The price of fish

I once saw a cartoon of the Mona Lisa halfway through completion with numerous badly drawn hands scribbled out and the words 'Dammit! dammit! dammit! written across it. (If I could find it I would have posted it) I think I had an episode of that this morning when the pencil tool in Flash was picking up every single wibble better than any seismometer ever could. Software flaws instill a fear in me of it leading to something much bigger and irreversible. Crisis averted now though.

Spent a lovely weekend in London with an old and dear friend, we managed to see Studio Ghibli's latest film, Ponyo, an expensive viewing as the only cinema showing the subtitled version was in Leicester Square. But it was a beautiful and well observed little film with some really good prehistoric fish. I also managed a trip to the Tate Modern which always takes me back to school days, no big sculpture in the entrance hall this time sadly and I wasn't overly excited by any of the exhibitions. (Except for the interactive quiz in which several under 10's beat me in a Lichtenstein paint the dots game) I do enjoy their book shop though and they always have a fantatsic array of children's books which made me want to start drawing properly again.


Lately I have been working on a 40 second intro for Mo which has been moving along nicely. Not quite as quickly as I had hoped but bits of it are moving now at least. Here is a screen grab (or as Laura says 'screen moment') from what i'm working on this very second. From the very beginning:

Also popped into Aardman last week to catch up with people and saw a nearly finished version of Blind Date, (a short directed by Nigel Davies) It is looking beautiful and I'm pleased to have got the chance to work on it.

Finally a massive congratulations to Emma Lazenby (of Arthur Cox Ltd) on her Bafta win for her film Mother Of Many! A fantastic film about midwiffery.

January.

Now the Christmas and New Years is truly properly over I am pleased to say I have managed to do a little bit of work (and eventually do my taxes) despite it being all snowy and meringue-y outside. Though the sound and sight of snow thawing out to slush is really quite sad and maybe I shouldn't have watched 'The Road' yesterday as it didn't do much to lift those first few weeks of January blues, just made me realise how meaningless doing my taxes REALLY is in the grand scheme of things.

 It has been fairly quiet recently so nothing exciting to report. I am using my current spare time to finally finish an animatic for Mo which in hindsight I wish I had started again from scratch. I need to make some changes to the characters etc  but I'd quite like to start on some other bits of work so I'm getting impatient. Hopefully there is something exciting on the horizon so I can update this with something that's worth writing home about.

I'm still eating mince pies that I opened before Christmas, is this okay?

Lens-flare-o-rama

Just finished designs for the Frank Baum, Monarch of Mo pitch. Good so far but we shall see what happens! Now I am making adjustments to Dinnersaurs and adding an extra scene, I feel happier now I've extended it. It all looks a lot less rushed but it will be nice when I can leave it alone.

After a really quick turnaround Taio Cruz's new video for single 'No Other One', Directed by Nick Bartleet is ready for viewing. Right at the bottom of this post.

(And for those of you who like this kind of thing you can see the 'behind the scenes' here.You can occasionally spot me standing around looking like I'm not doing not much, but contrary to what you see I was actually working hard, it was just a very long day.)