Music Picks from Twenty-11

One of my favourite things about this time of year is reading people's "Best of" lists. Its such a great way of finding new music. The hype has tempered, people have a little more perspective. Its a good time.
This year I thought I'd put together a short list of some of my favourite songs from the year. Not all of them were released this year, but I heard them all for the first time in 2011.(For the sake listenability I put some of the more challenging ones at the end. be warded - swear words happen.)


There are looooads of songs and artists left off this list (for various reasons), but a couple that deserve a mention - Joe Goddard with Gabriel (I couldnt find the right version on grooveshark) Azealia Banks with her genius 212, Realestate misses out purely because I've got another song by Matthew Mondanile in there (under Ducktails) and The Weeknd was left off because I think his songs are a lot stronger when they are in the album.
If you have a list of your own, link me up. I would love to hear

Sleepy Travelers.

A couple of sleepy train travelers.
Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas! Thanks for stopping by this year. Love you all.
Alex

mademoiselle

A little something I sketched while I watching Midnight In Paris the other day. So many great costumes in that film!

1 minute sketches

Work has been busy lately, but I've started trying to fit 10 minutes of warm up sketches in at the start of the day. I took a leaf from Matt Forsythe's book and started using this gesture drawing tool.
Ive got pages of these but none are digital.

Hope you're all well, will hopefully be able to share some of the stuff I've been working on at Mighty Nice soon.

Monkey Up

Earlier this year I teamed up with the PRA to design their first Mobile platform game for 2Play Mobile. It was a really quick after hours gig, but was loads of fun. Hope you enjoy!

The final scrolling background, and the original concept I deliverd.

The Character concept.

Some Exploration sketches.

Million Faces.

Hi there blog, This is a part of a really quick, really fun job I did for a client a couple of weeks ago. I was commissioned to pitch a character design template that could be used to populate a game.The first drawing was the template I pitched, and the following drawings are examples of the way the template could be used.

The design wasn't chosen in the end, but it was a nice way to spend a Sunday.

I have a couple of fun things I want to share over the next week or two, so drop by again soon :)

Sketchening

A few months ago I made the decision not to show my sketchbook to anybody. Not even if they asked really nicely. I did this mainly because when it comes to drawing, I have an ego. Its embarrassing to admit but its true. I like to think that I'm ok at drawing, and I like to think that my peers think the so too. If I'm sketching in my sketch book and there's a chance that other people will see all my ridiculous ideas and shitty sketches I tend to get afraid, and draw something I already know how to draw. Thats not what I want from sketching. I know that to get a good idea I have to work through 9 really bad ones. I cant skip the bad ones. They are part of the good one. So I stopped letting people look through my sketchbook. Now I love drawing more than I ever have.

Because you are my friends I want to share a few pages of my sketchbook. Im not saying these are the good ideas I've mentioned. Just ideas I thought were funny or kind of got into. None of them well drawn or executed, but they were fun. Hopefully the well drawn good ideas will surface over the next few months/years.

An idea for a poster I was asked to make.

I love "There Will Be Blood" the "Fuck" is a study from A Type of Show exhibit

I caught a plane the other day

Theres an amazing pie shop near my place in Newtown called Pie Tin. Its good for drawing.

While I was at Dr D I got a lot of drawing time as I waited for shots to come through.

My good buddy Simon Westlake.

In other life news. I finished working on Happy Feet 2 a few weeks ago. Im now working with the super great folks at Mighty Nice. I should be able to release some really fun work I've been doing with them v soon. Stay tuned! Oh and I'm also studying with iAnimate. Which has taken up a lot of my time, it has been a pretty big factor in not posting anything lately.
Hope you're all well
Alex.

Deep breath.

I've got a week off before I move to sydney. It feels amazing to sketch again! The more I use ink and watercolour the more I love it.

Rosie Sleeping

Its hard to believe there was a time that I didnt like drawing girls.

Strutten Show. Lino Cut Prints

I mentioned recently that I'd been invited to take part in Strutten Launch Party exhibition.
Now that the show is all wrapped up I thought I'd share the work I sent them, as well as some thoughts on the process. These are Lino Cut prints, hand pressed on German etching paper.

This was my first gallery show (excluding that Smirnoff thing I did in sydney last year, because that was more of a Marketing/commission thing). I've written a long winded explanation, and then deleted it because I think I can summarise my feelings on it all by saying that - it was a mixture of failure and success.

Im not totally stoked on the final designs, the wolf one is the only one that really converted from my concept. The second two lost a lot during the making of them, and even then the concepts weren't that strong. It was fun to get away from the computer though, and get some ink and blood on my hands. It was also pretty fun seeing if I could make Lino Cutting look fresh and get away from that usual aesthetic.

Congrats to the crew at strutten, who managed to pack 300 kids into the gallery. Keep an eye on them! They are super good at what they do.

Its been busy

20 minute Vivian Maier study.

The last 5 or 6 month have been really busy. In a good way... but it feels like the manic rush of colliding jobs is finally coming to an end. Or maybe a better way to describe it- I'm hittin the breaks a bit. Limiting the amount and type of work I'm accepting, and hopefully getting to focus on the projects I feel most strongly about. More on that in the coming months.



These are a few little pieces from my hard drive to clear out the cob webs. The guys from Tiger Choir asked if I could help record some of their set while they were supporting the drums around Australia. It was a fun exercise. There are a lot of things I'd do differently next time, so Im looking forward to doing it again when I have some time. Editing spontaneous stuff like this can be a tricky for me, its like putting together an intricate puzzle, but often the pieces you need arent there. Im guessing the more experience I get the more I'll collect the pieces I need when I need them.
A couple of sketch book pages from the weekend-

Oh and contrary to my opening statement about work, Im moving to Sydney for a couple of months to work on what looks like a pretty hectic project. Its all part of my master plan though. Stay tuned!