Latest Updates!

Hello all!

I feel like I always start these blog posts with a remark about how long it's been since I last posted - I guess I do it quite a lot, but with good reason! For the past few months, I've been winding down from my latest animation and spending more time with my family. On this project, I was responsible for animation, character design, script/storyboard and 30+ backgrounds of varying detail - in fact, the only element that wasn't my responsibility was the sound. 

 

An unused backdrop from the recent animation.

Needless to say, while I am bursting with pride at what I've produced, recuperation time was vital - I had to commit a lot of myself to the production. With the project finally wrapped in mid-April 2025, I have since been taking a relaxed approach to what's next for me and I will delve into that today.

Lately I have avoided taking on any substantial projects, instead returning to my illustration work and focusing on trips that were pending at the time. I travelled to Majorca with my dad in early May to surprise my brother and his family, having a great week together this was my first opportunity to truly relax since September 2024. After returning to Scotland, I organised my upcoming projects and started preparations for future illustration work. 

In June I spent a few days in Paris with my brother, where we attended Distant Worlds, a concert dedicated to the music of Final Fantasy-a formative game series from our childhood. We also managed to sneak in a trip to the two parks at Disneyland Paris, marking the third Disney resort we've visited together.

Illustration of Ibrox for Father’s Day

Since then, I shifted my focus back to custom artwork, namely the football stadiums, which I do get a steady stream of orders for. I am now in a position to jump back into a sizeable animation project again. What I have in mind is my own modest production, with a mind to hone my skills in the discipline. So unless any companies reach out with a contract in the meantime, my plan going forward will be to animate my own project while occasionally working on a few illustrations that I have in the pipeline.

Until the next update, peace ✌🏻

A Long Overdue Update!

Hello all!

It's been a little while since l've posted anything of any substance in the blog other than a few pieces here and there. As I've previously discussed in a few different posts, I have been working hard on an animation since last July - the first since Hashtag Live in late 2022. This project is now 95% completed including sound and we are now awaiting final approval from the client. I plan to cover more about this animation in the blog - breaking down the processes behind the work. This will be planned out once everything has been approved and the final production is public.

In September last year I also completed illustration work on a feature length film titled "Make it to Munich." The film follows Ethan Walker, a young Scottish footballer who, following a life-changing car accident, makes the decision to cycle to Munich for Scotland's opening match against Germany in Euro 2024 - only nine months later.

The film premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival on March 9 2025. I am pleased to say that I was in attendance, getting to spend some time on the red carpet and soak in the experience of a film premiere. I initially had the opportunity to meet with all the cast and crew in a function at the Dakota Hotel and even got the chance to catch up with Martin Docherty and lan Bustard, whom we animated in "Marty Goes to Hollywood" in 2014.

Make it to Munich itself was fantastic, a deeply enjoyable film on many levels with the ideal balance of emotion and comedy. The film will be released in Scottish cinemas in May, though could possibly see a wider release.

I have also taken part in two local fayres (Christmas and Easter) in which I have been selling my prints. These have been an enjoyable experience and not entirely outside of my comfort zone since I have a background in sales and upselling.

Going forward I have a checklist of smaller projects that I intend to get through before taking on anything bulky. I will be taking a laid-back approach and treating this period as a break whist I recharge for what's next. However, I do have a few ideas for future graphics work and there is a certain animation that I started a few years ago that I may just revisit.

On the subject of animation, I have learnt over time that these projects tend to be few and far between, my next animation project may well be 2 years away. I have no idea what the future holds in this regard, how exciting!

Merry Christmas 2024!

Merry Christmas everyone when it comes! What a hectic year it has truly been, but an incredibly fast one all the same.

As the year began, there was no real plan for me going forward, I had been working on prints, namely a Twechar map and had a few other pieces planned. In retrospect, its quite funny how tight for time I felt then, as now by comparison, I believe I had it easy.

2024 started with the horrible news that my friend & collaborator Mallorca had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died only a matter of weeks after his announcement. After about seven years of collaboration on The Hashtag Show, I felt a bit unsettled and unsure of what the future had in store for me.

A month later, I was contacted by a film studio in Glasgow that I had previously worked with. I was presented the opportunity to create an animation with a runtime of 3-4 minutes and would be carrying out the majority of the work on the production - story sketches, storyboards, pre-production, animation, character design and backgrounds. The only major aspect of the piece that isn't being done by me is the sound, which the studio will take charge on.

This animation has now been ongoing for around ten months, albeit the post-production didn't end until late June and a different graphics project took priority for two weeks in September, followed by my two-week holiday to the US. The character design was signed off around May and the storyboards approved in late June so animation has basically been ongoing for 5 months now, minus the aforementioned gaps.

I currently estimate the animation to be around 75% finished, and I am hoping to be completely finished by late January. This has been a brilliant project to work on - I will probably do a much deeper and more detailed breakdown of the production in a few months, once it has been revealed publicly.

This project has been a huge undertaking for me and had a number of challenges. I have worked on similar productions in the past, but never by myself, I've practically done a whole team worth of work while also doing a lot of other work day-to-day. I keep reminding myself of this fact as I gradually reduce the amount of work still required. Every time I have hit another milestone in the production, I have encouraged myself along using three simple words (one word really) "Chip Chip, Chip" which basically means I'm gradually finishing the piece bit-by-bit, like a sculptor chipping away at marble.

I also recently completed other pieces of digital art - one of Ibrox stadium, a piece that I was often asked about doing upon completing the Celtic Park and another inside Celtic Park as a Christmas gift to a customer's father - which has now been printed, framed and collected.

Going forward, my road map has me finishing the animation by (hopefully) the end of January. Once this has been completed, I will be taking a much needed break (might be a long break) and only doing some occasional print work and I plan on spending some much needed time with my sons.

Favourite Animated Christmas Special

Hey Arnold - Arnold's Christmas (1996)

This episode has only very recently made it on to my list of animated favourites. I'd watched this Christmas Special several times before, but it was only during a recent rewatch (2021) that I truly appreciated how great the episode actually is. "Arnold's Christmas" has leapfrogged all The Simpsons Christmas specials that at one point would have topped my list, purely for nostalgic reasons.

In the episode, the tenants of Arnold’s home, an inner-city boarding house (Sunset Arms) are running a secret santa in the lead up to Christmas and Arnold draws the quiet Mr Hyunh, who always seems sad around the holidays.

Arnold soon pays him a visit to find out a little more about him and it becomes clear that the man has a very touching back story. Mr Hyunh, originally from South Vietnarn, explains how he was separated from his baby daughter Mai during the Fall of Saigon in the Vietnam war, holding her above his head as a U.S. Army helicopter was evacuating the Vietnamese. She was taken by the soldiers back to America, guaranteeing her safety.

When he was finally able to leave Vietnam himself, Mr Hyunh had been unable to find Mai, knowing only that she had been taken to Hillwood. I won't go into more detail on the plot here as this episode is better to be watched for yourself and I recommend you do! I watch it several times over the Christening period and its fast becoming a tradition.

This episode actually premiered on December 11,1996 - 28 years ago yesterday. I'm a little gutted that I didn't realise this fact sooner as I'd have loved to coincide this post with the anniversary of its release.

Overall, it is a wonderful, heartfelt episode and I wasn't surprised to find it is often included on "TV's best holiday episodes" lists including Variety's, Screen Rant's, Indie Wire's and Den of Geek's and is the top rated Hey Arnold episode on IMDB. I watch this special several times over the Christmas period and I recommend you give it a watch on Paramount+.

The episode's opening is my favourite part, a catchy tune and a very atmospheric scene - several shots of a snowy Hillwood and a few of the shows best known characters, and a certain football headed snowman. It always gives me strong, nostalgic 90's vibes.

Go watch it now.

Favourite Animal Character in Animation

Mushu (Mulan, 1998)

Mushu is the selfish and motormouthed Chinese dragon companion of the main character, Fa Mulan. He is, by far, the stand-out performance in 1998's Mulan, owed largely to a great performance from Eddie Murphy.

Murphy would later go on to provide the voice of Donkey in Shrek, a very memorable role that he may well ss have been considered for because of his performance as Mushu.

Murphy is much better known in animation for the role of Donkey than he is Mushu. However, if you analys! both performances, they aren't all that far removed from each other - Funnily enough Donkey would marry a dragon in the Shrek series. Initially conceived as two dragons then later a two-headed dragon, Mushu was finally developed as a single-headed, physically-diminutive dragon, that is impulsive to his detriment.

Mushu - a demoted Fa Family ancestor - joins Mulan as her guardian when he inadvertently destroys the stone dragon that was originally chosen to guide and protect her on her journey into the Chinese army. He is introduced as an incense burner in the Fa Family Temple and it is soon revealed he serves as a servant to the ancestors- a consequence of his ineptitude leading to the death of a Fa ancestor. As previously mentioned, his own lack of care around the stone dragon also leads to its destruction and Mushu takes the position but only to fulfil his own selfish desire.

Mulan is one of the first movies that I remember being taken to see in the cinema (in the Barrbridge Showcase) I also remember being taken to the nearby Mcdonalds afterwards and upon asking the staff, getting the Shan Yu toy - undoubtedly the best in the collection. Toys in Mcdonalds today aren't even comparable to the 90s and 00s.

I recently noticed during trips to Disneyland Paris that Mushu is quite a popular figure amongst the merchandise, which is different from Disney World in Orlando - I can only assume he was particularly well received in France when the film was released.

Busy busy!

Hello all,

It's been a minute!! I’ve been incredibly busy since the last blog update as it has been full steam ahead on our latest animation. During the pre-production stage, I designed the main character Gordon, sketched several scene backgrounds & storyboarded the project, which could run as long as 4 minutes.

Thus far, the majority of the work has involved creating different assets that the character, Gordon, will be interacting with & digitising the background sketches. For backgrounds in this project, I've been influenced by the Chuck Jones style - a simple yet artistic look.

Since the last post I have also created artwork of Twechar Parish Church, which has ceased function as a religious building in the past few years. It has since been placed up for sale, which has been a bit of a contentious subject within the village.

This was requested by an Twechar ex-pat who was very specific about what she wanted, the church at night with a beautiful white owl perched nearby. This piece was printed onto 350 gsm A3 card and mounted in a simple white frame

I have also completed several edited versions of the previous Celtic Park designs, which I have also included below. These were created and delivered digitally, so there were no prints required in these examples.

As things currently stand, I intend to have the majority of the backgrounds and assets for the animation completed by mid September which is when our family is going to Florida. Upon our return, work will commence on the piece and it is my hope, best case scenario, that it will be completed by Halloween.

In addition to this, I’ll be sharing a few posts over the next couple weeks, breaking down some of my favourite animations, characters & influences. I'll post a brief description on Campbell Animation, my Facebook business page, and then will go more in-depth on the blog.

After the animation has been completed, I have a few works in the pipeline that I intend to get done on the run up to Christmas. More to follow soon.

Second Update

This post won't be as detailed as I would usually like, the reason being that I already typed the post up and there was an issue with cut and paste which resulted in me losing everything. Lesson learnt, always copy on iphone, never cut. So as promised I have returned to update on what I've been up to in the last few months since September 2019.

One of the digital pieces I worked on was a drawing of Dennis the Menace and Gnasher. These characters were a huge influence on me as a child and were a big factor in my wanting to be an animator/illustrator. I initially drew out these characters in 2016 and only recently got around to bringing them to life in a digital form.

As mentioned previously, I worked on a logo for Elroy of Cut Different clothing, based in the USA. Elroy had a very specific idea of what he wanted the design to look like. I enjoyed working on this design as it does incorporate a character of sorts - character design being one of my passions. Elroy was very happy with this design and recently gave permission to share this design on my site and blog.

Next, I did some work for Kenny, one of Elroy's contacts. Kenny reached out to me to give his current logo new life. As you can see from the images, I upped the detail on the logo, but kept the core principle the same. Kenny was very happy with this updated look.

I helped Kenny again soon afterwards when he contacted me to create a logo for his brand "Moor Life." Kenny wasn't sure exactly what he wanted but was hopeful that we could include an elephant in the design. I created a design as below and Kenny was thrilled with the final delivery.

 There was another Hashtag Live held in Classic Grand in December 2019. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the boys were unable to record audio for another introductory animation so I instead I did various pieces of artwork for the show.

In mid November, I decided it was time to return to creating animation, as it had been 6 months since I had actually done anything in that medium. At first I planned to create an animation that I'd planned out earlier in the year. However, it occured to me that we were approaching the Christmas period, and so I felt this was a good opportunity to create an animation based around that. The result was "To Elf and Happiness" the story of Twinkie, a workshop elf and his secret love for Elsie, an Office Elf. Overall I was very happy with how this project turned out and feel that I am back to my animating best.

Going forward, I have a few ideas for what I would like to do next, including the aforementioned idea, which centres around a balloon character and perhaps another comic. I will also be doing my best to raise the status of Campbell Animation in 2020. I will update the blog as soon as I have further developments.

Hello again!

A common trend with my posts to the blog are that I tend to update it for a period, followed by a few months of silence. During that period though, it usually doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working. In fact, usually the opposite is true and I have found myself far too busy to put my thoughts down on the page.

This recent period of absence has unfortunately been down to some seriously bleak circumstances for my family. My grandmother sadly passed away after a battle with cancer. She fought amazingly and I am proud of how she defied the doctors every time. This has quite naturally been a particularly devastating time for me - my gran was always a massive part of my life growing up and I lived with her for ten years.

However, she was a strong lady and would not have wanted me to wallow in darkness after her passing. In the time since my last post I have created a few different pieces of work, including both artwork and animation.

Through my Facebook page, Campbell Animation, I connected with a new client from Buffalo in New York. He reached out to me to digitally re-create a sketch that he had made for one of his music business ventures. I created the piece and he was pleased with the final product, so much so that he contacted me recently to work on another design. This recent piece is for a clothing line he will be launching and the design is quite a unique one. Unfortunately, I won't be able to show any of these designs for the time being as the client has asked that these remain confidential. I will remain in communication with him and if he later allows me to present these I will do so.

In addition to this freelance work, I created a few one shot comic strip based on a joke I'd read online (below.) Once I'd completed the first strip, I got an idea for a second one and was able to create that fairly quickly after the first. These ideas were just for a bit of fun to post on Campbell Animation, so I may or may not create more based on these characters in future.

These projects re-developed my taste for creating comic strips. Drawing and reading comics had been my first passion and was what led me into the creative fields in the first place. I have always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to create an action-adventure comic book. The character pictured below is one that I have recently started to develop. I have sketched him many times now and really enjoy working on him.

I recently completed a test for a company called Education City, based in Oakham, England. I was in Leicester for a meeting with the team down there, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of touring their offices, though I felt that the type of work they done didn't quite fit my own style. I was a front runner for a position within Education City and was tasked with completing a learning module in the final stage.

After much consideration I decided to complete the task since I'd travelled all the way to meet them. Unfortunately, in the end, I was not the candidate chosen for the role but I am happy with their decsion, I would have felt awful declining the role and I was very much on the fence about it. In the end, I am glad I completed the module as through it I learnt more about Adobe Animate, which is not my native program.

I also created a unique character, that I named Arty, in their style to show that I was more than capable of creating assets in that style.

In addition to all this, I did more work for The Hashtag Show, bringing to life the Geordie Captain America, a character they had invented in their fortnightly podcast, and a frequent topic. Lately my work for The Hashtag Show has moved from animation towards more design work, which has allowed me to look towards other projects. The Hashtag boys are looking to arrange a date for another Hashtag Live event, which would be my 3rd show doing the intro animation. I will update the blog if there are any developments on that.

Going forward, I will be travelling to Florida on Monday for two weeks and getting a much needed break from everything that has been going on in my life. I will return with fully charged batteries and ready to look to the next project. As before the BBC project is going through a lot of development changes so my involvement has been delayed again. I have been speaking with The Hashtag Show about doing a possible comic strip so will probably get that completed once I'm back and move forward with once of the many animation ideas I have swirling around in my brain.