Some mentions...

Sarah And Duck.

Karrot Animations very own show, Sarah and Duck, is now being shown on CBeebies in the UK. You can see it on BBCiplayer. I animated on the episode, Cake Bake.

Scooby Forever.

Here's some work for Cartoon Network that we did at Karrot Animation. They wanted Scooby Doo set into Scandinavian landmarks. I did some of the concept/design work as well as some modelling/texturing/animation.

Cartoon Network Scooby Forever Promo from Karrot Animation on Vimeo.

Embarrassing Self Indulgence

This will be the only post I do of this sort, I promise :)

I have loads of drawings from when I was growing up, and here is a small selection. I think journeys are fun so here we go...

British Animation Awards super winner!

Heads up....

Here's a sting we animated for the British Animation Awards. After we did that, it won best sting! I animated sheep, but all the good stuff was done by Ruf.



I don't live here anymore, so Ruf does all my blog posts.

Love from Ricky RUFUS!

(This post was blogged by Rufus, who temporarily gained control of my motor functions. I was able to shake off the Blacklock parasite that time.)

Jekyll and Hyde redesigns

In this new (non-existant) animated series of the literary classic, Jekyll is a genius schoolboy who can temporarily alter his appearance making it devolve into a neanderthallic state using only the school science lab. He was inspired by the London riots of 2011 and goes on rampages.

Hand, nose, ears, and eyes studies

Cartoon Network idents

Here's some idents I worked on with the talented team at Karrot :)

Cartoon Network Idents by Karrot from Karrot Animation on Vimeo.

Post one...

I wasn't actually going to post any of this stuff (there's going to be a lot of it incoming). But Tegan told me to. It's probably a good idea...there's hopefully going to be a steady progression of improvement!

Quick life drawing!

A few quick sketches from the final life drawing session at Karrot Animation. The studio has grown so much that we no longer have the room for it!

Chemical Plant Zone

My newest illustration for the website, Zone Zero. I'm working through one image for each level in the 16BIT games. 

Just Chillin'

This was probably for something at one point. I dunno. I forget.

A Badly Animated Re-post

An image for the AIB jumble blog, the topic was GRAD FILMS. THIS IMAGE IS SO TOTALLY LOADED WITH MEANING! OH MY DAYS! See? See? Sally is trying to coax Wolf into improving himself via the ol' animation pencil, and Wolf is showing off, going for it, holding a wilting rose representing what he was and what he will become. OH MY STARS THAT IS SO DEEP.

Sonic CD fan art competition

The Sega Blog just ran a Sonic CD fan art comp. The rules were simple, depict a scene using the Mega CD game, Sonic CD, as a basis. Here's my entry which won me a copy of the game (which has just been re-released on XBOX XBLA) and a soundtrack CD.

NEARLY a pitch...

Whilst working with the wonderful team at Karrot, I thought it'd be a good idea to throw a pitch their way. It was an idea for an animated kids series.
It would've been a series with the same tone as The Animals of Farthing Wood in the way that main characters would actually die and it would be quite dark in places.
It wasn't a full blown pitch, it was more of an opportunity to see if they guys at Karrot liked the idea enough for me to develop it.
Then the movie Attack the Block happened...

My series would've focused on the adventures of a group of kids making their way across London under a full blown alien invasion. The similarities between my idea, dubbed SE15, and Attack the Block were pretty superficial. But they both feature teens against aliens and they're both in London.
I wanted mine to be a pretty real London, with council estates and everything, but UNLIKE attack the block, my characters were not assholes. They were just innocent kids trying to reach their parents on the other side of a semi destroyed London.
The main draw of my show, was that the kids were practically invisible to the aliens. The aliens saw pretty much as we do, i.e relatively poorly, but on top of normal vision they could "see" brain patterns. Brain patterns that only existed in adults, making them far easier to kill. Once night fell, the kids were basically invisible. The overall story would've depicted the kids being the ones responsible destroying the aliens.

In order to have enough images to show the guys at Karrot, I enlisted the help of Tegan (to design the girl and the kid), Rufus (to design their car and alien attackers), Marc (to paint a background of London) and Ibs (to creat a fox for me) (everything else I did on the weekend before). Everyone did a fantastic job, and I'd like to again thank everyone for their work, I really appreciate it.

Here's the pitch slides I used which you can click on to view. There's more after the break...

Making a graduation film...

My graduation film is now live in slightly higher res on youtube now too.

Instead of talking about the whole process of making this film, I thought it'd be easier if I just made our team blog public for all to see. From there you can go back in time to our first posts when the project was just a concept. I started the blog over the summer before term in order to get a head start. I knew we had a lot to do on the film so I wanted to invite the team to start early if they wanted to. I think everyone did. I wanted to get the storyboards and animatic done before term started, which I did. But as you'll see, the version I planned over the summer was almost entirely unused (mostly because it was utterly arse). SO we mostly went back to the version that I pitched in the 2nd year.
I haven't edited the blog in any way, and it was never meant for public consumption. As a result it's chock full of bad language and insults, and some pretty bad drawings (mostly from me). I hope you enjoy it!

My grad film; Badly Animated now live

Here's my grad film which I directed. I made it with a team at the AUCB, full credits in the video link.



You can read more about it here

More Storm

See previous post first.

This was it's standing on the first morning...

After only a few hours, I thought this was pretty amazing, but it went on to do much more.
There was a time when it was the #1 top favourited video in film and animation for the month, and at one point, it had over 50 honors (unfortunately I failed to get a screen grab at that point).
the film now stands at way over half a million views, with over 17,000 "likes" and over 3,000 comments. I think that's pretty good for a 10 minute long beat poem!

I still find it absolutely amazing that we are living at a point in time when you can make a respectable looking film at home. A few of the shots that you see in Storm I made on my crappy old PC, that threatened to choke and die every time I tried to preview what I'd done. The space shot and the one that precedes it for example.
DC asked me to make it look as appealing/beautiful as possible. As he asked this, I knew I wanted to include a penumbra, which also meant working out how to do it (luckily I'd already been thinking about it for a while and wanted an excuse to try it out)

Its actually really easy (create a duplicate of what ever you want to cast a shadow, make it black, then add a radial blur (on zoom). There. That's the only trick I've got up my sleeve. Now everyone knows how I did it. I guess I'll be unemployed now.)

I'm still working with director DC Turner at the moment on something new, which I'll be able to post about later in the year.

Until then, I'll try and post some blog posts that I plan to do for fun...

Storm the Movie, online in the morning!

For those that don't know, Tim Minchin is a comedian (a fantastic one in my opinion, and he recorded a wonderfully intelligent beat poem called Storm. I've been working on the animated version of it for a few months now and it's finally on youtube


I was heavily involved in the making so it's hard to quantify what my actual job was, but there was some animation, compositing, storyboarding and a bit of character design.

T'was directed by DC Turner, and produced by Tracy King. Making it has been an absolute joy and I'm so happy that iot's finally going up for everyone to see. It was one of those projects where the end goal was never far from sight, but there was ALWAYS that one more badnik jumping up from that final bridge to prevent you making it. And yet, it was never anything less than a delight to work on. I am very grateful to have been a part of this project and I'd like to extend my thanks to DC and Tracy.

Clapham Life Drawing 2

A second helping of some of my life drawings from the Clapham sessions. It seems I can't seem to settle on a style...

Emerald Hill Zone

Being so busy at work has meant I may have neglected my duties as site artist for the website Zone Zero. Well here's my next piece, Emerald Hill Zone. The first from Sonic 2 and so my first to feature the deadly parasite, Tails.

Life Drawing at Clapham

I've been going to the fantastic life drawing sessions in Clapham. After looking at Tegan's recent life drawing, I realized how much I missed it. I also like all the life drawing that Emilie posts, wonderful stuff.

So here's some of my stuff. There's loads more but scanning is a real pain...

The Christmas LUSH commercial

I worked at Karrot Animation on this commercial. We used old Victorian etchings, and meticulously cut them up into animatable parts. Here in this video are the parts that I animated. Follow the link above for the full commercial.



Working on this was an absolute blast, and I hope to return to Karrot to continue work on their children's series when production starts

Lush credits
Directed by Tom Werber
Production Team:
Harj Bains
Rufus Blacklock
Ricky Earl

Lift in Maya

Been a loooong time since my last post, I've been very busy animating at Karrot Animation for an advert for LUSH. I'll post my bits on that as son as it's done. In the mean time, here's a short animation exercise made in Maya

JULY 11 SECOND CLUB

Julys competition was a toughie. Very subdued dialogue and not much scope for gags....

Scrap Brain Zone

The sixth in my level pieces for website Zone: 0 


The final artwork I'm doing for Sonic 1, onto Sonic 2 now.

This is the furthest I've deviated from the original designs so far. But seen as though the music from Scrap Brain is so obviously inspired by Bladerunner, I wanted to pay a little homage too, though hopefully it's still recognizable as the original level.

The grad film that never was...S.E15 STORYBOARD

Before I pitched Badly Animated, I was also toying with the idea of making this. It's about living in the city as a kid, and how the urban jungle becomes a playground. It's is also about how an event can end your childhood. The former is semi-autobiographical, the latter is not.

Corfe Castle

My ladyfriend's parents are visiting for a week, so day trips abound! During one to Corfe Castle, I ran off and drew this.

I added colour later, but I prefer the ink-only one. I've included both here just to justify spending time on it!

More Zone:0 artwork! SPRING YARD ZONE, LABYRINTH ZONE and STAR LIGHT ZONE!

I am doing one piece of artwork for each level in the Sonic games for the website Zone:0. Here's Spring Yard Zone recreated in 3D!


Here's the actual level



And here's Labyrinth Zone...

And Star Light Zone...

The Making Of Badly Animated

There's work in this "making of" by myself, Tegan Jephcott, Mark Storer and Alex Cameron

Artwork for Zone: 0

Zone: 0 is a Sonic the Hedgehog website, a pretty well made one too. A real labour of love for what at the moment is one guy. I thought I'd offer my services as site artist. I am doing a piece for each level. So far, Green Hill Zone and Marble Zone!

P.S I painted the far backdrop on green hill, but completely lost interest in doing the same for marble zone. So I ripped it from the game instead

CG Showreel

Still a work in progress, needs a little more polish....

Saturday Night at the Movies

Drawing from the flicks

Shawshank, Full Metal Jacket, and Ol' Jimmy Stewart, Rear Window

Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom competition

I really really really wanted the joystick for this game! So I entered the competition to win one. I had to design a character for the Capcom Vs. series fighting games. I figured it'd be judged by men so I went with the hot chick angle. Most of the entries thus far are all generic anime guys with troubled pasts looking for some kind of revenge, some even with big swords. I knew I didn't want to take this route.

I always loved the idea of Gen from the Street Fighter Alpha series and Street Fighter IV. You could hit all three punches or all three kicks and he'd change his stance, giving you access to completely different movesets. I wanted to extend this to 3 stances, one for offense, one for defense and one to take the piss out of your opponent (like Dan. It's such a great idea, having a character to show off how good you are that you can win with such a weak character with more taunts than actual moves)
That got me thinking, what kind of person would have these three separate fighting styles? Someone with a split personality! The mask idea was to give a visible cue to the change. I originally had her store the spare masks on her back, but after a conversation with a friend I came up with this far more pervy idea. I didn't really want to do the whole sexy girl thing, but was talked into it! I WANTED TO WIN DAMMIT!

Well, I did win, came third, meaning I got the stick, a copy of the game and a signed poster. Pretty damn awesome, there was some stiff competition

Mini sketch dump

Sketch Dump...soon?

Maybe a sketch dump is overdue...I'll do one soon...probably.

Lip Sync CG animation to music

I love this song, so decided to animate part of it. The Matches, "Between Halloweens"
CG animation done in maya using the MooM rig, everything else done in Photoshop and After Effects.

Christmas CARD

Yeah yeah I may have already posted this on the AIB blog. Sue me.

Amara's Birthday Card

My niece's 2nd birthday!

Character test!

Some expressions here, testing out the rendering we'll be using on my grad film and seeing if the character "works". I'm going for a Warner Bros style on the character design (that's why I stole a Bugs Bunny model sheet!).

Almost a Production Still

Here's what I got for my grad film so far...this ins't the whole picture...missing a rather large CG element. Hand painted background going for a mix of styles. I wont post much for the film at all, and certainly not enough for people to get our story and steal it! Thanks to Teegs for rendering the character, would've done it myself but I lack a Wacom.

Fully rigged and textured

TAXIMAN TEST from Ricky Earl on Vimeo.