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HORROR MOON

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects, backgrounds made in Cinema 4D and edited in Premiere. Music by McLeavy’s

This is the first part of Horror Moon.

In essence, a multiple universe horror story, it’s equal parts Highlander and Sliding Doors. 

The Moon is rent in two by an asteroid. 

Alternate realities bleed into each other. 

A man returns home alone.

His doppelgänger appears.

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SHOWREEL 2

Hand drawn illustration, digital animation and video. Created in Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D and Logic. Music by McLeavy’s

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GIE HIM STRONG DRINK UNTIL HE WINK 1785

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects and edited in Premiere. Voices, Foley and Synths recorded in Logic.

It’s his birthday, and all Rabbie Burns wants is to enjoy a nice cold beer. His dog, however, has other ideas.

Video created for BrewDog

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STEELISM - SUPERHERO THEMES

Hand drawn illustration and type, coloured and touched up in Photoshop.

Steelism as Batman, or rather, Batmen. Based on the 1960s TV show logo, I drew Steelism the first version you see here, the following two are the front and back of the record sleeve showing the artwork in context.

Record sleeve artwork created for Steelism - Superhero Themes EP

Record sleeve design by Fetzer Design

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LETTUCHEAD - DR SPOCK 

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects (mostly using BAO Bones), woozy 3D bits in Cinema 4D, weird glitchy effects courtesy of iOS app Glitché (natch) and edited in Premiere. Music by Lettucehead

A man returns to his apartment. He lives there alone save for his strange companion, Pucky. Haunted by his brother's unidentified disappearance years prior, he has a series of unsettling visions that make the man realise that not everything in this world is quite what it seems.

Video created for Chicago band Lettucehead

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STEELISM - ENO NOTHING

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects (using BAO Bones) and edited in Premiere. Music by Steelism

Eno Nothing is a circular narrative no-road road movie into inner and outer space.

The intrepid pair are on a journey of self discovery and face unusual challenges at each turn. At the peak of their disillusion, the duo catch a fleeting glimpse of something greater before being yanked away, shunted back and left to begin their journey anew.

Video created for Nashville band Steelism

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ARE YOU SATURN THE REMOTE

Hand drawn illustration, coloured and touched up in Photoshop.

The Science Fiction I remember most fondly was that of my youth; limited budgets and acting that oscillated between vague and hysterical, the stories had ideas with tangible special effects and as such felt truly special. Drawn from a two week SF binge this poster regurgitates those characters and themes.

Poster created for the Barbican and Wrap magazine’s Into the Unknown print competition 

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CEREAL - EPISODE ZERO

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects (using DUIK) and edited in Premiere. Voices, Foley and Synths recorded in Logic.

This is the first instalment of what I intend to be a feature-length animation, presented in a serialised form. It’s called Cereal. The narrative will be episodic, more by necessity than anything - this allows me to break down the bulk of the work into manageable chunks. Much like the GCSE Maths Bitesize revision techniques of yore.

Ben can animate 1 section in 7 days. Each section runs at 2 minutes. How long will it take Ben to complete an average length movie?

The average of movie is now 130 minutes long, so minus the 2 minutes already completed, 128/2 = 64

7*64 = Ben can animate the film in 448 days

The first episode features 1970s Iggy Pop returning from tour to find his cupboards bare. Or are they?

Special thanks to Freya for voicing Snap.

This animation is part of CEREAL

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KEEP CLAM

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects and edited in Premiere.

I was approached by Katy at ALSO to create an image that would best illustrate “the over-worked, frazzled nature of working from home”. 

The article this image is attached to discusses the perceived notions of what working from home entails (laptops in bed, choosing your own hours) versus invariably the reality for most (cleaning the bedding, prioritising the chores, excessive boundless hours).

In this, I made sure to tick off* all the usual signifiers of stress. At least, the ones that seem usual to my mind. So we have spasming eyelids, twitching deadline imminent clocks, beachballs of doom, white-knuckles, washing up and socks that need pairing - the horror!

*ba-doom-tish 

This animation was created for ALSO, the journal for contemporary women

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GREAT LEARNING 2 PROMO

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up in Photoshop, animated in After Effects and edited in Premiere. Music by KID

Following on from the first Great Learning we have the precisely titled Great Learning 2. For this I wanted to tease out of the origins of the name of the night, albeit in a rather “Say what you see” Catchphrase type of way.

So, Great Learning draws it’s name from a piece of music by avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew. Taking this on board I drew; a car, a driver (who happens to be Dr. Cornelius from Planet of the Apes) and a can of Mountain Dew (being held ape style, with his foot).

Cornelius Car-Dew. Ahem.

This animation was created for Great Learning, a club night in East London.

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SARAH MYERSCOUGH GALLERY 404

Text animated in After Effects and Photoshop.

I’ve recently completed a redesign of the Sarah Myerscough Gallery website. Their old (Wordpress) site was a non-Responsive design and was a little unwieldy. After looking at the options, the gallery’s decision was to go with Squarespace.

You can see why. Squarespace sites look good. 

Essential for a gallery, their templates heavily focus on images. The site builder is drag & drop, SEO and analytics tools are built-in and the finished site will work across all devices*

I built their site using the Forte template, modified Flexbox buttons, Font Awesome vector icons, CSS, a little HTML and a smidge of JavaScript, it came out rather well. This particular page is my animated contribution to the continuing yet under-seen art of 404 pages.

*At least until the 1 inch screen iPhone 9. I’m making a prediction, now, that screens are going to get smaller again.

This animation was created for Sarah Myerscough, a London design gallery.

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GREAT LEARNING 2

Hand drawn illustration, coloured and touched up in Photoshop.

Following on from the first Great Learning we have the precisely titled Great Learning 2. For this I wanted to tease out of the origins of the name of the night, albeit in a rather “Say what you see” Catchphrase type of way. 

So, Great Learning draws it’s name from a piece of music by avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew. Taking this on board I drew; a car, a driver (who happens to be Dr. Cornelius from Planet of the Apes) and a can of Mountain Dew (being held ape style, with his foot).

Cornelius Car-Dew. Ahem.

Poster created for Great Learning, a club night in East London.

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HORSE MEAT

Hand drawn illustration, coloured, touched up and animated in Photoshop.

This is based on the Phenakistoscope that I created for Magnificent Second Occupation. I extended the loop slightly to include the mince reforming into the horse as I figured that a cyclical birthing and mincing was slightly less depressing than the original’s sustained slaughter. At least this way the horse is revived? Still, it’s hardly cheery.

Animation created for Trashmouth Records and Pit Ponies.

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GREAT LEARNING

Hand drawn illustration, coloured and touched up in Photoshop and animated in After Effects.

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was an early Sunday morning must see for me. Roughly, it was Transformers cross-pollinated with Gardener’s World. Roughly. So, in the future, due to science, plants simultaneously become aware and obtain the ability to turn into tanks. Now, see that guy at the back, receiving the slingshot shot to the head? That’s Saw Boss and he's the bad guy. First of his kind to gain sentience and his first action... He tried to kill his accidental maker. This really speaks volumes about his character, so essentially, don’t feel bad he’s getting walloped in this. The roguish flattop walloper? That’s my take on a Bart Simpson / Holden Caulfield style character, as Jayce was sadly unavailable. 

This was illustrated and animated to promote a new club / band night, called Great Learning. So I thought it fitting to educate you a little on classic late 80s animation. Ba-dum-tish.

Poster and animated GIF created for Great Learning, a club night in East London.

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KID - FALLING DOWN

Archive footage re-edited in Premiere Pro

This is a music video for the band, KID. Following a conversation, about how music can inadvertently sync with unrelated video being watched, we came up with the notion of taking archive footage of a 70s skiing competition and re-editing it into a new video. The idea being to really push those odd synchronicities. So when the guitar and vocals peak the footage match the effects with warping, double exposure, jump cuts etc.

Video made for the London band, KID.

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FREYA VS BEN

This was our wedding invitation that was sent out to family and friends.

It was constructed using the original Street Fighter sprites, an image of Hackney Town Hall that I greatly pixellated and an arcade font writer that I found online - helpfully called “Arcade Font Writer”. To render the characters into the compelling likeness that you see here, my lovely wife, Chun-Li now has Ken’s haircut and I, Fei Long have gained an impressive moustache. Arguably more impressive than my actual moustache, but I made it so, hey.

*Freya has a song that she sings to me when she feels like she’s done something wrong, to remind me that she is indeed still a “lovely lovely wife”. Of course, she is. I’ve started to join in on the song. It is pretty catchy.

Animated GIF made for our wedding.

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WHAT PEOPLE WANT

KIM! KANYE! JAY Z! BILL GATES! AYN RAND! OSCAR HEADED CHILDREN! NUDITY! BRIGHT COLOURS! REPETITION! 

This is the promo video for a group exhibition that I was selected for, entitled What People Want. The work in the video is also mine. The seven illustrations are part of a series called New Clear Family. This title is a play on Marlene Dumas’ piece, Nuclear Family.

The individual pieces reference The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things by Hieronymus Bosch, which depicts every day scenes that were considered deplorable or at least undesirable. New Clear Family responds to Bosch's scenes by offering a potential positive counterpoint for each. Love for Lust, Philanthropy for Avarice etc.

NB The sound attached to the video is rather loud, so mind your ears.

Animation made for the exhibition What People Want, at The Hive Dalston.