Showing posts with label Ground Running. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ground Running. Show all posts

Thursday, 23 May 2019

Carnage

Following up on my first post of the month I can confirm that Sunscapades will indeed be getting itself another German screening at the wonderful International Short Film Festival Detmold before May is through. It'll sneak in on the 31st as part of their International Mixed Short Films block which kicks off 10pm at the Culture & Art gallery.
I also hinted at hitting a bit of a milestone in my last post and, having double-checked all my documentation, can confirm that with the film's subsequent inclusion in the Sydney Film Festival's Animation After Dark programme on June 6th I will have officially cleared 200 international festival inclusions!
Granted this is spread over ten years and five films, but I’ll allow myself a wee nugget of pride having operated without representation, distributors or sales agents all this time.
So much love and gratitude to all the festivals and touring programmes, whether still kicking around or not, who took a punt on my weird shit over the years.

Wednesday, 8 June 2016

What happened, Billy?

http://www.porto7.com/
Hey-hey-hey!
So more good news for June, to follow on from Monday's post I just got the memo that Klementhro is also playing at Porto 7 - Oporto International Short Film Festival tomorrow, June 9th. It's in the festival's Competition 4 screening that kicks off at 11:30pm. Full venue and programme info can be found at the festival website.
As well as being the film's Portuguese debut this inclusion also marks the third film of mine to be shown at this festival, with Ground Running and The Naughty List both getting an airing back in 2012. So obrigado to the Porto 7 team, I'm stoked to be involved again!
Looking forward, here's another GIF character preview for my next film Sunscapades. Meet Billy, the non-IP-infringing friendly ghost!

Monday, 21 October 2013

Squeezing All The Goodness In

It's been many moons since I last updated my showreel, being distracted by the very employment it led to. Deep, eh?
I may have also been distracted by Breaking Bad a little bit. And, far more alarmingly, Catfish. But I'm all out of episodes for both, so unless I overcome my violent aversion to the voice of the narrator and fall into a destructive spiral of Come Dine With Me reruns, my time has freed up a bit.
The last few years I've updated the same reel by swapping old, ropey footage for new, swanky footage, keeping the main structure intact. Having been assured by many previous and prospective employers alike that it was overlong by at least a minute, this time around I redid the entire reel from scratch to get a concentrated 90 seconds of my absolute favourite shots:
Consequently I had to be pretty ruthless, and a lot of the earlier films of mine - House Guest, Ground Running, The Naughty List and my ode to Opie & Anthony Chicken Chokes You - have been whittled down to a few seconds of footage each - ol' zombie duck barely gets a look-in nowadays. After a hideous commission that started the year off (represented above only with a fleeting, modified shot of a cat running - nothing else from that doomed project need ever see the light of day) I've had a pretty good year of short commercial projects as well as the ongoing HuHa webisodes which, coupled with my love affair with Toon Boom, have been a great shot in the arm and give the reel a lot more stylistic range. Other projects thrown in the mix include work for Channel 4, Slurpy Studios, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and New Impulse Media. I'm still holding back on the Bullies footage as, even though it's all animated and awaiting a distribution plan of action, for the time being I want to keep it under wraps until the final version's been seen in full at least a couple of times. Some HuHa clips represent the same animation style so it'd be somewhat superfluous anyway.
I also wrote the music specifically for the reel, I wanted something quite punchy with a simple enough 4/4 to make effectively editing the clips a bit easier. At the moment the piece is merely titled "Hire Me Already" and features some nods to a certain band I may have professed to admiring once or twice.
For no other reason than I have a YouTube channel, it's also up on my YouTube channel. So if, for whatever reason, your machine or device or doodad doesn't like Vimeo you can watch it there instead:

Monday, 22 October 2012

New look...

...Sort of. Actually the layout's exactly the same, I've just switched up the colour scheme and brought in a new design motif. The ol' pre-"Throat" concept sketch of me on the pishadoo was starting to seem a little out of place now the book's out and the character's technically not supposed to be me.
Adios, old friend...
One of the eighty billion current projects I have on the boil right now is another website redesign that'll hopefully make the accrued creative projects I've put out over the years a little more navigatable and less scattershot. It occurred to me that about half of them have vectorised logos for the purposes of EPKs and similar such promotion, so I've been designing some more for the remaining half. This way each film, album, book or whatever will have its own associated image. A bit like OS application icons or, as a friend pointed out the other night, video game achievements. It's just one of those staples of web design that I never really embraced so figured it'd be worth a shot. No idea when said website will actually manifest itself though, but I expect it'll be far less of an undertaking than my last site overhaul which got a bit out of hand; though fun to do, the pages were so densely packed they each took like a minute to load.
Will keep you posted. It's what I do.


Back in the real world - Bosnia & Herzegovina, to narrow it down a little bit - I'm very chuffed to say that "Ground Running" has been included in the line-up for this year's edition of the Banja Luka International Animated Film Festival. The 2009 edition of the festival threw in my first film "House Guest", and much like I was back then I'm amongst some pretty superb company this year. Other films being screened include "Oh Willy..." (Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roels), "Kuhina" (Joni Männistö), "Luminaris" (Juan Pablo Zaramella) and "Bendito Machine IV" (Jossie Malis), all of which I'm a big fan of. My screening is Competitive Program 1 which will be at 10pm tomorrow, repeated on the 24th at 2pm, both at the Dječije pozorište Children's Theatre. Apologies for the short notice for those of you who are too far away and may have been interested, I didn't get the memo and only just now found out about it by chance. Just in case you're a Bosnian or Herzegovinian (or both, I'm not sure how it works) and fancy giving it a look there's more info here.

Monday, 1 October 2012

Old Hat

I figured the expiry date on my first two films has been up for awhile and it’s a bit daft that I don’t have official full versions of them online. Especially as my third has been up for nearly a year. Granted, that was the only one that had any real demand I suppose, but I don’t want it to get lonely, resent me and not take care of me in my old age. That’s just too meta and weird.
Sooo anyway, you can now watch my first film “House Guest” (2008) in full HD (although the first-season-of-“Beavis-and-Butt-Head”-quality-linework is treated far kinder by these little SD blog windows):
Strange to think that this blog started as part of the UWE MA the film was made for. Four years on I’m still inexplicably not heralded as the Winsor McCay of the 21st century. Wuddup wi’dat, yo’s?
My second film was “Ground Running” (2009), most of the animation for which was done very shortly after “House Guest”, then it pottered around a couple fests in pencil-test format for a year or so before I added some bits and coloured it in the following year. I never really pushed this film because by the time it was finally done it didn’t really line-up with my artistic direction (if that’s what you can call it). Both these films are pretty rough for me to watch but there’s the odd moment here and there I’m quite proud of.

"Ground Running"
from Ben Mitchell on Vimeo.  

And what the hell, just as a reminder here’s film #3, “The Naughty List” (2010):

Quick TV plug - if for some reason Vimeo is acting up in Spain and you simply can’t last a week without seeing it, the next broadcast by those lovely people at Canal+ Xtra HD will be this coming Sunday 7th at 6am. So either get up extra early or stay up extra late.
Finally, while 2011 was pretty much work/“Throat”-centric, I did manage to whip up this mini-short out of my love for O&A. This one’s also been up for a while but at this point I may as well just make this entry a retrospective.
All being well, 2012 will indeed be the year I finally finish production on “Bullies”. Then the whole torturous quest for validation may begin once more.
Ah, it's all good. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it so much.

Friday, 1 June 2012

Yep. Definitely have a cold. There goes the weekend...

Good news regarding the short film side of things (remember back when that was something I did?), there'll be a double screening of my cartooney cheeriness this month at Porto7 Oporto International Short Film Festival which takes place in Portugal from June 13th-17th. This rather happily marks the Portuguese debut of "The Naughty List" some 58 festivals down the line (ditto for "Ground Running", which is also being screened, although the in-progress version did get some Portuguese exposure a few years back). Happier still, however, is that between my three films to date this will officially be the one-hundredth festival event to publicly screen my work! Yay for triple-digits!
While I don't see a parade in my honour coming this way I suppose I'll have to settle for some type of sense of personal achievement, in accomplishing something I - and I'm sure a fair few others - never thought possible. On top of that it serves as something to show for nearly four years of sticking with an industry that has taken a massive slug to the gut, entirely on my own.
But a parade would've been nice. Just sayin'.
Or failing that, maybe something that resembles enthusiasm from the direction of a few more of these locally-based animation studios. That'd be nice too. I'm right here, folks! Animator for hire!
OH WELL, keeping things positive I'm sincerely flattered as always that there are still places out there willing to give me some exposure, especially as production has begun proper on "Bullies" after its 'get "Throat" finished'-induced hiatus. Speaking of which, here's a little glimpse at an in-progress line test. What a shock, it's something of mine that features unnecessary nudity...

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Book'n'Bill'n'Baby

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Thanks for taking the time to procrastinate and/or avoid real life long enough to drop by and enable my blathering bloggery.
SO my second convention appearance - at which I will be slinging "Throat" and other forms of cartooney booklike product - is this coming weekend at the London MCM Expo, which will be at Excel from the 25th to the 27th. Even if you don't give a care (pardon my language) about my book, there's loads of fungasmic shit to do, so book your tickets and get your sexy arses down there.
To discuss a book that I wasn't involved with (for what I can only assume would be a welcome change) I recently had the pleasure of being able to read and review the new book by indie animation legend and personal hero Bill Plympton, "Make Toons That Sell Without Selling Out". It's the perfect type of book for auteur animation filmmakers like myself and contains a great deal of guidance as far as honing one's skills, self-promotion and marketing, as well as some insights into the production processes of Mr. Plympton himself. The full review is online at Skwigly now:

"Make Toons That Sell Without Selling Out" - Review by Ben Mitchell
 
Okay, back to me! "Ground Running", my troublesome second film, is getting itself a rare and much-appreciated festival screening soon, at the 8th Detmold International Short Film Festival in Germany, which goes from the 7th-10th June. My film is part of their Animation screening on Friday (8th) at 4pm. The 7th edition was fantabulous enough to include "The Naughty List" so, having been included twice consecutively, I daresay they are a festival with highly refined tastes. I know, I know, I deserve to die alone. But then, don't we all, when you really think about it?

Sunday, 1 April 2012

Because I can't think of something fun for April fool's...

Brevity being the soul of so many things (self-promoting blog entries, in this case), I'll keep this one succinct just to update any Serbian folk out there on the screening time for "Ground Running" at the Belgrade Documentary & Short Film Festival, which just kicked off. It'll be part of the International Animation screening which begins 4:30pm on April 3rd, in the main hall of the Dom Omladine. Full info here, Serbs and Serbettes. Hope that sentence wasn't racist...
For the local Bristolian folk, the CineMe event I wrote of previously had to be rescheduled for later on this month, apparently the organiser's external HD with all the films on it decided to shit the bed. I've been there. Anyway it's now happening on the 24th (Tuesday) in the Tobacco Factory greenroom at 8pm. Please come, if you do I'll let you poke at me and rub my balding pate for luck.
I have no more things to say and will stop typing now.

Saturday, 17 March 2012

Hobnobbing

Three of my films - "Ground Running", "The Naughty List" and "Norton & Friends" (my Opie & Anthony mini-short) are getting a rare local screening this coming Tuesday (20th, not the 27th as suggested by the flier below) at CineMe Shorts here in Bristol. It'll also be the first and possibly only time my O&A animation will be seen on a screen bigger than a computer monitor so I'm looking forward to that.It'll take place at the Tobacco Factory - a fine venue where I frequently go to, amongst other things, draw naked people - at 8pm and tickets are a fiver (more info here). So if you're a local come on down and berate me.As well as being shown Monday afternoon at 2:05pm, two more confirmed April broadcast slots for "La Lista Traviesa" (the Spanish incarnation of "The Naughty List") will be on Thursday 12th at 2:05am and Thursday 26th and 1:35am over on Canal+ Xtra. So if you overdid the ol' afternoon siesta and can't sleep, give it a watch.
On a completely separate musical note, I've started doing my first live shows of 2012. Nothing worth advertising, just little slots here and there to stay practiced and work out some new material. I've also started recording again and have put online my first studio recording since "The Book of Women". It's kinda different, sort of melancholy country-western-ish, which is something I'd never imagined coming out of me. Give it a listen and, if you like, a free-as-gratis download over at SoundCloud.
High Midnight by Struwwelpeter

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Up North Down South

"Ah, crap. These guys again."

Just another quick remind-the-world-I'm-still-alive post with some news on the latest broadcast slots for "The Naughty List". This March Canal+ Xtra will be screening it on the 12th at 3:06am and then again at the notably more civilised time of 2:06pm on the 19th.It will also be shown as part of the Shire International Short Film Festival, one of a number of Cinewest festivals that have been giving it some much-appreciated exposure down-under (following on from its inclusion in the Auburn International Film Festival last year and Short Soup in January). The screening will be on March 28th and takes place in Sutherland, New South Wales. Which, for the geographically-impaired, is in Australia. Not Wales.
As previously mentioned, the upcoming Roanne Animation Short Film Festival will see the film participating in the International Competition 1 alongside such personal faves as 'Luminaris', 'Playing Ghost' and 'Morris Lessmore', a little film that just picked up an Oscar, so my expectations of winning anything myself are, as ever, not high. Just glad to be involved. The screening will be on Friday 23rd, 9pm at the Espace Renoir.
"Ground Running" will also be shown in the 'Best Comedies' section, which also includes Richard Phelan's 'Damned' and Joanna Quinn's 'Dreams & Desire - Family Ties' on the 25th at 6:30pm, same venue. The line-up on the whole looks great, other talents including Virgil Widrich, Luis Cook, Osman Cerforn, Louis Hudson, Philip Hunt, Jadwiga Kowalska, Mikey Please, Spike Jonze...to be honest, this could take a while, but the full programme is viewable online. Good stuff indeed.
G'night!

Friday, 17 February 2012

Running On

Another forthcoming screening for "Ground Running" has been confirmed, Serbia's Belgrade Documentary & Short Film Festival which takes place from March 30th to April 3rd, full programme to follow. The festival was kind enough to show my debut film "House Guest" for their 2010 edition so it's very nice to be included in their line-up again.As well as being broadcast tomorrow afternoon in Spain, "The Naughty List" is being shown as part of the TriMedia Festival (in which it participated last year) Fundraiser Series, beginning on March 17th at the Rialto Theatre in Loveland CO, USA.
The film will get another rare US outing later on that month, on Friday 30th, 7pm at the Clinton St. Theatre for Portland OR's Faux Film Festival, which looks to be a fun gathering of similarly auteur-stic filmage. Thank you, film festival people, the exposure is of course always much appreciated!
Righto, back into the rabbit hole I go.

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Quickies

The screening time for "The Naughty List" at Children's Film Festival Bangladesh has been confirmed as this coming Thursday (26th) at 2pm at the British Council Auditorium in Dhaka. I'm very happy and humbled to see it's amongst some great pieces of work such as Victoria Mather's "Stanley Pickle", Sal Maldonado's "Night Island" and Richard Phelan's "Damned".Additionally I've learned that both "Naughty..." and "Ground Running" are to be screened at the upcoming Ciné-Court Animé in Roanne, France. This will be late March, so watch this space for deets.
Yes, I just used the word 'deets'. I'm not proud, nor am I ashamed.

Thursday, 15 December 2011

"Hello again, Terminal 5..."

As the hectic holiday season has officially engulfed us, I am falling behind in certain areas, like keeping this blog up to date, for one. Rest easy, readers of this newfangled internet, for come the new year I may well be back on form and taking forever to say absolutely nothing of value like I usually do. While I have some time waiting on a flight that'll propel me away from this island for the holidays, I’ll quickly knock out some Christmassy chunks of good news: Firstly, Canal+ have added another handful of broadcast slots for “The Naughty List” over the holiday season, you can head on over to the channel website for full listings.Secondly, said tale of seasonal disenchantment will be screening in Italy alongside “Ground Running” as part of the Skepto International Film Festival’s pre-fest event tomorrow at Cagliari's Hostel Marina (7:30pm for pantsless Santa, 9:30pm for pantsless baby…I’m starting to pick up on a recurring theme in my work).Lastly, “The Naughty List” will also be getting its first – and possibly only – screening of 2012 next month at the Short Soup International Short Film Festival in Sydney, Australia. As part of Movies By The Boulevard, a series of outdoor film screenings at Sydney Olympic Park that runs through January, my film's in Short Soup’s ‘Dessert’ section which begins at 10:25pm on Sunday 22nd. So, if you find yourselves feeling any post-holiday melancholia, head on over there and cheer yourselves up. Granted, for those of you who don’t actually live in Australia, the incurred travel expense may depress you further, in which case you may just want to pick up a batch of reduced-price mince pies instead.

Sunday, 20 November 2011

Cartoons Are Fun

Best souvenir ever...

My massive Encounters-athon has just come to a close and I'm shakily writing this in the interim between the final screening and a personal trainer session that's sure to finish me off. The festival's been great, if for no other reason that I drank until my eyes melted and got to meet some much-admired filmmaker types. Knock wood I didn't manage to completely alienate the greater percentage of them. "Ground Running"'s Saturday screening played to a slightly smaller crowd but the overall response to it seemed even better than on Thursday. Shame on all of you for laughing at that little naked baby's pain.
My own self-celebration aside, there were loads of amazing and inspiring shorts including some previous favourites "Damned", "The External World", "Bertie Crisp", "A Morning Stroll", "Greetings" and "The Eagleman Stag" along with a few seen for the first time:









All in all it was a great week and I'm especially grateful to Pete, Justine, Jo, Matt, Hans, Mel, Chris and Rachel for their support. Also I want to express my appreciation for the volunteers for all their help, including the frumpy one (who couldn't have been in a shittier mood if her knickers were lined with fibreglass) for not spitting directly in my face.
Well, it took three films and ninety festivals but I finally have this one crossed off the list. I finally feel at home in Bristol now.

Friday, 18 November 2011

Yes Sir, I like it

Between work and making a point of being more of a regular attendee at this year's Encounters, I'm operating on approximately four hours of sleep a night, floating from event to event on Arnolfini gingerbread lattes (which I assume are about 950 calories a pop). As I have a brief sliver of downtime, I'll take this opportunity to document the latest addition to the hall of Greatest Things That Have Ever Happened To Me:There really are no words. Except for 'happy' and, upon further consideration, 'joy'.
I'll give a proper overview of the festival on Skwigly soon, but in the meantime I'm happy to say "Ground Running" got a far better response yesterday than I'd expected from a 10am audience. In fact it played to pretty much a full house, which was also unexpected and a great start to the day. There's another showing tomorrow at noon (so it has a second opportunity to bomb) which can be booked online at the Arnolfini website:Note their good taste in still selection...

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Fifty is the new...uh...eh, who cares...

Another groovy little milestone for "The Naughty List" has been reached with its fiftieth festival taking place later this month. This will be in Gdańsk, Poland for Euroshorts 2011, screening alongside some smashing films such as Iain Gardner's "The Tannery" and Grant Orchard's "A Morning Stroll". This will be on November 23rd at 6pm, more info on their site.Also, if you're around for Bristol Encounters (which starts today), don't forget that "Ground Running", the runt of the litter as far as my films go, will be playing twice during the Animated Encounters screening "The Human Condition", firstly at 10am tomorrow (17th) and then at noon on Saturday (19th). There's loads of other events and screenings worth checking out, including the great John K's signings and Q&A discussion that I'm mildly losing my shit over in anticipation. So if that grim scenario is something you're okay with witnessing firsthand, pop along.

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Launchy

I was at the launch party for this year's Encounters programme last night and it has to be said that it's looking to be a very strong year. The small handful of animated films they showed were pretty sophisticated and to be honest I'm not sure how well my li'l auteur venture will measure up, but it's great to know it's amongst some good company. The two that grabbed me in particular were "Hurdy-Gurdy" (D. Seideneder), an elaborate and intricate time-lapse style stop motion piece, and "Luminaris" (Juan Pablo Zaramella), one of very few films I've seen to use pixilation comedically (as opposed to, y'know, creepily).
There's some great events lined up including a Studio AKA showcase which I caught at ITFS and is definitely worth checking out, as well as Cartoon Saloon and special programs for Irish and Brazilian animation. The truly SPECTACULAR news is that John Kricfalusi will be doing an in-person Q&A which I booked the nanosecond I found out about it. To put it in perspective - without John K there'd be no "Ren & Stimpy", without "Ren & Stimpy" there'd be no preadolescent impulse for li'l Ben to fuck around drawing cartoons and without that I'd probably be working in telesales about now.My film "Ground Running" will be shown as part of the Arnolfini animation screening "The Human Condition" which will be at 10am on Thursday November 17th and then repeated at noon on the 19th. Other animators featured as part of the festival include Grant Orchard, Julia Pott, Richard Phelan, Francesca Adams, Sam Morrison, David O'Reilly, Louis Hudson and Mikey Please.

Saturday, 1 October 2011

Oktoberfests

This month is turning out to be a positively cray-cray one for film screenings, starting today at the aforementioned Goden Kuker-Sofia festival where “The Naughty List” is screening at the Arena West Cinema as part of the 1pm Films For Kids competition program “Through The Eyes of a Child”. It’s also part of the Ukrainian touring festival KROK which wraps up on Monday and the German touring festival Film Sharing, which has its final stop on the 21st in Mainz at the Capitol & Palatin, starting at 8:30pm.I can also confirm that, as well as Berne, it will be part of the Cologne, Cape Town and Vienna editions of the Shnit International Shortfilmfestival as part of "Shnit Animates 1", showing at the following times/places/venues:
•Cologne, Germany
Friday 7th, 9pm Alte Feuerwache 1
Sunday 9th, 2pm Kölner Filmhaus 1
•Cape Town, South Africa
Friday 7th, 4pm Labia 2 (I’ve never been to that particular venue but it sure sounds like a lovely place)
•Vienna, Austria
Thursday 6th, 6pm Burg Kino 2At the 6th Vilnius Film Shorts, it goes under the mildly scary title “Nepaklusniųjų Sąrašas” in the "International Competition V" at 3:30pm on Friday 14th at the “Skalvijos” Kino Centras and 4pm on Saturday 15th at the Kino Pasaka.Also on the 15th it’ll be the closing film of the “Männer” section of Emmentaler Filmtage in Switzerland, showing at 2pm, 4:30pm and 9:30pm and the following day (16th, to condescendingly imply that you don’t know what fifteen plus one equals) at 12:30pm, 4pm and 6:45pm – full programme here.Then on Monday 17th it’s on in Romania at the Comedy Cluj International Film Festival during their 3:30pm Animation screening at the Cinema Florin Piersic, repeated 11am Friday 21st at the Cinema Arta.Following in the footsteps of “House Guest” back in ’09, it’s up for the Delta Film Award at Manchester’s Festival of Fantastic Films on Saturday 22nd.A particularly nice bit of news to round off the month is that it will screen alongside my previous film “Ground Running” at FLIP International Animation Festival in Wolverhampton on the morning of the 28th, which just happens to be my birthday. I know, you don’t have to say it: I’m adorable. FLIP was also the first festival (of, I’ll be honest, a lot) to turn down my work and help steel me against the concept of film rejection, so to have two shorts in at this point is quite validating in a cyclical sort of way.
Phew. Okay, that’s enough deplorable self-love for one post. All that’s left is for me to apologise for using the term ‘cray-cray’ in the first sentence: I’m sincerely, profusely sorry. It won’t happen again.

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Baby Love

Some more film news, starting with the latest outing for "The Naughty List" which will be at the 3D Wire International Animation Market in Segovia, Spain this October 13th-16th. I don't know if it's incorporated into any particular screening events but will update when I get info as my childlike grasp of Spanish isn't doing me any favours at the moment.I'm very happy to say that later on in November my previous film “Ground Running” will be playing at Animated Encounters, the animation strand of Bristol’s own Encounters International Film Festival. This is a fest I’ve been going to since I moved here back in 2006, and handily my apartment’s pretty much just around the corner from the venue. It’s the first time any of my work has been included though, so it’s nice to be able to cross another high-tier fest off the list (between this, ITFS Stuttgart and Clermont-Ferrand I just have Annecy and Ottawa as my main ‘get’s left). Hurrah!
Sour grapes. It's sad, really...

Thursday, 7 July 2011

Cruisin'

More fest news, "The Naughty List" will be part of another touring (or rather, cruising) festival from September 24th to October 3rd. The KROK International Animated Films Festival takes place on the Princess Dnipra which will be traveling through the Ukraine, stopping off at Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Sevastopol and Odessa. So, if you fancy some swashbuckling adventure (I'm sure river cruisers give you the option to swashbuckle), check it out.
Speaking of Eastern Europe, I found out recently that the woman who sold me my Wacom Cintiq is an Estonia-based model and artist who, by insane coincidence, is the face of David Thorne's hysterical 27b/6 website/book. Well, it's a coincidence because I recently became a huge fan of the website. If you're not familiar with Thorne, he's an Australian designer who, either from boredom or a career that has beaten him down to breaking point, publishes his email correspondence with a succession of recipients whose grasp of reality and humour is alarmingly literal. He cultivates a consummate douchebag persona although you always find yourself rooting for him. Anyway, it's a great go-to site for when I'm feeling all procrastinatey. And 'Tabitha' is a pretty talented artworker as well, so give her work a look.
Okay, I haven't talked about me for several sentences and frankly it's making my skin start to itch.I have two mini-edits of my films "Ground Running" and "The Naughty List" online at Virgin Media Shorts, one of those online short film competition thingies. They aren't in the running or anything, right now they're just two of about three-thousand that are presently viewable online. I'm usually a little loathe to put entire films up but as these versions are exclusive edits to accommodate the unusual 2'20" cutoff time I'm less precious about it. In both cases the stories (such as they are) are still pretty much the same. Some of the humour/timing doesn't play as well but given the concession I think they still work overall. Anyways, if you like you can give them a watch or several hundred. And share them with everyone you know - it doesn't affect whether or not they get shortlisted so I can't really be accused of trying to skew the judging in my favour.