Mr Sim

As I was logging into my Facebook page this morning I got assaulted by a load of banner adverts with things whizzing about and distracting me, and they were more distracting to me than usual because I made them.

Orange and Poke asked me to work up a character I was playing around with back when I was illustrating and animating the Good Things Should Never End site: an animated Sim card. And he's now gone on to star in a number of ads and print stuff. Famous little fella.

Mister Sim is a miscevious little chap, obsessed with eating and talking and flashing his gold gnashers. He's just generally extremely mouthy despite his tiny size, as you can see from some of the examples I've lifted out of the ads below.

Orange have also made him a fan page too on Facebook, although be careful: he does bite.

Webby Winnah!

Yay! Thanks for voting everyone. Orange Unlimited won the peoples vote for the Webbys for Best Visual Design (awards which Vanity Fair calls "Better than the Oscars") so thats nice. I shall now drink drink some beer, rip off my clothes and dance with strangers. East London will probably be evacuated shortly.

Webby

The great gods of the Internet (I've decided they are called LOLZ & PRON) have decided to award the Orange Unlimited site I made with Poke London a Webby nomination in the "Best Visual Design - Aesthetic" category. 

It's a public vote, so if you feel like voting, or checking out any of the other finalists (all of which are amazing) go henceforth here.

Design Museum: Designs of the Year

My eyes are going funny. I've been spending the last few days designing and animating in a retro pixel-art style, and now the world around me is talking on a 16-bit 2D videogame appearance; I'm walking sideways and picking up roast chickens off the ground to regain "health" but at least I seem to have unlimited credits. Anyway, all will be revealed soon, here's a teaser:



Anyway, back in the real, 3D, realistically rendered world, the Design Museum has revealed its "Designs of the Year" Award / Exhibition - and the Orange GoodThingsWillNeverEnd site I produced with Poke is in it. Blimey. It was quite odd to see my animated doodles of vikings and sasquatches featured alongside the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii, Peter Saville's identity for Kate Moss, the Helvetica documentary and the Dior spring collection. But I shan't complain..

I was celebrating far too much to point a camera at anything on the opening night, but since then I've sneaked back and recorded some evidence:













It's a nice exhibition, and worth attending if you're in London, even if you just spend the whole time playing with the Tenori-On machine:

Best Creative Campaign of 2007 is...

....that GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd site I did with Poke, for Orange Unlimited, at least that's according to the Internet Advertising Bureau & Microsoft Digital Advertising who awarded it at its Grand Prix awards, so thats nice. I might buy a iced bun to celebrate.

Bats, Votes and Sites

A few random unconnected things to blurt out today.
Firstly, an image of mine has made it onto my favourite illustration Blog: Drawn which is nice. It's something I did a year or two ago, for a secret shadowy organisation of illustrators I belong to called Robotface, which decided amongst its members to put together a book of illustrated animals. I contributed a couple: Vampire Bat and Goat. I'd forgotten all about the project, but it seems you can now view it online, or buy a hard-copy (once a slight hiccup with the printer has been sorted out).

Here's my critters:



My personal favourites from the book are The Deer, The Ibis, The Nymph and The Squid. Good work shadowy-illustration-collective!

Also, while I'm here, the Orange Unlimited site I worked on a few months back seems to be picking up lots of attention in end-of-the-year best-of lists, Campaign put it in their top 10 pieces of digital creative work for the year, Contagious magazine has put it in their list of Most Contagious things of the year, and its one of the 12 finalists in the FWA website of the year - which you can vote on HERE!

Plus I've just started on the redesign of my main Rexbox site - it's going to be quite different soon...

Interactive Telly Ad

My little characters designed for the GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd Orange Unlimited website are now inhabiting a stop-motion ad on interactive tellyvision, in a handsome production put together by Weapon 7.



Video here.

I really like how this turned out, and the music is nice too. I must get into doing a bit more stop-motion again.

Thanks to Cookie for spotting this.

FWAH

I just discovered that ridiculous GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd site I did at Poke for Orange was awarded with the FWA (Favourite Website Awards) on the 5th of November, Bonfire night! This calls for some extra big fireworks to celebrate with!




Kaboom.

Orange Unlimited

I've been working closely with the lovely folk at Poke on the new site for Orange. Its a neverending webpage, because, as they say, Good Things Should Never End.

It's been a great project to work on, a really open brief to just make loads of crazy stuff, my favourite kind of work basically..

Plus you can take the content from the site and share it on your blog, myspace or wherever, just like this: