Greg David's Blog (11)

Man, it's been ages since I was last here! Planet Sunday is doing okay, I've increased my staff and taken on another 2D animator, and we currently have a CGI animator too, who's with us on work placement. We're in production on the first episode of Cranium's Ark, a 23 minute extravaganza which incorporates a mixture of 2D animation with live action. The production has been okay, despite the initial problems of breaking the software - no, not hacking it, but actually breaking it, as in everythi… Continue

Okay, so it's now 1.55am, and my dog has just farted. Great. I'm currently doing an all-nighter, so while the macs are rendering some sequences, I thought I'd head over here and update my ever-out-of-date blog. We're working on a show that we've been developing for four months. We're due to go into full production in the New Year with the first 23 minute episode to be completed by the end of January. At the moment we're literally compositing the promo for the show, so I'm busy typing away to th… Continue

Well, the last of the 'nine old men' has passed on, and so we say farewell to one of the greatest animators ever known I may not be the biggest fan of Disney animation (I'm more of a Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, early HB guy), but I have great respect for their ability and the vision that these guys had. When you think that they were pioneers in this industry, having little, if not none of the technology that we have today, it really is astounding. Whenever I read The Illusion Of Life, I am amazed… Continue

Over the years I've read several books about the animation studios of the 1930s and '40s, like Disney, MGM, etc. Some of the tales about the animators back then and the stuff that went on behind the scenes mirrored some of what went on in the animation school I attended almost 14 years ago. The practical jokes that we'd play on each other, the wind ups, etc etc, and all the fun that needs to exist in a place of creativity, where the ridiculous becomes the norm, and what is supposed to be the ri… Continue

Well, I was going to call this blog number two on the way, but that would sound like I need to use the bathroom. Anyway, we've just found out that our family is expanding, and we have a baby due in November. It is exciting, but scary all the same. For those of you who don't know, my son is now 2, and it's a great age to be, both for him and us as parents. Our main concern are the sleepness nights, as I remember how hard it was for all of us back then. But hey, we got through it once, so we shoul… Continue

Wow! What a couple of weeks THAT was! After all the struggle of doing nearly 35 hours' work in just two days, you can tell from my previous post that I was a little tired! Well, there were a few hiccups with what I produced over that time, which meant that I had to redo some bits, mainly rendering them through After Effects again to get the alpha channel to work. That all happened between Tuesday and Thursday, and on Friday I had an email from another client who offered me more work, which had… Continue

I've been working on a music video for the last couple of weeks, and I had one less day than I thought till the deadline, so it meant working overnight. I crawled into bed at 8am, slept until midday and then carried on. It's now 10pm and the files are just uploading to my ftp site as I'm typing this.

I feel like I've been on a long haul flight! The project was a mixture of live action and animation, something I've never done before, so it's been great fun. I've realised how much I'm im

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Isn't it exciting, the start of a brand new year. It's almost like a blank sheet of animation paper just waiting to be drawn upon.

Last year for me was great - I could've done with earning a bit more money, but hey, I'm still alive, well fed, and above all, safe. So what does 2008 have in store for me? Well, I've hooked up with the author of a series of successful children's books and we're going to be developing them into a series for TV. We're looking to get a deal set-up on the

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For those of you who are in the UK, I'm currently attending the Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol. Today's events were really interesting. It was an Animation Symposium that featured a number of panels of people from the animation industry. If you're thinking of attending, do it!

So, being my first festival in 13 years, I felt completely out of place yesterday, being Billy No-mates. I'm not trying to get sympathy, but it's hard when you go to these things alone and it appears l… Continue

Well, I'm hard at it once again, my son is asleep, my wife is out and it's just me, the dogs, my machine and my laptop. Scrub that, my son's still awake, I can here him 'bapping' Larry, his cucumber friend. Just to clarify, 'bapping' is when he slaps you on the the sides of your face with both hands shouting 'bap!'. Larry is a stuffed toy cucumber from Veggie Tales.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I thought I'd let you know what's happening. Currently

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Hmm... that sounds like something Fisher-Price would sell.

Well, first of all, welcome to my blog. I had better warn you that as I share my thoughts with you, you may wonder if you've stepped into some kind of twilight zone episode. I'm sure that sometimes when I'm drawing cartoons too much, I end up thinking like one. My wife would testify to that, especially when I start laughing for no apparent reason, having seen something in my mind's eye that cracked me up. The joke is mostly los

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