Skip to main content

About TET & Animation and Video Life

TET a.k.a. The Extraordinary Tourist
a.k.a David Arandle
Introduction

Animation and Video Life began in 2008 as my own personal blog to document my animation projects.

Online I am known as TET or 'The Extraordinary Tourist'. My real name is 'David Arandle'. I'm a self represented artist, animator, video maker, and writer of amongst many other things. I'm currently based in Gawler, South Australia.

I run an online animation studio called Animation 4 Business, with a small team of animators who help me create animated explainer videos for clients worldwide.

As this blog has grown it has expanded into more of an online magazine. I still document my own projects but in between I write everything from animation tutorials, animation software reviews, to feature animators and more. Turning the site into a valuable resource for independent animators like myself.

My art and animation is primarily based around the fictional characters that I create through my drawing, painting and writing (and any other 'ings' you care to think of). With my traditional art I work primarily with Acrylics and Chalk pastels. For my digital art and animation I use a 21" Parblo Coast Pen Display Monitor, Clip Studio Paint, and Cartoon Animator.


Biography

Since completing my Diploma of Arts (Art and Design) in 1994 I have been a self represented artist, working professionally as a freelance artist, designer, and writer from 1995 to the present.

In 1997 I opened my own studio gallery in Perth, Western Australia from which I created and sold my original artworks. At the same time I registered my art and design business, Art Time Productions (http://www.arttimeproductions.com), through which you can commission an artwork, website design or logo design.

Entirely by chance, in 1999, my work started to sell online through various community forums that I participated in. Inspired by this I decided to exclusively sell my art through the internet.

In April of 1999 I adopted the online nickname 'The Extraordinary Tourist', taken from one of my own fictional character creations, to grab people's attention in online forums. Due to the name's length I became known as TET, a pseudonym with which I have signed all my paintings with since 2007 (Prior to that I used my real name, David Arandle).

From 1995 I worked primarily using acrylics overlaid with soft chalk pastels on canvas but switched exclusively to acrylics on canvas in 2007. I also dabble in digital art, mostly collages that include my own hand created artwork.

2001 I began selling my own original artworks through my website and Ebay (http://myworld.ebay.com.au/e_tourist/).

For a time I was most known for my whimsical, cat themed paintings, of which I painted more than 50 artworks, but have since branched out to other themes and characters.

My art is primarily based around the fictional characters that I create through my drawing, painting and writing (and any other 'ings' you care to think of).

My work has been bought by collectors all around my home country, Australia and world wide, in particular the USA.

Prints of my art can be bought through my Redbubble site (http://etourist.redbubble.com).

When I'm not creating art I write on a range of topics for The Extraordinary Tourist Life and produce videos that often feature my art and animation being created.

In July of 2008 I discovered Go!Animate (now known as Vyond) a site that allows users to create their own animations using pre-animated characters and backgrounds. This reignited my long forgotten interest in animation and I have since become one of that site's leading animators.


Exhibitions

2013, 'Horses, Cats and Other Things', Joint exhibition with horse artist, Ellen Steyn, The Gawler Community Gallery, Gawler, South Australia. (9 artworks)

2009, S.A.L.A. Exhibition, Solo show, August, 'Introducing The Extraordinary Tourist', The Gawler Community Gallery, Gawler, South Australia. (17 artworks)

2004-2005, 'Sleeping Cats', Online Exhibition, (9 artworks).

1997, Studio Gallery, East Perth, Western Australia


Awards and Prizes

2014 Reallusion Animation@Work Competition - Runner Up Best Video
http://forum.reallusion.com/Topic187362-361-1.aspx

2010 Go!Animate Creating for a Cause Competition - 1st Place
etourist - Save the Tiger, Super Rica & Rashy
http://goanimate.com/contest/past/8

2008 Go!Animate Site Launch Competition - Runner UP, Series Animation
etourist - The Bikini Proposal
http://goanimate.com/contest/past


Who's Talking About Me

2014, Reallusion TV, Featured Director
http://www.reallusion.com/reallusiontv/featuredstory/David_Arandle.aspx

2009, Go!Animate Blog, The Extraordinary Tourist by eTourist
http://blog.goanimate.com/2009/04/extraordinarytourist-by-etourist.html

2008, Hazel Dooney, Google-eyed.
http://hazeldooney.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-eyed.html

2008, Canvas and Pen, Spotlight Artist.
http://www.canvasandpen.com/spotlight-tet-the-extraordinary-tourist.html

2008, Free Wheely, Peugeot 607 Feline: Cat or Spaceship?.
http://freewheely.blog.com/3206985/

2008, Eric T. Francis, Untitled: I've been tagged.
http://erictfrancis.blogspot.com/2008/01/untitled-ive-been-tagged.html

2007, Pennlive, Tet ~ The Extraordinary Tourist.
http://blog.pennlive.com/iridescentartnews/2007/03/tet_the_extraordinary_tourist.html

Popular posts from this blog

Should You Buy or Upgrade to MOHO 13? *Spoiler* Yes. Yes You Should!

MOHO 13's New Character Set. Smith Micro released MOHO 13 , their all in one, 2D animation studio, this week. The question is should you buy or upgrade to the latest version? Obviously I've already spoiled this in the title, so the actual question is why do I think you should buy or upgrade? To be clear, I'm only talking about MOHO 13 Pro. If you're considering MOHO 13 Debut be aware that you're missing out on some of the new features, and a lot of existing features that are only available in the Pro version. Debut is fine if the budget doesn't stretch to Pro, but, if you never want to be disappointed about not having a feature, it's Pro or nothing! The other thing I need to be transparent about is I'm not, by any stretch, a frequent MOHO user/animator. However I took the time to learn MOHO 12 Pro fairly extensively, blogging about my process and sorting out 104 free MOHO training videos into a logical viewing order in the process. I think I ha

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determ

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w

TimeBolt: Fast Video Editing for Anyone Creating Online Courses, Podcasts, or Vlogs.

I resisted making tutorial videos for a long time because I don't like editing. Specifically I don't like editing me teaching as I step students through a process during a screen record. I have a tendency to insert long pauses not just in the middle of sentences but between multiple words in the middle of sentences as my pace matches what I'm doing onscreen. This makes for very long and very slow paced video tutorials. To counteract this I have to edit out all the pauses. This can take hours, or even days on particularly long tutorials. For example, when I created my main course, The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator , I literally injured the thumb on my right hand, operating my mouse, as I spent weeks taking out all my pauses (seriously, I had to wear a thumb brace for a few weeks to fix the pain). Recently I came across TimeBolt , a very affordable, fast editing application with the featured purpose of removing all the pauses from your video (and even

Creating a G3-360 Head From a Single Photo in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator

Source Photo from Generated Photos . Ever since Reallusion introduced the G3-360 Character Head into Cartoon Animator 4 I've wanted to see if their 360 Head Creator tool could be used to create an animated head using a photo. Part of the reason I've never given this a shot, until now, is that I just assumed it would be difficult, and require a lot of photo editing to blend out the sprite edges. It turns out, creating a photographic G3-360 head is not that much more difficult than creating a cartoon head, and can be done using a single photographic image using my own G3-360 head rigging system . While this article isn't intended to be a full tutorial, I'll run through the basic steps of how I achieved my photographic G3-360 head, shown in the comparison below, of a Cartoon Animator Morph-based head on the left, and my G3-360 head on the right. Pros and Cons Cartoon Animator's morph-based head system is ideal for animating photographic faces. It uses a semi 3D wire me