see that T shirt there >

See that T shirt there ~ click on it.
I have migrated to a new blog...
forty grins
I have been posting things up during the Summer that take my attention for a moment. they don't rhyme like poetry, they don't sing like a bird. they just chime for a moment like a clock in a parlour with no one in to hear it...

Johnny kelly

procrastination, the seed, and the making of the seed are well worth a watch. RCA 2007, now directing at Nexus. Reminded of Johnny as a winner at this year's D&AD winning animation film by Matthew Young of Leeds, about the city, is a similar genre. (As was Tom Ormondes film at UWE last year)... what am I saying? I'm saying that this is not plagiarism, but a form. A playful form of expanding on a theme such as city, or inconvenience, or procrastination. They are often platitudes, but often accompanied by good craft.

FMX talks online

++ Watch FMX 2010 presentations and speaker interviews on AWNtv +++
FMX is a large festival that happens annually in Stuttgart Germany.
Even though it’s been a few weeks since FMX 2010 has closed its doors, we still have a special treat for you. AWNtv has launched a large number of interviews with speakers and presentation recordings in the FMX channel. Some of them include top notch speakers like Ed Hooks, Simon Otto (DreamWorks Animation), Victoria Alonso (Marvel Studios) and Evan Hirsch (THQ).
You can also watch recordings of “Early Days in France”, a track from last year’s conference where French keys actors from the early 80s shared their memories. Among others Pierre Buffin (Founder and CEO, BUF Compagnie), Xavier Nicholas (Managing Director, Lucasfilm Animation) and George Lacroix (GL Consulting) testified how they started in the business and retraced how the more important studios evolved from heavy in-house software to simpler turnkey systems in under five years. Find out the trials and successes they had to face in the early days, when complete movies were made on hardware that was less powerful than today's cell phones. To watch the recorded sessions, please go here.

Esc competition for CG animators

here is an open call from Escape...
"We wanted to let you know about a fantastic new competition we're running at Escape Studios in collaboration with The Mill - the CG Graduate Design Awards.

We're inviting final year students and graduates to submit showreels of their best computer graphics work, which will be judged by us and fellow experts from The Mill. The top 20 show reels will be critiqued by a panel of judges and the top prize is a place on Escape Studios' soon to be launched Online Mentored VFX Course for both a UK and US winner.

The competition is quite simple - to enter, students need to upload their video to Escape Studios' YouTube Chanel. The closing date for all entries is August 2nd and more information on the competition will appear on the Escape Blog.

It's a great competition with some fantastic prizes up for grabs, so do encourage your students to enter."

2010 student Sample blog links

2010 student Sample blog links
the below are the links to the work the students have been logging in support of their developing and exploring work;

Sarah Little

Jack Norris
Daniel Keeble (Dan's WEB)
Livvy Brewer

Dane Winn(web)
Max Mavromichalis (blog)
Charles Miller (blog)
Daisy Hynes (blogspot)
Sophie Grimwood

Robert Meech

Andrzej Niedzialkowski
Jenny Adam

Rebecca Viale
Rebecca Farr


Lucy Guthrie
Ben Stanley
Craig Rudman



David Dymond Japan adventure!

Family portrait wins Stuttgart Grand Prix

Congratulations Joseph Pierce.
"The 17th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film ended on Sunday evening with the presentation of the "Trickstar" in seven competition categories. Several awards were presented for the International Competition: "A Family Portrait" by Joseph Pierce from Great Britain won the Grand Prix accompanied by 15,000 Euro, sponsored by the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city of Stuttgart. The film is a detailed study of a typical small family. (Read an interview with Joseph here).The Lotte Reiniger Promotion Award for Animated Film (10,000 Euros), sponsored for the first time by the MFG Filmförderung Baden-Wuerttemberg went to "Sam’s Hot Dogs" by David López Retamero from the Royal College of Art, London. The special award Music for Animation presented by the GEMA Foundation (5,000 Euros) went to a film from this region. Heiko Maile‘s music for the hypnotic animated film "Love & Theft" by Andreas Hykade convinced the jury. The SWR-Audience Award won the film "Sinna Mann" ("Angry Man") by Anita Killi from Norway".

Drum circle by Graham Dolphin

Drum circle by Graham Dolphin

"Graham Dolphin's work appropriates objects and icons of the fashion and music industries, reforming them into assemblages that reveal the obsessions and formulas underwriting the temporal world of mass culture. Text works include: every lyric from the Beatles back catalogue hand written over the iconic cover of the White Album. In another text work, Dolphin takes every word from a single issue of Vogue and scripts them onto a single page, which has the same dimensions of the magazine. Dolphin's drawings compile every 'product' (shoes, cosmetics, etc.) traced over each other onto a single page. Film works include: gathering 1,500 images of Kate Moss merged into 60 seconds and footage of 100 Fashion Shows shown in a mere 100 seconds. These compulsive actions transform and disrupt the surface aspirations of popular culture and the glamour industry." Seventeen gallery

Rob Green Virus

WARNING - My computer's been infected by the Robert Green virus. Now I can't save anything.

* Earlier this season you wore gloves with "England's No 6" sewn into the side. Explain to us how that came about.

It was Portsmouth away when I saved a penalty in the last minute and we held on for a draw. The fans were chanting 'England's No 1' and I joked back by holding up six fingers, as if to say I was only sixth choice. The fans picked up on it straight away and it became a regular chant at games. When the club manufacturer heard what the supporters were singing, he asked if I'd mind having it sewn into my gloves as a laugh. If you can't laugh at yourself you can't laugh at anyone so I thought why not? It was just after Fabio Capello had announced his first England squad for the Switzerland game. Of course, I wore them the following Saturday in the 1-1 draw with Birmingham and Capello was in the crowd!

charlie brooker on NEWS

cyberjournalist.net is a good site that compiles and sorts allsorts. this video by Charlie Brooker about making a news article is very good. Charlie Brooker is very good

good political cartoonist - Mark Fiore

Mark Fiore,
who the Wall Street Journal recently called “the undisputed guru of the form,” creates animated political cartoons from an undisclosed location somewhere in San Francisco. His work appears regularly in a wide variety of online news web sites and is seen by millions, probably even scrillions.

After a short stint at the San Jose Mercury News as their staff cartoonist creating traditional political cartoons in a terribly stifling fluorescent windowless office, Fiore happily fled the print world in 2001 to devote all of his energies to creating animated work.
credit card exposure of charging for under use
Mark Fiore was awarded a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and has also received an Online Journalism Award from the Online News Association and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. With two awards from the National Cartoonists Society for his work in new media under his belt, Fiore also seems to excel at writing in the third person.
Mark Fiore is the first internet animator to win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. His work appears only online

I am liking this archive facility from Europa, "For the first time, a web site offers free access to a scheduling of heritage films from the most prestigious European archives and film libraries." have a dig...

lines and colours

Good blog this, Lines and Colours I haven't trawled its depths, but it looks rich. for example; Milton Glaser draws. video here. lines and colours archives go back to 2005, key person is Charley Parker, "I've been doing professional web site design since 1995. I'm perhaps best known as the creator of the award-winning online comic Argon Zark!, widely credited with being the first comic created specifically for the Web."
not Charlie Parker, the great Jazz saxophonist...
and good links, like this to Classic Cartoons blog

Lou Romano

Thanks max for linking to Lou Romano. I particularly like the colour scripts for the Incredibles.
"Here are some other samples of Incredibles work I did (2000-2004): Development, color/lighting design and DVD bonus materials."
*ALL ARTWORK PROPERTY of PIXAR/DISNEY*

Sarah Cox interview on AP/engine

Good interview with Sarah Cox of ArthurCox on AP/engine. Talks candidly about her career to date, and the move to Bristol and the future of ArthurCox.

joel Trussell

I am liking the work of Joel Trussell at the moment. this Video is rather good. Have a browse!

UK animators call for tax breaks

UK animators call for tax breaks


Wallace and Gromit, Bob the Builder and Pingu are going in to battle as leading lights of Britain's animation industry prepare to campaign for government support for UK-based talent.

The industry, creator of classics such as Bagpuss, Mr Benn and Thomas the Tank Engine, is seeing talent lured overseas by lucrative tax breaks. And they complain that work is being outsourced to studios in the Far East. Earlier this month it emerged that a film produced to showcase one-eyed monsters Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots for the London 2012 Olympics, was produced in China. [thanks tanya]

Spiegel van Holland - mirrors of Holland

Here is one for Jamie... Mirrors of Holland, by Philips Geluidssysteem and Bert Haanstra, 1951, Very Nice too! "Mirror of Holland (Dutch: Spiegel van Holland) is a 1950 short Dutch documentary film directed by Bert Haanstra. It won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival."

framepool stock film site

thanks to the doritos team for pointing this resource out. framepool for library film stock of global proportions. Good.

forming Game - Malcolm Sutherland

Malcolm Sutherland documentary on making the great film forming game. "This is a making-of video for the NFB produced experimental animated film "Forming Game", directed and animated by Malcolm Sutherland in 2008, with sound and music by Luigi Allemano". (he also made a film called Astromomer's dream, interview here, and Pixeldoodle is also worth a look.

DVD DESIGN

for all about to design DVD covers, this DVD search engine is a sure fast way to see the good, the bad and the ugly and downright redundant. Slothradio DVD search Just put in any name to the search box, such as Roger, or space, or treacle, and see what you get!