Jamie Oliver title sequence for Channel 4

Recently screened on Channel 4 was the 2nd series of the food programme 'Jamie and Jimmy', featuring well known chef Jamie Oliver. I was asked to contribute to the title sequence by designing name plaques that pop up revealing the celebrities taking part in the cookery show. The theme I was given was British fairground so I looked at lots of lovely, old, hand-painted signs.  I couldn't use actual fonts because of copyright so I created my own as well as hand drawn elements:

Here's a still to show how they featured in the final animation:

It is a very minor element of a lovely animated title sequence created at Picasso Pictures, directed by Jens and Anna which you can view here.

Matte painting

Recently I have been working as a matte painter/background artist for an animated commercial campaign made at Picasso Pictures for the directing duo Jens and Anna. The campaign included various 30sec commercials as well as online web films with information about new healthcare initiatives in Kentucky, USA. I began working on the campaign last summer (2013) when I was asked to create high resolution images from details in the commercial that could be used for the accompanying print campaign. This year I was asked to do backgrounds that were used in the actual commercial. My images were then projected onto the 3D elements of the scenes with 2D character animation added from Flash.

I was given wireframes of the scenes from the CG animators which I then painted in Photoshop according to the project style. Below you can see an example of a wireframe and then the finished background:

The images are created at a size that allows for camera moves within the shots. For example, the image below is wider than the TV ratio because the camera move goes from left to right within the image. I also had to draw more information on layers so there was enough imagery as the camera moves around revealing different parts of the picture.

I was also given matte references for the 3D objects to help isolate areas for colouring:

Additional shadow layers were added by the CG programme (Maya) into footage that was then composited together and colour graded for the final output. Here is the finished commercial:

Here is a time lapse video of a background I made for the most recent commercial: