Im in france at the moment to Support our film- The Cat Piano at the worlds leading animation festival- Annecy. Needless to say, the experience is amazing.
There is about 7000 people attending the festival which is set in the alps about 4 hours train from Paris. the town it self is beautiful, Very old french/swiss buildings, winding streets, and pressed against a turquoise blue lake. The atmosphere is incredible here. I cant imagine anything better- thousands of friendly, like minded people, mind blowing scenery and the worlds most cutting edge films.
Im just about to start my third day of the festival. The highlights so far have been seeing the european premiers of Pixars film Partly Cloudy and Henry Sellicks new masterpiece Coroline.
This internet cafe is shoddy, so its hard to share photos. hopefully i will find a better one!
soo this is kinda the final design for DZ. there were a few tweaks i wanted to do, but I had to leave them. Also, i got my business card printed. great success. If you are a brisbane kid, use king of print. Their customer service is pretty crap, but the product is great and cheap.
I have no innate talent for storyboarding, but it something I enjoy greatly. These are are some studies done this morning to take my mind off things.Theres no way for me to explain how excited the Where the Wild Things Are trailer made me. It brings together so many things that resonate with me. An amazing director who inspires me beyond words, a fantastic story, and genius music. the cynic in me would suggest that all of this is to much of a coincidence, that some genius marketing department has cooked all this up in their pot- a magic potion that will effortlessly achieve cult film status. but the truth is that i dont care, because i am not a cynic at heart. I am excited that so many talented people were given the chance to make the film. if you are interested in film stills, for study or otherwise, check out Framefilter. A great collection, regularly updated by cal arts graduate and dreamworks storyboard artist.
To expand on my mention of innate talent (a very controversial topic in creative circles)- I don't have innate talent for anything i do in creative fields. This is not a designed self-deprecating statement, it is a realisation that i came across years ago and has so far helped me immensely in my development. There are people that have innate talent, ideas and concepts come to them, lines flow effortlessly from their pencil. I have worked and studied with these people, and they are truly inspirational. In contrast to them everything I do is a battle. From start to finish. Despite this, I have so much energy for what I do, and I think this goes a long way to compensate for what I lack. I would be interested in how you feel about talent, Im sure there are some strong opinions out there.
So its been coming for a fair while.These are the front and back of my new card. I would have liked to get a Die Cut, but there isnt enough time to print them before I leave the country. Im not a designer, so this stuff is hard for me. Hope you dig it! (sorry i know that "hello!" is a bit tacky, and has been done. but i originally had "FUCK yeah!" and it seemed a little strong)
Heya blog, so ive known you for a while, and it occurred to me that Ive never shown you my face. i think its time to take it to the next level...Just a stupid pic for another site.
Annnnnd something with crazily cliche' subject matter, but hopefully not too boring. Havent really done serious cell shading for a while. i like the limitations. *(slightly updated image based on some ideas offered over at SatelliteSoda.com) Love Alex
and another loose study based on a very dapper man on Facehunter. With some liberties taken on the treatment. You can probably tell by now. I Love Half tone.
Also, a couple of things that have inspired me over the last few days, largely via Boooooooom. an amazing live video from lykkili
A really fun Music Video from a french band Naive New Beaters. The song isnt my scene, but the vid is!
???removed due to lameness (the first time ive ever done this, but the pic just really annoyed me!)
and an infamous Justice video following a youth gang through the streets of paris. violent and haunting.
Thank you very much for the helpful advice guys. Ive tried to address it the best i could.
Ryan? Which ryan are you? Ryan K? haha, i couldnt stalk you to find out, but all of the advice was great. I would love to hear what you think of the new version (i know its not radically different, but hopefully its...better) :)
so ive been working on some 3d stuff for my reel. very slowly. This animation was started because the dialog shot i was working on was too overwhelming. the plan was to work on the dialog shot, and then when i was bored of it i could work on this one, instead of mindlessly staring at random things on the Internet. needless to say, this didnt work. i just worked on the easier and more instantly gratifying shot. and the dialog shot sits in blocking phase.
On the plus side. this shot was fun. It started off being a simple jump, but that was mega boring and acting is more fun. so now its a jump, and run and fun little droid. This is the first pass, so i would love some crits on it. anything and everything would be amazing!
Love
Alex
PS, to answer emily's question from the last post- the girl was drawn in black ink, over red colerase. Scanned, the red lines removed, then turned into a colour half tone, comped over the top of the scan and coloured. I wish there was an easier way to get good halftone effects in photoshop, rather than downgrading the image mode. if anybody knows one (apart from the simple filter) i would love to know :)
Hey! I made a website!!! JOYBOX:art and craft with alex grigg hahaaha ive been putting it off for years, because i had no idea how to do it. I bit the bullet and made one though. and it makes me happy to have a portfolio i can control completely, and present in the way I want!
ive been playing around with ink over the last week or two. Pretty fun, white ink isnt all I imagined it would be though. This is quick ink drawing, with some colours...
Also there are a couple of sites i think everybody should read every day forever. Motionographer- Ive only just started regularly reading this bad boy, and im kicking myself for not starting earlier. Everything great in animation and moving image. Totally inspiring.There is a link on the side bar----->>> A couple of quick links that really stood out to me- dvein.com probably on of the coolest companies ive seen. Also a short film called Onwards, sponsored by nike. Amazing. It looks like it might be mocap, would be amazing. because its such a stylised character. If its not mocap, thats probably just as great! because its some simply brilliant character animation. The other site I think is great, CartoonBrew. both of these sites are pretty big, and you probably read them already. Hope you are well
So I got some positive feedback from the guys about this design. I can imagine that im going to develop it further over next little while. I really have to talk to the guys a some more. Once again, would love to hear what you think.
Hi Blog, Some sketches from the last day or two. based on a study from a guy on face hunter Hope you like:) Thanks for the opinions on the last post, its always interesting to get some outside perspective. oh and ben, ill have a think about your question, im not really sure.
So as promised here are some more progress pics from my development for DZ's up coming EP launch. I started them before I got feed back on the last one. So, predictably, they weren't received well. Actually, they were received well, but the band shared my opinion that they weren't really suited to an EP cover. Its a weird magic. I cant really put my finger on what it takes for a piece to be suitable for a CD sleeve. I guess because its packaging, there are a different set of expectation. Tricky. I find that my favorite covers are photographic, or quite abstract. Most of my skills are focused towards figurative work, so that habit is inhibiting me I think. All of the designs so far are based on my Feather Wolf concept. Ironically, the Feather Wolf design struck me as the one I liked least of the set. I appropriated the middle design as a blog link button for my myspace page
Im working with a band called DZ at the moment; trying to produce a CD jacket, as well as some branding and merch. I think I will keep some of my work in progress up here.
So this is the first colour sketch i sent through, kind of a concept for things more stuff. They liked it but didnt think it fit they're image. So back to the drawing board. I like it though. I hope you do too
I thought I'd Write a quick post about the great news we got last week. The Cat Piano has been accepted into official competion in Annecy. We are all very excited. Congratulations team!
Hi Blog, So following my scanning sesh last week, i had a few sketches on my hard drive that i was keen to colour. This was one of them. A drawing that was inspired by an australian Muso, whos name escapes me. the colours are influenced by the photography of Hedi Slimane. Photography is something that always inspires me. Especially portrait photography and photo journalism.
This is a little sketch i did a while ago, but only just scanned and coloured this morning. In other news, our film -The Cat Piano won audience choice award for best short at the Adelaide Film Festival. We were very excited. Animated shorts are often over looked at Film Festivals so we were very proud that it picked up the honour, especially on its first festival entry.
In other news, Im about to head back up to Brisbane, after my stay here at PRA in Adelaide.It has been great, and Im looking forward to working with these extremely talented individuals again soon. Big love Blog
Hi my name is Alex Grigg. Im a graduate from Griffith University's animation program. I am an animator, illustrator and production designer based in Australia.
This is my personal blog, a place for me to keep track of my thoughts and help develop my skill. I love for people to take a look around, but please be kind in your judgments as these are personal explorations. I actually doubt that anybody but friends will read my blog, but i hate to feel self conscious about posting so this is more a disclaimer i guess. Constructive criticism and ideas are much loved so feel free to tell me what my posts make you think
