A Little Less Action

Not a lot of blog-action recently hey?
Was directing a very low-budget and inevitably fast-turnaround ad piece for Sky Active channel so my 'day job' at Tandem www.tandemfilms.com became an 'evenings also' job too for a week.
That finished, then been away with family in Cornwall for half a week. So not much progress on the movie thus not much to blog about really.
Had a couple more ideas to put into the short film, hopefully I'll be posting some more once I get a chance to work these through.

Sketchbook: 'Mineshaft'

Moodboard: 'Mining' Ref. Images

Still: 'Quarry'

Sketchbook: 'Quarry'

Virgin forest, then the road comes...
Spiraling down into the earth, forming an open-cast coal mine or mineral quarry. The extraction of natural resources...

Still: 'Paths'

A trace through the prehistoric sea. The line that will become humankind...

Still: 'Texas'

A long straight road shoots out across the plains; the arid dessert land is cultivated, first for cattle, then for arable crops.

Still: 'Cargos'

Wait at the crossing whilst a mixed freight train passes. It seems to take years to roll by (signified by bursts of remapped time); lumbering trucks with various cargos... all the fuelstuffs... timber, coal, oil, nuclear etc.

Still: 'Roundabout'

Various shots of buildings and roads constructing and pulsing with timelapse crowds and traffic.

Sketchbook: 'Splatdoodle'

Nothing to do with the film project this. Just a bit of fun with acrylic paints and a silver marker pen.

Moodboard: 'Trains' Ref. Images

Moodboard: 'Level Xings' Ref. Images

No Time for Art

Today's the day if you're filing a UK Tax Return... Leave it any longer and the IR also expect you to calculate how much tax you owe too!
Suffice to say, I've not got so much creative work done this week while I've been scrambling around to find all the paperwork and create the mother of all spreadsheets. Hope to get back onto the movie work next week.

Photo: 'Passing By'

Shot from a train heading out of Kings Cross one evening. The elements are here...
Layered construction, buildings formed from planes. The latticework of cranes and pylons.
The parallax of scenery slipping by.

Moodboard: 'Pylons' Ref. Images

Sketchbook: 'Power' Sequence

Sketchbook: Notes About The Movie

Making Movie

Since the beginning of this year I've been working to make a short animated film though It's not got a title yet...

Quite a lot has been done already; I'm hoping that the piece might be around 2 minutes long. I'm planning to document progress here, and invite feedback from readers.



This image is from an earlier test. It suggests some of the themes and techniques I'm pursuing. The movie would represent a journey through space and time, a road journey encompassing all human evolution from nomadic wanderers to city dwellers. A kind of 'uber timelapse' compressing tens of thousands of years into a couple of screen minutes. All elements would construct themselves on screen and possibly be represented in a multi layered or stratified form.

Retro Rugby Poster

Just completed; this poster for a local rugby tournament.
I'm becoming a big fan of the typeface 'Rosewood'. It's quite old-fashioned and rather flouncy. It's got a built in drop shadow to the bottom right, which I removed because I wanted the text to bulge forward and the drop shadows to 'radiate' from the centre of the image.
The image of a retro rugby squad, was re-arranged to give the appropriate arrangement for a 'Sevens' team.

Is there anybody out there?

Is anybody actually reading this stuff ??? or at least just passing through? This blog accepts replies, though at the moment the Blogger reply window is somewhat masked inside this frame... i.e. you need to hit 'comments', type in your response and then scroll down a bit to see the vital 'Publish Your Comment' button. You don't need a Blogger account to post a reply, if you click on 'other' you can post giving a name, or even anonymously...
BTW (By The Way) as we ITK (In the Know) LTS (Like To Say)... I've just purchased the domain www.chrisgavin.co.uk/ too, so this now points here as well as the existing www.chrisgavin.com domain. I'm expecting site traffic to double soon as a result; better get in touch with the service provider and give them a heads up ...
My fave three letter acronym ... it's TLA which stands for er ... Three Letter Acronym. Neat.