The Dream of Ink: UNHIDE Conference

‘The Dream of Ink’ is a beautiful animated short, put together by the amazing Lightfarm Studios for the opening of the UNHIDE Conference, the first event focused on Digital Art in Brazil. Directed and Produced by Rafael Vallaperde, the short is the journey of a little girl made of ink through a phantasmagorical inky world.

I love the art style of this piece, and the way the use of colour, the character design, and the beautiful fluid simulations all support the aesthetic and the story being told.

Also, check out the video below for a short behind-the-scenes look at what went into making this film.

UNHIDE Conference took place in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, 2nd-4th November 2018. It was hosted by the UNHIDE school of digital art.

Method Design - AICP Sponsor Reel 2016

This VFX dance spectacular from Method Design must have been a dream job for the Houdini effects artists. Method was hired by production company RSA to produce this years AICP sponsor reel. Using motion-capture driven animation and dynamic simulations, the short playfully represents the AICP sponsors as dancing avatars.

I love this video. It's visually engaging and has a huge amount of energy, and the simulations are really creative. I'd love to have worked on this project. Congratulations to everyone that did.

#DrawYourCity with Mischief

Comic cover by Esao Andrews for House of Mystery #37

Collage by Ashley Joseph Edwards

Illustration by artist Dasha Pliska from Odessa in Ukraine

The last few months Mischief the product I work on at The Foundry has been running a monthly themed drawing challenge. 

Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to knock up anything for them so far but this time I finally made an effort for the #DrawYourCity theme.

We’ve been putting out an ‘inspiration’ board for each theme and this time these images caught me: 

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I was born and raised in Central London and love living somewhere so charged and ever-changing. One of the best things about living here is being able to share the city with newcomers and show them your favourite sights. 

My rough idea starting out was to draw hands offering up the city at night and to have the hands and city lights coming out of the dark. I started my piece by drawing the hands without thinking too much about what I wanted to put in or around them. 

Once I was happy with the hands without really thinking about it too much I drew some of iconic buildings of London but also some of the ones that are less well known but I have a connection too, like the OXO tower that I associate with fire spinning on the full moon. 

I drew the buildings in a matter of minutes intending them to be a rough outline that I would then draw over. 

In the end I ended up liking the way it looked with the sketchy style buildings instead of rendering them in a similar style to the hands. The contrast between the styles and the loose lines give the city energy and life that I think would have been lost if I kept working on it too much more. 

At David's prompting I added some colour to it and this is the final version of the piece I drew: