Latest Update!

Hello all! I should probably start by apologising because I haven't managed to update the blog in quite a while now. To be honest, I've just been really busy living life and decided not to devote my free time to work for a while. However, I have been plotting out future projects during my time off and, as always, I have more ideas than I'll ever feasibly be able to realise.

I travelled to Amsterdam in early September for my friend Jon's Stag Doo. Jon has been mentioned on the blog several times over the years as we've collaborated on several animation projects including Marty Goes to Hollywood and Meatballs. It was a great weekend and a perfect send off as he transitioned into married life.

Shortly thereafter I had a two-week holiday in Orlando with my family, visiting the Disney World and Universal resorts. The holiday was amazing as always. We have now visited the state of Florida eight times together and three times since our son was born. He really enjoyed this trip, getting far more invested in the character experiences and at 40 inches tall was able to ride many of the adult rides. He also returned home with a LOT of new cars.

We then had Jon's wedding to attend at the Busby Hotel in Clarkston. Jon as I mentioned previously is someone I have worked with many times from university right through to full productions.

I am currently working on a highland cow design that will hopefully be finished in the coming weeks. I am at the colouring stage, which may sound nearly finished but there's still a lot involved in this process. Once this is completed it will be sent to print and I will share the final piece here including some variants.

My next post will likely be showcasing these designs and following on from that I’m planning a piece for a family birthday. An updated showreel will also be dropping as well as a few other projects which i will update in due course.

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.

Favourite Character in Animation

Genie - Aladdin (1992)

Can’t lie, I love everything about this character - his design, the way he's animated, his dialogue and, perhaps most importantly, he's voiced by one of my all-time favourite actors. But in all honesty, who doesn't love the Genie?

He appears about 20 minutes into the film and changes the tone completely, taking over from lago as the comic relief. Genie's introductory scene, alongside his showpiece song "Friend Like Me," is also one of my favourite animated segments from all movies.

The Genie was actually quite a revolutionary character at the time of Aladdin's release - very few animated characters of that period were known for pop culture references and repeatedly breaking the fourth wall, particularly within Disney. True, some of those references have served to age the film (a Peter Lorre or William F. Buckley Jr reference may now require a Google search) making it less timeless than it otherwise could have been. 

 

However, there's no doubting how important he was (a huge part of this came directly from Robin Williams frequent ad-libbing) and I believe he opened the door (good or bad) for movies like Shrek which are choc full of pop culture and contemporary references.

Favourite Animated Movie

 Hercules (1997)

This film is ridiculously underrated, it isn't up to the calibre of a Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, but it's without doubt an excellent release from Disney. 

          

This is a film I've loved from a very young age, though I don't believe it has always been my favourite - that honour went to Aladdin. As I went through my teens, I really came to identify with the themes of the film. Hercules' journey to find the place that he belongs in the world, the continuous theme of "going the distance" and following a dream, felt particularly poignant as I tread untested waters with a career in animation.

Hercules was released at a time when the Disney Renaissance period of successful animated movies was winding down, and box office numbers were lulling. The movies themselves (Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan) were still beautiful works in their own right, but just weren't drawing the numbers of Disney's past masterpieces. Eventually the assumption would be that hand drawn animation is the problem and sadly the companv would switch almost exclusively to computer animation.

Add to this a hilarious sidekick in Philoctetes and an equally brilliant villain called Hades and you have the ingredients for a classic movie. 

                           
 

In regards to Disney merchandise, this is probably one of the films I have the most collectables for - outside of perhaps Aladdin. I’ll share a few of my favourites below including my Hercules tattoo.

Is it Disney's best? No. But it will always have a special place in my heart.

Pixar's Mark Andrews Comes To Town!

So, as I have mentioned before, all of us at the Glasgow School of Art were eagerly anticipating the arrival of Mark Andrews, the Academy Award winning director of Disney-Pixar's "Brave."

Mark started off his visit by giving us a lecture with a bit of background information on how he ended up in the industry himself. He then showed us some storyboards that he has worked on, taken from movies like "The Iron Giant" and "Spider-man" as well as giving us an exclusive look at what Pixar are working on at the moment, which I won't say anything about, just in case.

We also got the fantastic opportunity to present storyboards for a two minute animated short to him, thirty seconds of which we will need to animate for our next animation project. As previously mentioned, I chose a story that revolves around Ted, a boy genius who creates a time machine to bring a Viking to the modern day. Mark had some really good suggestions for where I can take the story, and great ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of. I will keep his advice in mind for future projects and I have already began to look at story-boarding in a different way. This experience, which was also my first workshop with a professional, has encouraged me to make an effort to attend the Animex masterclasses which I have always missed because it meant an extra days stay, which would mean more money. But after this experience, I would imagine that these classes will be worth the extra price, and will hopefully attend them in 2014.

Drawings by Mark as he explained his suggestions for improving my storyboards.

Overall, I learnt a lot from the past two weeks with Mark, and from his colourful personality, which made him all the more likeable as a person. His advice always lead peoples stories down avenues that they may not even have considered before. I also learned a bit more about pitching my storyboards - that for two minute boards, I should be presenting them in roughly one and a half to two minutes tops. This helped me a great deal, as before I would simple drone on, which I guess must have really bored the listener.

My next posts will likely be about my next few assessments: the Masters Proposal and the Animation 3 project which, as mentioned, will be animating thirty seconds of the storyboards that I made. I will also try to have my storyboards scanned and uploaded soon.