Stop Motion

Just stumbled across this awesome stop-motion music video clip. Seriously cool! It's called Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie

Puppet Circus

For the last two weeks AFTRS have been collaborating with NIDA on a design project - we've taken inspiration from a children's book called The Circus in The Mist by Bruno Munari and turned it into a circus puppet show!
Firstly the narrative in the book was adapted into a short script and in groups we were given a selection of scenes to work on. We had to use paper as our primary material, to make 3D and 2.5D puppets. A circus exterior was built at a 1:25 scale for exterior scenes and then a larger panel of interior circus tent was made as a backdrop for the puppets inside the circus. Most of the effects were carried out in camera whilst shooting, such as shadow puppets and transparency backdrops and the puppet maneuvering. We also shot some of the action on green screen so we can experiment with some special effects in post production.
We had a great team of cinematographers who shot the film on a Red camera with a special 'snorkel' lens to get up close and personal with the miniatures. Here's a collection of a few of the pics I took behind the scenes as it all unfolded over our two days of shooting.

The Big Top

Enter...the checkerboard floor.

A tuba player... his cheeks puff in and out.

The strong man in puppet action

The team of puppets that make up most of the cast!

Ready to operate the bow-and-arrow Indian.

Standing by to operate a series of puppets on perspex over green screen.

The tent interior backdrop - paper with a fabric roof.

A giant fly!

A paper road with a zip being fed through the mouth of a car front...

Behind the scenes... a group twirling effort.

Final touches and a cute paper hat.

A charcoal street-scape on a transparent background, for the shadow puppets.

Architect for the week

One of the most recent things i've been doing at school is set design which involves hand drafting floor plans and elevations. And then hand building models. And then putting it all in the computer in VectorWorks. A little crash course in architecture! I designed a house that is influenced by a kind of country cottage feel...except it is massive... so more like a country mansion - but whatever, if i can design a hypothetical house i may as well make it grand!

Syd Mead website

www.sydmead.com

2050 sushi train?

This is my attempt using textures in photoshop (not the most ideal program for this sort of thing, but a good challenge nonetheless) to mock-up a kitchen, supposedly from 2050... but i went with a bit of creative flow and decided that if you're going to have an awesome kitchen in the future, it may as well be a sushi train... and make that a penthouse sushi train. It's inspired by the legendary Syd Mead and his futuristic creations... but also by a recent visit to the Ivy's sushi train that has all you can eat for $20 bucks most nights of the week! seriously good. (check it out here Merivale Event)

good things come in small packages

I was lucky enough to receive this awesome camera for my birthday/christmas present last year. It's a lomo diana mini and it is SO cute! it looks like a toy - and it's super fun to play with. it brings back the nostalgic feeling of exciting anticipation when waiting for films to be developed... like back in the day. so here's some of my favourite shots from a few rolls i took over the summer holidays. enjoy. http://lomography.com.au/

Aus-day antics. pool in a pool.

itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny navy polka-dot bikini
such a cute photo

photo of a photo. i love the texture of this fence in the background

sums up a good night i think. pretty girl and a bottle of wine...

fairy party hat parade

one of the fairies

christmas water pistol fights with the family up in Grafton

don't shoot!

a dualJack the horse after he took the front off his shin...

bubbles

making my mark

so i think i want a stamp so i can stampity stamp everything i please. i like the idea of having it as a kind of business card... something a bit ephemeral or transient that can be transferred across different surfaces...

these are just a couple of ideas i've revisited from a uni assignment back in 2006 i think. the font was originally inspired by a font used in vogue at that time. thoughts?

concept illustration

Who would have guessed it...? I can draw!

Having spent a few days with film designer Phil Shearer (he's awesome - check him out phil@filmdesigner.com) he taught me how to illustrate for film. The brief was to create an ancient Chinese temple based around an entrance of particularly large scale; the temple has an ominous feel and could be hiding a secret.

It was crafted by lead pencil on butter paper, then scanned into Photoshop to render colours and heighten the overall details. Butter paper is a great choice for this style - the heavy, dark textures are a result of the lead pencil smudging on this type of paper and being heightened on Photoshop.

final artwork

original scanned image

original sketches

the [extra] ordinary

This is a series of photographs that I created for my Major Project at UTS when completing my Bachelor of Design in Visual Communications in 2009. Each portrait is composed to portray a facet or idiosyncrasy of the subject’s character, which entertains something extra in the ordinary. Alot of fun to do. And many thanks to all my good looking friends!