the Wheeler Centre

I spent the weekend down in Melbourne at the Wheeler Centre
where they were having a conference of sorts on graphic novels. I couldn't tell you specifically what I learned but I heard some interesting ideas, saw some nice work I hadnt seen before, met some great people and above all came away completely inspired and fired up about my "Yallourn:Decommissioned" project.

So here are a few more Decommissioned images to celebrate that.

These are just attempts to work out how stuff might look....so do expect to see any of them exactly like this in the finished work.

At the moment I'm really just trying to get the story structure nailed so I've stopped making pretty pictures for the time being. I suspect my next Decommissioned post will be a bunch of rough sketches and footnotes.

Thank you for a good time Wheeler Centre... and great to see you getting behind graphic-novels/comics/etc as a valid form of literature.

Lighting tests

Here's a couple of shots of the models before the filming starts in earnest. These are just lighting tests really.

Making a bird

A couple of shots here of the bird model from the Merino film. This is by far the smallest of the models (being a life-sized crow as opposed to a life-sized sheep or goat).

You can see it here ... in construction (before the feathers have been added to the PVC pipe and armature wire skeleton)

Here it is all feathered up (it could maybe do with a a few more on the wings).

And, finally, here it is being held by Lani in a high-tech, green-screen suit that will allow it to be seamlessly comped into whatever background we choose. Fancy!

Yallourn:Decommissioned

In other exciting, non-sheep/goat related news, Ive just received funding to make a graphic novel/picture book based on the town of Yallourn. The town was built in the 1920s grew in the 50s and 60s to become the cultural centre of its region and then was demolished in the 80s so that they could access the brown coal upon which it was built.

The idea is to build up all the images collage-style out of old paper documents that survived the town's destruction.

So thank you very much Australian Society of Authors. And to celebrate, here's a couple of images Ive done so far to try and establish the visual style of the book.

Exhibition Opening night

These were from the opening night (Id meant to put these up about a month ago). and funny to see them getting the white gloves treatment. After months of abuse, being dropped/stepped on/knocked over/left lying in the mud/pulled apart/reassembled the well trained gallery goers carefully restrained themselves from so much as touching them for fear of breaking something.

I also had a loop of all the raw footage taken so far, of us pushing the puppets around dressed in our green lycra body suits and that was a huge hit (people straining their guts out in shiny green body suits...with goats...why wouldn't it be a hit). I cant help but wonder if the "Making Of" is going to be more entertaining than the final product. I hope not but you never know.

Exhibition Set-Up

The opening and exhibition all went pretty well. It was nice to see the puppets all set up on their little black plinths in front of a nice white wall.

These snaps were taken during the setup I'll post some of the actual opening shortly.

Of course it all meant a month of not being able to do any actual filming with them which was a bit frustrating but they're back in action now. Currently I've got a few of the goats strung up on the side of the local grain silo for a couple shots there....If it ever stops raining.

Exhibition this Saturday

Finally...Here are a couple of promotional piccies from the film.

Im having an exhibiton of the models from the film at the local gallery (the aptly named "Goat Gallery") The opening is at 6:30 this saturday so if you happen to be in town and have nothing better to do...