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.

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?

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.

Summer Cleaning

With the weather finally warming up, I think I'm starting to awaken from my winter coma.. right in time for the summer solstice! So I've been scrubbing, cleaning, organising and I found these videos which upon re-watching, didn't make me cringe so I thought I'd share them.



This was made for my Grand Aunt, Lily Ong, who was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was in the last stages of making "In the Beginning" and passed away the day after I completed it. Because of the tight deadlines and the crazy amount of work I had to do on that film, I never made it back to see her or to attend her funeral so the least I could do at the time was to make a little animated clip for her memorial service. She was born (and also died) in the year of the pig and collected pig figurines and memorabilia obsessively throughout her life. By the time she passed away, she had amassed thousands of those little guys.



And some pixie dust I animated for an FX assignment in VFS.

Bobble & Bunnies on Fred!

I just found out today that "Bobble & Sqweek" and "In the Beginning" were nominated for the 2nd Annual Channel Frederator Awards!!

They were nominated in the "So Cute it Hurts Award" category and the "Bad Ass Bunny Award" categories respectively. If that isn't an honour, I don't know what is :D Voting begins April 16th so if you think Bobble & Sqweek are cute enough to give you stomach ulcers or the rabid exploding bunnies are indeed Bad Ass, do vote for them!

Thank you Fred! <3

By the Beard of Moose!!

This blog was becoming so stale from the lack of updates it was starting to smell like unwashed socks. Soooo.. here's some freshly laundered animated goodness for all to enjoy!






These are 4 bumpers that I worked on with the 1337 animation crew also known as By the Beard of Moose , a ragtag bunch of vfs classical animation alumni (and one instructor!) who got together for the trick17 stop motion competition in November and have since been joining forces to take over the world, one frame at a time. This time, we stormed the Mytoons front for the Mytoons Bumper Blastoff in the hope of attaining eternal glory In the Name of His Mighty Beard (and maybe some cash too :D).

Kudos to (in no particular order): Tzanko, Michelle, Ian, Tammy, Jim, Jared and Temris for awesome work on this project.

RE-FREDERATED

Wow, i can't believe it.. again!

WOOOHOOOO!!!!

Thank you channel Frederator!

My demo reel

Here are snippets of stuff I worked on during my year at the Vancouver Film School

In the Beginning

And the film i made by drawing on tonnes and tonnes of paper.

Bobble and Sqweek

First up, the flash film i made at the Vancouver Film School.