Dullardgate

Just found out 'House Guest' was a runner-up in a 4mations competition I don't remember entering. This was announced a few weeks back now, I guess I didn't get any notification because, well, it didn't win. But pretty cool that it got a look-see.
I was fairly certain I actually had an account on 4mations, but finding that there was no way to log-in anymore initially had me assume that I'm now being rejected by skull-flying kittens. A little further investigation led me to this article, explaining that the website was initially shut down a couple months after it began (I guess it was one of many sites I set up an account with and then barely ever returned to) around the time of the Sachsgate nonsense. Essentially it came down to people being offended by sex and drug-related imagery on a website that was always meant to incorporate adult content.
There's nothing gained in pissing and moaning about an incident that occurred over a year ago, but Christ almighty, get a fucking grip.
Anyway, 4mations has now become an animation blog with lots of quite interesting (albeit filtered) shorts and suchlike.
Here's some adorable, inoffensive cartoon nudity from 'A Cautionary Tale' to go out on:

Like Pulling Teeth

Here are a handful of stills from my in-production short "A Cautionary Tale (Of Coital Mishap)", the delightful romp about sex and dentistry, a pairing that I felt needed more exposure. Rather than go into too much detail and ruin the story it seemed like a better idea to just have the images speak for themselves. I'm also a lazy fuck and can't be arsed to type much today.


The film's coming together in a fairly atypical way. Rather than having the whole film storyboarded and written, I'm finding myself continuously writing more material as I animate. After its initial, inaccessible length of ten seconds, the revised version is about two minutes. My plan, cackhanded as it is, is to continue to embellish and flesh it out as I go, until it takes the shape of a coherent, appropriately-paced short film. Probably somewhere between three and five minutes. It's an experiment and it may end horribly, but I have to say I'm having a lot of fun working on it and the animation itself is turning out far better than that of 'House Guest' and 'Ground Running'. If nothing else, it'll make for plenty of new showreel footage.

Me Me Me Me Me

Shameless tool that I am.

Looking back over recent entries, it's dawned on me just how much of a sickeningly egotistical celebration of my film's reception this blog has become. I'm an utter tool. Thinly veiled as a resource for festival information, all these updates really say is 'look how great I am'. How tempting must it be to just track me down, backhand me, then sneer with disgust as I gaze at the floor, knowing I've done wrong.
The only logical thing at this point if I want to salvage the measliest scrap of humility would be to delete all the offending entries and lay off the self-congratulatory bullshit in the future.
I'm not gonna do that. I'm just saying it'd be the right thing to do.
Fuck being modest. I'm going to milk 'House Guest' until it's droopy, wrinkled and all dried-up. Come December it'll hopefully be out on DVD and the festival season will be done and dusted anyway.In the meantime, I'm well into production on my third film (my second, 'Ground Running', still inhabiting a sort of limbo while I decide on the best way to go about re-editing it). The film I'm currently working on is autobiographical, though it will hopefully offset my onanistic praise by depicting me as a morbidly obese sexual inadequate. But, y'know, in a cute way. This is an extension of a ten-second animation I produced for a competition that never happened due to a number of irreconcilable technical issues - the number being 'one' and the issue being that the guy with the projector got baked and never showed up on the night.As ten seconds wasn't really enough time to cram the story in, it consequently came off as a bit of a clusterfuck. I put together an overly-ambitious pitch for a ten-minute film that would detail a number of regrettably slapstick sexual encounters, usually ending in irreparable physical and emotional damage. While pursuing that film without funding isn't a feasible proposition given its length, I'm opting to produce a short that falls somewhere in the middle.
As it stands, the plan is to have a three-to-five minute animation elaborating on the story in the ten-second version, incorporating dialogue, foley, music and all the other stuff that makes a film watchable.
I also want the overall look of the film to be a tad more polished than that of 'House Guest'. I've identified three main factors that should help in this regard.
1. Better animationThe film has very little dialogue, the action mainly playing out while I narrate offscreen. As such there will be a lot more 'full' animation shots, as with 'Ground Running'.

2. Thinner linesIn abandoning my beloved Berol Color Fines for proper, art-store, extra-fine drawing pens, the visual quality takes on a more professional look, especially when scaled-down and in motion.

3. More love for the backgroundsWhile the background designs for 'House Guest' were knocked out at a pretty fast rate (there being call for about a hundred of them), I'm taking more time to draw detailed and textured backgrounds. A little bit more time in Photoshop takes a lot of sterility out of the finished shot.
On that note, let's end with a couple of said background designs, because I can't think of something funny or clever to write that'll wrap this up.

A Cautionary Tale (of Coital Mishap)

Just a post to say that my epic new ten-second film is done. In total the animation took two evenings, and I actually had to trim quite a bit to get it down to ten secs. Ultimately it's a bit of a clusterfuck that speeds by, so it might take a couple of views to really get it. That being said, it turned out quite well, and there's something to the idea that makes me think this may grow into a bigger film if time allows.
You can download it in hi-res here, or have a look at some stills (with the obligatory warning of it being, I dunno, kinda-sorta-not-really adult):




NOTE: For this version I've put an Auf Der Maur poster on the wall which I guess I'd have to change if I ever make this into a proper film.

A Mere 10"

Here are some drawings for an itsy-bitsy new film I'm doing. This one's the shortest yet, running at no more than 10 seconds. I decided to throw together the story of how I lost my tooth a little while ago, an anecdote which takes me about half an hour to tell as I love my voice so much. Turns out if you cut out the irrelevant bits ten seconds is ample time to tell it. So, yeah, I need better anecdotes.
Anyway, it's for a ten-second film competition being held at this month's 'Straight To Video' screening at Start The Bus. A couple friends of mine are also contributing entries, including Jo (she who done all that stuff on my film innit). It's a nice idea and sounds like it'll be a fun night.



I also thought you might enjoy two slightly grotesque line tests. First off is the last layout in motion. You might want to cover your gums.

And here's some classy'n'mature contruction-line shagging to go out on. Look at the fat bastard go!