Jammin'...in a couple of respects...

It's been just over a year since Bill Plympton put out the call for animators all over the world to contribute to "Guard Dog Global Jam", and so in honour of the film's successful completion and subsequent glowing reception at a whole heap of international fests (recent inclusions being OIAF and LIAF) I did a feature on the project from the perspectives of Bill, Plymptoons producer Desiree Stavracos and a bunch of the film's very talented contributors. You can read it over at Skwigly now:

Guard Dog Global Jam - A look at Bill Plympton’s worldwide collaboration endeavour

One of the highlights of being personally involved with the film was learning about so many other great animation enthusiasts, professionals and independents out there. So a great deal of thanks go out to Fatima Yasrebi, John T. Quinn, James Sugrue, Ansar Sattar, Amy Sutton, Mike Schneider, Filip Grudziel, Rebecca Wallace, Jeremy Galante and Julius Liubertas for their feedback for the article, as well as Desiree and Mr. Plympton himself for putting the whole thing together in the first place.Occupying a completely separate position on the spectrum of my extracurricular activities, I have recently been going through a bunch of old music recordings of mine in anticipation of re-releasing all my CDs. This came from hearing the news that Lulu is rescinding their produce-to-demand service for music, alongside the realisation that Cafepress (my main alternative) had rather shittily done so already without mentioning it to anyone.
So, while I weigh up the remaining options, I'm remastering all my production work from 2003-2008 to bring it up to par with my most recent album, 2010's "The Book of Women". Some of the tracks I've been uploading to SoundCloud as they're done to serve as a free online sampler. Here are the first batch from this past week:

On A Limb by Struwwelpeter

Rabbit Hole by Struwwelpeter

Laughing At A Wall (Live) by Struwwelpeter

What I Predict (Amneurotic) by Struwwelpeter

Cold Turkey (Remix) by Struwwelpeter

More to come in the following weeks. In the meantime I may as well use the opportunity to remind y'all that the completely free EP "Digital Stimulation" is still available to stream or download in its entirety.So there ya go, free reading material and free music to distract you when you should be working. I spoil you all.

Big Plympin'

While I blather constantly on this blog regarding my silly little films and my silly little life, there's a silly little voice in the back of my silly little brain that constantly screams: "Hey DUMBASS, who GIVES A SHIT?!"
To be honest, I write because I like writing, and for the most part all I have to comment on is the incremental, ponderously slow progression of my career. Keeping this up has been hugely beneficial for reference and updating contacts and SHUT UP BEN SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY IS YOUR OPINION OF HUMANITY SO LOW THAT YOU THINK ANYONE WOULD GAIN ANYTHING FROM READING YOUR DRECK?
See, there...that's what...yeah.I'd really like to channel the writing impulse in the direction of stuff other people might care more about, while generally staying within the world of animation. To that end I've been doing some freelance writing for the online animation magazine Skwigly, beginning with three articles on Bill Plympton, one of my more significant influences. Two of them are up now, the first a review of "Independently Animated" which, as I've said before, is a great goddamn book so check it out.The second is an actual interview I was able to get with him while we were both at ITFS last week. It was a pretty superb way to start the trip (well, for me) and he was very generous with his time, sharing a lot of insights into the industry, independent scene and the animation process.
Read "A Conversation with Bill Plympton" by Ben Mitchell at skwigly.com
Given that I was disheveled, all over the map (on the tape some of my questions come out like Yoda dialogue) and hadn't slept for thirty-six hours he was incredibly accommodating, even signing a bunch of merch and sketching me a character from his newest in-progress feature "Cheatin'" (see vid below).

The third article will be more focused on "Guard Dog Global Jam" and I'm presently working on getting some of the other collaborators to contribute to it. Before then I'd like to have some more book reviews, articles and interviews up on the site so if any of those get published I'll link to them here. In the meantime, please do me a massive favour and spread the word about Skwigly through their Twitter, Facebook et al. The more I'm writing about other people, the less I'm talking about my boring ass, so everybody wins.

Globally Jammed

I returned to my apartment after work a few days ago to see this a-waitin' for me:You can't not be in a good mood when one of your industry heroes personally sends you a package. The closest experience I've had so far was when Milla Jovovich issued that restraining order. In this case it was some amazing and unexpected original artwork from Bill Plympton in exchange for my contribution to "Guard Dog Global Jam" (more info here) which has, according to the man himself, 'been a big success, lots of festivals from around the world inviting it for exhibition'. I've been fortunate enough to see the finished film and it is truly excellent, inspiring and humbling all at once. Plus seeing my name and stupid grinning face in the credits of a Plymptoon = an instant animation boner.While I'm already up and a-bloggin', here are some more festival inclusions for "The Naughty List". At some point between the 9th and 13th June it'll be shown at the International Short Film Festival Detmold in Germany, marking its third festival in the great nation of wurst.
It also makes its third appearance in Canada later this month at the 3rd Annual 'Show Us Your Shorts' Festival of Short Film in Calgary on the 22nd.On the 30th it'll be screened at the Magma Short Film Festival in New Zealand. I fuggin' love New Zealand. I was only there once when I was twelve but it made a big impression and I'm officially envious of my own film. Stupid smug film, getting to see the world when all I see day in and day out is the same view from my studio window and sure sometimes the hot Russian girl in flat 21 walks in front of her window topless but you can only be enchanted by the same pair of nipples for so long which I suppose is why I'm so not into the concept of monogamy and will in all likelihood die cold and alone in my own arms.
So...that's...where I'm at...yep.
The cool thing is that the film has at this point been accepted into over twenty festivals in less than six months which, as it took significantly longer for "House Guest" to be as widely screened, I'm taking as a very positive indicator that the quality of my work is improving.
As I can't think of a way to wrap this one up, I'll just leave you with a random panel from a completely separate comic book project I'm working on:

"No more singing a cappella..."

I'm really pleased to say that recently I had the privilege of being involved in a very nifty mass collaboration for Plymptoons. As I'm a huge Bill Plympton fan you can appreciate that this was something of a dream opportunity and a great excuse to familiarise myself with lots of incredibly talented animators.The project is "Guard Dog Global Jam", a multi-animator shot-by-shot re-imagining of one of Plympton's best shorts, the Oscar-nominated "Guard Dog". Of the chosen applicants, each animator was assigned a shot to reproduce. Mine was a quick cutaway of a mouth gearing up to sneeze.

Concept still

As it was only two seconds I decided to do it on ones (24 frames-per-second as opposed to 12, which is what I usually stick with). The fluidity of movement is really appealing, almost to the point where I'm considering having my next film be an entirely on-ones affair. Composition-wise, the shot combines full animation (the lips) with tweened animation (the teeth), the throat being the background. Here's a quick vid of the various stages, beginning with the original shot as animated by Plympton, then the line test, coloured mouth animation, teeth animation and finally the fully composited shot:

I was also able to jump on board Mike Schneider's incredibly ambitious flicker-frame concept in which a different illustrator tackles each individual frame of his allocated shot.Mine simply resorted to the fabric-texture-with-relief-shadow look I've been pulling out a lot lately, most notably with the Channel 4 project last spring. It's kind of practice for the ever-growing Struwwelpeter music video I'm still working on. Here are some other, more visually adventurous takes on it by some of the other illustrators:

From top-left: Grant Fuhst, Sameul Guin, Steven Archer & Christopher Panzner

The choking mouth of the first shot is coincidentally apt when considering my ongoing graphic novel project "Throat", the next progress update for which I'll save another entry, however for similarities sake I thought I'd throw up the finalised cover design:
The main artwork has been posted before, but the added bandage/subtitle came from smearing an Ace bandage with hot chocolate mix, blending/warping/blurring the typography to match it and then tweaking the colour to make it look like blood (trust me, it's a far more distressing visual when it's smeared brown). Hopefully it represents the story well, sort of a mix of goofy and grim.

Back to "Guard Dog", I'll leave you with an animatic (consisting of concepts and the odd finished shot) that was recently uploaded to give a preview of the wide range of styles used: