OMG! PONIES!!!

I recently discovered theoatmeal.com and it's now my favourite web site in the whole world! How to ride a Pony.

Here's where I'm up to with the Brian model. This weekend I'm going to start working on all the different facial expressions and mouth shapes that I'll need to make him talk.


In this picture his eyebrows are actually 1,000 individually rendered strands of hair. I shit you not Gentlemen!

With hindsight that was probably overkill, but at least now I know how the hair system works in Blender. Bring on the Mullet!!

Meet Brian!

This weekend I forwent my usual nights out clubbing with P. Diddy, 50 Cent and DJ Bell-End. Instead I decided to stay in and do some character modelling for my next animation.

Here's the reference sketches that I drew to model from. I was aiming for a 40-50 year old male, cartoony... but not too cartoony! He also had to be a bit of a nerdy loser. Apologies if you look like this!


And here's the weekend's work! I'm not 100% happy with it, now that I can see him in 3D and from different angles I think it shows up some of the weaknesses in the character design. Although it doesn't help that he's in a neutral expressionless pose at the moment!


I'm going to add hair and eyebrows next, that should cover up a lot of the head shape problems, and the Will Smith ears! If I can he'll have a nice flowing mullet (Just like DJ Bell-End).

I could spend longer trying to improve the head but the main aim for this animation is to get it finished. I'm coming across a lot of the same situations that I did when I first started learning 2D animation. So I know that I'll learn more from finishing a bad animation than I will from never finishing a perfect one.

Give us a Hug!

After months of doing nothing I finally have a new animation project that I'm excited about! I'm animating this one in 3D using Blender so there's going to be a very steep (but fun!) learning curve involved.

And just to prove that I've not been slacking off, here's the body of the main character which I made this weekend. It doesn't look like much but this took me absolutely ages to make as I haven't modelled in Blender for years.


I should hopefully be shooting that live action Zombie sketch very soon too. I just need to get organised and pick a day... Oh and buy a Cricket Bat.

Denzil's Face (1997)

This is going to be my last retro computing post and then I'll get back to animating. Back in 1997 I wrote a game for the Amiga called Denzil's Face. When it was finished I sent a copy to Amiga Format magazine and they published a review of it.

After literally minutes of Indiana Jones style Googling I finally managed to track down a copy of that issue on eBay, and it turned up today. Click on the image below to read the full review.


Here's a couple of my favourite snippets from the review:

"Another game that's based around a very simple idea and yet is very satisfying to play is this awful looking game called Denzil's Face."

Alright, calm down buddy! We're not all Pablo Picasso.


"It looks dreadful and the sound isn't up to much but it's a whole heap of fun to play!"

Or so the ladies tell me... No wait! That doesn't make sense!


"Another well executed idea that looks a whole lot worse than it plays."

OK I get the point! ...You Bastard!

Now that computer graphics technology has finally caught up with my vision, I may have to re-write this game in Flash. It's either that or a Bob Johnson RPG.