Summer.. where has it gone?

Like most people I have spoken to so far.. summer has been pretty dull, either been working, catching up on sleep or trying to sort some uni work out and trying to avoid boredom...

For myself, its been fairly productive... been drawing a bit more, I was screenprinting (until i ran out of supplies), learnt Illustrator a little bit more and been trying to pass my bike test (which i failed first time).

There's been a lot of confusion over some of the summer stuff we needed to do/collect but I recently realised i made a silly cock up of not reading the brief properly... been researching 2 artists (both contemporary) whereas I shouldve been looking at only 1 and a historical artist reference.. soo... thats been fun catchin up. Spent most of my time playing with toys, designing and wanting to make toys, as well as trying to find more excuses to buy myself more useless toys :)

but on a slightly different note to that I've been amazed by these things over the past months...

I love these guys :) wanna make some myself...



same as these... made by Fallon, London ( http://www.fallon.co.uk ) who are also responsible for some of those great Sony adverts (like the plasticine rabbits) and the Triple Velvet "soft soft SOFT" baby :P



Kung Fu Panda intro : i cant help it.. but i love this STYLE :D



same with this:
the ending to Bolt (the beginnin sticks a little and sound aint great but watch it)



i love all of Pixar's recent work, so much that I've looked like a fool going into Tesco and buying childrens DVD's but i dont care...

another ending: Wall E



I don't know what it is with animation... I know how long it takes, hence why I dont want to do it... but I LOVE CARTOONS! i think it's jsut seeing the characters come to life instead of lying flat on a page... a lot of my own drawings never make it off the page and so i lose interest in them.. but i dont want to have to learn ANOTHER program :( (flash)

the new Mr.Men show is fantastic :D



Samurai Jack - again, stunning animation and STYLE :P



unfortunately i couldnt find the intro to this but you get a general gist of the animation styling
Foster's home for Imaginary friends:



looking at these.. they all have a 50's kinda styling to them which maybe why I find them so interesting (not that im a big kid or anything).. but it certainly beats the animation of cartoons from the 80's/90's (transformers, thundercats, teenage mutant hero turtles etc) however the classics like The Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, Top Cat, etc do not fall into the above category ;)

anyway... ;)


edit: one more...

this character kind of embodies my love of toys, animation, and illustrator style graphics