Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game

Here’s what we’re working on now at work……..

Back in Blackwing

Ever heard of Blackwing pencils? I had heard animators talk fondly about these things as the best pencils for animation. However they were discontinued by the original manufacturers quite some time ago. A couple of weeks ago another manufacturer began production of them and it seemed like the whole 2D animation wing of the internet was talking about them again.

I had to try them!

So I ordered some from Pencils.com (sadly nowhere in the UK sells them yet) and they arrived this morning. I had assumed that these things would be like every other thing that I’ve ever bought and not live up to the hype, but I was pleasantly surprised. They are great!

I’d say they are roughly equivalent to a 6B in softness for anyone who wishes to know, as there is only one grade available and it is not specified anywhere! I normally use a 6B anyway and any pencil would struggle to outdo my usual pencil, the Faber-Castell 9000, but this one is even better! It has a soft dark lead that produces a lovely line on all of the paper I have tried it with, but especially on some thick creamy-coloured smooth animation paper I was given recently. Annoyingly I have no idea where in the UK to get this animation paper though and shipping from the US costs four or five times the price of the ream of paper itself!

Winnie the Pooh

Disney today released the first trailer to the upcoming Winnie the Pooh movie!

I was recently privileged enough to see quite a few scenes from the film and I was really impressed with what I saw. I can't wait to see the whole thing!

Mummy!

Well what happened to my aim of scanning every sketchbook page? Work happened! Waaaaay too busy for most things at the moment, but did manage to get to the Manchester Museum today to do some skeletal anatomy studies. Rather annoyingly though, I discovered that the natural world section was closed off for refurbishment! So the best I could do was sketch one of the less well-preserved mummies (the one with the least flesh) in the Egyptology section, a priest (or rather an ex-priest!):