In recent years, there has been a surge in animated projects that have
pushed boundaries, broken taboos, prompted discussions and wowed
festival and online audiences alike through compelling storytelling and
unmatched artistry.
Join Ben Mitchell and Laura-Beth Cowley of Skwigly Online Animation
Magazine and the Intimate Animation
podcast as they take you on a tour of the landscape of contemporary
animated films that deal with themes of love, intimacy, relationships,
anatomy and sexuality – and the incredible artists behind them.
Through
research and firsthand interviews with trailblazers such as Signe Baumane, Andreas Hykade, Ruth Lingford, Michaela Pavlátová, Bill Plympton and Joanna Quinn, as well as newer voices including Sawako Kabuki, Renata Gąsiorowska, Will Anderson, Sara Gunnarsdóttir, Michaela Mihalyi, David Štumpf, Levi Stoops, Lori Malépart-Traversy, Anna Ginsburg, Veljko Popovic, Joseph Wallace, Renee Zhan
and more, Intimate Animation looks deeply at how animation has been
used to present elaborate and complex concepts relating to love and
sexuality.
Exploring the role animation has played in sex education,
self-discovery, the body, lust and love, as well as how the medium can
be used to visually represent emotions, feelings and concepts not easily
described in words nor depicted through live-action filmmaking,
Intimate Animation is the ideal book for professional animators,
filmmakers, enthusiasts, researchers, academic and students of animation
and film studies interested in the themes of love and sexuality.
The book will be released March 27th and is available to pre-order now
(use code LP96LCNPH at checkout through this month for a whopping 20%
off!)
After some ruminatin', I think there might still be a few last gasps of life left in this here blog. Ahead of a big announcement coming up next week (that will probably explain why my energy for writing has been depleted of late), here's a roundup of some fun stuff I was involved with during the quiet spell that may be of interest.
Back in May Laura-Beth and I were at the always-wonderful Cardiff Animation Festival to host their brunch sessions and chat with attending filmmakers Tanya J Scott, Gerald Conn, Hannah Fisher, Naomi Crame, Lleucu Non, Josh Hicks, Tova Persson, Hoching Kwok, Gus Andrews, Qianhui Yu, Samantha Moore, Greg McLeod, Robert Brown, Katie King and Faye Craig. For those who weren't able to make it, these were recorded and put out as podcast minisodes, so brew some coffee, grab a croissant and have a listen. It'll be like you were there, boy-howdy.
Skipping ahead to November, Manchester Animation Festival was great shakes as ever. More of a flying visit this time but I did manage to cram in hosting duties for three events, including an all-new Skwigly Screening, the ever-bloodthirsty Skwigly Quiz and a special event wherein emerging talents from the Ukraine presented their animation projects in development. The event was part of a mentorship initiative brought about by Skwigly's collaboration with the Linoleum Festival and the UK/UA Animation Lab, which also yielded a series of free online lectures seeing industry professionals dispense invaluable advice. I was privileged to host one with producer extraordinaire Helen Brunsdon (below) and you can check out all six here.
To my delight, everyone's favourite stop-mo nightmare-weaver Robert Morgan (of Bobby Yeah and The Cat With Hands fame) had his first feature film Stopmotion released. A live-action/animation hybrid tale of an animator's relatable descent into madness, the film is hideous and horrible in all the best ways and definitely worth checking out. I was very happy to host a special CAF screening and discuss the film with the director himself, which you can check out below:Robert and I discuss the film further in episode 113 of the Skwigly Animation Podcast, which is still ticking along. Other episodes we put out last year include a British Animation Awards special, a celebration of Cartoon Saloon's 25th anniversary and chats with the talents behind 2024's holiday features and specials.
On the guests front we've also featured Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) with Nick Park making a welcome return alongside fellow Aardman-ites Merlin Crossingham and Ben Whitehead to chat all things Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. In our Animation One-To-Ones strand, which has continued to be a fantastic vehicle for our contributors to get some facetime with the movers and shakers of the industry, I also caught up with industry stalwarts Torill Kove and Job, Joris & Marieke. Speaking of contributors, I would be remiss to not shout out the fantastic work being created for the site by our wonderful team including Ryan Gaur, Martyn Warren, Jordan King and Kévin Giraud.
On the written features side of things, a couple pieces you might want to check out include chats with the fabulous NFB producer Maral Mohammadian as well as Zach Woods (creepy Gabe from the US version of The Office) and Brandon Gardner on their stop-motion NPR tribute sitcom In The Know. More recently I wrote a little summary of the late great David Lynch's own dabblings in animation over the years. Not an easy write as, being such a massive influence and all-around mensch, the news of his death rattled me. But ultimately it was a gratifying exercise and a rare excuse to lump together a bunch of factoids floating around my head that wouldn't necessarily have had much use otherwise.
Throughout the year Skwigly, Rumpus and Sun & Moon also continued our Bristol Animation Meetups (BAM), with four hugely successful seasonal events that included our established industry one-on-one sessions in the Spring and Autumn, a big chunky BAM quiz in the Summer and a seasonal collab event with AnimInspo to cap off the year. We have some fun irons in the fire on the BAM front, so keep your eyes on our socials to not miss out.
As to why I didn't bring any of this up at the time, well...here's the culprit.
Her name is Ivy. She saps all of the time I used to have for blogging because she's so adorable and her demands are both constant and merciless. Kind of lowkey ruined our life at the beginning, but hey, at a certain point you come around and fall in love. Dogs, what are they like?
So I think you're about caught up now. Stick around, more news a-comin'.
I think if anything is going to indicate that the sun has just about set on this blog, it'd be that. But you can catch up/keep up with what I'm up to over on the News section of my website and I don't think that Skwigly is going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
We've also got some fun stuff ahead on the Bristol Animation Meetup front, so keep your eyes on our Insta.
And I'll have a big announcement in March, so this probably isn't goodbye forever.
