Paradise By The Dashboard Light [work in progress]

Modelling a dashboard in Blender:

Also starting to consider render style for this project:

(produced in Blender 2.76)

Work in progress: welcome to Erewhon

Landscape, forest and villages

Test render

Closer view

Red Mars [work in progress]

Produced in Blender 2.76

A Mars A Day [work in progress]

Working on a Martian landscape, with some help from the Guru:

Someone should sweep up all these rocks...

Produced in Blender 2.76

Based on a Blender Guru tutorial

If H.R. Giger designed catfish... [Work in progress]

[designed in Blender 2.76]

Another Day In Paradise [Work In Progress: Dystopia City]

The end is in sight: I've put together the main game cycle for Dystopia City, although I'm still doing some work on the various alternate endings plus the soundtrack. Beta very soon - promise.

Where indeed?

Game produced in Scratch. Graphics hand-drawn in Paint, Paint.net or Scratch, with some backgrounds rendered in Blender.

Just another run-of-the-mill day in Dystopia City

"Steampunk Girl" Screening: London Independent Film Festival

Some great news: "Steampunk Girl" is on the official selection for London Independent Film Festival 2015! This will be my second LIFF screening (the first was "2007" shown at LIFF 2012) and I'm really looking forward to being back. I'll post details of the screening and festival programme as soon as they become available.

Work In Progress: Ravenclaw

A more detailed bird model for a close-up

Work in progress: Heart of the Matter

Modelling a heart in Blender, for use in the Broken Bird video

Basic heart mesh

Adding the major vessels. More detailed work to follow...

When Words Collide [Work in progress: Steampunk Girl]

Putting the final touches to the Steampunk Girl video now: one major scene still to render, which will take approximately 20 hours to create 40 seconds of film. There's still time for things to go wrong, but provided there aren't too many crashes the film will be ready for a premiere screening at Kino London on Monday.

My first foray into kinetic typography has been really satisfying. I'm working in Blender which has advantages and disadvantages. KT lends itself very well to 2D animation and a lot of videos have been made using 2D packages like After Effects or Photoshop. It's not hard to simulate some 3D effects in these programs as well. For me it makes sense to work in a 3D space, not unlike making a physical stop motion animation, I think this matches the way I think. Also Blender is designed for really fast creative work once you are familiar with all the short cuts, and where you actually need 3D effects, or smoke, particles, physics, fluids etc. they are all built in. I also found I could use the compositor to create a look and feel for the animation, for example incorporating fake shadows, motion blur, vignetting etc.

For KT music videos, one issue must come up quite often, irrespective of which animation software you use: what do you do when you hit an instrumental break and there are no words to base your animation around? I came up with a solution, but you - and I - will have to wait until Monday to see if it worked...

The Joy Of Text [Work in progress: Steampunk Girl]

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a new animation project: a kinetic typography video for Steampunk Girl, a song by musician John Anealio. I'll post more updates as I go. I'm discovering there's something immensely satisfying about animating with words.

You can discover John Anealio's music here.

Mechanical Maps

It seems I am not alone in my wish to pay tribute to the Game of Thrones animated map: there are plenty more tributes and parodies out there on the Internet. Here are a few I particularly liked: Firstly "The Simpsons" take which you may have seen - a match made in heaven.

Huge amount of skill in this extendable castle illusion.


Purdue University staying fairly close to the original Game of Thrones sequence.

I love this! a very professional job with a social media theme for HootSuite.

And amazingly, a blatant rip-off of the Game of Thrones map - in a classic computer game from 1994.

London Mechanism

My animated tribute to a certain fantasy TV series...

Produced in Blender 2.68, scored in MuseScore.

Work In Progress: County Hall

A mechanical County Hall - now just one more landmark to add.

[produced in Blender 2.68]

Showreel 2012

Models, scenes, effects, clips taken from the past 4 years, with modelling and animation in Cinema 4D and Blender. There are exciting plans for 2013...

She's Electric! [Tears Of Steel]

The latest short film from the Blender Foundation, Tears Of Steel. It's not as emotionally affecting as last year's movie Sintel but (sob) what is? (sob) I like the plot: I like eccentricity and unnecessary-but-cool, you can never have too many evil roboticists or armies of killer robots, and the Amsterdam setting is a nice touch too.

Technically I was blown away: this live-action/CG is a world away from Sintel and shows that Blender has evolved from an animation tool into a filmmaking tool. And there's more: I understand this film was produced from start to finish using only open source software.

"We Can Get You Some Really Cheap Gear" Competing For Shooting People Film Of The Month

"We Can Get You Some Really Cheap Gear" is an entry in Shooting People's Film Of The Month contest. In the final round, the top 5 films will be judged by Plan B but the first round is a public vote - if you liked it, please visit, vote and share. As an incentive, if we make it to the final round then I promise to make the sequel ;)

[Post script 24.8.12: We didn't make the final round so plans for a sequel have been shelved for the moment. Congratulations to the finalists]

"2007" Screening: Wanstead and Woodford Cine and Video Club

I've been invited to screen "2007" at Wanstead and Woodford Cine and Video Club on 29th June, at St. Paul's Church Hall, Woodford Bridge, along with a few words about the development of this music video and a few of my other films. Molly Brown will also be presenting her own showcase.

"2007" Official Music Video - Tenderstar

Legoless Part I: Dispatches From The Set

After the screening of “We Can Get You Some Really Cheap Gear” at Rotoreliefs, several questions about the making of the film came up in the Q and A. I’d like to share a couple of lessons learned: this article is about the technical side of things, and in Part II I'll write about the reality of working with Legos.

Set construction was the most time-consuming part of making the film. Each of the five locations took one night shift to build and shoot: as with other films, write for the minimum number of locations, and build your sets for multiple scenes if you can. Also (and I learned this the hard way) make sure you’ve got every single shot you need from each set before demolishing it to build the next one.

There are three basic principles of Lego filmmaking: stabilize, stabilize, stabilize. Use anything you can find: sellotape, superglue, blu-tack, nails, radioactive slime – anything to reduce shake between frames. The good news: Lego isn’t only good for on-screen antics – it’s also ideal for constructing ad-hoc camera rigs, tripods and dollies. A few minutes stabilizing your set and camera saves hours of frame-by-frame adjustment in post.

One more thing: watch out for Lego injuries: constantly handling all those sharp edges is hard on the skin.