Pitstop campaign animation

An animation we produced for Take a Pitstop has made its way online.

The idea was to raise awareness of Lymphoma in the under-30s so we tried to make something funny but got across a very serious message that could affect people's health.

We worked with animator Matt Partridge with art direction from Zinc Design. The voices were done by Louis and Tom and the script was written by Ian.

Lennononandonandon

Last week BBC Comedy asked me to animate to a rap by the very clever Dan Bull to commemorate John Lennon's 70th Birthday and a blue plaque unveiling. After working out how to avoid some massive copyright litigation parties, I smashed it out in about 3 days. All animated and prettified in Flash.

Dan crams in as many John Lennon/Beatles songs and albums into the narrative as possible. So as big Beatles fans it was fun to geek out all over this baby, and of course I managed to shoehorn in a bit of nudity and a scat-laugh.

There's always something you could alter, but we're pretty chuffed with how it turned out with the small amount of time we had. Here's the original BBC website link.



*Update* Ooh, and apparently we were featured on the BBC homepage too. Zing!

Man In A Cat's Shortlisted for Funding

All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat) has been shortlisted for Digishorts funding! Nice Stuff!

X-Factor styley, over 100 entries have been whittled down to 12. After the development process 6 of those will be commissioned. Next week we'll be starting off with a day of discussion and workshops with the other shortlisters and Kate Leys. The development process will go on through till March when we'll see... If all goes well and we get the green light, we'll be chucking up regular updates here for you to track the progression of the film.

While 'Man In A Cat has been talked about for a while, and the tester trailer alone has got over 850,000 views, it had to stand on ice for a while as our other projects and work relationships developed. But after having the storyboards on my wall for over a year it'll be great to get some outside input. I'm particularly excited to see how the original story changes. While I love the idea of a Man, Woman, Cat love triangle (not like that), there's still plenty that could be done on the script.

So let's start from the beginning shall we? Here's where the original idea taken from my sketchbook when I was 16, which was taken from Tony Lopes' Odd Streak strip.

Huh, will yer look at that. Message in a Bottle was on the same page. Page 32 was obviously drinking well that year.

The Secret Identity of Santa Claus

Unwanted husband and father, Paul Slater is a check out assistant in Tesco. But Paul leads a secret double life... He is... Santa Claus!... in the Tesco Christmas Grotto Mega Value Clearance section.

Click here to watch it in all it's full HD glory!

Like the awkward time when you watched a loved one dissapointedly unwrap your present bought on a shoestring budget, I would have liked to have offered you a slightly bigger, more raunchy present, but time's been tight lately. Where's the sherry. Sherry will dull this guilt.

Trivia: I wrote this when I was 13. Gadzooks! 10 years ago! In the '90s! Jesus. Here's the original sketch while I go and spin out in the corner.

Circa 1999

Christmas Card Animation For Go'Proces:

Danish company Go'Proces: came to me with a script for an animated Christmas card. So I made one. It's only occurred to me recently that Scandinavians have a particular sense of humour. Like the sort of joke that doesn't have a punchline... or a joke. Just a big vast dark cold landscape of subtlety. I like!

As their friend base is exclusively Danish they decided not to go for subtitles, so good luck working out what they're saying! Let me know what you think they're saying so I can laugh at/with you.

Lastly, big up to long suffering Amy Commander for doing the voice of 6 characters - possibly even a man's voice too with help from my computer.

P.S. Seems there's some audio sync problems with this uploaded version.

Trick - Another Halloween Short

Here's a Halloween short Louis did the animation for quite a while back for Will Rot. Probably best not show your kids this one - not the last 20 seconds in any case. Make that 30 seconds, sorry eyes.

How Not To Be Halloween Fabulous

Here's a Halloween animated greeting card for y'all that I knocked up!

Seeing as statistically 67% of all males between 16 and 45 will be dressing up as Michael Jackson this Halloween (science doesn't lie people) here's a audio-visual forewarning entitled 'How Not To Be Halloween Fabulous, or How I Learnt to Stop Caring and Started Dressing as Michael Jackson'

For some real advice on HOW to be Halloween Fabulous read Ian's sage words of advice.

Don't Touch goes to Glastonbury

*Edit* Looking back through the emails I believe we were shown twice at Glasto, courtesy of the lovely ChewTV.

Don't Touch is off too Glastonbury Festival with thanks to Dave Allen of the mighty Animation Forum West Midlands! From what I've heard it'll be screened on the BBC's back-to-back 25m2 screens. Whoop-di-whoop. Other films being shown are Second Home Productions' The Animal Book, and The Brother McLeod's Codswallop. Fine company indeed.

For info and a bit of a history on Don't Touch lookee here.

Are you... Bored Stiff?

May we introduce our sticky new born, 'Bored Stiff'. Here's what it has to say for itself:

Dr. Nick Deadly gets bored and takes time out to work on an extra-curricula project. Plus, there was queue for the toilet.

Click here to see it in all its (half) HD glory!

They said, 'It couldn't be done!'... well more, 'I don't want to do it!'. But one digital pen, 3 dogs lives and lawsuit later I had proved them wrong. If you're interested... Excuse me. Yep. Hi... here's the original scribbles I did on a tiny scrap of paper a few years ago. The words are me trying to give it a title. 

Featured on YouTube!

Wowzers!, Zoiks! and indeed Blimey! 'DON'T TOUCH' got featured on YouTube!
Considering I can't stand watching the bugger any more I'm quite proud. I suppose it's appropriate to show you it again... as if it'll look any different featured. *edit - Thought I'd give you the new HD version to oggle at.

All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) Trailer

Here's the lastest glimpse of the upcoming film, All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat). Should be a good'un when it's done.

Portfolio Review at Flip

A veritable tirade of news lately. On Friday 4-5.30pm, 6 graduate animators, including myself, will be having our showreels ripped to shit by a panel of experts at The light House, Wolverhampton. It'll be like standing on stage with my balls hanging out for inspection. In the best possible way, of course.

The panelists include: 

• Dan Calvert, a senior animator at Blitz Games. 
• Mick Foley, from Sumo Dojo Productions. Member of PACT National Council for Animation and a council member on the Skillset Animation Forum
• Roger McIntosh, an animation director with credits including, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', 'Peter Rabbit & Friends', 'Kipper' and 'Angelina Ballerina'.

Things that I'll try to get to:

Thurs 6th

7-9pm: Opening party at Millenium Point,

Fri 7th

4-5.30pm Portfolio Review Session (obviously),

6–7.30pm Sita Sings the Blues,

Sat 8th 

11.15-12.30pm National Film & TV School Screening,

6.45 – 8.30pm: Student Competition (4 film's from my old college),

8.30pm Closing Party.

Louis & America

Just started on a string of commissions for Las Vegas/L.A. based horror filmmaker William Rot. Very nice guy who's working on the feature 'Helter Skelter'. 

Definitely exercising my dark side at the moment. I should start watching fluffy cartoons and doing charity work to keep myself clean, but I'll probably just watch porn and cry whilst cutting myself instead.

Updates, plans and fresh impetus

We've been a bit mean with updates to the news blog lately so I'm going to reinvigorate the ol' bird and give it some fresh impetus. Here's what's happening in our world.

Our other blog UMOKYEAH is chugging along nicely, satisfying our desire to publish silly thoughts and pictures while venting some spleen when it all gets a bit too much.

On the animation front, Louis is multi-tasking through some test footage for the Brothers McLeod while thinking about resolving Man in a Cat with it's intended (and ultimately more satisfying) ending. A trailer for Man in a Cat should be in the works very soon in preparation for some festival appearances (hopefully).

Film-wise, our new 'made-in-a-couple-of-days' ethos is going well. The Outsider got some nice feedback and Max Fitness, again starring Tom Reid, is almost ready to be unleashed. Next up is the Film Dash 48-hour film competition which we'll endeavor to patch something together for, followed by another series of quick improvised shorts.

In the writing stakes, we'll soon be in the process of writing an expanded follow-up series for Max Fitness, a short story called The Third Stroke which we'll aim to make as a film sometime, and another short film which needs an ending. Oh, and I'll be blogging on the Film Dash among other bits for 4Talent magazine while Tom and I will be contributing to new music/film/everything blog/website Aural Pleasure too.

I think that's mostly what's going on. Hopefully we'll update more regularly now and may just send out some calls for help for various things we'd like to do in the near future.