Top 10 Films of 2012

So it's that time for the year again. Here's a run down of my favourite films of the year - bearing in mind that I didn't see

all the best film 'contenders'

10. Skyfall

Back to basics and some much more - ticked all the Bond boxes and looked brilliant.

9. Margin Call

Taught, thriller(ish) filled with moral ambiguity and great performances

8. Wrinkles

Moving Spanish animated feature

set in an old peoples' home

7. The Imposter

Almost unbelievable documentary about a man pretending to be something he's not...

6. The Descendants

Excellent, slightly low key drama - wonderfully put together

5. Paranorman

Brilliant stop motion combining 80s adventure with 70s horror, great humour and fantastic animation

4. Argo

A fantastic story that manages

to perfectly balance drama, tension and humour

3. The Raid

Makes you wish all martial arts movies were as good as this

2. Moonrise Kingdom

Fantastic, charming, funny Wes Anderson flick.

1. Martha Marcy May Marlene

Creepy, haunting, extraordinary story of life in a cult - outstanding performance from Elizabeth Olsen.

A few special mentions in the following categories:

In the 'Not As Bad As They Say' category...

John Carter of Mars

Prometheus

In the 'Every Bit As Bad As They' Say...

The Man with the Iron Fists

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

and finally in the 'Not As Good as They Say' category...

The Hobbit

The Master

Shame

Here's to a good film year 2013 - see you on the other side with more doodles!

Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas to all... hope you have a great holiday and normal doodle services will be resumed in the new year!

"Classic" Doodle

I've been busy with writing and boarding duties this week, so to keep the blog warm, here's one last post of design work from the Mr Ace video

Dark Doddle

This weeks offer for the sketchblog was "The Intimidating Musician" - I might have gone overboard with this the intimidating...

Ahem, er, Wednesday, doodle

Sorry folks, didn't get this posted yesterday, so here is this weeks Tuesday memorial doodle - form the sketchblog - The Jubilant Binman...

The Ace Man Cometh

So, for the last few months I've been making a music video for the horrendously talented Pale blu Jak, and finally it's finished!

Big thanks to Neil, Nicole and John for letting me do this little project for them and for agreeing to all my crazy ideas. And a special thanks to Graham Corcoran for the most of the background art and Jorge Ortiz and Bruce Ryder for helping out with the animation. Enjoy!

Sir Doodles of Tuesday

I've been all kinds of busy recently, so here's some notebook doodles for the ol blog this week

Sorry sir

A late blog entry (depending on your time zone I suppose!) this Tuesday. I've been ridiculously busy recently finishing a music video project I'm doing and so below is one of the designs of a squirrel operating a mechanical tree - as you do. Look out for the finished product very soon!

Tuesday the doodelth

This week sketch blog doodle ... The Aesthetic Anteater

Tewsday Doodle

This week's sketchblog effort. Theme was "the Short-tempered Clown"...

Tue-Fri-day Doodle

With life drawing over for now, seems like the the friday sketch blog doodle and my regular Tuesday doodle have become one - this week - Captain Spasm... (you may need to turn down the colour on your monitor for this one - sorry!)

Last Life Drawing

So last night was the last of the four life drawing classes with Niall Laverty . I really enjoyed getting back to the easel - even if I am still fairly rusty and look forward to going to more of his classes in the future. Below are last night's pick...

Friday frolics

This week's Friday Lobster Boutique sketch group theme - "The Unhappy Bandit"...

The mornin after the life drawing before...

Drawings from week 3 of Niall's life drawing class, including an interesting exercise in stopping and looking at your drawing for 30 seconds while the model held the pose. This mostly resulted in 30 seconds of curing, shame and wishing for better drawing ability!

More Friday fun

So this week the Lobster Boutique sketch blog theme was "The Unconfident Beggar". Been very busy this week, so this one's a bit more rough and ready...

Real life life drawing

A couple more from my Monday life drawing sessions. I probably should be concentrating more on gesture drawing rather than playing with the different marks you can get out of charcoal, but it's been such a long time since I used it...

What the Friday...?

So an unexpected Friday doodle today. A few buddies have decided to do a little weekly sketchblog thing (I'll post the blog once it's up an running) and our theme this week was gangsters. Here's my effort...

Good ol' fashioned life drawing

So I woke up this morning with a sore shoulder, stiff neck and charcoal indelibly ground into my hands. I think I must have gone life drawing last night. This class was the first time I've drawn at an easel with charcoal since I left college (a long time ago). So here are a couple of very rusty two minute sketches - the plan is that they'll serve as the "before" shots - the "afters" are to follow over the next four weeks of Niall Laverty's fantastic Gesture Drawing for Animators course

Vamp doodle

No digital nonsense today, just ol fashioned pencils and some very shiny brown paper...

Corny return

I thought it's about time I did another one of these single panel cartoons. I'm never very happy with they way they turn out, but hopefully it'll raise a smile. This one is inspired by the awful dubbing they used to do (still do?) on movies shown on TV...

Rejected Cows

In the process of designing this nonsense, there's always a few designs that for some (usually the right) reason don't make it to the finished product. Here are a few brightly coloured cow options I did for a video I'm working on that didn't make the grade...

Fez Cow

Justin Bieber Cow

and of course, Elvis cow

Japan doodle

Here's a quick Tuesday three panel comic strip doodle. "Inspired by a true story" from our recent honeymoon!

Post It doodles

So it's Tuesday and it's time to start posting again after all the wedding/honeymoon nonsense. Watch out for more finished stuff soon, but in the mean time I thought I'd post some post-its!

Spooky Doodle

A spooky Tuesday quick brush pen doodle today...

Tuesday WIP

Here's a little short I'm working on. I was hoping to get it finished by now, but I've had some real work to do, so it's not finished yet - needs a bit more animation and a lighting pass on the BG.

Also this is my 100th post - woot!

Photoshop Phakery

Some more memory skteching and messing about with Photoshop watercolour brushes for a wet Tuesday morning...

Tuesday Teaser

Here's some designs for a little animation project I'm working on for the wonderful Pale blue Jak

Texturey doodle

Playing about with textures in the Photoshop....

Memory Sketch

Back in the Tuesday doodle vibe again finally with this bit o nonsense. Another "memory sketch" - remember someone on yer way into work and then get them down quickly when you get in. This sour looking lady was on the bus this morning - I can't remember if her skin was blue or not....

Le Best of Annecy 2012*

* Best of Wot I Saw

Yesterday I arrived home from another fantastic animation festival at Annecy. This year was particularlly special as Ireland was the spotlight country for the festival. Animation Ireland, The Irish Film Board and SDGI did a great job of promoting and putting together Irish events, retrospectives, exhibitions and of course parties!

On a personal level, this was lovely for me as I've only been back in Dublin working for a year and it finally gave me the opportunity to meet some of the wonderful folks from other studios around town.

Features

I got to see a few screenings and thought I post a couple of best stuff that I saw. Of the features, I saw and enjoyed The Lorax, Le Tableau, Zarafa and (having gone in to the screening, wanting to not like it) Madagascar 3.

The stand out film for me was the Spanish feature 'Wrinkles'

Shorts

I got to 3 out of the 5 shorts in competition screenings and saw and enjoyed this year's worthy winner 'Tram'

Below are a selction of other shorts that I really liked too...

The People Who Never Stop *teaser* from florian piento on Vimeo.

Second Hand from Isaac King on Vimeo.

Extracto de Lagrima from Carlo Vogele on Vimeo.

How to eat your Apple (teaser) from Erick Oh on Vimeo.

and finally the wonderful 'A Different Perpective' by Chris O'Hara

"A Different Perspective" Trailer from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

Other Bits n Bobs

There was as always lots of other stuff going on in the festival. With the Ireland focus going on, I nipped along to various Irish networking and special events - the one on Thursday featuring a moving speech from Tomm Moore. The culmination was a great night 'painting the town green' at Finn Kellys on Friday night - it was the party of the festival.

Most of the 'making ofs' were booked out by the time I got meself organised, but I did get along to an impressive presentation by Brown Bag about their new feature project 'Deep'.

I was also helping out on the (2D Animation software) CelAction stand in the MIFA and saw a great case study presentation from Celaction, Adobe and Jamie from Karrot Animation about their heart warming series 'Sarah and Duck'.

I also managaed to fit in one of the TV series in competiton screenings with some great stuff like 'Circus Show', 'Regular Show' and 'Save Your Planet'. This was the first time I had seen the fantastically mnetal, wow-I-can't-believe-they-actaully-made-this 'Secret Mountain Fort Awesome'.

So that's it for Annecy 2012 and that's enough text I reckon - the next post will have drawings in - I promise. Merci Annecy - à la prochaine!

More grannies??!

Tryin to get back in saddle of posting after some up and down time....