Retrospective

When I was a kid we were lining up to ride a donkey and when it was my turn the donkey-keeper put me on the saddle backwards for a laugh. Little did that man realise that this new point of view would give me, more than a decade later, the necessary inspiration for a...

BENJAMIN DRAKE RETROSPECTIVE ! ! !

Yes, that's right. It's time to look backwards!

Whatever for dear Ben?

Well, because all the new drawings I've done are un-scanned or unfinished, and because I've found a few things I've never uploaded on the internets in my archives.

Queensland Year Project, 2007. I worked with Jasmine Hambling and Patrick Culleton on this one.





One of the first drawings I ever did with a tablet, 2005.



Comic, 2006.

High school comics.

I drew this before I left Bunnings for a woman that worked there.

Alright, alright enough! I'm sick with nostalgia!

Me too. Here's a work in progress, and a new comic I forgot I had to clear out the stink of mothballs.

In other news, I'm trying desperately to create a new demo reel and all my friends have web pages now! Damn! If all my friends were political superpowers I feel like, I dunno ... Australia. Or Canada. Check out these awesome pages!

SENimation - The Sense of Imagination.

JOYBOX - Art and Craft with Alex Grigg.

and

Emily Nelson's Art - Art by Emily Nelson.

If you're really serious about karaoke...

Karaoke is the best.

Truly He is Risen!

*Warning: This blog contains religious content which might offend and/or bore some readers.*

Happy Easter everyone!

Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling Death by death,
bestowing life to those in the tombs.

The Hebrew is for Yehoshua. This is what I imagine Jesus looked like. A Mexican Wrestler according to my friend Victor Qiu. I was aiming for first-century Jewish man, but whatever.

Hey folks, please accept the useless and belated happy Easter wishes from your lukewarm and weak-willed Christian friend Benjamin Drake.

Aw, now Ben, don't be so hard on yourself...

I slept through my alarm on Sunday when I'd been specifically asked to show up and help with communion. I worked till late the night before in the pizza mines, that's my excuse.

You little apostate...

Yup. Anyway. Hope everyone had a good holiday. I really miss childhood Easter. There's things that existed in your childhood that disappear in adulthood, like marshmellow rabbits for instance and those rock-hard icing sugar eggs that came in pastel blues and pinks and were decorated in a kind of baroque style, anyone know what I'm talking about? And then there was egg hunting. We have video footage of an Easter in the very early 90s showing mum stealing eggs out of our basket and re-hiding them while the egg hunt was in progress - That's how you save money! A kid can only count so high.

Religiously the mysteries behind Easter are far more important that Christmas, that's one thing the Orthodox world has gotten right. In Greece, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Georgia (sorry if I've left anyone out) anywhere where there are the Orthodox, Easter is the major holiday.

What religious mysteries?

The resurrection. In my humble opinion, It's one thing to believe in the immortality of the soul, another thing to hope that the soul is immortal and pin that hope onto something. Christians pin their hopes on Jesus. It's important to remember that the character of this faith in Christ's death and rebirth into a new life with God is tempered by the suffering of his Crucifixion. The resurrection is in the shadow of the crucifixion, but the crucifixion is in the light of the resurrection. That's straight from Hans Kung's theology.

Alright Benny, pack it up...

Okay, okay! Here's a bunch of sketches.

Long Time Singin' No Blog Blues.

Apologies...

Dear friends and miscellany, I have only my deepest apologies for my lack of blog in the past months. I left you in September 2008, where I was working casually at Liquid Interactive, afterwards I was invited to join the PRA team to work on their short film The Cat Piano, directed by Ari Gibson and Eddie White. I left Queensland for South Australia and had many great adventures there. I was lucky enough to live with the stupidly talented Makoto Koji and Alex Grigg. If you like I'll post the work-diary I kept while working at the PRA.

And after that?

I went back to Queensland in December, celebrated Christmas, and in 2009 went back to Uni to finish my Honours degree. What followed were a few hideous months of high-stress and sleep deprivation which resulted in a thick art-of book for Pepela & Parvana (the moth film). Yes, it's true, I didn't finish that film for Honours sadly. I've learned that:

If you're going to do Honours, make sure you do it full time.

I was working at Liquid and the PRA for the better part of my Honours year which was, well, a smart-move career wise but a crushing blow to my extra tertiary education. If I had my time again I wouldn't do Honours to tell the truth, I could of had more sleep and made more money that way. On the other hand, however, I couldn't of foreseen the work opportunities ahead of me in January 2008. At the time it was just Paul, Sen and I hanging around and hurting from the sudden dissapearance of all our third year friends. The world was wintery and Level 5 was a warm bed. Also, if I didn't do Honours I probably wouldn't of developed the Pepela film to the point it is now.

About that moth film...

There's so much in terms of development of that film I haven't blogged and, like I said, it didn't get finished as my Honours piece. What did get finished was an art book and a few animation tests. which I'll post on YouTube later. If God is willing and I am able it will get finished in the future, but probably with funding. I love the film concept, it's not something I'm going to let slide - I haven't forgotten The Cafe Guernica either! At this stage in the game, however, I have to focus on my career.
I did finish a teensy little piece in a few days though. I felt rotten for not finishing a film so I made this little short called The Flame of Mothistan. Animated in Photoshop with Particle Illusion effects. Composited in AfterEffects.

Fair enough, anything else?

Mais oui! The Cat Piano made the official selections for le Festival International du Film d'Animation d'Annecy!

Click that little Annecy link and you'll find a film index page for The Cat Piano (Le Piano du Chat) with all our names in the credits, in case you haven't beleived me this whole time. I'm going to blow all my savings and head over there in June. This'll be my first trip north of the equator - Yipee! Trouble is though I haven't got a lot of money at the moment and so I haven't got the space in my mind to look forward to it all yet, but I'm sure it'll hit me when I'm on the plane.

Enough talk already, where's the pictures?

Meng gu ren! Mongolians. I love their music and clothes. Some day I hope I'll visit the place.

The first sketch is the best in my opinion. The next two were my attempts to clean it up. The third one is as final as I want to take it really. It loses something the more I try to pin it down.

Odysseus



He's not really Odysseus, for that he'd have to have a beard (according to the urns). The coloured one is the final. I'm not sure I want to take it any further but you're welcome to make suggestions!

JULIVS CAESAR

I liked my aunties reaction to seeing a photo of Caesar's bust: "You can tell he's well educated, and a bit nasty." I'd like to try another Caesar drawing soon, this one is a bit stiff.

Dieu et mon droit and all that, what?
A British Redcoat.

He's a work in progress. I love three pointed hats.

Meanwhile, in a previous epoch...
English Knights

I've been fiddling with this face for a bit. Work in progress.

And that's all she wrote for now. There's plenty more to come, I've got lots more time on my hands these days.