Hello everyone…. long, long, long time no see. As most of you know from my last blog update, I’ve been working at a new full-time job…. which has been incredibly awesome and rewarding, but with the downside of me not being able to work on any personal projects the past few months. I am hopeful this will change soon.
In the meantime, it breaks my heart to see the comic languishing so badly, and rather than continue to let it slide any longer, I’ve decided to share a few pages from my sketchbook based on a trip to Greece my wife and I took last year. To keep things fun and playful, I’ve cast Topo, Mari, and Swoop in the roles of myself, my wife, and well… Swoop. I know this does nothing to advance our story, but I hope it’s better than nothing. Please enjoy!
I apologize for the absence of updates. I’m on vacation (a real one this time) in Greece for a week, and the past few weeks were especially busy as far as deadlines and last minute project tweaks. It’s actually not over yet and I’ve brought my laptop with me just to finish up some other things! But at least that makes it easier to tell you guys about the my brother Dave’s latest video creation. This time, all three Dutton brothers are involved. My youngest brother, Henry, provided the music. It’s one of his earliest beats (and you should watch some of his jam session videos on Dave’s Vimeo channel to see what else he can do - the man’s a beast).
This is Dave’s first animation done completely in After Effects, and it’s made up of stuff from my sketchbooks over the past four years. I’m pretty excited about what we could actually do if I created some work especially for this sort of animation. Some One Swoop Fell stuff specifically. And yes, that is a sly hint at something.
My brother Dave, a super-talented film-maker, recently picked up this gorgeous new camera. It’s an SLR that happens to shoot really great HD video. .. okay I admit… there’s way too many happy adjectives in those last two sentences… but I’m seriously excited to show you guys what he can do with this camera. He’s been wanting to film me working on One Swoop Fell, so he hung out for a couple sessions in the studio while I worked on last week’s page. The end result is awesome and I hope you guys will watch and enjoy it!
… It’s a major credit to his expertise in editing and photography that I look like I know what I’m doing (though we also get to see how often I erase, redraw, and be indecisive in general). Please hop on over to his website and tell him what you think (or leave a comment on the video - I’m sure he’d really appreciate it). Oh, and please “heart” and share the video with friends if you like it! Based on the feedback, I’m hoping to do some more of these videos, but with dubbed commentary.
