daninski

Look at all these little updates of late. Amazing. Right, I’ve just added to the gallery on the site. There are four images from pitches and then there is a poster we did for a mate of mines radio show’s live show. The radio show is called One Life Left. Go check it out, it’s about vidjo games and won a broadcast award this year in the UK.

It’s been updated! The music is by Dan Pugsley.

More things on my home page .

Well, the longer the gap between these posts, the more that needs to go into them. Which of course results in longer to write it. Well, here we go. It’ll be a bit brief, too dense for musing.
Ian Gouldston came to Newport to take part in the University here’s Artist In Residence scheme. Or maybe it’s Animator In Residence. Well either way I spent a few weeks being as helpful as possible to him as a sounding board and animation assistant I guess. Was a good time and the work produced was really interesting. Developing an idea for a short-short film to put in the showreel and to test the animation pipe-line for the teeth short is now turning in to a potential collaboration with a musician we have worked with a few times. Dan Pugsley of Skindred fame is the musician in question, his name might be familiar as he did the music for our showreel and a little animated birthday card which I shall talk about in a minute. The stage we’re at is basically swopping visual and musical references and hopefully roughing together some sounds so I can start to storyboard it up. He’s off on tour soon so that’s all going to slow down annoyingly. I’m collecting it together as we go so I can put it into a pitch document for potential presentation for funding, forward thinking that is.
We’ve had few pitches of late. One failed one that we worked really hard on and looked really pretty. We did a little cute job with Iain Gillespie freelancing for us, that was for Blacklist. And, just in case you’re interested, I got rotovirus from my doctor sister. Great way to lose weight that is.
Animated birthday card! Well seeing as we have a horrific amount of free time as Holbrooks House at the moment, and there was an up-coming birthday of Blacklist’s premiere baby, we animated a super saccharin birthday card for her. This can be see here, http://vimeo.com/6727666
Here is a shot from the failed pitch:

There are a couple of pictures added in the pencil lines section. Just a few dolops from pitches we’ve been doing over the months. I will do a proper blog post too at some stage. I keep writting it and not posting it then having to add more because it’s not been posted. I’ll endevore to have it done by the end of the week. I’ll put up some non-pitch drawings too.

It’s by here: www.daninski.com

RANT EDIT: Dear little girly wrist boy racers of newport, next time you try to push me off my bike as I ride home please have the decency to stop to check if you’ve managed the deed. I would very much like to evaluate how well you have done with said push and maybe offer some of my own input to your technique.

So motionographer have now put the film online! Huzzah! Here’s the page it’s on, feel free to write something nice about specifically our film because we worked stupid hard on it. And here’s a direct link to the video. Well wasn’t this an informal post with little to no rambling! Oh… Um. Here’s a picture of my daps, I’ve managed to wear a peddle mark into the bottom. Also, t.o.m. is now avaiable to view in the ‘eye looks’ section of the site. I’ll put Bren Hystlen up there too at some point. I really need to swop out the quicktimes for youtube links as it really slows down the page as it is. It shalt be done.

Hurray! We have a pitch! Which is of course excellent, but a little frustrating because the ‘team’ is divided by vast distances and limited technology. This makes creative conversation a little slow and unsparkly. Sparkle tends to last as long as the warmth from an exhaled breath in the coldest of school mornings. Sparkle doesn’t lend itself to long distant travel. But saying that we had a conference call with each other which came up with some cool stuff. Tomorrow holbrooks will be reunited, then a dense period of work. Then we’re done.
The holbrooks’ site is still there, nothing has gone wrong yet, I swoped in some nicer images for the lo-res ones that were there so it’s a little nicer on the eyes now.
Uuum, what else… Oh, Bren Hystlen still isn’t up on the motionographer site, so isn’t up on our site concequently. It can’t be long now can it? It’s all uploaded and primed on vimeo, I just need a sign.
Another plus is it’s been sunny for ages so lots of peddling has been done. Although my bike chain keeps slipping now when I’m going up hill. Why does that happen now? Google will tell me. Google or Dan Cresswell.
Here’s a doodle of someone waiting…

Yep, the holbrooks’ site now has content. It’s not quite all done yet, some images need replacing with hifi eye friendly images. Some nips and tucks need nipping and tucking. But it’s definitly a functioning website now. Excitingly it also features a copy of our short film ‘t.o.m.’ as well as lots of other examples of our work. Woop woop! We also have a bit of pitch work so I’ve been writting stuff out at speed. We have a really nice idea I think but I’m not sure how to implement it in animation. It’s a nice idea though, makes me smile a little.
Right now I believe Tom and Dave should be going to F5. There’s a photo of them a few posts back remember, so be sure you memorise it for stalking fun. I’m hoping the sheep short, which is actually called ‘Bren Hystlen’, is recieved well there. So yeah, come have a look around here for t.o.m.

Well the new site is complete! Well, when I say complete I mean it’s not really. It’s almost complete. It has skeleton that is there and online, sans the meat. The meat’ll be added as soon as we know how to. We’ll know how to on Tuesday because it’s a bank holiday weekend for baby on the cross day. But it will all be done just in time for F5 RE:PLAY! That’s where the long awaited premiere of the sheep short is happening. So hopefully we’ll get plenty of hits and interest. You can see the teaser trailer for the shorts commissioned for the event here.
Co’director Tom Brown and our dearest friend David Surman are going to be accompanying the film to NYC so you should keep an eye out for them. I’ll include a photo of them both at the end of this incase, by some astronomical odds, someone is reading this and is going to F5. If that’s you feel free to stalk them. You have my permission. Seriously you do.
Whilst we’re talking about F5 I have to thank Eliot at 48v for he is going to be helping out with the super short notice DVD reproduction!
So yeah, hopefully it’ll become less quiet when F5 gets underway. It’s not been a good week for cycling either, just wind and rain. To be honest I can live with the rain. It’s not cold rain. The wind on the other hand is a pain.
So sunshine or less quiet please!
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Gray.
Aged 31 and 1/3.

P.S. Here’s a photo of Tom and Dave. They should be leaning against walls looking all broody.

Well. After a truely mental final stretch the short got completed in 3 weeks. That included many all nighters and a campbed in the studio. I invested in the smaller cintiq model for the project, which made my bank account weep a little but sped up elements of the animation process no-end. Unfortunately we can show the finished thing now until the motiongrapher F5 festival thing. Not even a screenshot.
Boooo. So it won’t be up anywhere until mid-April.
So normal service has resumed; a pitch, short film stuff and seeing how we can fully exploit the little mouse story that Holbrooks did with Ste Curren.
I’ll end this post with a picture done on my new equipment and a reminder of how cute little mouse and red balloon are… 