A Man & Ink - News, Developments and Musings

Happy New Year :)

2009-01-06T08:33:00.005Z

So a new year is upon so and over the Christmas Break I have being doing a little redesigning on The Girl and the Whale, after taking time off for turkey and chocolate of course.

So here is a new concept for the Island in both a line and colour form. It was drawn with a new programme I am trying out call Zeus Draw. It is a great vector drawing programme which was used for the line version then coloured in Art Rage with a little colour tweaking in Photoshop.

Happy Christmas to All and to All a Goodnight

2008-12-22T14:02:00.003Z

The end of the year is upon us once again, how time flies when your having fun. I would just like to take this opportunity to wish everyone out there a Happy Christmas from us all here and have a great 2009, wow the end of the decade is nearly here too.

So we are all off tomorrow to our various homes around the country and I cant wait for my visit from Santa.

The Irish Film Board Launch

2008-12-22T13:48:00.004Z

We had a chance recently to socialise with the industry of Galway, at the recent Bórd Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board launch of their films catalogue, which we were duly included in with "Miss Remarkable and her Career". And Thanks to Simon Perry of the IFB for his kind words about the project.

So picture to the left is, (from right to left) Tomm Moore of The Cartoon Saloon, Director of the upcoming feature "Brendan and the Secret of Kells", in the middle is Barry O'Donaghue of Barley Films and director of the feature "Caribou" and then there is myself.

And below are two members of A Man & Ink, Mr Michael Lennon and Donal Mangan, an animator on Miss Remarkable. With behind the controls of the camera, Candice, another animator on Miss Remarkable. A great night had by all.

Great External Links

2008-12-16T11:47:00.003Z

So a couple of new things have been posted to the World Wide Web recently that are worth checking out.

The official french Brendan and the Secret of Kells trailer has been posted to the ever expanding YouTube and can be found here.

Its great to see the snowdrops in full flow, after all the people who worked on them.

And in the world of shorts, the award winning Nora Twomey has started up a blog where you can see two of her films in full. It brings back alot of memories watching From Darkness. :)

Miss Remarkable Continues

2008-11-21T16:04:00.006Z

So we are continuing on with the animation of Miss Remarkable and everything is going great. We have a few finished scenes so I wanted to post some stills to illustrate the style. The film is completely black and white and the scenes are based on Joanna's graphic novel of the same name. And all this is with the participation of Bórd Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board. Our thanks to Emma and Andrew. :)

A New Little Project

2008-11-20T11:04:00.003Z

So the recent Junior Film Fleadh has just finished here in Galway, the last film was shown on Saturday 15th Nov. But not only were there films shown at the festival but before each film there was shown the promo animation produced by ourselves. It was a piece we created in Apple's Motion and told the story of the magic of cinema coming from the projector to the screen.

The Girl and the Whale - another image

2008-10-19T17:40:00.004+01:00

So it is wet & windy here in Galway today so it inspired me to a storm concept for The Girl and the Whale. I hope you like it.

Another Redesign

2008-10-12T16:00:00.004+01:00

So sometimes you can just not be pleased with something, so we have gone for a new redesign on our site again, so check out the new site, just images for now with video to be added soon. Enjoy.

visit our site...

Oh and for the eagle eyed here is a sneak peak of a new show we are working on.

Recent Pitch

2008-09-21T11:05:00.002+01:00

Ok so while we are waiting for the machine with the photos of Miss Remarkable to come back from the Mac Doctor here is an image from a recent music video pitch. The video tells the story of the world waking up.

It's Official

2008-09-16T18:07:00.004+01:00

We have finally gone officially into production our new co-production Miss Remarkable and her Career, although we did start animation a month ago we wanted to wait to announce it until we had put pen to paper on our Bord Scannan na hEireann contracts, which we did last week. And thanks again to Orla for all her help.

Miss R is a co-production between ourselves, Lisbet Gabrielsson Film AB (Sweden) and Bullitt Film (Denmark) and is based on the graphic novel of the same name from Joanna Rubin Dranger, who is also directing it. We are producing 75% of the animation here under the guidance of David Rylander of Rylander Animation based in Sweden. So there is alot of skype and emailing going on. But we are also responsible for the english voice record which we are planning for early December.

A little history on our involvement is that myself and Lorrain met Lisbet, Joanna and David at Cartoon Forum last year and have been putting the co-production together for the last 6 months, and thanks to Barry O Donaghue of Barley Films for his immense help there.

I shall post some images and production photos soon.

A couple more join the team.

2008-08-29T16:16:00.005+01:00

So I haven't posted in a while but we have been very busy starting work on a new project. So we had a couple of new animators join us. More to come on them and the project soon.

Have a good weekend to all. :)

Our New Site Revamp

2008-07-23T15:54:00.007+01:00

So we are currently in the process of building a new main site, it is coming together page by page but it is the place to see more images on Wulfie and other projects too.

Enjoy :)

www.amanandink.com

A New Project

2008-07-22T09:19:00.004+01:00

So despite my best efforts and good will to publish more often I have fallen into my old habits of irregular posting, so in an effort to get back on track here is a new concept from a short film idea we are working on, The Story of the Girl and The Whale.

The Finished Colour Version - something different post

2008-06-29T16:41:00.005+01:00

Ok so I figured I would post the coloured version of the pervious post (Something Different), just finished this up today. A good Sunday spent in work. For those interested, it was coloured in both Flash and Artrage.

Enjoy :)

Its Raining, its pouring and everyones working.

2008-06-26T14:27:00.005+01:00

Its been absolutely pouring with rain here in Galway the last couple of days, but its ok because I have been inside checking links on the Galway Film Fleadh website for this years' festival. In fact I wasn't the only one, we had the work spread across two continents as Lorraine came back to do the bulk of the work for a week or so, slotting all the pages on the programme site together from Sydney, Australia (raining there too i hear :) ).

There lots to look forward to this year, including a public interview with Peter O'Toole, which can only be great. Roll on July 8th.

Something Different

2008-06-24T16:23:00.006+01:00

I thought it might be good to post an image from a different project, other than Wulfie and in an effort to post more often here is an image I have been working on, on and off for the last week or so. It is the same image but the different versions I have been going through, just finishing the cleanup version there today.

Programmes used for anyone interested in that type of thing are, Rough - Flash (brush), Colour Rough - Art Rage, Cleaned - Flash (pencil) and all drawn with the cintiq.

Wulfie Characters - sized comparison

2008-06-18T15:32:00.004+01:00

So in an effort to post a little more often, here is coloured size comparison page of the characters of Wulfie. We are hoping to start posting more images from our other projects too, so keep on coming back for new postings soon.

Libby Outfits

2008-06-14T16:54:00.005+01:00

Today I spent a couple of hours sketching different outfits for Libby, so I figured I would post some of these sketches. Including one inspired by the current Euro 2008 tournament, although I don't think Libby would be too happy by her teams current performances.

Looking for Animators

2008-06-03T11:46:00.006+01:00

We are currently looking for Animators. We will be holding animation tests in house and the project will be in Anime Studio Pro. Please send your details to jobs(at)amanandink.com.

(Edited Comment) Thanks to all the people that have sent in their stuff but we have all the animators we need for now, thanks again.

Wulfie Scene Illustration - amended

2008-05-30T14:42:00.006+01:00

So here is the finished scene illustration from the previous post, I thought it would be interesting to post this as well as leave the other one up so as to see the evolution of the design for the image. Enjoy your Friday all. :)

Wulfie Scene Illustration

2008-05-29T17:04:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted artwork in a while, holidays and other stuff getting in the way. But I wanted to post something I have been working on today, it's a scene illustration for Wulfie, it's not completely finished, still working on the background but I'll posted the finished one along with this when its complete.

Summertime Is Here

2008-05-16T14:34:00.002+01:00

There has been a number of sunny days here in Galway and we came up with a new concept, not a tv show, film or illustration idea but we are going to change our working hours, for the summer anyway, so instead of the normal 9.30-6 from Monday onwards we are going to switch to 8-4.30. so we can all enjoy a bit of the sunny weather to come in the next few months.

Back From Salerno

2008-04-15T16:53:00.006+01:00

For the last couple of days we spent our time in sunny Italy at the Cartoons on the Bay Festival in Salerno. For us the weather was great and spent most of out time in t-shirts, while the local wore their big, thick coats. and us irish got blamed for bringing the weather with us, but we are back to work now and getting Wulfie ready for Cartoon Forum submission.

But at the festival Michael took a couple of photos with his camera phone...

I am off to get lost on our first day at the festival.

Our new buddy Juan Camilo Gonzalez from Columbia.

And can I just say that when I am in Columbia I like to drink Cafe de Columbia.

Aidan Harte, Director of Skunk Fu! gets us lost once again, just this time in Rome.

See Aidan's blog here and he is now studying sculpture in Florence.

On our way to the Vatican

"I did not know men could build such things."

Wulfie Animation - win the race

2008-04-03T13:04:00.003+01:00

Here is a looping clip of one of the scenes from the Wulfie Trailer. I thought I would post it to show the different stages in the process all in one scene.

Most of the characters are in the key animation stage, with the turtle animated in Anime Studio with his shell a line version and his skin textured. The skin works really well and is easily achievable in Anime Studio, hence the reason we are going with it, but as the case with alot of computer generated animation its just too clean and the best description of this I have heard is from a Japanese 3D animator, "the computer animation will never be as perfect as hand drawn", kinda sums it up really, but its a trade off, time, money and texture animation for not hand drawn. I miss the pencil though.

Incidentally this entire scene was made in digitally, from storyboard image all the way through. Oh and in 2 different countries - (another reason for the digital process).

Andy & Derek Style

2008-04-02T09:40:00.005+01:00

We've been working alot on the style of Andy & Derek and here is one of style concepts we have been working on. We really wanted to go for a limited palette and at one stage even had just black & white designs but we are really happy with this look.