Sparkly Sparkly Shiny Things

Stefan Awards opener 2009 from Pete Mullins on Vimeo.


Ahhh...it's that time of the year. Summer has finally released it's stranglehold on us and has stubbornly conceded to Winter. (We really don't have an Autumn in this part of the world).
Kids back at school, wheels of the economy well and truly turning over and I do the graphics for the annual Stefan Awards.
Stefan is basically a local identity, he owns a huge chain of hair salons. He's kinda like the 'Richard Branson' of the hair industry here in my state.

Anyway, every year he has this mega-budget awards ceremony where all of his hairdressers can compete for big prizes. It's a sparkly, shiny, glitzy night where my company supplies all the video feeds to the massive screens at the back of the stage. I get to do the animated backgrounds based on whatever the 'theme' is for that year.

It's always last minute, always kinda tacky, but gee I actually have a bit of fun doing it.

Last year's theme was a sort of heaven, hell, angel affair. I get to go along and a have a nice meal with plenty of wine watching tall, leggy models parading up and down a catwalk. Quite a civilized way to spend an evening really.

Heresy

At a recent SciFi/Comic convention I got talking to a fellow down 'Artist's Alley' who showed me how he inks his work in Adobe Illustrator. Now, I've dabbled with inking in Adobe Flash with some good results, but I was always keenly aware that I was using the software not in the way it was originally intended. After all, Flash is fundamentally a web/animation program.

Well here's my first attempt at 'penciling' in Photoshop, 'inking' in Illustrator then coloring in Photoshop.

Early days, but I think there's some promise in this technique. It certainly is fast!

Sunday Night Sketch

Quick 15 minute sketch taken from the Madonna film clip 'Frozen'. Fantastic imagery, great clip.