Shiny Metal 'Cast

♫ New podcast day, new podcast day, ♫
♫ Life's a bit less crap because new podcast day! ♫

Another good'un, alongside myself and Steve's riveting discussions of crucial industry developments like the Postman Pat movie and a possible Shrek 5, we have two fabulous guests, John DiMaggio (who was Bender off Futurama, currently Jake in Adventure Time) and Laura-Beth chats to "tiny director/animator" Kirsten Lepore. Kirsten directed the fabulous short film Bottle as well as her more recent Move Mountain which was recently released online:

On top of his voice work, John recently produced a documentary on, fittingly, animation voiceover artists. It's called I Know That Voice and looks pretty damn decent, so keep your eyes peeled for it:
The podcast, as always, can be downloaded, streamed and subscribed to and is still cheap as free, so go get it:
This episode is dedicated to Harold Ramis, a fine chap who, along with the likes of James Gandolfini, Patrice o'Neal and Philip Seymour Hoffman, has joined the ranks of too-soon-departed men I never met but admired hugely.

RIP sir.

Retrovertigo

A series of Skwigly articles I've never brought up here were revived yesterday. They're basically unnecessary critiques of old shows from my youth that have long-since left the airwaves. It's not exactly the most hard-hitting coverage as far as Skwigly goes but they're fun to write. From this point on I want to try and do them more regularly, in the meantime here are the first four:

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show

The Powerpuff Girls

The Real Ghostbusters

Little Shop

Real wrath-of-God-type stuff

Bit of a manic week with a deadline today and two more Friday, so gotta make this one quick. BEHOLD - new Skwigly podcast: Discussion in this episode mainly focuses on the various upcoming awards ceremonies, dotted with the usual tangents such as Croods crudity and fond frog-cock memories. As always you can stream, subscribe or download directly. Guests include the recently Oscar-nominated Daniel Sousa, whose beautiful film Feral is now available to buy online. Also Skwigly correspondent Tom interviews Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi (he who wrote a rather nifty little book called Cartoon Modern) and Steve talks to British Animation Awards director Jayne Pilling.

Jayne also has a few pretty darn decent books on animation under her belt, you can read my recent review of her latest Animating The Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality and Animation here.

On the subject of book reviews, I recently picked up Don Hertzfeldt's wonderful new graphic novel The End of the World from Antibookclub. The capsule review is that I can't recommend it enough, but the full review also went up on Skwigly this week. I also got wind that the man himself reposted it, which is mighty nice indeed.

Post by don hertzfeldt.

Social Meh-dia

Back when I first independently released my graphic novel Throat I set up a Facebook page to help promote it and put up some exclusive extra content. Ultimately what really shifted copies came down to the old-fashioned, in-person approach of self-debasement through flyering and convention appearances. The extra visibility of the new, serialised editions of Throat gave things a shot in the arm but I don't have a whole bunch of extra material to keep the Facebook page updated, and given how much slower it's going than anticipated (had things gone to plan all three would have been out by now) I very rarely have news updates.

So I've basically made the Facebook page about everything I do, just so there's stuff to actually talk about on a regular basis. There's also a trove of character designs, sketches, videos and whatnot I have littered about the place that could all go up over time. Mainly it's so I don't have to go through the rigmarole of setting up a different page to promote each new film/book/album/whatever when they come out, this way things stay in one place. It's another branch of social media to channel my thinly-veiled narcissism through, but at this point enough other creative types do it that I'm not going to pretend to be meek about it. Instead I'll opt for painfully needy:
LIKE ME!
I MUST BE LIKED!
CLICK 'LIKE'* TO SHOW ME YOU LIKE ME!

Ben Mitchell - Creative Offal

While you're liking things on Facebook (you contemporary soul, you) here are a few very decent artist pages to check out in a desperate bid to not come off as entirely self-involved:
 
Chris Reccardi 
Clive Barker
Robert Morgan
Leah Heming
Fatima Yasrebi
Sophie Klevenow
Kris Genijn
Don Hertzfeldt
Tine Kluth
Philippe Vaucher
Rumpus
Bill Plympton
Bros. McLeod
Eric Drooker
Skwigly Online Animation Magazine (what?)

*Also make sure you click 'Follow'. They're sneaky, those scurrilous li'l Facebook elves...

Oy, with that white balance...

 

One of the lingering Skwigly projects I finally knocked on the head during my time away (mainly by scrapping the laboured first attempt and doing a simplified re-edit from scratch) is our first proper documentary covering the animation scene of 2013. Given it's a pretty mammoth event, the first doc is centered entirely on the Annecy International Animated Film Festival which myself and Steve visited last summer.

I'm pretty proud of the amount of coverage we managed to get done and it's one of the most longform video editing projects I've undertaken in a good long while. Given that it was shot using basic, high street HD camcorders I think it comes off as pretty watchable. While some higher-end technology might bolster the slickness of this type of video, really it's the talent of our interviewees who agreed to be involved that sells it. The line-up includes Marcel Jean, Eric Goldberg, Lauren MacMullan, Robert Morgan, Isabel Peppard, Ainslee Henderson, Will Anderson, Bill Plympton and Chris Landreth, with contributions from Corrie Francis Parks, Kris Genjin, Robbe Vervaeke, Jamie Badminton and Sarah Gomes Harris.

You can stream it online or direct download it, either way if you enjoy it please share it around as I'd love for this to be one of the strands of what we do that has the opportunity to evolve. If nothing else, it should make you appreciate the podcast all the more for not having to look at these two creeps:

Ee-yikes...

Further Advent-ures (Eh? EH?!)

Recycling old material. I'm nothing if not eco-conscious.

Following on from last month's post, here are some more personal favourites from our Skwigly Advent Calendar:

David Ridges

Ant Blades

Rok Predin

Signe Baumane

Fatima Yasrebi

Jardine Sage

We're in the last stretch of it now which, given that the 25th has already come and gone, may seem a bit confusing. Last year we had a lot of people getting in touch asking if they could get involved after all the slots had been filled, so we extended the idea of contributing illustrators to include the 12 days of Christmas. This year we've done more or less the same thing:

Julia Young

Robyn Liebschner

Tanya Scott

Fatima Yasrebi

Seb Burnett

Laura-Beth Cowley

For the last one I helped out a bit on the animation (such as it is) front, using some basic After Effects whatchimajiggery. For the benefit of those who may not know, the guy leaping about in the picture is Aardman co-founder Peter Lord (who I interviewed a little while back when his film The Pirates! had just been released), which seemed appropriate. We kind of put it together spontaneously without mentioning it to him beforehand but I'm pleased to say he was sporting about it:

At least I'm wearing clothes this year

Be merry, y'all.

Figgy Podding

It's very nearly Christmas, so before I leave you beautiful people in the very capable hands of my good buddy Prescheduled Posting I'll point you in the direction of our last Skwigly Podcast of 2013. Unlike last year the topics discussed aren't especially seasonal but I whipped up another one our adorably cringey li'l plays at the start regardless. We're incorrigible.
In this episode we have Steve's interview with master puppetsmen Mackinnon and Saunders, I chat with Jerry Beck, the most proactive man in the animation historian biz, while Skwigly contributor and animation author Stephen Cavalier gets the skinny on Disney's Frozen from the directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. Especially nice is that we get to pull out an earlier interview with one of animation's greatest living masters Richard Williams, the man behind The Animator's Survival Kit and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The plan was to have this up for our Encounters coverage but that, for reasons I'm still not really clear on, wasn't to be. At any rate he makes for a great end-of-year get, so special thanks to Kieran and Jude from Encounters for their help getting it sorted. As ever you can subscribe, download for keepsies or stream below:
Also today I was able to put up a video featuring my recent, informal live BAF interview with Joanna Quinn discussing the making of her festival ident. Some nifty exclusive footage included in this one, so give it a watch if you fancy a glimpse into this fantastic woman's process:

Adventageous

As with last year we at Skwigly have been implementing our online advent calendar where we showcase a particularly impressive animator/illustrator each day in the lead up to the 25th. They're all smashing so head on over to the front page of the site and check them out. Here are a smattering of what's gone up so far to whet your whettable bits:

Will Anderson

Jurate Gecaite

Bianca Ansems

Can't Be Bothered Man

Brothers McLeod

Leah-Ellen Heming

We've also joined forces with Corrie Francis Parks who's brought her own Advent Animation Showcase to Skwigly this year, shining a spotlight on a different seasonal short each day (and having the good manners to pimp my own holiday short so I don't have to a fourth year in a row...oh wait, I guess I just did).

Interestingly enough, this year has seen a surge in similar online advent ventures, one of which being Jonti Picking (aka Weebl)'s calendar which I've done a couple of mini-animations for:

These were knocked out in roughly a day each, so as with the HuHa shorts the animation was super-simple and a lot of fun to design. Although the kid in the second one is doubtless plagued by the ennui of being designed by a grown man who's watched way too much Powerpuff Girls and South Park:

Dailies

Steve Henderson and I - sharp young men

I've returned from Bradford - a magical land where everyone wears running clothes, yet nobody runs - and I have to say that BAF was a big win. For a relatively modest event, the caliber of guests was blisteringly high with some exceptional work screened. Skwigly was a strong presence at this year's edition, by which I mean we scurried about the place irritating everyone like a skin rash. As well as a laid-back, repeat showing of our Skwigly Showcase (prepared for the Encounters fringe programme back in August) I joined Steve for what's now become the BAF/Skwigly Quiz.

With Joanna Quinn

We were also able to get a heap of interviews with some brilliant talents, including MacKinnon and Saunders, Michaela Pavlátová and Dave McKean, while I was privileged enough to both finally meet and live-interview longtime Skwigly supporter and all-around fabulous lady Joanna Quinn.

Laura-Beth Cowley, Adam Elliot and myself

The last day was particularly exciting as I got to both meet and interview Adam Elliot, who I spoke of in the last entry. In spit of jetlag and emergency dental surgery he was incredibly upbeat and entertaining, his onstage discussion with the UK's own stop-motion hero Barry Purves the undeniable highlight of the week. As I had hoped, I (with the help of Skwigly contributors Tom and Laura-Beth) was able to record and release a series of daily podcast minisodes while over there. Head on over to Skwigly to hear exclusive interview excerpts with Dave McKean, Joanna Quinn, Michaela Pavlátová and Adam Elliot, or you can stream the entire set below: Next on the Skwigly agenda is an extended trip to my homeland Quebec where I'll be covering the latest developments over at the NFB as well as Montreal's 12th Sommets du cinéma d’animation! Quite the busy beaver, am I.