The Animation Playground

If you want to see what I'm doing now, these early ideas became The Animation Playground, an independent animation studio based on Canada's West Coast, collaborating with artists across Canada.

Fern

THE BLACK BEETLE!

I recently finished illustrating a children's book, "The Black Beetle", written by Bruce Parker. The story is about a boy who, after suffering at the hands of a gang of school bullies called "The Horrible Four", decides to challenge them when he finds inspiration from an unlikely source. The book is available for purchase on www.lulu.com so do check it out if you know an adventure-loving kid or are one, at heart!

Some rough drawings...

Courage is...

A post for 2011, with 2 days to spare *phew*. Happy New Year Everyone!

Sometimes...

New York, New York!

My finned friends will be visiting Brooklyn, New York this coming July 31. Yepp, Abstraxion - Vampyros Lesbos is being screened at the 2010 Animation Block Party!

I thought I'd share some sketches of the fishy denizens from my initial story pitch so you can see how they've.. uh... evolved!

2Up Tracks

For those of you wondering what I do for fun besides making coffee, drinking coffee and playing Warcraft, here's part of the answer. A couple of summers ago, I started touring the region with Oliver on his motorcycle.

We documented most of our rides with photographs and satellite tracks via GPS. Over time, we decided to build a website to share our adventures.. so here it is!

While I designed it, Oliver did most of the backend coding for the site, including a nifty autohotkey script that grabs pictures from a folder for a particular ride and generates the page from a template.

Stay tuned, because there will definitely be more rides to come as the weather warms up!

Abstraxion - Vampyros Lesbos

Abstraxion - Vampyros Lesbos (2010) from Choom Lam on Vimeo.

Last August, the talented Abstraxion of Biologic Records contacted me about animating a music video to one of his tracks, Vampyros Lesbos. The liquid, hypnotic sounds captivated me right from the first listening and conjured these images in my head. I hadn't had the opportunity to do traditional pencil-on-paper animation since my student film at VFS so it was great to be able to dust off the animation desk and practice flipping again. This was probably the most fun I've had drawing and scanning stacks and stacks of paper.

Rethink Happiness Goes South...

...Literally! I just found out that it's been chosen to be part of the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in New Zealand this May. So if any of you happen to be in or around Palmerston North next month, please drop by!

Back to The Beginning

One of the things that's kept me busy these past few weeks is a collaboration with Amanda Healey and Taura Hanson on their final project. They're both students in the VFS Digital Design program and are building an interactive version of "In the Beginning" for mobile devices.

On my end of things, I'm illustrating the book of the story which ties in with the interactive games via Augmented Reality. The illustrations will serve as "tags" that the camera on your mobile device picks up, triggering an action in the game. It was an interesting challange to create these illustrations because the cameras needed clean, sharp edges and clearly defined black and white spaces in order to recognise the images. Too much detail or not enough contrast and the camera won't respond reliably.

This clip was inadvertently made by Amanda as part of the game. It's bunny doing what bunny does best... hopping.

This little gem aside, they've done an insane amount of work to transform the film into an awesome, interactive, bunny infested universe! Bunny pinball anyone?

VIFF 2009 Trailer

This is the trailer I directed & animated for the 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Rethink Happiness

Here it is! This is the environmental public service announcement I made for this year's Animation Block Party.

Thanks again to the good folks at Animation Block for commending the Bunnies and awarding me this chance to make another film for them.

If you like it, show it to your friends! Show it to your mom! Heck, show it to your mom's friends!

Spread the word... Rethink Happiness! =)

To watch it in its full HD goodness, click here.

Hidden Elephant

I'd never thought of a turkey baster or a vacuum cleaner hose as musical instruments until I saw the Robert Minden Duo's performance of "Hidden Elephant". Using an incredibly imaginative mix of words, song and "found sounds" the duo told the true story of two circus elephants who were separated for years and were later reunited in a sanctuary.

I recently had the privilege of working with the duo as they composed and performed the soundtrack of my newest film - "Rethink Happiness". In exchange, I made them these drawings!

Fish & Chicks

Tracks

Procrastina....

I used to think having a blog was a great way to procrastinate.. until I started procrastinating my blog updates too. I guess I'll just stick to colour coordinating my shelves.

But hey, all that procrastination has paid off! Finally some sort of art! These are a couple of variations on a background from my next film.

Home again, Home again...

I have no real excuse for the lack of posts so I'm making up for lost time with lots of pictures! I just haven't really drawn anything post-worthy in a while but hopefully that will change soon.

Valhalla!!!!!

Not quite my usual style but this image was in my head just before I fell asleep 2 nights ago and I was compelled to reproduce it. Along with it was a voice that kept shouting "VALHALLA!!!" over and over again in my semi-conscious brain. I'm no expert on Norse mythology but I guess it's got something to do with war.. and battle... and stuff.

Fall...

My seabus drawing for the day to commemorate the change of seasons. I've always wanted to know what it felt like to jump into a giant pile of leaves....

Bunnies on the Block

Wow... a whole two months without any updates. Things have been pretty insane and I'm glad I finally managed to catch a breather this Labour Day Weekend. The biggest news on the animation front for me had to be, first of all, the Bunnies making the screening list for the Brooklyn-based Animation Block Party, and then taking home the "Best Student Film" award!!! It was such an honour and my thanks go out to the organisers and jury at ABP. Thanks also to the marketing guys at VFS who posted an article about the event on the VFS blog.

Also, Bobble & Sqweek and the Bunnies both made it into Stash 47 thanks to the awesome guys at Channel Frederator - yet another high point of the last 2 months!

More updates to come soon (I promise!!!)