New Jibjab eCard

The guys at JibJab just released another eCard that I did for them a while ago. 

You can check out Party Parakeet here!

Naughty List

Naughty List from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

Happy Christmas!

Christmas Animation

Some craziness from a little Christmas'sy animation I'm working on, can you guess what it is yet??

God Smears

I experimented with a more linear approach with some of these smears. I wanted to see how the hand smears might work if they didn't necessarily follow an arc. You can see my attempts in the first and third row drawings and I was happy with how they worked.

Devil Smears

Some smear drawings from God, the devil and an Xbox. I remember having a lot of fun and experimentation with these and even more so with the God character. I'll post some of the smear frames from his animation soon!

Garage

Garage from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

Another little animation!

Audience Vote

I found out my short film A Different perspective picked up the audience vote at the London International Animation Festival, thanks London people!

More Smears!

The last post I put up discussing smear drawings seemed to be a popular one so I thought I'd follow it up with another similar post, this time highlighting some of the smear frames from my recent animation "Postbox".

Postbox

Postbox from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

So here's a little something I've been working on over the last couple of weeks, hope you enjoy!

New Animation

Here's a little preview of an animation I'm working on.

Film Festivals

I don't normally post photos but I thought I'd share a few from some of the film festivals where my short film has played and where I've been lucky enough to attend over the last few months.

Annecy 2012

The film had it's premiere in Annecy and I couldn't have asked for a better place to have it. I'd been to the festival three times already but this year was definitely the best. With my film being in competition for the first time and with the focus on Ireland this year it's not an experience I'll forget anytime soon!

View from the front row before my screening, just a little bit intimidating then.

Odense Film Festival, Denmark

This was a nice little festival. It was mainly live-action shorts in competition. It's always cool to check out the live-action stuff at these festivals too, it's a nice change from just watching animated stuff.

Encounters 2012, Bristol

I was only over for a couple of nights for this festival but it felt a lot longer. We crammed in so much stuff and met a lot of really cool people. It's also cool that after a few festivals you start bumping into people you've met at previous festivals and get to hang out again.

One of the displays from an Aardman exhibition. 

The Pirate Captain from an Aardman workshop we attended. We got to play with him and everything!

Live filming of "Bob", a series of shorts from Angry kid creator Darren Walsh.

The ship from Aarman's "Pirates". It was flippin' huge (as you can see, thanks to our intrigued elderly ladies providing scale reference!)

                                       

Shnit Film Festival, Berne, Switzerland

This was my most recent excursion. Berne is such a beautiful city and hosts a really cool festival. It's more of a laid-back festival and the festival headquarters had almost a music festival kind of set-up, with little stalls, bars and places to eat. Plus we got to see bears wandering about in the city, OK, they were in an enclosure, but it felt like they were just in a little park or something, it was really cool. 

Neon pink was like the festivals signature colour, so they had random pink coloured objects displayed throughout the festival.

The bear enclosure.

And one of the bears doing his Baloo impression.

I'm off to Portugal for the next festival and hopefully it's as fun as these ones have been!

Clean Walk

Walk Cycle from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

Cleaned-up version of the walk cycle (with some funky beats for good measure!)

Rough Walk

Rough walk test done in Flash

Character Design

Playing around with some designs for a new project.

Sushi Bear Part 4

Sushi Bear enjoying some steak for a change!

Sushi bear returns

So the person who ended up buying my art auction painting just so happens to own a little sushi/noodle shop and he also happened to be opening another new restaurant. Happy with his purchase of my sushi eating bear he subsequently asked if I'd interested in doing some more paintings for his new restaurant featuring the same bear, kind of like a mascot I guess. I happily agreed to accept the commission and below are the (almost) finished pieces. Due to time constraints these are not paint on canvas, like the original, but digital instead.

Film Update

Just Thought I 'd give an update on my short film A Different Perspective. The film has already screened at several festivals including;

Annecy International Animation Festival

Belfast Film Festival

Galway Film Fleadh

Fest Anca

And the film is due to be screened at the following festivals over the next couple of months;

Odense Film Festival (Denmark)

Anibar International Animation Festival (Kosovo)

Busho (Hungary)

LUCAS (Germany)

Concorto Film Festival (Italy)

Bristol Encounters (England)

LIAF(England)

XXII Message to Man International Film Festival (Russia)

WFAF Varna (Bulgaria)

Schnit International Short Film Festival (Switzerland)

Small Cinema Festival in Moston (England)

Kerry Film Festival (Ireland)

Animasyros (Greece)

TINDIRINDIS (Lithuania)

Bradford Animation Festival (England)

ANIMAGE (Brazil)
Uppsala (Sweden)
CINANIMA (Portugal)
Cork Film Festival (Ireland)

So if you happen to be in those countries why not not check it out!

***Update***

The film will have it's American premiere at the Los Angeles Irish Animation Festival.

JibJab eCard

A while back I animated a little eCard for the great guys over in Jibjab. It's being launched on their site this week and you can watch it here. They were also nice enough to feature me on their blog which you can see here.

Auction Painting

Here's a little painting I did for a great charity auction being organised here in Dublin. For more details check out this site http://animationartshow.blogspot.ie/

Acrylic 8"x8"

Salmon

Salmon from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

A little animation featuring audio from the film "Step Brothers". Enjoy!

Busyness cards

Some potential business card designs

Annecy 2012

I was delighted to find out today that my short film "A Different Perspective" is part of the official selection for Annecy this year. I had already booked flights and accommodation to attend the festival in June but today's news now makes the trip that little bit more exciting!

Here's a little teaser/trailer for the film, it's not easy making a trailer for a 2 minute film!

"A Different Perspective" Trailer from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

Mythical Bikers

A couple of illustrations from another blog I was involved in that I thought I'd recycle here.

Annie!

Another award for "The Amazing World of Gumball", and probably the best yet!
Gumball won the Annie for best animated television production, Congrats to everyone who worked on it!

Smear Drawings

I always enjoy incorporating "smear" drawings into my animations and I'm always fascinated when I see other peoples approaches when using this technique in their work so I thought I'd do a post featuring some of the smear drawings I created for previous projects.

Cartoon Brew

Nice little plug from Cartoon Brew today, nice way to start the week!

LINK

Poster

A little film poster thingy

Gumball Animation

Here's a sample of some of the work I did on "The Amazing World of Gumball". Unfortunately the audio's out of sync slightly on some of it.

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