Someday soon I hope to write about something new that I'm making. But for now I'm happy to say that Apache - a music video I made for the band Danger Beach last year - is shortlisted in the Vimeo Awards. (voting is open now by the way hint hint)

I remember watching with interest all the video's that got selected last time and the buzz that surrounded them, and I thought how did they manage to make something that makes people sit up and take notice. That is interesting from beginning to end. That people want to watch more than once.

I contemplated this for a long time, I watched video's from around the world. I looked at books in the library. I consulted the ghost of Stanley Kubrick. Then one day I found the answer and I'm not kidding when I say that this video (link below) was a huge inspiration when I was making Apache.

Hot Chip - I Feel Better

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The experimental Animation Tag Attack that I contributed a short section to back in 2010 has been officially selected to play at Annecy this year.

The brain child of animator Christen Bach, he started the film with a visually intriguing piece and then reached out to animators around the world to continue the story.

Below are frame grabs from the 11 contributers. The last section, number 12 was again made by Christen in which he wraps up the narrative. It's being held back for the Annecy screening but I have had a sneak peak and I've got to say it's unexpected and very cool.

Christen Bach, Mads Juul, Andreas Normand Grontved, Oren Mashkovski, Maxwell A. Oginni, Ewen Stenhouse, Scott Benson, Wolf Reimers, Mikey Please, Brendan Carroll & Francesco Giroldini

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The good people at Stated Magazine interview me about things and stuff.

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Now and then, between work, I will be making a short film. It's very short and the concept is simple like most of my stuff so I can focus on the design which I enjoy. I'm going for a very flat look, this will be a no dimension film. I'm also interested in exploring cartoon expressions and icons, not quite sure how this will work yet but it's the exploring that ultimately makes it worthwhile for me. This is the first frame.

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Something similar to the Apache video I made earlier this year for Danger Beach was required with animated characters of the band etc. The track however couldn't be more different. I really like it, but where as Apache had been upbeat, fast paced and short. This track was incredibly slow, melancholic and long.

In the past I've been careful to pick music that suites the type of animation I do, this track was a bit of a challenge as I wasn't sure animated characters would sit comfortably with the subject matter of the song. I chose instead to focus on the lyrics which I think are fantastically banal yet surreal, creating an Illustrative typeface to go with my style of Illustration. The lyrics/typography instead of the characters are what bind the video together.

The unfolding technique came in part from a similar technique I developed for the Apache video, but also from earlier works where I'd been creating scenes from layered images in After Effects and casting lights on them to create shadows (Bedbugs Odyssey).

I liked the idea of then traveling through these scenes and building them as I went which also gave me interesting transitions between scenes, the focus for the scenes being the lyric 'Factory Town'.

For a long time I wasn't sure what to do with the characters, how they would intersect with the factory town I was creating. The idea of an American band singing about the hardships of industrial britain from their point of view felt a bit strange to show. But then I thought well this is a cover, they didn't write the song, they are just visiting it, this is their impression of the song. And so I bookended the video with the band viewing the song from afar. Travelling around inside the song like visitors and leaving the song behind at the end. The typography and flattened Illustrated layers constituting the song itself.

I want to thank the good people at Late Night Tales, and I strongly recommend you have a look at their excellent back catalogue of compilation albums. MGMT's compilation being particularly interesting!

Watch All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Also thanks to Michelle Higa There are some making of images posted up on Motionographer!

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Just a small note to say Apache will be playing at onedotzero this month (Nov 23-27th 2011)

Head along to London's BFI on the Southbank for all things visually moving.

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A big-game hunter is stripped of everything he has - cloths and all - and is then in turn hunted by a bunch of African tribesmen for sport.

I saw the DVD on the Criterion website. It looked intriguing so I searched it out on youtube to get a taster. I got so drawn in by the chase that I ended up watching the whole damn thing.

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Motionographer currently has a making of Apache for those interested in how you go about creating the spinning carousel effect featured in the video.

At the end there is a scrap of paper with what looks like the mad scribblings of a lunatic. It has numbers on it but unfortunately they left off the text. These are the doodles I did one morning that led me to the carousel idea, I thought it might be interesting to show the thought process I went through.

2. Working out the angled edge, it's built in After Effects so no curves.

3. Making the whole thing circular (I wasn't sure what to do with the ends so I put in a divide).

4. Getting rid of the divide altogether, paring it down.

5. Designing the ends so that the imagery dissolves from one side to the other.

6. Thinking about carousels within carousels, plus the waterfall coming in at a different angle.

7. This refers to the colours on the inside of the circles, strong and simple like old Wrigley's chewing gum packets.

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This video was a lot of fun to make. I had an Apache character I'd been doodling for a while (read doodles post from last year) but I wasn't sure what to do with him until I came across this track on a website called New Weird Australia. The track was perfect, I got in touch with the band (Danger Beach) and started noodling out some ideas.

The track made me think of traveling but I think a lot of music video's use this device so I was looking for a new way to show traveling without just having panning backgrounds etc. I thought it'd be cool if you could see more of where he's going and where he's been. This made me think of bending the plane he's on like a roll of paper going through a print machine so we can see shapes of things to come. I added more rolls so he could move between planes which he does on the train ride. When it was set up I tried to think of different way's this system could be used to illustrate a scene, starting with quite a simple desert scape and the inside of a cave to the more complex scenes with the train where the motion bleeds together. I'm already thinking about new projects where I can push this idea further. A more graphic less literal approach might be interesting.

The textures, colours and bits of postcard are a nod towards nostalgia for the old west as depicted in kids books and films.

A big thanks to Rodney Selby who helped me out with the character animation so I could focus on the Illustration etc, I thought the Buffalo's guitar playing was particularly nice.

Watch Apache

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A couple of years ago I started working on a music video, it was a self driven project so there wasn't really any deadline. I had a rough idea about someone who goes on holiday and every day she can see an image of herself and what she did from the previous day. She gets stuck in a loop and ends up following herself around. The idea played out in my head very well, I thought this is going to be amazing.

I started creating backgrounds in my spare time, each background had to have a sunny, a rainy and a night version for the different days and times. I got caught up in the lighting and the mood, I thought I'll put people in later, it'll be fine. I went all isometric and flat trying to get a feel for a place out of the colours rather than the shapes.

I got about three quarters through the backgrounds before I thought I'd better put it together and start creating characters. Unfortunately It didn't work. I tried editing it different ways. I tried putting captions on the screen. I tried simplifying the idea. It really was rubbish. Eventually I had to abandon it.

Recently I had another look at the project. Seeing the backgrounds with fresh eyes I realized the backgrounds where what interested me all along, not the story. I was creating footage of an imaginary but slightly boring city. A city where all the people are at a concert or something out of sight.

Going with the footage idea I found a piece of classical music and made a mood piece. 

Scenes from an abandoned Music Video

Having done all this work that went nowhere I feel like a character out of a JG Ballard short story, a character with an obsession he can't explain.

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Off the back of the Bedfellows exhibition I got asked to do a series of Illustrations for a 3 part podcast for Paper Radio. I'm getting into simple isometric shapes at the moment, previously I've used bright colours but this required something moody, for some reason it feels retro like early 90's corporate illustration. Normally I would hate this but for some reason it feels right.

Paper Radio

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I've recently been messing around with stencils and rollers to make simple print style works. Here's a series of six that I contributed to an exhibition at The High Seas Gallery in Auckland called Bedfellows.

Thanks to Ellie May for the photo.

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Watch it now why don't you!

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Here's a fun project I recently completed. Animators from around the world are asked to continue an ongoing animated story in whatever style they like, creating five plus seconds of animation and going where they want with the story. It was a challenge working with other peoples characters but interesting too, I'm sure something from this will turn up in future animations I do.

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