I made an animation about my partner and her friends’ ongoing legal case – to get sign-language access at entertainment events and venues. They have a Crowdjustice funding page over here – it’s a great cause; go and give them loads of money!
The Latest, in a Very Occasional Series of Interesting Posts About My Exciting Marathon Training
It’s less than three weeks to go to the London Marathon, for which I have been training since November. This should be the start of my tapering, but I’ve actually been on a sort of involuntary tapering programme now, for the past 3 weeks, due to mashed knees. I’ve decided to transfer most of my […]
Rubbish animation, but this is just 30 minutes into using Autodesk Sketchbook. I didn’t know it could do animation before! It’s quite nice too. Responsive, pared-back interface, nothing but the timeline, onion-skinning and brushes… hasn’t crashed yet… not too expensive either… (I might hate it by next week)
More catch-up. I have really had no time at all for drawing this month until now, so I’m trying to draw these as fast as I can. Some of these drawings might be a bit messy and tangential.
Super-8 film, shot using a 40 year old Canon Auto-Zoom 814 ‘Electronic’ camera and a reel of Kodak Vision 3 500T Super 8mm Negative Movie Film. I got some strange looks from some of the other tourists.
In the Maxis version of Sim City, I’ve never been able to find out how to build giant space-elevators in the middle of my dystopian-nightmare cities. This issue has slightly vexed me over the past 25 years or so.
I really enjoyed drawing this picture for the Bloomsbury Festival. Here’s an earlier version with the British Museum. This was before I was informed that the museum itself wasn’t actually part of the festival, and I hadn’t got the local demographics quite right. Oops! I’m still quite pleased with it though.
Exporting Art-boards From Illustrator As Separate Files
There is a really useful button, hidden away in the “Save As” dialogue, in Illustrator. If you have just been given an Illustrator file, with about a hundred-million art-boards in it, and you need to find a way to import it all into After Effects; then this can be good thing to know! (it took […]
Here is a drawing of a robot monster, which has just been dredged up from the bottom of my hard drive. Robot monsters are never not cool, so here is another one! This one is half victorian-robot, and half Jekyll and Hyde, and is also found to be lurking in a dark recess, on my […]
Bee Detective Teaser from James Merry on Vimeo. Newly updated, and slightly improved version of the Bee Detective teaser animation. Rejigged for the national tour.
My first attempt at making a zoetrope out of piece of mountboard, a paper plate, and some string. It’s a bit wonky, but then, as a wise old man once told me, “That is why you’re an animator, and not an engineer”. The earliest known zoetrope was invented in China by Ting Huan, circa 180 […]
I’ve won an award! This is the Clin d’œil Award for Best Special Effects 2011, for my animation work on Hands Solo. Massive thanks to Charlie and Billy for allowing me to draw pictures all over their films. 🙂
This was made in collaboration with Bump, back in…. 2002? I think..? A looooong time ago, any which way you look at it, anyway. For a Channel 4 TV pilot based on the infamous Shoreditch Twat periodical. Shoreditch Private Army from James Merry on Vimeo.
This film was produced and funded by the Channel 4 Mesh scheme, back in 2003. I’m still proud of it. A young girl’s adventures through how I imagined the Russian Far East to be. This, being before I had managed to go there in person, it’s a fairly embellished artist’s interpretation of what the Russian […]
I made this film all the way back in 1998, when I was an animation student at Farnham, Surrey. The idea behind the film was my own frustration at being deaf, and having to keep up in social situations full of hearing people, and the way that hearies just don’t, or can’t understand. It won […]
This was my RCA graduation film. Made in 2001. Thats ten years ago. TEN! Anyway, it’s based on the old fairy tale of the same name. This was my first foray into 3D animation, and I had to teach myself 3DS Max. I used my old PC with a Windows 98, which I remember liked […]
The ancient legend, retold through the traditional medium of second-hand television. This was made in 2000. At the time I was being inspired by Plunder-phonic music, specifically Negativland, and I wanted to see if I could create a visual equivalent. It was one of my student films at the RCA, and also one of my […]
Check out Charlie Swinbourne and William Mager’s new film about a deaf teenager caught in-between the deaf and hearing worlds. I think it’s great! [Disclaimer: I made the fake animated Facebook page sequences in it, and some of the titles. And the big spinning CD at the start 🙂 ]
The first pen and ink drawing I’ve done in a while… Now the summer is here, I’ve decided to make it my mission to draw as many trees as I can during my lunch breaks, before the weather goes all rubbish again. Here is the first tree of probably not that many…
It’s been a while since I’ve last looked at this on-going side-project, but I’ve finally managed to get round to doing another Stupid Bird. Only another million left to do now. Stupid Bird; No.83 from James Merry on Vimeo.
Keyed and auto-traced video footage, and converted into shape layer paths. Crazy-wide strokes, and thin dashes to cause glitchy Moire effect, and a fill layer on top with a difference transparency. Voila! Personally I really like the look of this. I’m not sure what a practical use of it might yet be though… Doodling with […]
Yup, I’ve drawn another pine cone. They’re good things to draw actually; Easy to get lost within their folds and shadows and crinkly bits, although it can be tricky remembering which sticky-out bit I’m drawing at any one time. Here are some photos of the drawing at different stages of completion…
I’ve been making a conscious effort to get away from the computer and do more drawings on, shock, horror, actual paper, using actual pens and inks. Photoshop, Illustrator and all the rest are great for doing very specific tasks, quickly, to meet deadlines, but I think they have actually become part of the reason I’ve […]
I’m trying to make more of a conscious effort to get back to drawing with non-digital media. At least to start off with anyway. I drew the the roughs out in pencil and ink, on actual, real-live, physical paper, did the final line-work really carefully with a dip-pen, and then scanned it and coloured it […]
I don’t know why, but I thought it’d be nice to draw a knight riding his trusty stead. Here are some of the progressive iterations I made while drawing this.
I’ve finally bit the bullet and laid down the cash for a new Wacom Cintiq to replace my ten year old Intuos. It’s terrifyingly expensive, compared, to say, a mouse, for example. I’m really happy with it though, and I’m glad I got it. Anyway, here is a short review of the Cintiq, and pros […]
I got commissioned to design a map for an exhibition about Southall, to be held at the South Bank Centre. I love maps so I jumped at the chance to do this. I’ve never actually been to Southall myself, despite having lived in London for a decade now. Now I feel I’ve been missing out! […]
I did this title sequence for a brilliant new BSL comedy series by William Mager and Charlie Swinbourne. It is called The Fingerspellers. Check it out here.
I’ve not been getting much time for drawing lately, which is always frustrating. Anyway, just to keep my hand in, I’ve started a drawing of me riding through Richmond Park on my bicycle. Its not finished though.
I thought I’d have a go at designing a t-shirt for Threadless. Well, actually, its an old drawing, but adjusted for t-shirt suitability. Anyway, if you fancy wearing a t-shirt with a dog, bras and knickers on it, please vote me high! I need all the votes I can get. Thanks! 🙂 And here’s the […]
I’ve designed a poster for my daughter’s Christmas present! Its a bus. With animals in it! It took me a while to come up with this. Apart from having to fit it in-between my day job, and my dad duties, at first I wasn’t sure what to draw. I had a vague notion of that […]
I thought it would be nice to kick off my new blag with some of the more successful recent attempts at life-drawing, that I’ve managed to do over the past few weeks. I draw all my life-drawings at the Doodlebar, which has an excellent regular life-drawing session every Tuesday night. I can’t go for the […]
I foolishly ignored the old maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and accidentally broke my old website while not fixing it. And then, to compound matters, my Macbook Pro broke down too! And that bit wasn’t even my fault! I blame Nvidia. Anyway, now with a new main logic board and graphics […]
