Paddy Mac Fisto

After effects old "film-look"

2009-01-05T04:52:00.000-08:00

This is something myself and Rob did to flesh out Boulders "Commercial" showreel a little. The music is from The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. All achieved with AE CS3 Professional, it was fun drawing those film pops and burns. got great reference from the opening sequence for Sky Ones amazing, envelope pushing, hard hitting, gritty real life drama show "Dream Team"...of all places

Aged motion graphics from Paddy macfisto on Vimeo.

Christmas Homebrew

2008-12-24T03:22:00.001-08:00

Some lucky members of the Smith clan, along with a few VERY lucky chums are getting a few bottles of my Mexican homebrew. While not quite ready to drink yet (I tasted it last night at 1:30 in the morning when I was labeling it up...makes your mouth slightly uncomfortable) I thought I'd blog the genius label. Kudos to Dave O' Sullivan for knowing 2 weeks ago the tag line I'd use, although Jamie told me it's was pretty predictable..I guess it is. Thanks to the new Cartoon effect in AE CS4 too. Merry Christmas After Effects...and to Adobe a good night

JumboTron Logo

2008-10-03T04:03:00.000-07:00

Well today I completed my section of the Swedish feature we're working on at the moment. It's for a company called ATMO and the movie is called "Metropia". Starring such stars as Vincent Gallo and Juliette Lewis... It's a fairly interesting film, not least for it's INTENSIVE use of After Effects. All the films animation is being done through After Affects. It's been a while since I actually animated anything so it took a while to get into it but I'm pretty happy with the stuff that me and the team have been coming out with. the file sizes are massive though and a real pain in the arse to work with. It's all HD and the character rigs are enormous so that you can zoom right into their eyeball and still have HD resolution. So as you can imagine the going can be pretty slow, but today...FINALLY i've finished. New babies and feature films make Eddie a really really tired boy. And just so I'm not posting a big chunk of text (cos who the hell wants to read what i've got to say except people who have to) here's a logo I was messing around with before we started on this ATMO project.

I was going for a real Game-show type feel, cheesey gold everywhere and I really wanted to work in some explosions to really give it that "Roy Walker Factor". It's all done in AE CS3, no plugins or anything!! the 3D text is done in the "Shatter" effect and I used the previously posted "Shine Cheat" on the lights. That new CC Light Sweep is pretty handy too. And even if it could be created in 3DSMAX in under 10 minutes I'm still proud of it...so ha :P

Boulder are Pure Gold! from Paddy macfisto on Vimeo.

Trapcode "Shine" Cheat and other news

2008-08-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a while. Things have been a bit topsy turvy in Boulder lately so haven't felt much like posting. Add to that the fact that I have had absolutely nothing to post and you get an almost year long break in posting.

Getting close to "New Baby O'Clock" now, only a week or 2 really til D-Day. Still don't know whether it's a boy or a girl. Lately I've been reading a few other blogs written by people who have kids or about having kids and their experiences.

Daddytypes is a good site for gadgets and gizmos and general parenting news.

Sweet Juniper is a very well written blog, not always about parenting but nonetheless a great one to keep going back to.

Reference Library is just a site where there are some great photos of things that I'd love to buy for myself and my kids.

Recently in Boulder we've been trying to broaden our horizons and experimenting with a few different techniques, so there should be a new showreel fairly soon that will showcase those new clips. Some of them are very "Motion-Graphy" so it was great to work on them. Fran posted one that we worked on together here

AND...since we've been doing lots of "logo-y" type thingys I've basically come to the conclusion that Boulder seriously need to buy a license for the Trapcode plugin "Shine" for After Effects. It's used on EVERYTHING!! I've come up with a cheat that kind of emulates Shine but obviously it's not as good and not as versatile. I've only really applied it to text thus far although if I get a chance I'll apply it to some imagery, but I fear that that will necessitate a few layer duplicates and transfer modes so it mightn't be the simplest solution. Suffice it to say if you've got $100 and you need to do some mo-graph then buy it. However if you want to mess around on the cheap you can download my "workaround"
here

Here's an example of what I achieved with it:

I've included the font that I used in the zipfile. it might come in handy for someone. If anythings unclear in the file send me a mail and I can probably confuse you even more.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this is for AE CS3 as it uses the CC Radial Fast Blur

New Logo, El Tigre cancelled

2007-11-26T04:04:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't been doing much creative stuff lately. Haven't had the time what with the new house and all. Life is good in Maynooth though. I did manage to get a new logo done for my brother who's just set up a digital label, Ambig Records. Here's the pics, plus a little light rays thanks to AE CS3.

In other news El Tigre was canceled, which is unfortunate but there's not alot little ol' me can do about it. I did enjoy working on it when the deadlines didn't get in the way of my sanity but alas it is no more. We've a few more episodes to finish up early in the new year but after that ...kaput. Apparently the ratings weren't so hot and it's too expensive to make, I have my own opinions on where the expense was coming from but I suppose now mightn't be the time to be airing my views. It's a shame they only paid any attention to the US ratings as I'm sure it'll be huge in South America and I would imagine it doing OK in Europe and Asia. Anyway...onwards and...onwards. No news of any new projects that are coming up quite yet but we'll all be hoping we get one of our own off the ground. That's it for now, be good and remember...Keep it country!

Cow Girl

2007-08-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is my latest submission for the current Boulder Media Art Challenge theme which is "Cows". I did everything in Photoshop (including the initial sketch) and then put in some lighting in After Effects. I had been trying to paint some decent hair using the excellent Furiaes Photoshop tutorials. I was happy with the head because I had some reference for hair direction etc... but I kind of stumbled with the hair in the body. It looks fuzzy but not exactly like the kind of thing I was trying to achieve. Still though, I was pretty happy with it, I particularly enjoyed doing the lighting in After Effects, mainly because it only took 10 minutes and I'm much better acquainted with After effects than with Photoshop. Anyway here she is.

New Puppet Tool in After Effects CS3

2007-07-17T00:36:00.000-07:00

Me and Sam were messing around with the new Puppet Tool in After Effects CS3 (Yay! we finally upgraded!) and these are the results of my fooling. A great feature in this new tool is the ability to record, in realtime, the animation you want to achieve. You just hold down control and select a pin point and move it around. When you release AE automatically generates all of the keyframes in the timeline. LEGEND!! Doesn't look like we'll be sacking all the animators just yet though...the tool is still a little counter-intuitive but still...great fun.

Unbelieveable Blogger

2007-06-05T01:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not normally one for posting up links to other peoples sites, regardless how good they are, ala John Nevarez but when I came across Nathan Fowkes Blog via Marco Buccis Blog I felt that this was something that as many people as possible should see. I'm not sure whether I'm inspired or sort of...anti-inspired (i.e: throw away all my pencils cos I'll never be THAT good) but I don't see how anyone could be anything but inspired by Nathans amazing work. But don't take my word for it check it out yourself.

Silly Carry-on Altogether

2007-06-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

I don't usually migrate stuff that I've posted on The Famblee Blog to here because I try to keep this blog (slightly) work orientated. But I guess this has some animation in it so I'll get away with it. The weather was über crap over the bank holiday weekend so me and the kids had some pixelation fun indoors. Dunno why but YouTube messed up some of the timings (for some reason the orirginal quicktime has different held frames than the YouTube clip), not that it matters much seeing as how the timings were pretty loose anyway, but still... Anyway the kids had a great laugh so we might try and do some more. We had to shoot the whole lot on a phone camera because muggins here couldn't find his digital camera. Apologies for the small clip sizes.

Chris' Van Blog

2007-06-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

My good chum and fellow compositor, Chris, has started a new blog. It's basically going to be a diary of him renovating/refurbishing/doing up/restoring/pimping his 1980 T25 Volkswagon Campervan, before he takes it on a European tour (holiday roh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ooohhhhlllll). He's running a competition to find the best paint job design. Anyone can enter, and he promises that the winning design WILL be painted/sprayed/printed on stickers and stuck on the outside of the van. Should be great. There's quite a few entries up there already so I thought I'd post mine up here to try and garner some more support for him. All you need to do is download the template files from the T25 Blog and mail them to Chris. He hasn't been too clear on how he's gonna decide on the winner, but I'd presume it'll be something that him and his girlfriend can drive around in and not be attacked. Anyway here's my design. Cheesey and predictable I know, but whaddya gonna do?

Relaxing Lunchtimes

2007-05-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

Lately I've taken to heading down to the Iveagh Gardens on my lunch hour, just to relax and do a bit of sketching. I generally head over to the waterfall area but I could end up any where. I've only just gotten back into it so there's nothing that I'm actually that happy with yet except for the sketch below. I'm hoping to get back to the "former glory" of the halcyon days on location while studying at Senior College Ballyfermot. Yeah right. Anyway on my way back from the park today I decided to walk up Richmond St. to get a coffee and walk back along the canal. On my way I saw some out of date election posters put to good use. Pretty cool. It'll become a public toilet/house for a wino by 10 o'clock tonight so I took a photo of it before it got too dishevelled looking. Anyway, hopefully my trips to the park will yield some more decent sketching, which I'm hoping to regularly post over the nice summer months.

Park Sketch

Election Poster Shack

*UPDATE*: Blogorrah have posted up the Election Poster Shack

Tracking Sheet Doodles Mach 2

2007-05-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

This is another doodle. It's a my little version of the ultra homo-erotic "300" for the latest Boulder Art Challenge. This "Bi-Weekly" theme is BLOCKBUSTERS!!. No, not the quiz show with the legend that was Bob Holness. It's this years summer movie Blockbusters. If you check out the Art Blog there's some pretty good ones on there already, especially the departing Ian Kennys Transforming Spidermen Of The Caribbean. Not sure how anyone will match that but it's turning out to be a decent blog. Well done to Teehan for getting the whole thing together.

Troy Ride

2007-05-10T05:06:00.000-07:00

This is another short we did for Disney. I didn't think it was gonna be shown because I heard there'd been a bit of a "bru ha ha" between the creators and Disney. They must have kissed and made up. Listen out for Mac from Fosters, and I reckon the Truant officer is voiced by Kurtwood Smith from such classics as That 70's Show and Robocop. Anyway enjoy.

Trinity Arts Workshop Cock up

2007-05-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

Well I took an hour and a half off work today to go do some life drawing in the the Trinity Arts Workshop on Pearse St. Unfortunately for me their website is seriously out of date and the life drawing class wasn't on. BOOOooo... Anyway I had to head back up to the studio to get my car anyway so I stopped off in the Natural History museum on Merrion Square to draw some of the skanky deadness in there. It was closing in an hour so I only got a couple of quick sketches done. None that I was really happy with, except maybe the cormorant sketch below. I got back to the studio and worked on the latest Boulder Art Challenge. I don't know why I keep messing with photoshop, my sense of colour is crap. I'm determined to colour this one though, I'm sick of submitting plain ol' sketches. Anyway here's the cormorant sketch, I used a 4b pencil and a pen (can't remember which type).

Sketches for the latest Boudler Media Art Challenge

2007-04-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of sketches I was working on today. There tends to be a (slight) lull between episodes (it prolly lasts about half an hour) so I was working up some ideas for the Boulder Blog. I had all ready decided I wanted to do something with a fish seeing as how I have a goldfish on my desk, and seeing as how the goldfish I have ate the other 2 that were in there with him I googled some animals that engage in some light cannibalism. I came up with scorpions and bats. I'm probably going to work up both of these ideas as I like them both. Thinking of calling the bat-fish hybrid "The Fat Bish" or "Bash" or something like that. There is actually a fish called a scorpion fish so i'll have to be a little more creative with the other guys name. Anyway, enjoy.

PS: We're all heading out tomorrow night to give Aoife and Catherine a good send off (they're both off on their travels around Thailand and New Zealand). They've promised to keep a travel blog so hopefully i'll have some cool photos to link to in the next few weeks. We'll miss you gals, have a cracking time and steer clear of any dodgy mahouts with gold teeth, and or rugby players without any.

Tracking Sheet Doodles

2007-04-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Well when I'm waiting on animation or a BG to be approved or just rendering something out I tend to doodle. Most of them end up in the bin but I reckon seeing as how this is most of the drawing I get to do during a normal week I'm gonna post them from now on. As you can see ALL my scenes are approved and I can go home now, WOO HOO!!

New Blog

2007-04-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Me and the girls have started up our own blog called (aptly enough) "The Famblee Blog". From now on I'll be posting any photos, videos etc... of us all having a larf on there. Bláithín and Isabelle will also being saying hi from time to time. Anyway, check it out here if you so wish.

Slán

PS: I've also added a link in my links sidebar for posterity

Some Hand Studies (and a leg one just for good measure)

2007-04-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

One in Three Stills

2007-04-16T01:02:00.000-07:00

One in Three was a documentary I made in college. It was about 3 women who suffered from cancer. It was all very serious stuff altogether but I found these stills the other day and quite liked them (check out the animation punch holes on the hand with the drip!! Been a while since i've used punched paper). I was very proud of the film at the time and it was shown in a couple of festivals all over Europe including the Galway Film Fleadh, Samhlaíocht (where it won Best Documentary) and the Wie Wir Leben Festival in Munich (here's a review of it I found). The Wie Wir Leben one was by far the best seeing as how they flew me over and put me up in a hotel for 6 days (the duration of the festival). The festival wasn't too bad either, lots of really nice people and interesting stories. The guy who was running the whole thing, Gregor Kern, was really enthusiastic and even helped me try to get the film distributed, unfortunately that all fell through.

Munich was a great place aswell, very clean. It tries really hard to make you forget it was the birthplace of Naziism but I had a great time all the same. Oh yeah dopey hole here decided to cross the road where there was no pedestrian crossing and nearly got run over by a tram. Those things are really quiet. That sort of thing is frowned upon over there, crossing the road at non-designated places. And they all wait for the green man, even if it's 2 in the morning and there's no cars on the road you can see all the germans lining up at the pedestrian crossings waiting for the little green man. And I didn't know the rule about standing to one side of the escalators, alot of unhappy germans saying "entschuldigen" in a not so polite "get the hell out of my way" kind of tone. Anyway enough ramblings, back to work "Dummkopf!!"

A Couple Of Self Portraits

2007-04-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

Steamy Studios

2007-04-12T01:23:00.000-07:00

Well here's a blast from the past! This is something myself and Teehan did just before I started in Boulder. It was a submission for "adult orientated entertainment" on BBC 3. There was an open call for subbmissions so we lashed this together and sent it in. Jamie did pretty much all the work, I did the voices and the (dodgy) sound. The porn music towards the end was recorded from a saxophone playing santa doll. We actually got a personal reply from the bloke who was handling the submissions, dunno whether that was a good or bad thing, anyway here it is. I'm not embedding it because my daughter checks this blog and it's slightly risqué, so if you're easily offended by ex pornstar grannies losing bladder control then do not click on the link. But if you like that sort of thing then...click here and maybe seek some psychiatric advice...

Boulder Art Blog Post

2007-04-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

This is my Boulder Media Art Blog debut. I was wrong to berate Teehan for his choice of topic apparently. Someone else came up with "11". Anyway I tried a take on the bit from Spinal Tap where they're talking about the amps that "go up to eleven" but I got fed up so I just lashed this little guy out and called it Rockin' up to 11. Enjoy

PS: check out the Boulder Media Art Blog

My Latest Showreel

2007-03-31T06:32:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest version of my compositing showreel. The music is cheesey '80s Irish rock legends Thin Lizzy with "Out in the Fields". Check out the amazing video here.

No new posts in a while

2007-03-30T04:39:00.000-07:00

Well how cheesey is this!? Me posting about having no new posts and all. I haven't had time to do any drawing lately. We've been completely snowed under with El Tigre for the last couple of months. Tigre premiered in the states a couple of weeks ago (4th March). The reviews have been mixed though, here's a pretty in depth one by "name dropper extraordinaire" Amid Amidi on Cartoon Brew.

I recently spent a week in Vancouver, basically prostituting myself at various animation studios there. The whole city blew me away. I've never experienced a city like that with massive buildings and STRAIGHT ROADS!!. Straight roads would definitely be something of a novelty here in poor little catholic Ireland. What was also pretty novel though was seeing how other studios work. Staff over there seem to have a better time of things, seem generally to be treated better and repected/trusted more. I really enjoyed the learning curve of meeting people who've been set up for a number of years in the animation industry over there. The people at Studio B, Atomic and Global Mechanic really impressed me. Atomic seemed alot like Boulder actually, only in a city with proper public transport. Also we were EXTREMELEY lucky to have met with Greg Tiernan of Nitrogen Studios. He gave us some really brilliant advice about immigrating there. Cheers Greg. I suppose what impressed me most about all the studios we visited was the fact that they all had several projects, all at various stages of development, going on in-house. Something that isn't really happening at Boulder at the moment unfortunately. Anyway the plan is to move there, hopefully within a year, depending on certain things falling into place over here.

In fact a couple of people from the After Effects team are leaving us in the next while. Aoife is heading off galivanting around the place with Catherine, and Chris is making a similar move to Canada after touring around Europe in his über cool Volkswagon camper van. Gonna be even more difficult to get these 11 minute episodes from hell out on time without 2 invaluable members of the crew. They will be sorely missed indeed.

At the moment I've started working on an independant short for one of the animators in here. I'm actually excited about it, which is good cos it means i'll do a better job. Shouldn't take too long to get comped and ready for the edit/picture lock. It'll be ready for the Galway Film Fleadh so hopefully we'll get it in there.

Anyway I'm gonna sign off now with a few pics of Vancouver which most of my friends have probably seen but if there's anyone who actually checks this blog that I dont actually know then they might get a kick out of them.

These are a couple of the view from our balcony. I've never stayed in a hotel where your ears pop when you go down in the lift... Nice.

The Panoramamamama

Some Hockey pics. A killer whale dirigeable!? That drops prizes on you!? LEDGE!

Who's a CHEEKY DIVIL then?

Fran's Number 1!

Fran thought me being jet lagged was really funny, which changed my opinion of him from one of close chum to inane loser in no time at all at all.

Apparently this is the building used in X-Men the movie, it's so tall the top of it is overexposed, seriously...it's not that I take crappy photos...honest...

BOOOOOO!!!!

YAAAAYYYYY!!!! Hotels are great!!

IMDB Extravaganza!

2006-11-15T01:02:00.000-08:00

Woo Hoo! I've finally arrived! I'm on IMDB! check out my page here. I'm down as a lead animator because apparently compositors don't get credits in american shows, for union reasons or something equally ambiguous, but good auld Boulder insisted that I have a credit for all my hard work and dedication. I'm bleedin' great amn't I?

Isabelle is on the move!

2006-11-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

Isabelle has started to crawl after practising her push-ups for the last 2 months. Awwww

El Tigre Trailer

2006-11-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

I know this is probably on everyone in Boulder's Blogs by now but I thought I'd stick it up here anyway. It's the new show we're working on here at the moment. Looks like it's gonna be a hit, can't wait to get some merchandise.

Hallowe'en Sketches

2006-10-31T01:12:00.000-08:00

I did a couple more Hallowe'en sketches, but seeing as it's Hallowe'en today I don't know whether i'll have time to colour them. You can check out all the Hallowe'en Art Competition entries here

Venice Sketch Painted

2006-10-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

I painted up the previously posted sketch of an apartment in venice. I used Photoshop. For the tones and gradients I just used completely filled layers changed to overlay mode and their opacity taken down.

Enjoy

CD Designs for DJ Jeremiah

2006-10-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

These are some CD designs I did my my brother Matts (aka DJ Jeremiah)

This is the final CD print he decided on.

This is the CD sleeve cover

This is a particularly cheesey one, I wasn't sure if he wanted to go uber-euro-techno on it.

And this is an animated logo I did for his site (I think he uses it as an avatar aswell)

Venetian Apartment Sketch

2006-10-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

I never considered myself much of a layout artist (see Galvinators Blog for some serious layout art) but on a recent trip to Venice. I really wanted to draw some of the buildings. Unfortunately I had no materials with me and the Venetian prices were a little out of my league so I resigned myself to taking a few snaps and drawing them when I got back home. The texture on the buildings is unbelievable. Here's my first sketch so far. Might have a go painting it in Photoshop. I'll post up the results.

Jamie Has Blog!

2006-10-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

The aforementioned Jamie Teehan, Animator extraordinaire and all round total Legend has finally got off his hole and created a blog. It's pretty basic at the moment but he assures me he'll get the finger out and post up some good stuff. Check it out here

Hallowe'en Drawing Competition

2006-10-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

Galvinator has set up a blog for a Hallowe'en Drawing competition. Should you feel the need to enter please do, it'd be great if we could get a load of diverse artwork up there. There's no real prize, all that's really up for grabs is bragging rights, although I think Galvinator may have something up his sleeve. The website is Hallowe'en Extravaganza.

This is my first entry:

Comments Please

2006-10-12T00:49:00.000-07:00

I'd really like some criticism, good or bad, of the work that I've posted. So any visitors that have anything to say please feel free.

Some Old Story Boards

2006-10-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

These are some of the boards for a project I was working on with Jamie Teehan ( he doesn't have a blog yet but he's working on it). It was based on a poem by Siegfried Sassoon called "To The Warmongers". I never made it but I'm still hopeful that something might come of it, I think it's a good idea. Anyway here's the poem

To the Warmongers

I’m back again from hell
With loathsome thoughts to sell;
Secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.
Young faces bleared with blood,
Sucked down into the mud,
You shall hear things like this,
Till the tormented slain
Crawl round and once again,
With limbs that twist awry
Moan out their brutish pain,
As the fighters pass them by.
For you our battles shine
With triumph half-divine;
And the glory of the dead
Kindles in each proud eye.
But a curse is on my head,
That shall not be unsaid,
And the wounds in my heart are red,
For I have watched them die.

- Siegfried Sassoon.

Here's the Boards

Quick Goliath Sketch

2006-10-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

This is a quick sketch I did of the image on my desktop at the moment. I was fed up doing retakes on this bloody ABC pilot "Slackercats". Nearly finished up with Fosters and the "in so much of a mess they want to make live action" Cartoon Network (what are they gonna call themselves now, just Network?) and about to start working with the infinitely more organasised Nickleodeon. WooHoo!

Old sketch from work

2006-10-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

Tom (the Galvinator) was trying to encourage me to draw more in work so he found a photo he thought I'd like. Here's the sketch.

My Bottle Rocket

2006-10-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

Here's the bottle rocket videos I promised. The first launch was a test to see how the rocket would hold up, and it seemed to go pretty well. On the second launch I added some water to the nose cone to give it extra weight and inertia but unfortunately I pumped the rig too hard and it blew the seal and broke the locking collar and the rocket flew off on it's own. Unfortunately Blaithin (my daughter who was filming the whole thing) got such a fright that she didn't catch the second launch which went higher and further than the first. Ah well, back to the drawing board I guess. I need to figure out a way to make the seal stronger and the locking collar more robust. If anyone has any ideas please email me.

Enjoy

Oh Dear, Old College Photos.

2006-10-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

Found some old college photos when I was going through my old life drawings. Pretty awful and the people in them probably wont thank me but I thought it'd be amusing for the people who know them and aren't in the pics. As is generally the case with photos.

This is Yaz and Caoimhe

Karl

Dave

More Life Drawing

2006-10-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Here's some more Life Drawing I was able to unearth. Again I'd ask you to excuse the poor photo quality. Some of these aren't as solid as the last ones I posted but hey, may as well keep up this posting lark, it's giving me something to do and maybe, just maybe it'll get my ass in gear about doing some more. Anyway enjoy.

Some LIfe Drawings

2006-10-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

Well I said I'd post some life drawings up so here they are. Excuse the poor quality photos but I hadn't a clue how to use a digital camera when I took them.

I did this one with a bamboo pen I made myself and some ink. Really quickly just lashed on the lines of action. Not the best accuracy wise but I really like the line quality.

This one below was a blind drawing. I spent quite a while at it (around 45mins) but I used to find these were a great way to warm up in a life drawing class, and you could generally judge the quality of the rest of my days work by how good my blind drawings were. If I got bored with them I was usually kind of jittery all day and couldn't really get into drawing that day but I knew when I threw out a few decent ones the day wouldn't be wasted.

This one below was done with a wash pencil I bought in Dun Laoghaire. Sadly I haven't been able to find the same kind of pencil again and I can't remember what it was called. Ah well.

Below is one I did with oil pastels.

This was a pencil drawing I did. I got the weird "smudgy" effect with some water based markers and an old Mr. Sheen bottle filled with water. I just sprayed it a little but it took ages to dry. Turned out nice though. I tried it on a drawing before I did this one but it was a total disaster, I sprayed the water on while the drawing was still clipped to the easel and it just ran down the page and wrecked the whole thing. I put this one on the floor before I sprayed it.

This is a detail of the drawing above.

2006-10-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd put some info about myself seeing as how this blog is pretty anonymous right now. For starters my name is Edward Smith, I'm 27 (just had a birthday, going to the Leinster vs Munster Rugby on Friday match with the lads to celebrate). I'm currently working for Boulder Media in Dublin. I work in the AfterEffects/Post Production department. We make a couple of different shows in here. For the last two years or so we've been mainly working on a show for Cartoon Network called Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends. We've also completed a number of internal projects that have done pretty well on the festival circuit: Barbershop, Big Rock Candy Mountain and a Frameworks project: Carte De Visite (on which I was both compositor and editor). We've also done a few shorts for the Disney Channel: Got your Nose, Troyride and Boyz On Da Run (see previous posts below). We're just finishing up with "Fosters" at the moment and starting on some new projects. We're in the middle of a pilot for ABC called "SlackerCats" at the moment, it's tough going for the Post and the BG departments cos it's in HD. We're also starting 2 new series: one for Nickleodeon called "El TIgre" designed by Jorge Gutierrez of "Mucha Lucha" fame and another for BBC called "Twisted tales", created by Jam Media the people who brought you "Picme". I completed my Diploma In Animation in DLIADT in Dun Laoghaire in 2002 with my diploma film "one in three" winning Best Documentary in the Samhlaiocht Festival that year. It was also shown in the animation section of the Galway Film Fleadh in 2002, the MPA Europe Festival and the Wie Wir Leben (the way we live) Festival in Munich in 2003. I have 2 kids Blaithin who's 9 and Isabelle who's 8 months. Thats about it really, apart from a few hobbies. I play (I use the term loosely here, I'm rubbish) rugby here in Dublin when I get the time, and I've recently embarked on a Bottle Rocket odyssey and I should have some videos and pics to upload soon, just doing some test launches at the moment but I reckon I'll get Blaithin, Sarah and Karl, to make up some rockets at the weekend. I should also have some Life Drawing to upload shortly if I can unearth the CD I backed it all up on. Anyway, more soon.

The 3rd Part Of BoyBand

2006-10-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the last part of the Boyz On Da Run.

Enjoy

Two Short Films For Disney

2006-09-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

These are two shorts we did in work for the Disney Channel. I did some of the compositing on them (along with the rest of the compositing team, Aoife, Eoin and Chris). The third one is coming shortly, we're doing some retakes on it at the moment.

Heres Act 1

And Act 2

Toms New Blog

2006-09-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

One of my friends in work had put up a blog of his very own. It's vastly superior to mine so I'm hoping that i'll get some extra hits by putting his link on my blog (he's kindly posted a link to mine from his) so here is the GALVINATOR

Some Artwork

2006-08-25T05:13:00.000-07:00

Decided to post up some of my recent drawings.

This one is a drawing I did from a photo I found online

I then painted it in Painter using the Van Gogh brush

This one is a design I was working on for a short film. It was about a guy who's obsessed with Hurling (for Info on Hurling see the GAA website.

I wanted the film to look like old footage though so I jigged around with the other image (which was a sketch and then coloured in Illustrator) in After Effects

And this last one was just trying to master the pencils and chalks in Painter. Looks OK (except for her legs)

Two great links

2006-08-25T03:50:00.000-07:00

The Late Late Show In Lego?

Wha?.....

Good Ol' Brian, He's a total ledge

And I mean Towshally Loyke

DJ Jeremiah (my little bro awwww)

2006-08-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

Just finished off my brothers new website. Check it out here: DJ Jeremiah

Franblog

2006-08-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

This is Franblog. Watch out world. Lock up your daughters.

We need a Canal Barge to have lunch on!

2006-07-12T04:01:00.000-07:00

We (as in the BG and Post Production Room) were going to try and organise a swap type thing. Starting by swapping 10 seconds of animation (including BG and full composite) for anything else and working our way up to a canal barge, ala One Red Paperclip , to park outside our studio so we could have somewhere to have lunch, but it didn't recieve the anticipated level of enthusiasm from most of the people working in the studio (NAYSAYERS!). So I'm probably just gonna use this site as my own blog and stick up some photos and assorted artwork. Don't expect really regular updates or anything but I will stick up some visuals. Unless of course anyone has an interest in swapping something for 10 seconds of animation, then the Canal Barge Extravaganza could be ressurected.

More to come in the near Future me hopes.