I finished painting The sculpture of Dash a couple of days ago. It gave me way more trouble than I'd counted on, but its done now. So now I need to get stuck into my painting again. Boy am I tired.

Here are a few screenhots rom A4, the second video to feature Skratchet, alongside Gobo, one of my oldest characters and the oldest character that I still work with.

This is a hand drawn, photoshop coloured cell animation, edited in After Effects and Premiere. It is styled on classic side-scrolling platformers, with lots of paralax-scrolling in the abckground. It's about their lives and how they're surviving, they go to see a film and talk about stuff. People thought it was funny. It got screened at Straight to Video 2 and the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards.

This is the first appearanc of Skratchet.

A very short (I think 53 sec) stop-frame animation called a.sort. He was simply obsessed with sweeping up dead bugs and things.

These are two different designs for the image on Skratchets t-shirt. The one with the rolling hills is closest to the one that made it onto the shirt for the sculpture featured in 'Bubbles', although I dropped the rainbow and the mauntains.

This was the second time I worked with Skratchet.
The first time was in the only claymation stop-frame animation that I ever made.

This was an installation called 'Bubbles' that was on the Spier wine estate for the second outdoor sculpture biennial they had there.

I later adapted it for indoor display with a wooden base that saved me from having to install the piece in the actual surroundings. cutting holes in the grass and genrally digging holes to sink supports into was no fun at all. Also, although I really liked the sculpture being in the same environment as the viewer when it was presented outside, it never worked quite as well for me indoors. I still haven't worked out why. I expect I shall figure it out soon.

I thought that I'd have finished this sculpture by now, but I have gotten involved in presenting a paper at a museums conference and its taking way longer to deal with than I'd anticipated. Writing is hard and even harder when you're as out of practice as I am. Art is easier, I can see the whole piece at one time.

Anyway, here are some pics I've been meaning to post of the construction of the sculpture that is nearly-but-not-yet finished. His name recently became Dash, and I think that this name will stick. I really like all of the dictionary definitions of the word. They fit his character.

One image shows his frame and the other shows the mess of polystyrene and polyeurahane that he is carved from before the shell layer is applied.

Last night I pretty much finished the modeling and surfacing of my latest sculpture. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Now if only I could decide on a name for it.

Holding Pattern

another pen and ink, digitally edited drawing

The guy in the background is called Radical Joe

Two digital sketches I did recently, the beginnings of a series, I think. I really want to work with video game map imagery, with more aesthitic and less of a GUI look. Although some GUI's are plenty pretty. Anyway, these are the first steps in that direction.

a dramatically lit scene near where I used to live in Woodstock

A photo I took in Caledon, classic small town scene, delapidated institutional architecture.

Vane, 2006
water-based enamel on canvas, 1000x600mm

This is one of the most recent paintings that I did. It is closest to the direction I want to take my new work.

The Small Bang

This is the last image in a series of 3 digitally edited pen and ink drawings I did in 2005/6. the other two are below. The first one, SHTSHTSHTSHT was done for the DIRT Contemporary's b&w poster project. The other's were an extension of the idea that I would like to persue as soon as possible, following Skratchet's adventure after the small bang (into the sea).

This is a mock up for a painting I might do soon. It's of a new character that I'm working with. I'm currently focusing on a sculpture of him, which will be for my show in October at 34 Long.

I've not yet settled on a name for him.

The fact that he is sitting in the dark is not necessarily connected with the blackouts mentioned below.