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.

SOOO much! DZ promo work, Game Art Direction, and Illustrations

My buddies DZ asked me to help out with some art for their upcoming Single Launch. I did about a million ideas but these are the two that we went with in the end. The first is the tour poster design (sans text), and the second is the single sleeve. You can hear the single hereThe guys have had a pretty massive 12 months. National Tours, much acclaim, EP releases ect. To give you an idea of what they are like, this is their last music video- Teeth'. Its pretty fantastic.


A personal illustration -

I spent the last few weeks helping out my friend Bill Northcott and studio I Love Biscuits with an up coming game release. Bill has produced some really successful flash games off his own back and with the amazing organisation/programming power of Biscuits things came together quite quickly.
I was asked to define the art direction and design the backgrounds and props. Bill took care of the character work and animation.
These are a few examples of frames from the very long back ground. (in game all layers paralax)

And these are a layout of some of the props that I designed
And last but not least- These are a few illustration/doodles that I played around with between projects as well

Anyway, thats a slice of what I've been up to in my downtime! Would love to hear some feed back on it, so let me know what you think :)

Hopeyoure all well
Alex.

Animation Test shot Flash Dance.

Heya blog,
Ive had a little down time lately, so I took the chance to do some test animation.
About 2 days of animation, 2 days of figuring out how the hell it was going to work, and then another day reanimating and learning how to use After Effects...And then about a day figuring out why vimeo was breaking it.
Animated in Photoshop CS 4.
Would love some feed back on this one :)

Love Alex.

DZ Shirt Design

soo this is kinda the final design for DZ. there were a few tweaks i wanted to do, but I had to leave them.
Also, i got my business card printed. great success. If you are a brisbane kid, use king of print. Their customer service is pretty crap, but the product is great and cheap.

New Business Card

So its been coming for a fair while.These are the front and back of my new card. I would have liked to get a Die Cut, but there isnt enough time to print them before I leave the country. Im not a designer, so this stuff is hard for me. Hope you dig it! (sorry i know that "hello!" is a bit tacky, and has been done. but i originally had "FUCK yeah!" and it seemed a little strong)

Jump Animation, Second Pass

Thank you very much for the helpful advice guys. Ive tried to address it the best i could.



Ryan? Which ryan are you? Ryan K? haha, i couldnt stalk you to find out, but all of the advice was great. I would love to hear what you think of the new version (i know its not radically different, but hopefully its...better) :)

Alex

New Animation. Jump!

Heya blog!

so ive been working on some 3d stuff for my reel. very slowly. This animation was started because the dialog shot i was working on was too overwhelming. the plan was to work on the dialog shot, and then when i was bored of it i could work on this one, instead of mindlessly staring at random things on the Internet. needless to say, this didnt work. i just worked on the easier and more instantly gratifying shot. and the dialog shot sits in blocking phase.

On the plus side. this shot was fun. It started off being a simple jump, but that was mega boring and acting is more fun. so now its a jump, and run and fun little droid.
This is the first pass, so i would love some crits on it. anything and everything would be amazing!

Love

Alex

PS, to answer emily's question from the last post- the girl was drawn in black ink, over red colerase. Scanned, the red lines removed, then turned into a colour half tone, comped over the top of the scan and coloured. I wish there was an easier way to get good halftone effects in photoshop, rather than downgrading the image mode. if anybody knows one (apart from the simple filter) i would love to know :)

Shhakke

Heya blog,

This is a little sketch i did a while ago, but only just scanned and coloured this morning.

In other news, our film -The Cat Piano won audience choice award for best short at the Adelaide Film Festival. We were very excited. Animated shorts are often over looked at Film Festivals so we were very proud that it picked up the honour, especially on its first festival entry.

Here is the recently released teaser.


The Cat Piano - trailer from PRA on Vimeo.

Check out the HD version on Vimeo.

In other news, Im about to head back up to Brisbane, after my stay here at PRA in Adelaide.It has been great, and Im looking forward to working with these extremely talented individuals again soon.
Big love Blog

Alex

News and animation

Some cool news. Ive been asked to work on a great film called Cat Piano. Its being made by some talented kids down in Adelaide studio's People's Republic of Animation, a studio that I have been excited by for a long time. The film is a 2d short animated film, directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson, and stars one of Australia's most influential musicians and writers, Nick Cave, as narrator.
I'll reframe from posting anything CP related unless i have permission. In the mean time check out the sporadically updated blog (theres a new link on the the sidebar).

K, beside that, I have had some helpful suggestions about the last animation post. So Ive reworked it. The most obvious change is at the end, but hopefully the many little tweaks throughout make it feel a little healthier

Stairs Revamp 1 from Alex Grigg on Vimeo.

all the best

New Animation, Stairs

Heya blog,

For somebody who often answers the question "what do you do?" with "duh, Im an animator" I dont dont put a lot of animation up. Hopefully over the next few months, there will be a little more animation going on around here.


Stairs from Alex Grigg on Vimeo.

Im not going to lie to you. this took a little longer than it should have. mainly because i have a lot of trouble sitting down and animating for the sake of animating.

This isnt 100percent so i would love to hear some opinions guys