This is an ‘idle’ animation for games- when not doing anything else he demonstrates his character with the furtive scratching of his arse.

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An orc character crafted as an experiment in normal map baking in Blender, and as a character for my students to rig and animate.

His name is Doc Fungus, and he pretends to be  doctor, running to the scene of emergency with his experimental tools close at hand.

Doc Fungus loves his fraudulent job. As he rushes to the aid of the distressed, he capers and gibbers madly.

The top model is the high res version, completely impractical for my rickety old computer. The lower two are around 2400 faces and suitable for animation on college machines and with big enough polygons for the bones to be visible through the mesh. The beginner modelling students will get the low poly version to play with, a mere 640 faces.

There are many ways to make one, but this is the method I used which seemed to work well.

Ingredients:

Plaster bandage- one roll of. I bought mine from ‘Artrageous’ next to the Childrens Scrap Store, St Werburghs. £5 for enough to make several masks.

Things from the forest- I went to the Leigh Woods, Bristol and gathered fallen sticks and bark from around Yew trees, and some fallen ivy vine wood for the curly horns on one mask, and contorted hazel from the garden for the other.

Cling Film- enough to wrap your head in.

Mini glue gun- I got mine from Wilkinsons for about £4. It is a very useful thing to have around the house.

Cheapo poster paints- £1 a pot from Wilkinsons.

Nail scissors.

Optional- pen knife or other whittling device.

How To:

1. With the help of a friend wrap your entire head in a layer of cling film. Avoid suffocation by popping holes for the mouth and eyes, then wet strips of plaster bandage and wrap them around your head so that you resemble an ancient mummy. This will set over a few mins into a hard helmet that fits comfortably on your head. Probably you want it to cover the bridge of the nose and around the eyes too. It probably won’t want to come off your head. This is resolved by using the nail scissors to cut from the nape of the neck up to the back of the head.

2. Use the glue gun to attach sticks to the helmet, creating a frame for whatever features you want the beast to have.

3. Add layers of plaster bandage to cover the frame. Add more plaster bandage and squish it about to add details.

4. Wait for it to dry. it could take all night. A heater sorts it out fairly quicky though.

5. Glue on whatever extra details you want. Horns, tree bark, etc.

6. Paint with cheapo poster paint. Tip- you can show all the details by painting in a medium colour and then getting a darker shade very diluted and painting all over with that. The watery paint runs into all the cracks. Also why not try drybrushing afterwards with a lighter shade. Not unlike what some young boys did with Citadel Miniatures.

7. GET THEE TO THE FOREST!

Designed, built and hand moulded custom Easter egg design. Intended to hark back to the roots of the egg tradition and add an earthy esoteric flavour, I combined the image of the Orphic Egg, that with a serpent wrapped around it, with the Oroboros, a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail.

The original egg design was created in plasticine, and painted with a thick layer of latex to form a flexible mould. The whole thing was then coated in two halves of plaster, to support the shape. Then by cutting the latex in half and removing the plasticine, I could paint the inside with chocolate. I created seven eggs in total with this mould which I gave to family and friends for Easter 2009, using different combinations of dark chocolate with ginger or rose water, milk and white chocolate with chilli or almond, then covered in dried rose petals or coconut. As I used the mould it gradually degraded, losing some of the fine details.  The egg shown is an eighth, made just for pictures much later- the mould was not at its best by then.

What you can’t see is the dragon’s body with wings at the back, and the words “Light, Life, Love, Liberty” inscribed along the neck and tail. I think next year I’ll make a more substantial mould with food grade silicone and add extra detail to the egg part so I don’t necessarily have to bother with the extra coverings.

A brief clip from the unnofficial music video I made to LJKruzer’s song “Just Like Watching the Saints” which was to be premiered at his performance at the Electronic Carol Service in 2005ish. I then adapted the footage into the Spectralists’ visuals.

The film is a version of the Nativity played by robot toys. When the 3 Wise Men come from the distant lands of Argos, Index and Toysrus they discover the Child King is a hyper-evolved sort of future-organic android with fantastic powers and glory all around. The original footage was made very quickly indeed- I will probably rerender it and post it here some time.

Created for the stage production of the musical “The Forbidden Planet”- the set was the inside of the space-ship with the projector screen for the cockpit window. I designed and made the monstrous manifestation of Prospero’s Id.  In this scene the beast glares in while it’s giant rubbery tentacles dangle down from the ceiling of the set to menace the actors.

The design is intended to capture the essence of wonderfully bad 1950’s scifi- the monster contains echoes of Robbie the Robot and Emperor Ming.

It’s one of my earliest animations, but I still really like it!

An experiment in designing, modelling, rigging and animating a low poly games-style character.

This is a showreel of the Spectralists sound reactive visuals we perfomed many times, at our own audio-visual night Acid Skiffle, and in London for all manner of shows. See this entry for more details.

Lots of filmclips juxtaposed in twisted ways, intersperced with my animated characters. The modelling and animation is very basic- that’s because the VJ software we used only supported animated 3DS files at the time, so no deformations or rendering of any maps besides the diffuse channel.

Oh yes, and the sound-syncing goes wrong almost immediately. Technical issues to do with rendering a sequence that isn’t live! Nonetheless I think it works rather well.