(Another) Long Awaited Update

I’m finally getting around to updating the blog and giving a little rundown of what’s been going on over the last few months.

I’ve been majorly busy recently, which is not a bad thing, but it has meant that I haven’t been able to keep on top of updating the blog, & even sometimes updating content on Youtube & Facebook.

First up, I created another few “Coachy Bear”designs. These are just a little bit of fun that I create to share on Campbell Animation & another local page. Generally when I create these, I try to tie them in with a season or holiday, such as Christmas or Halloween.

I also have a few different logos to share since last updating the blog & I can do so now. These designs were actually first commissioned in 2020, but due to some unforeseen issues & then an NDA, they were only made shareable recently.

I can also proudly say that I’ve created another 2D animation recently too. Animation (though its used in the title of my blog AND Facebook page) had taken a slight back seat in recent years due to the more prevalent graphic design projects that were arising.

I created this intro video for Hashtag Live 10, the Christmas show, which was now my 3rd Hashtag Live intro & 5th Hashtag animation in total.

The content of the intro was… interesting to say the least. Written by Mallorca Lee & Scott Gibson, Hashtag Show creators, it involved their usual antics, introducing the audience to the show and, on this occasion, proudly showing off their cartoon genitals.

The request for this piece came in quite late- about 2 weeks before the show. With all the free time I could spare, I managed to get the animation completed by the deadline, sacrificing only a few intended visual jokes.

Overall, I’m pleased with the end result & the audience at the live show responded well to it - one of the biggest laughs was from a gag I’d added at the last minute to solve a pacing issue, which was a strangely encouraging moment.

Lastly, I dabbled in a bit of photo editing a few months back. Originally, the client had asked me to draw a superhero design, similar to the ones I’d done before. I suggested that I do it as a photo edit since I was struggling for time between projects & this was much faster than drawing. She was fine with this & you can see the finished product below, which the client was overjoyed with.

I do have some more updates to come in the next few weeks in regards to what I’m currently up to but will discuss this in due course. A range of work (with a well known figure) that I was hoping to have started by now is still in limbo but I hope will still go ahead soon.

Elias has arrived!

Hi everyone, it has been a mental few weeks, just trying to wrap up projects & clear my schedule for my son being born.

We welcomed our son Elias into the world on June 23rd at 11:45 - coincidentally enough Elias was Walt Disney’s middle name. He is doing great, he had us all worrying for a little while, needing some extra TLC in Special Care, but he has came through it now.

As stated on a previous post, I was working on a football related piece, which I can now reveal as the piece below. The work features Scott Brown and Billy Mcneil, two influential captains and players during their time at Celtic FC. The effort that went into this artwork was huge seeing as there are four separate elements - each of which could be their own featured print. In the end, I am happy with how it has turned out and have a few ideas for what to do with it.

 

 

I will now be taking a break from any creative work for the next few weeks as I focus on settling Elias into our home and taking care if him. I have two other projects that I need to wrap up so these will be my priority once I return from paternity.

I will also be focusing on completing the animation that my oldest son Logan & I were previously working on. 

As I also mentioned before, I have been sketching some character designs too, so I have included these below too - they may one day find themselves being digitised in some form, as past sketches have.

 

Until next time!

 

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.

 

Happy New Year!

As I start off every new year, I do like to reflect on the work that I've done in animation over that period. 2018 has been a particularly successful and busy year for me, having completed a total of six animations (though Meatballs was started in 2017.) This year was very taxing, however I am determined more than ever to keep working hard so that one day I will be able to do it full-time. I am very proud of how I did in 2018.

The first animation that was completed in late Jan 18 was done in collaboration with Jon Campbell and was a particularly fun project for us to work on, using less limited animation than we have on any other project. The final project looked great and showed some of our finest work.

From Meatballs, I moved onto my first collaboration with The Hashtag Show where I created "Animal Testing" showing the boys take on the subject of animal testing itself with a funny Scottish twist. Although I moved onto this off the back of another animation, I was very hyped to create this one as I knew it would get me a lot of exposure.

After that I worked on the Hashtag Live 6 animation, which was shown in front of a sold out crowd at Classic Grand in Glasgow alongside Animal Testing.

After this, I worked on some freelance work for a gaming Youtube channel called "Wheezing Cow." This consisted of a large cow character in a walk cycle merging into a production logo. This project broke things up for me as I had worked on two Hashtag productions in a row and was feeling fatigued. 

After a break, I bounced back with Hashtag 2: Shite. This animation was shorter but I felt was a lot better than the first one, with a lot better gags.  This project was quite difficult to get of the ground for me, as I was unable to visualise anything from the voiceover given. This may have been a touch of creative block since I had been working myself pretty hard.

 I then focused on creating character designs for a few months after this before finally finishing off the year with the animated intro to Live 7 which was again in Classic Grand.

As mentioned in other posts, I have started pre-production on an animation that may be getting sold to the BBC. I am still unable to give any information on the project just yet but rest assured as soon as I can I will. My point of contact on the production is estimating the project to be completed by April 2019.

Below I have included my most recent character design and also a tribute I created to legendary comic creator Stan Lee.

I am currently working on a character design for the BBC project and creating a production intro for Campbell Animation, which should be completed within a week or so.

 

And so we come to the end of another year

Well Hashtag Live has been and gone again and what a great night! My animation was screened and, a slight glitch aside, it all went great! I also got the chance to see several of my designs on the screen showing the boys in different films, which was great.

Going forward I don’t have another Hashtag animation to do this side of Christmas but I do have the project mentioned in the last post. I had a meeting on Thursday with the company behind the project. It seems that after discussions the project has shifted from a series to a short film, which I personally think works better. This means some changes to the script which has delayed production a bit. At the moment it is hoped that this will be finished for February.

This may be my last post of 2018. Going forward I hope to continue with a few designs, there’s one in particular I want to get finished, which I will show as soon as it’s finished.

I would say overall it has been a pretty great year for me, having completed 6 animations, which considering I have another full-time job is pretty astounding and a step up from 2017’s one animation.

Below I have uploaded the animation from Live 7 and the funny images.