I’m always banging on about the first Jurassic Park and how the original announcement trailer was nothing more than a single shot, slowly moving in on a mosquito imprisoned in amber.

Anyway I watched it again, and guess what? It seems I remembered it wrong. Over twenty years have passed so please cut me some slack. Okay, so it’s by no means a single shot but still you get my point. It’s incredibly lean on action and appears to have footage that was never intended for the final cut of the film. By all accounts a proper teaser! The second trailer is the one I’m most familiar with as it brought me my first encounter with a CG dinosaur. I remember standing up in my living room and moving slowly towards the TV set. Peering at the gallimimuses, much like Dr. Grant, and wondering how they’d made the leap from the shiny and stabby antagonist of Terminator 2.

I can’t recall ever having seen the third one, until now, but still it’s nothing short of a masterpiece. The sound design is exceptionally strong and the combination of voice-over and voice-acting is very impressive. For instance:

Universal Pictures presents – Ian freeze! – I can’t get Jurassic Park back online!

The bringing it home section is very interesting to me and seems somewhat muted compared to today’s high-octane standards. It’s quite heavy on dialogue and focuses almost exclusively on the threat of velociraptors. I’m not sure how intentional this is because it makes the film seem quite small in scope. Indeed blink a couple of times throughout the trailer and you’d be forgiven for not realising that there’s a T-Rex stomping about. Nevertheless this is great for the audience, and I think most people prefer this approach to the much favoured “promise everything and deliver nothing” model.

With all this in mind I came this week to the Jurassic World trailer. All in all I thought it showed a remarkable amount of restraint for a Hollywood studio as there were no sneak-peeks at the new “cooked up” dinosaurs. I did enjoy the shark moment: the sight of our greatest predator, strung up, and humiliated, offered as no more than a tasty titbit. I wonder how many people thought back to Jaws and how it created the phenomenon we know as the summer blockbuster. Also I have to admit that he first note of the main theme nearly got to me. Not quite the full-blown chills, more of semi spinetingler.

Afterwards I felt quietly optimistic. That is until I realised that this was only the first showing and that we have a good six months until release. I imagine there will be at least two more trailers between now and then. Will they be able to keep their powder dry for this long? Probably not but here’s hoping.

Just to explain: Pirandello Aspect is now the new home of all my freelance projects. Film making, concept art, fashion illustration, and video games. It’s been a source of constant frustration to me that my work has been spread out all over the internet. I’m very happy that it’s finally all in one place. Because of this I’m having a big sort-out on my laptop so expect to see all kinds of previously unseen gems in the coming weeks.

Jungle Moose App Icon

This afternoon, for some inexorable reason, I felt compelled to re-design the Jungle Moose icon. I’ve never done this sort of thing before and I’m not exactly sure why I’ve started now. I guess you could call it, and the phrase makes me shudder, fan-art!

I’ve been following the work of Tyson Ibele for a number of years. And was therefore intrigued to find out that he was bringing his talents to the world of iPhones and androids. Although when I first watched the announcement trailer I wondered if it was actually a game or rather some high level mocking of the freemium model.

This was primarily because the game appeared to be over in a matter of seconds and nigh on impossible unless you were prepared to part with some cold hard cash.

On it’s release, last week, the internet initially responded with a good deal of anger at said difficulty. I persevered with the game for a couple of minutes each day and slowly found myself becoming rather good at guiding the slippery assailants towards their pointy end. When I finally beat the first stage, lumbering out of the water to claim my delicious prize, there was that elusive sense of…well…it’s on the tip of my tongue…ah yes, achievement!

I’m pleased to report that with a couple of updates and the inclusion of a practice mode Jungle Moose now seems to be doing rather well and at the time of writing has enjoyed upwards of 200,000 downloads :)

As I would expect from Mr Ibele the animation is great, from the nervous paddling of the hippo to the frenzied attack of those piranhas. The music is also rather good starting all bright and chirpy and then, when things ultimately take a turn for the worse, descending into a dark, discordant climax.

If I’ve in anyway whetted your appetite then you can Moose to your hearts content here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tysonibele.junglemoose

As part of the promotion for my kickstarter campaign I decided to pay tribute to special effects maestro Phil Tippett. I’m sure that some of you out there will have already worked out that his surname provides the inspiration for the picture book’s title and therefore it’s eponymous titular protagonist. But for those of you who hadn’t I wanted to explain a little bit about the man and the influence he’s had on my work.

I first became aware of him in 1984 whilst watching a documentary called Star Wars to Jedi and for some reason his name stuck in my head. Now I really can’t remember if I was aware that he worked on Dragonslayer, it’s possible I knew this but pre internet days the information I had on him was pretty sketchy. That all changed one day in 1987 (I’d  started perusing film magazines by then) when an article in Cinefantastique caught my eye.

CINEFANTASTIQUE January 1987

There was that name again, Tippett, above what looked to me like quite a dinky little robot. In all honesty I was a bit perplexed as to why someone associated with Star Wars, the biggest franchise of all time, was doing animation in this Judge Dredd clone directed by some crazy Dutchman I’d never heard of. Thankfully my preconceptions were put to bed with the entrance of ED-209. I guess I was old enough to appreciate the craft of film making a little more and the work that would have gone into creating such  shots. Moreover I was struck with how much personality he’d projected onto this lumbering hulk of metal: it’s birdlike indecision when reaching the stairs and the resulting full blown temper tantrum after falling down them.

From that point onwards Phil Tippett became my own personal touchstone for creature design. Even to this day it’s practically impossible for me to draw a monster or robot without reflecting on some of his wonderful characters from the past. And of course I’m hoping that the robot designs for my picture book will in some small way pay tribute to his legacy. But until then here are four of my favourites.

It’s probably too late to include this artwork as part of the pledges. But I may print a very small batch of these cards and just give them out randomly with the books or to those people who write nice things and help to promote the kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/89442931/tippett-a-picture-book-by-jonathan-howard

Obviously film is a collaborative medium and whilst I’m giving the credit for this awesomeness solely to Mr Tippett no doubt others will have worked on the design, modelling, painting, texturing rigging, lighting, animation, puppeteering and all the other things that helped create these slices of movie magic.

I Decided that a Star Map of sorts would be a nice end shot for the promotional video. The eight constellations I’ve chosen are the eight types of reward for my Kickstarter campaign.

In order of value they are: Canis Minor, Columba, Ursa Major, Pegasus, Perseus, Scorpius, Phonenix and Orion. It was very simple to make just duplicating a lot of blue rectangles and glowing white spheres in Maya.

I’ve found it very frustrating over the last few years that my commercial art, fashion illustration and film work has been spread over a number of different blogs and websites. I thought it was high time that I merged the streams into a single location. Here goes…

…did the world end? No. That’s good.

So then, after a three year hiatus it appears that I’m delving back into the world of children’s literature: blame Kickstarter! Please believe me when I say that I tried very hard not to get sucked in. I’ve now rationalised my change of heart to the point where I feel that if any new idea comes along for circumventing the traditional way of publishing books I feel duty bound to, at the very least, give it a go.

The book is called Tippett (two ps and three ts) it’s a hard backed picture book for children of all ages and features a new art style from me; something I’ve been messing around with since 2010. Of course every Kickstarter campaign needs a promotional video. It shows you’re committed and also if you’re asking strangers to pledge money towards your cause it seems important to put yourself out there in some fashion as a living breathing human being. That being said it’s an odd experience to film and edit yourself.

Below is the set I created for the shoot. On the right hand side you can just see a  fake wall I made out of photographic paper and gaffer tape. I was a bit worried when the plant, which I’ve had for a year and a half, started wilting or should I say lacking direction but some of my Brother’s Baby Bio came to the rescue. I just may have rung him up and hysterically screamed “The plant is dying…I need it to live for the sake of continuity.”

I used a Rode Videomic Pro for the sound. The results using the shoe mount on top of the camera weren’t great so I ended up buying a 3m extension cable and gaffer taping the mic to a footstool just out of shot. I live on the Hackney road and the traffic outside my flat is a nightmare. You can clearly hear a car horn right at the start when I say “Hi!” I kept this take in the final because I thought it was funny and the added ambient noise added to the sense of emergency.

Here is the preview link if anyone wants to check it out before it goes live, hopefully later this week. Any feedback would be appreciated.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/89442931/252903462?token=ea2da989

Hi!