3 x 3 Show Success

Very pleased to see that a couple of my entries in this year's 3 x 3 illustration shows were successful. Claude Debussy's Life In Miniature animation picked up a Merit in the Professional Show and my cover illustration for Sophia Mcdougall's Mars Evacuees received an Honorable Mention in the Picture Book Show.

AOI Awards Shortlist 2014

Very pleased to say that my animation Claude Debussy's Life In Miniature has been shortlisted for this year's AOI Illustration Awards in the Design category. The Awards show will be held at Somerset House, London later in the year.

Applied Arts Awards And Interview

I'm triple happy to be able to say three of my entries were chosen this year for the Applied Arts Illustration Awards. My Claude Debussy: A Life In Miniature animation was a winner in the Motion category, The Skull in the Poster category and Next Steps In The Final Frontier in Editorial. Quadruple chuffed to also have an extensive interview, entitled Colour Ways for the Split Run section, in the current Awards Issue that can also be read online here.

Claude Debussy's Life In Miniature

Here's a great animated project I worked on earlier in the year for classical music site Sinfini Music. Their mission is to 'cut through classical' by commissioning interesting online content including animations, of which this is part of the composer's Lives In Miniature series. The brief was to capture a flavour of the life of Claude Debussy, a composer I was only vaguely familiar with I'm sorry to say, in an animation under three minutes long. It was an education delving into his lovely music and dramatic history to write the script and develop a suitable visual style for the proposal.

Debussy's music was groundbreaking and radical for the time and his personal life proved equally unconventional so I focused on those aspects for the narrative. His was also the era of the Impressionists and, even though he disapproved of any association, I thought a modern and colourful painterly approach was appropriate mixed in with an inky brush pen style for the drawn portraits. The beautiful composition Claire de Lune was chosen for the piece and all was in place. It was put together in After Effects with a single unbroken 3D camera move and was a real joy to make, hope you enjoy.