I’m back in the UK for a while and I’ve just been accepted as a student at Animation Mentor which is a great online school I discovered while I was in San Francisco. If you’re reading this, you are probably also an AM student, so hi!

Over the next 18 months, if I can succesfully juggle my animation schooling with work, I will use this blog to document my transformation from motion editor/generalist/crowd sim/whatever to ANIMATOR.

This new focus should result in more regular updates on this blog starting with bouncing balls and progressing to characters and acting. Eventually, if all goes well, I’ll have an awesome new animation reel when I graduate. Hopefully I’ll still have time for the occasional silly sideline which I’ll stick on my tumblr. I’m also @dunkr on twitter.

12Mb Quicktime - shot list - resume

I started by asking for examples on ask.metafilter.com and the first answer, a link to the Enhance button page on tvtropes.org, was probably the most useful resource. I also used various torrent, subtitle and transcript sites. I spent a few weeks downloading and editing, and managed to get it done before the Christmas break. My brother Joel did some great music in Garage Band which I re-cut the video to. After uploading to YouTube I posted it to my tumblr, b3ta and waxy’s amazing supercuts page (to which I’d previously contributed “My Arse!”).

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out but I’d never have predicted that 6 weeks later it would have over HALF A MILLION views. It’s been pretty exciting seeing my little video spread around the internet. It’s unlikely I’ll ever repeat the success of “Let’s Enhance” so I thought I’d use this blog to catalog some of the more interesting or surprising places it showed up. Reading the comments on some of these blogs I’ve found some great enhance clips I missed and even learnt something about Eigenvalues.

waxy.org/links:  Andy Baio got the ball rolling. He’s good at that. He even sent me a nice email.

Boing Boing:  They previously posted my Dance Dance Industrial Revolution pic.

kottke.org:  He previously posted my Bunk and McNulty go skiing picture.

b3ta newsletter:  After a few years of photoshops, my first mention in the “puerile digital arts community” newsletter.

reddit and digg:  Most of the views came from these guys. They are HUGE.

Slate, The Atlantic, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times: WTF?!

Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, Videogum, Metafilter:  Nice that it made it back to MeFi.

Felicia Day:  Popular actress and geek. I wonder if she knows any of the actors doing the enhancing.

Official Photoshop Blog:  If I ever update this video, Avatar will be the first clip I add.

Motionographer:  I love how someone says in the comments, “Duncan Robson has a pretty solid CV”. Thanks!

A real-life image processing expert, The Vancouver Police Museum, The CEO of MotionDSP - Makers of actual video enhancement software.

Jesse Thorn:  Host of awesome public radio show The Sound of Young America.

Screenwriter John August.

An interesting essay about “appropriation artists”.

A CBC radio interview with fantasy user interface designer Mark Coleran.

A seminar series on genre fiction at King’s College London is called “Let’s Enhance”.

Clients From Hell:  It doesn’t stop! Just yesterday it was blogged here which means new followers on tumblr, twitter mentions, youtube subscribers and a bunch of comments.

It’s been fun but also pretty distracting, especially when I’m supposed to be looking for work. This is why I felt the need to write all this down, so I can concentrate on the next thing. It won’t be another supercut. It might be an animated short.

I’m back in London for a bit working on Clash of the Titans after a lovely 3 months in California. Follow me on my (slightly more regularly updated) tumblog for more silly games related potatoshoppery.

wormhole from Duncan Robson on Vimeo.

Added this to my reel. Now for some python dabbling, job hunting and preparation for the big move to San Francisco in April.

*Simon Wainwright from ITD is also in the band Hope & Social who’s imminent album I predict will be well worth buying and listening to.

Back in October I made this picture of Senator Clay Davis from The Wire in the style of Shepard Fairey’s celebrated Obama “Hope” portrait. It’s become the most linked-to thing I’ve ever put on the web.  Someone suggested I sell them so I’ve uploaded it to mysoti where you can buy prints or t-shirts. It would be great to see one out in the real world.

shot list (pdf)

cv (pdf)