Winter Olympics caricatures

Here are the other Athlete caricatures that I created while watching coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics:

Curling & Caricatures

Throughout the 2010 Winter Olympics I found myself glued to the TV for way too many hours (I was watching Curling or Snowboarding during the daytime, and Ice Hockey all through the night). As a result I found myself spending very little time on my artworks, but at the same time, the short breaks in live sports coverage did inspire me to start trying some caricatures.

With a near-empty sketchbook, a big pile of old newspapers (full of pictures), and nothing else to be doing during the two 15 minute intervals of every Ice Hockey game, I realised that it would be the perfect opportunity to experiment with some caricature work... If nothing else, it would prevent my drawing and painting techniques from getting rusty!
Over the past three weeks I've made about 20-or-so caricatures in my little sketchbook, but to keep everything in this blog post related, I'm only posting a couple of my Curling caricatures just now - Scottish team members & Team GB Olympic stars: Jackie Lockhart [above] & Kelly Wood [below].


My caricatures so far have been a bit hit-and-miss, but I'm quite enjoying the learning/development process.

Since the Olympics finished, I've continued the caricaturing. And at the weekend just past, I went up to Dewar's Ice Rink (Perth) to watch Scotland's Olympic curling stars in action at the Scottish Curling Championships.
I took my sketchbook and pencils with me, thinking that I might do some sketches while spectating, but I never got around to doing so. I did however pay a lot of attention to the construction [in Animation terms] of the poses and actions of the players, so that once I got home I could retrospectively thumbnail-sketch some of those poses on paper.
I find it quite surprising how well various poses have stuck in my head, and how I can kind of 'recognise' various players from the tiny sketches days after the event. Here is my sheet of retrospective sketches [it measures roughly 200mms x 80mms]:


And finally, here is a blurry wee photo of myself with Eve Muirhead (the 19 year old skip of Team GBs 2010 Olympic Women's Curling team) after her team won the Columba Cream Scottish Curling Championships on Sunday afternoon:

Shortlisted in film contest!

My animated graduation film, Pigment of Imagination (2009), has been shortlisted to the final 10 of an online film contest; and as long as no issues arise over the coming days, then I should have some VERY exciting news to announce soon!

But in the meantime: Yay!

The Astronomer's Sun - a new stopmotion film

Jessica Cope & Simon Cartwright - two friends I met at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) - have recently completed their new short animated film, The Astronomer's Sun; and if you're in the UK there is every chance that you can watch it at a cinema near you over the coming weeks as part of the British Animation Awards 'Public Choice' screenings.

Jess & Si both graduated from ECA in 2008 after producing their graduation films: The Owl House and Splendid Isolation respectively.
The Owl House was screened at the Flip Festival in Wolverhampton at the beginning of November 2008, was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award in March 2009, and went on to get screened in the McLaren Animation Awards programme at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

A short time later Jess & Si won a commission from 4Mations Digital Shorts to create one of 13 "ambitious, original and thought-provoking animated short films from new and emerging animators" with backing from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund, Channel 4, and Screen Yorkshire.
The resulting film is The Astronomer's Sun - a 6 minute stopmotion film in the wonderful trademark style of Jessica Cope, about "a young man who visits an abandoned observatory to confront memories of his past and follow his father on a journey into the unknown".
Stills, production photos, and further information about the film can be found on its production blog at: http://theastronomerssun.blogspot.com


Their film is showing in Programme 3 of the British Animation Awards, where the audience will get to vote for the best piece of animation in various categories. And after the votes from all 27 screenings across the UK are counted, the most popular piece from each category will be declared the winner at the British Animation Awards ceremony later this year.
Interestingly, each winner receives as their trophy an original piece of sheep-inspired artwork* created by notable artists from the animation industry: Previous contributing artists include, amongst many others, Nick Park and Tim Burton!
You can see all the previous trophies in the Awards Gallery of the British Animation Awards website here.
*("Sheep-inspired trophies" are due to the fact that the initials of British Animation Awards is "BAA" - which is commonly known as the sound of a sheep's bleating).

Amongst the other nominated animations are:
The 2009 OSCAR-nominated This Way Up (Smith & Faulkes, Nexus),
Simon's Cat - 'TV Dinners' (Simon Tofield, Tandem Films),
Codswollop (The Brothers McLeod),
Fields of Vision (Rob Zywietz),
The Black Dog's Progress (Stephen Irwin, Animate Projects),
Coldplay's Strawberry Swings music video (Shynola, RSA Films),
several Cadbury's Creme Egg adverts (Chris Cairns, Partizan),
and the CompareTheMarket.com Jingle advert [AKA: the original "Compare The Meerkat" advert] (Darren Walsh, Passion Pictures).

To see a full list of all the animations that are showing in each of the three British Animation Awards programmes over the coming weeks, please visit: http://www.britishanimationawards.com/public_choice2010.htm

The Astronomer's Sun will be screened as part of Programme 3, which is screening at the Filmhouse cinema, Edinburgh on Wednesday 24th February. Tickets for this screening will be available to buy online from the Filmhouse website here.

The other 26 national screenings will take place at the following locations:
Belfast, Bournemouth, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Dundee, Exeter, Falmouth, Farnham, Glasgow, Harrow, Lincolnshire, London, Liverpool, Maidstone, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Ormskirk, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Staffordshire, Totnes, and Wolverhampton.
To read the full list of Dates & Venues for each programme screening, please visit: http://www.britishanimationawards.com/Venues_playdates.htm

If you're interested in this, please try to attend one of the screenings, and then help out Jess & Si by voting for The Astronomer's Sun.


Images copyright of: The Astronomer's Sun, 2010.
Images used with permission from Jessica Cope.