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.

Dinosaurs in Exeter

Returned yesterday from Dinnersaurs' first (and hopefully not last!) festival. In Exeter. I have never been to Animated Exeter before despite it being rather close to home. It was a nice excuse to go and combined it was a rare visit to the home farm. It is a rather lovely little festival. Dinnersaurs was well received which was lovely and made me feel pleasantly nautious inside. Especially as it being my first film since graduation it felt a bit more personal. We pottered around town for a bit on the Sunday after eating a rather luxurious cupcake. On returning to Bristol I realised how much colder it was in Devon.

I really hope it gets into some more, it would be nice to go to some festivals and have something to talk about!

Dinnersaurs in blinding HD

Dinnersaurs can now be viewed in better than ever quality with massive huge thank you to Ben Mitchell.
Unfortunately not yet in silly-glasses 3D and sadly, probably never will be. But I had been struggling with the quality of final exports after editing etc and had settled with mediocre quality when viewed on fancy screens (it was fine when viewed on regular broadcast equipment, as that never asks for anything I can't muster) but Ben has unimaginable knowledge of anything post-production. He made it right and we're all happy now. Sadly it's too late for Animated Exeter but you probably wouldn't notice anyway.

Thanks Ben, (Oh and incidentally, he's a good animator (he's won some awards which he modestly never displays) and has some books out which I can say I have actually read now!)

Here, look how good Blake looks now:

It's so small you can't tell, you'll just have to trust me.

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?

Festivals and birthdays

Dinnersaurs will be shown in Screen Out Loud at Animated Exeter next year, on the 13th of February, Blake and Claire's first festival! The full festival takes place from the 11th - 20th of Feb

It was my birthday last week, mum always makes really odd but thoughtful cakes, this year, Terrance Scrimshaw! 

Christmas update

Wallace and Gromit have but their N-Power decorations up (With some help from me), see the results here!

So our Christmas tree went up today! A bit too early for me but we're not actually going to be here for christmas so I let it pass. 2 minutes of decorating and I'm bored. Our fairy has had some kind of 1960's make-over and has probably seen more Christmas days than I have.


Working on Change 4 Life ad this week at Aardman. Lovely :)

Terrance Scrimshaw

I have just uploaded a short animation I did a fair while ago that I'd forgotten about. It began as just a kind of character study and I just did bits here and there over a few months. Terrance Scrimshaw is a washed up, lonely and confused old sailor in some maritime town. Animated in Flash with watercoloured backgrounds.

I can't get this silly video to fit! How do I do it? Does anyone know? I've only just noticed.... I think the columns are too small and that's beyond my expertise.