Monday 30 July 2012

JOY.

First, let’s get the self-appreciation horseshit out of the way: “The Naughty List” will be on TV again next week (12:15pm Wednesday, August 8th) on Canal+ Xtra. I suspect the high degree of Catholicism in Spain may account for their showing of my Christmassy whimsy all the year round. I’m all for it.
Some good news on the Skwigly front, our podcast has gone and gotten itself an iTunes listing. Hurray, visibility! You can now subscribe and get each new one automatically, which will free up your valuable time no end! Yes, yes, of course - you’re very welcome.

Okay, now the cool part:
Hot on the heels of getting the unprecedented opportunity to interview Billy West, the man behind Stimpy (of “Ren & Stimpy”, which probably didn't need clarifying), I got the even unprecedentedder opportunity to talk to John Kricfalusi, the man behind the entire show and, by extension, the creator-driven cartoon revival it put in motion.
While I was able to interact with him very briefly at last year’s Encounters festival (by fortuitous happenstance he was a special guest at the very edition one of my films was screened at) this interview was an amazing experience to hear all manner of firsthand anecdotes and recollections from his career and, surreally, watch him ‘pitch’ his latest short film idea to me live over Skype.
Obviously it’s not me he’s pitching to specifically, but the public in general. It’s being crowdfunded and boasts probably the most exciting array of incentives I’ve seen. Granted, I adore the Spumco universe so it’s kind of tailored to my taste, but I strongly urge any cartoon, illustration or film enthusiast to check it out and maybe toss a few sheckels in its direction.


Of course you can expect to read and listen to the interview in the very near future on Skwigly and our above-mentioned podcast respectively. Stay tuned!
John Kricfalusi's fine immortalisation of yours truly, overlooking my liquor cabinet all classy-like...

Friday 6 July 2012

Bully Backgrounds (Part 1)

Here's something for a merry Friday afternoon that you can all shove in your eyeholes should you so desire - the first batch of backgrounds for my fourth short "Bullies", a film which is defying logic and expectation by inexplicably coming together.
Ain't they purty? It's a bit of a departure from my prior background work as far as the level of detail goes, though the general approach to construction and design has stayed the same. I owe a big hearty back-slap of gratitude to the lovely Luca, who has been lending a hand here and there for no reason other than being spectacularly awesome. She's also been a massive help with my animated "Throat" promo, which should be online sometime in August, so get out the zester and keep those eyes peeled. In the nearer future I'm off to London to indulge an extended weekend of Faith No M'awesomeness, so steel yourself for some fanboy gushing over the next few posts.

Monday 2 July 2012

French Connections

A little hotter on the heels than usual from the last podcast, Steve from Skwigly and I have put together an Annecy special, which focuses on said festival – a rather major one, which took place in June. Really all the material is down to Steve as I didn’t make it over there, I just put the podcast together and threw in some of my usual on-mic grumbling’n’mumbling. Our plan is to do more ‘special’ podcast editions that will be a separate stream from the normal episodes. This way we can focus more on specific themes, practitioners or events and play around with the structure a bit. As well as a bunch of general film discussion there are interviews with Matt O’Callaghan (director of the contemporary “Looney Tunes” theatrical shorts) John Kahrs and Kristina Reed (director and producer respectively of the highly anticipated new Disney short “Paperman”) as well as a rundown of the festival’s ‘unofficial’ component Annecy+, curated by Bill Plympton and Nancy Phelps who were awesome and gracious enough to include “The Naughty List” in last year’s edition. You can download the podcast directly or stream it below: Skwigly Podcast Special 01 - Annecy (02/07/2012) by Skwigly Animation Podcast