Hurray for memes!

Animation definitely isn’t the best medium to take part in these kinds of silly things (which is why I’m amazed by this awesome legend of korra version someone made).
But I thought the idea would be funny enough to make even though the momentum has already pretty much faded.

I mean, animating Iron Man doing a pelvic thrust; “totally worth it”

Yesterday I spent the day painting a wine barrel. A local organisation in Rotterdam, promoting vegan cuisine and a green lifestyle, is doing this project where they are  going to plant fruit trees in these wine barrels.  They’ll place these barrels in the  middle of the city.  The idea is that locals will take care of these trees and eventually be able to grow fruit from them.

To bring a little more colour to the whole thing they asked people to paint them. So me and a couple of other artists took out a day to add our personal touch.

I had no idea what to expect of the end result, as I didn’t have a plan going in. I also hadn’t touched an actual paintbrush in years, but I actually think it turned out pretty neat for something made in an afternoon.  I might do some more paintings soon because this was a lot of fun to do.

Also, check out the work (from left to right) of Stephan Brussche,  Aimee de Jongh and Kenny Rubenis who painted the other barrels that you can see in the second photo.

whoo boy, this took longer than planned.

This was supposed to be up on lovely Valentine’s day, but since I came up with the idea a week before I wasn’t able to quite  make it without half assing it.  So I figured I might as well take some more time to tinker with it.

But hey, it might not be Valentine’s day but the sentiment still counts.

Just a little preview of  a new animation I’m working on. Haven’t done anything animated in a while aside from the occasional gif. But I might as wel do something with that degree I have lying around here, so I’m trying to beef up the ol’ portfolio.

Look for it later in the week.

It seems my most popular work are the pop culture mash ups I’ve posted up here, so I thought I might as well put this up here.  I know, shameless,  but I still like the drawing.

Obviously  this was made back when the movies of The Avengers and Green Lantern were still pretty far away.  We still had no idea how those franchises would end up outside of the comic market.
Seeing as how Disney/Marvel dominates the superhero movie market right now, and The Green Lantern movie pretty much flopped, I find it funny how that joke in the corner has become really dated.

I don’t think I have any more pop culture mash ups laying around, so next time I’ll post something original again.

This was the original doodle I drew on paper. As you can see it’s very rough and messy.  Luke seems to have been a hybrid of Luke, Leia and Chewie. I wasn’t quite sure yet who was going to be in the image.  Han also has two facial expressions.   This was just to get the basic idea and composition down and get started.

After scanning the sketch, the main work is done on the computer.

I usually draw directly in Photoshop these days and don’t even bother with drawing on paper. It saves in clean up time.  It’s just easier to get a sketch done on the computer and fix mistakes, or change ideas along the way. It becomes a hassle when you settled on an image, then have to scan it in and also take time to clean that scan, only to find out you want to change things afterwards.

As you can see the original idea also had a toddler Spock and Uhura in it, reacting to the whole thing. That idea made it up till the cleaning stage of the line art. At the last moment I decided the drawing would be too busy and was clear enough with just Kirk being abandoned.

Just a quick glimpse in my process of putting a silly idea into an illustration.

I happen to be a a fan of both franchises and am actually really curious to see what JJ Abrams will do with Star Wars.  I know he’ll still be involved with the Trek films as a producer, but  I couldn’t help but feel like this news was a slap in the face for Trekkies everywhere.

Still  looking forward to ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness’, though!

I’ve never been too happy with the end result of my graduation film. I guess it goes for anything that you’ve struggled to make, that you can’t look at it objectively anymore at a certain point. I can only see the flaws and because of the constant reminde how terrible it was to make, I couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore ( let alone wanting to share it with anyone). I wanted to redo the whole thing,  so I never really showed it to anyone.

Another reason I was never ecstatic to share it with the world is the fact that I’ve never been able to get original music for it, and had to make do with unliscenced music, wich was supposed to be a temp track.

But looking back on it now, two years removed from making it, I think I’m sorta ok with it.  I still don’t think it’s awesome, but I’m happy I’ve been able to make an animated short at all.

Maybe I’ll even make another one someday.

Not only are the muppets hilarious, like  a lot of Henson’s creations, they also can be very inspirational characters.
The rainbow connection is one of those songs that always cheers me up on a bad day. The lyrics and the meaning behind the song mean a lot to me. Whenever I’m at a point where I think I’ll never accomplish anything in life, and want give up on my dreams, I put on this song to remind myself to hold on to that sliver of hope and that there’s always a chance things will turn out right.

So here’s to all the lovers and dreamers out there seeking to find their own rainbow connection.

I still have some more old stuff lying around;