The Toys Go Winding Down

Today the thirtieth episode of the Skwigly Podcast went up, featuring a trio of stunningly talented animation heroes. I speak with fellow Canuck and stalwart NFB director Cordell Barker (The Cat Came Back/Strange Invaders/Runaway) on his new film If I Was God, while Laura-Beth Cowley catches up with Australian 'clayographer' Adam Elliot to learn about his wonderful new film Ernie Biscuit. Meanwhile Julia Young, who has been absolutely killing it for us on all fronts (in particular with some extensive coverage of this year's Annecy festival) talks to Cartoon Saloon co-founder Tomm Moore, director of the amazing feature film Song of the Sea which has been mesmerising international audiences for months and is now finally out in UK cinemas. For more on the film you can have a read of Julia's review and another written feature from a conversation I had with producer Paul Young on the fascinating and unique circumstances that led to the film getting off the ground.

Back to the podcast, it is of course all tied together with myself and Steve's usual onslaught of cartoon wafflage, delving into such territory as festival highlights, reboot remorse and the Manchester Animation Festival which Steve has been involved with of late. Midst the decline of animation-centric festivals the world over such events are a precious commodity indeed, so if you have an animated film to submit then make sure to get it in before August 15th.
On a more sombre note (not really), the podcast in its current state has come to an end with this episode. After three years and thirty great big gigantic episodes it's just not feasible to continue to produce them as I have done, and I'm not crazy about the increasing gaps between each one going up. Therefore I'll be taking a revised approach that will make for more frequent episodes and better structure overall, getting our Skwigly community of writers and contributors more involved. Quality and quantity! That's the hope, at least.
Until then you can subscribe, stream or download episode 30 and a billion thanks to all of you who've supported the podcast and kept it going. I had no possible idea when it first started that it would last this long but it's largely been a joy and, truly, one of the main reasons I've maintained such enthusiasm for the industry as a whole. So here's to the upcoming Skwigly Podcast v2.0!

Good gravy...

News for a dreary Sunday afternoon

I'm just coming off a very nice holiday break and the inevitable catch-up-with-life stuff that follows, so here's a roundup post of some coverage that went up while I've been away as well as some general updates.
There are two new Lightbox videos, beginning with an exclusive interview with Canadian animation legend Cordell Barker (The Cat Came Back, Strange Invaders) on his new NFB film If I Was God, which boasts some gorgeous stop-motion; more recently one of our newer contributors Beverly chats with Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, directors of Minions.

Thanks to mass merchandising and over-saturation I'm sure the world at large has a daily fill of Minion excess whenever they step out of their homes, but her interview does go into some interesting places as regards the range of animation techniques on offer, so I'd recommend taking a look.

Laura-Beth and I pester the brilliant Adam Elliot at BAF 2013

Elsewhere on Skwigly, Laura-Beth has a fantastic interview with Australian animator Adam Elliot, a mutual hero of ours. Even if I were 100% impartial I'm confident I'd say it's the best and most thorough piece on his latest project Ernie Biscuit, so treat yourself and give it a read.

Speaking of treating yourselves, Alan Holly's amazing short Coda is now online in full. This was one of my absolute favourites of last year's shorts crop and I'm very happy to say there's an in-depth interview with Alan up now also.

Visiting Claude Cloutier at the NFB during production of Carface

As well as some memories of the underappreciated 90s animated sitcom The Critic, I have another NFB interview up with Claude Cloutier, whose new film Carface was part of Annecy 2015's official selection (along with Ernie Biscuit; If I Was God, bafflingly, played out of competition).

In non-Skwigly news, I now know the screening times for my latest film when it premieres at OFF in August, the first of seven showings being Monday 24th at 9am. The two programmes it plays in are Main Competition 4 and Animation 3, both of which have full time/venue information listed (if you're a master detective you might even be able to keenly scrutinise both and work out which one's mine).

Also the proposed release date for Throat: Book 3 - Nobody's Waiting of August 3rd is now confirmed, with a cover mockup I'm not 100% wild about. But all being well a book that sort of looks like the one above will be out that week. The end is in sight, folks.