All images © Dale Newton 2011 unless specified otherwise.

Saturday, 21 May 2011

new toys...


...which I am very excited about. Thanks James Gurney for letting me look "what's in your bag". I thought those fill-able brush pens looked nifty and they are! Here they are and some late Friday afternoon doodles in my sketchbook. There's some animators from Framestore (Arda, Vincent and Karl) - a doodle reminiscent of my son Ruairi who has a very cute little form right now - and a fellow from the train on the way home.


Thursday, 5 May 2011

Animators vs Earthquakes


This is a 290 x 260mm watercolour, colour pencil and acrylic painting on watercolour paper painting that I made to contribute to the "Animators Vs Earthquakes" exhibition organized by: Paul Nicholson & Sylvain Marc in aid of 'Artists Help Japan', a charity created by Pixar's Dice Tsutsumi.  It is being hosted at Cafeand in Shoreditch. 07 - 22 May 2011 Cafeand 77 Redchurch St London E2 7Dj OPEN 10am-7pm, Wed-Sun. Closed Mon/Tues.

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Daisy Lola

My daughter Daisy Lola O'Brien Newton. Born 18th April 2011.

Monday, 11 April 2011

ancient spider god

A rather dark drawing around my current insect obsession that emerged while playblasting turned into something even darker...



Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Insect Life

Well, some spaces have finally opened up in my work schedule and for the first time in many years, I'm able to do some constructive work in a loose sketchbook! Hoorah! We'll see how long this lasts though...

Here's one from the train journey this morning. A very amenable subject who never glanced up from his paper in 15 mins!

Saturday, 20 November 2010

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Three Brothers animation. Death's design.

The Three Brothers animation was directed by Ben Hibon and executed with the Framestore London commercials team. I worked with Ben and supervised the project for Framestore. Ben Hibon, concept artist Alexis Liddel, and myself brought designs to the table. Here's the Framestore PR.

Here's a progression of designs for the Death character. The three explorations below are quite different in their fundamental parameters. Bony and gaunt hands found even at this early stage.




The following drawings found the overall idea - how his robe would work, a little about his transparency / ethereality and facial structure and detail ideas.





and there was something about this one that we liked that spoke loads about his character. He became even creepier than this in the end. We took him far away from human characterization, he was a much more primal creature than this image suggests.


Here I tried to nail down more of the specifics, the hood etc. and started to touch on the all important look.




These were the final concepts which laid out in more detail the lighting and look, textures etc. Also how exactly shadows were to suggested and create forms.




Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Three Brothers animation. Colour Keys.

I guess 'tone keys' rather than 'colour keys' would be a better way to describe these. I made for them as a spring board for the compositors on the show, Adam Rowland and Russell Dodgeson, to build on. They did a beautiful job compositing on the film and their work oozes the sort of subtle tonal work we were after.















Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Three Brothers animation. Three Brother's design.

This was the first drawing that spoke of a good direction. Heavy tones of the charcoal implying deep shadows.



Antioch Peverell. The first brother - a violent and brutish guy. He challenges Death for the most powerful wand ever created.





Cadmus Peverell, the second brother. A vain and arrogant man who asks Death for the power to raise his dead bride from the grave.







Ignotus Peverel. The third brother. He takes the upper hand on Death by asking for the power to remain hidden from Death as long as chooses.



Character size chart: