Psst! Sugar & Spice in HD

Now that I've stumped up some cash for a Plus account on the brilliant Vimeo, I can start posting some HD movies. Here's my segment from this years PSST! Pass it On animation/motion-graphics collaboration:



It's not actually HD in that embedded version, but you can see it in full WrapAroundPixelRama (tm) on my Vimeo page here.

It was a fun little film to make, I took the final frame of Bran Dougherty-Johnsons piece and continued the themes he started. But with more focus on Victoriana, sexual awakenings and, of course, snails.

As always I had a hundred ideas that I couldn't put into practice due to lack of time, but it turned out okay, and enjoyed animating something a little bit closer to my sketchbook style. Something I want to do more of.

And I was massively pleased with the musical score by David Kamp, who managed to make it feel like something far more professional!

Psst! London Screening

Psst! Pass It On has got a London screening, far handier than that one in LA the other day, so I'll be going along, hope some of you other cockney-sparrows come too. Here's the details:

(Psst! is a collection of 17 collaborative films made by some very clever people. I made a bit too, about a young womans sexual awakening with a snail. Saucy.)

Psst!

I've been asked to make a film for this years PSST! Pass It On - 17 collaborative films made by covens of motion-graphics warlocks and animation alchemists. It'll be launching around the world at various events in the next few weeks, and you can pre-order the DVD here.

My film is a collaboration with Bran Dougherty-Johnson of Grow Design Work and my particular section concerns a time-traveling aphrodisiac, a cup of tea, and a famous nursery rhyme. It looks like this:

Work Work Work

I'm working like crazy at the moment, trying to finish off my Grip Wrench animated series and clear the decks of work before a much needed holiday. So very nearly there, I'm currently putting together the final episode, number 10, and it should be quite a finale. 

Here's a crop of a background I just drew for it, not very dramatic, but I'm pretty pleased with it. I think I'm gradually getting the hang of this drawing thing. Practice, practice, practice. And you certainly get plenty of that working in animation...

I'm looking forward to getting all this out of the way, not because I'm not enjoying it but because this, along with my other major projects lately (a show for Disney, and the design of the LittleBigPlanet game for PS3) have all been longer than a year in duration. So really wanting to do some quick projects after this. First up will be animating my film for this years PSST! Which I'm looking forward to getting my (hairy) teeth into.

And then finishing the new version of my main website that has been sitting motionless on a harddrive for months. And do a new showreel. And go on holiday (look out California, we're coming to visit next month). And make some puppets. And build a animatronic sasquatch. And get tattoos. And practice growing a bit taller. And writing it all down in a big to-do list.

In other news I've decided the size I'd picked for all images on here was stupidly narrow. So from now on they all going to be a bit wider. Which will look a bit ugly until all the old-sized images fall off the bottom of the opening page - by which time I will have probably decided I want to go for an even wider standard...