Friday, February 23, 2007

Monstrously good news!

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!

After 8 months on the market and now with our second estate agents it's finally been sold. This being the first time I've ever sold a home I'm not in a hurry to go through the experience again. Tres stressful. We've found a lovely house at the other end, in Warrington, Cheshire, and our offer there has also been accepted. We've been told to expect to move in in 6-8 weeks!

Sadly, this does mean I won't be attending the Red Stick Festival this year as both events collide. I hope to be there next year though on double the schedule!

Been a busy couple of weeks post-Animex with Frankenstein's Cat production design work kicking up a gear. I designed a couple of episodes this week (a pet pageant episode and a Halloween one) and the scripts are providing lots of room for fun new designs.

A completed episode, with full music score, is winging it's way to me as I type - the only thing that's missing is the credits and a title sequence, something we've yet to settle on. I personally can't get the beginning of SPONGEBOB out of my head!

Thanks to Glazey for his kindly compositing work as ever ;-)

Thursday, February 15, 2007

PLEASE VOTE!!! Threadless Submission: "BUB THE BUILDER"

Dearest Badablingthingies!!

Thanks to the help of the lovely Nik from Zombiedollar$, I've put forward "Bub The Builder" as a Tshirt design for Threadless and lo and behold the blooming thing has only gone and been chosen! It's in the running in the open competition so I would ask ANYONE to please call by Threadless and give BUB THE BUILDER your vote. It means signing up but it's utterly painless and spam free. If I get enough votes then it means I don't have to keep washing the disposable nappies for the babies and I can dress them in something other than potato sacks and dishclothes...

Your support is utterly appreciated.

http://www.threadless.com/submission/110065/Bub_The_Builder

Sunday, February 11, 2007

ANIMEX Festival Review

Another Animex Festival has been and gone and, as ever, has lived up to it's growing reputation of attracting the very best from the animation world. And me.

Joining the usual suspects of speakers this year were such industry luminaries as Oscar winning producer of W&G Curse of the Wererabbit, Claire Jennings, and big bad bebop Hull-fop hippety hop beatboy JAKe, creator of Geek Boy and all round top hairy bloke. A nice touch this year was the award given to the evergreen creator of Acting For Animators, Ed Hooks, who received his Animex "Lemmy" at the end of festival dinner, to everyone's delight. Congratulations Ed, can't think of a nicer fellow in Animation.

The Cat maquette you see above was wheeled out during my speech (which was shockingly full of innuendo, smut, double and single entendres I'll be the first to admit!). It was presented as an example of things one can do to help raise the profile of a project when looking to chase that greenlight. I asked Colin Batty some years ago to make me a maquette, and the talented sausage came up with this definitive sculpt.

The box was made by Chris Keogh at Mackinnon and Saunders. What you can't see on the reverse of it is the address to Castle Frankenstein, Oddsburg.

As well as an insight into the development of Frankenstein's Cat, I was also able to show the pilot of a "pre-Curtis" Bob The Builder as made by Ealing Studios many moons ago. This was by way of explaining the sometimes long and meandering path by which a project goes from page to the screen. The pilot raised many eyebrows in the audience as it's little known that it was ever made.
This fine collection of male specimens consists of (l-r) Dougie "The Mouth" Pincott, Professor Paul "The Stare" Wells, Curtis "The Tongue" Jobling and Chris "The Lobe" Williams. As you may be able to gather this was from the end of Festival Dinner after much swigging of dirty liquor!
Ahhhh, the lovely, divine, Claire Jennings, ex-Aardman (sorry Claire ;-) ) Poor Claire had to endure my company, dad jokes, inappropriate questions and general rants throughout the dinner. Watch this space as the Jobling endeavours to work with the Jennings in the near future!

Thanks to everyone at Animex for helping me, Emma and the kids to feel as welcome as ever and thanks to everyone who turned up, both at my workshop and lecture. If you came and listened, do please post comments - feedback always appreciated.

Bada Bling!

Monday, February 05, 2007

Brrrrrraaaaiiiinnnssssss.........

It's that time of year when ANIMEX International Festival of Animation rolls round again, as the great and good of all things cartoony descend onto the frosty streets of a northern English town. The colourised "Bub The Builder" above will be getting screened during my talk on friday - I tried desperately to get this baby submitted to Threadless T Shirts but couldn't work out the software :-/ This is where I expect Andy Glazebrook to leap to my rescue like some hairy faced supergeek!

Further to my last post on Lottie, here's how she measures up to Nine (well, this incarnation of her anyway). You'll also see how Nine himself has evolved in the tail department - we went with a broken crank handled spotty tail to put further distance between our cat and the cat belonging to a certain preschool builder!



If you ARE going to be at ANIMEX, do please come by and say hello. I promise I'm quite approachable, if a little ginger, so if you've no aversion to short fat hirsute fellows then amble on up...