, Matt said to look at the footprints in the grass, he was very pleased with that, (and rightly so!)

The outside world - full of green stuff

I managed to get some time away over the weekend and spent a very sunny day at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Right now it has some fantastic work by the very talented Andy Goldsworthy and is very much worth a visit. It made me realise just how rich and textured the British landscape is. I would love to capture some of this essence but without grinding our 3D scenes to a standstill. I think what I'm talking about is those Summer afternoons of endless possibilities, that feeling we had as kids where you were free to explore, sit by a stream, think, explore or just throw stones into a river. Calvin & Hobbes captured this feeling perfectly, as does My Neighbor Totoro. Thats what I'd really like to capture on screen. No small order!
Hope you enjoy the pictures, if you like the outside world take a look at Gretel Parkers blog, it's a magical place which often is full of lovely pictures of the countryside, (don't let the skip full of books convince you otherwise!)

Gordon's Run

I mentioned this a while ago and have just re-discovered it. This was for Gordon's 30th birthday. If you are familiar with Logan's Run you'll understand why! Sorry Gordon, guess I owe you a pint or two!

T-shirts & Book mockups

***UPDATE*** I've put two T-shirts on Ebay, tell your friends. Here are the links: Ka-boom design, Wump Wump design

Thanks to everyone for sending in their colour choices, its been really interesting. The red shirt seems very popular so far. I'llp ut up some new images soon to see how that might look.

I've just ordered some sample T-shirts for our first range of designs. They are all black & white and use a single comic frame as a front image. This is a mockup of how the final t-shirt will look. Please let me know what you think - and if you want to order one that would be splendid!

I've also got some mockups of a book collection made. This features about half of the 400+ comic strips as they might appear in a published book collection. These will be going out to some publishers shortly to try to generate some interest in doing a book for real.

We are also working on a website and shop front which can feature all of this stuff. In the meantime we are preparing stuff for Annecy and working on our trailer. We'll post more images shortly.
Niel