The soul of drawing

Photos by Heather Dresbach

Back from another great CTN animation expo.  The presentation Alex Woo and I gave seemed to go over very well- we had an enthusiastic reception and I was pleased that several folk approached us afterwards to tell us it had inspired them.  Apologies to our marvellous model Daniella who I turned into a hippo!

Crookie, Mo-ris, the Grillos and Jonez by Jamie Bolio

I caught a couple of great seminars- Andreas Deja did a live version of his Deja View blog with musical accompaniment by Richard Sherman! The mighty Oscar Grillo made an impressive presentation of his animation career and an inspirational slideshow of his personal work and artistic influences.

I promised to post some photos from Alex's Gesture class at Pixar so here they are.

Terry Song, Manny Hernandez and John Nevarez pitch their gesture story sequences

Diagrams by Alex Woo

 Holger Liehe

 Matt Jones

 Terry Song

 Terry Song

 Terry Song

Terry Song

Domee Shi

CTN-X 2011

This weekend I'll be heading down to L.A. to attend the CTN-X animation conference, now in its 3rd year!  Sunday morning at 10 am Alex Woo and I will be talking about our approach to Gesture Drawing.  See you there!

30 sec warm ups

1 minute

1 minute

Back to the UK!

I went home to the UK recently for the first time in a year since moving to California. That time flew by! I had the pleasure of catching up with old friends, meeting new family members and re-acquainting myself with England and Wales . . .

I met up with my three favourite draughtsmen Matt Cruickshank, Phil Warner and Oscar Grillo down on the River Thames at Hammersmith.

We swapped stories over glasses of stout at riverside pub The Dove.  Dating from the 17th Century the Dove has the smallest bar in Britain (4 ft. 2ins by 7ft. 10ins) and is said to be the site of secret rendezvous between Charles 11 and Nell Gwynne.

In all the time I worked for Uli in Camden I never drew the Lock

Waiting on The Strand for Aardman chum Ash Boddy to go see the Spanish Drawing exhibition at the Courtauld.

I went to the christening of my brother's gorgeous baby daughter in Derbyshire. The ceremony was at this ancient 13th century church in Weston-on-Trent.