Bedside Literature

I'm very excited to announce the official release date of the latest Skwigly book - Intimate Animation - by myself and the incredible Laura-Beth Cowley.

In recent years, there has been a surge in animated projects that have pushed boundaries, broken taboos, prompted discussions and wowed festival and online audiences alike through compelling storytelling and unmatched artistry. Join Ben Mitchell and Laura-Beth Cowley of Skwigly Online Animation Magazine and the Intimate Animation podcast as they take you on a tour of the landscape of contemporary animated films that deal with themes of love, intimacy, relationships, anatomy and sexuality – and the incredible artists behind them.

Through research and firsthand interviews with trailblazers such as Signe Baumane, Andreas Hykade, Ruth Lingford, Michaela Pavlátová, Bill Plympton and Joanna Quinn, as well as newer voices including Sawako Kabuki, Renata Gąsiorowska, Will Anderson, Sara Gunnarsdóttir, Michaela Mihalyi, David Štumpf, Levi Stoops, Lori Malépart-Traversy, Anna Ginsburg, Veljko Popovic, Joseph Wallace, Renee Zhan and more, Intimate Animation looks deeply at how animation has been used to present elaborate and complex concepts relating to love and sexuality.

Exploring the role animation has played in sex education, self-discovery, the body, lust and love, as well as how the medium can be used to visually represent emotions, feelings and concepts not easily described in words nor depicted through live-action filmmaking, Intimate Animation is the ideal book for professional animators, filmmakers, enthusiasts, researchers, academic and students of animation and film studies interested in the themes of love and sexuality.

The book will be released March 27th and is available to pre-order now (use code LP96LCNPH at checkout through this month for a whopping 20% off!)

November Shmovember

There are a couple new episodes of the Skwigly podcast series Independent Animation (the companion podcast to the book of the same name) available to check out. In episode 9 I catch up with the magnificent Signe Baumane to discuss My Love Affair With Marriage, her incredible second feature following 2014's Rocks In My Pockets, a prominent case study in the book. We last spoke nearer to the start of the film's production, and since its release it's gone on to perform spectacularly with a US theatrical release capping off its festival run.

Episode 10 features a new chat with Joseph Wallace on the inspirational coming-together of his latest short film Salvation Has No Name. The film's complex funding journey is another major case study in the second edition of the book (it also graces the new cover), so it was great to follow up on its eventual production and enormously positive reception which culminated in an online release earlier this year.

While you're over on Skwigly be sure to catch up on some of our recent industry coverage by our incredible team, including Kévin Giraud's review of Chicken For Linda, Martyn Warren's Watership Down retropective and Ryan Gaur's The Tale of The Princess Kaguya retrospective, interview with the team from Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and reviews of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and Robot Dreams.

It's the most wonderful time of the year - the time when my publisher lops 20% off the retail price of my book. If you've still not let the wonderment of Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films into your lives then go ahead and treat yourselves - or the indie animation fan in your life, aching for that perfect gift - while it's marked down. The sale starts December 5th and goes through until January 5th - and did I mention there was FREE international shipping to boot? Well, there's FREE international shipping to boot. There, I mentioned it. 

Skwigly, Rumpus and Sun & Moon have another edition of BAM comin' at ya in a couple weeks, again at Bristol's King Street Brew House. As with our last event, attendees can book in for some facetime with an assortment of local industry professionals who are keen to share their insight, advice and expertise on all things animation. We also have some festive surprises in store, so keep an eye on the event page for updates, info on who will be attending and how to book a slot, and be sure to earmark December 14th in your calendars.

UPDATE: More event info and full list of industry guests is available here.

April Shmapril

It's with some sadness that I have to announce my book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films will, as of this month, no longer be in print. Ah well, we had a good run and it was nice to be a *sniff* sort of real author for a while.

APRIL FOOL'S. Ah, we have fun. I'm delightful.

It won't be in print because a brand-new, updated second edition will be coming out on April 11th. 

In essence this is the same book at its heart but it was a welcome opportunity to condense elements of it and keep it more up-to-date, as well as adding in a bunch of brand-new case studies and expanding on certain areas that have become more invaluable to indie artists in recent years, such as navigating the festival landscape and getting films out in the world and seen by the right people. As with the first edition, it is loaded with exclusive insight into the working processes of some of the industry’s most noteworthy indie animation talents, including Signe Baumane, Adam Elliot, Don Hertzfeldt, Kirsten Lepore, Robert Morgan, David OReilly, PES, Bill Plympton, Rosto, Chris Shepherd and dozens more; not to mention curational perspectives from the folks behind Ottawa International Animation Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Manchester Animation Festival, Cardiff Animation Festival, London International Animation Festival, . It also boasts a new cover model courtesy of the incredible stop-motion talent Joseph Wallace, whose pictured film Salvation Has No Name is smashing it at the moment (be sure to catch it at Annecy if you've not seen it yet). It's a little sad to bid farewell to the original Ernie Biscuit cover, but rest assured the areas of the book that cover Adam Elliot's work have remained untouched.

You can preorder now - and if you buy it directly from the publisher you get free shipping to boot. PLUS if you buy it at any point throughout April you get a freakin' massive 20% discount. We spoil ya, so we do.

It'd be nice to get a new film of my own off the ground at some point in the near (or at least not horribly distant) future. In the meantime I'm still riding the magnificent Laura-Beth's coattails all across the magical land of Wales with Crafty Witch's CAF on Tour inclusion. Next stop will be the Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea, Monday 24th April at 7:30pm.

Circling back to the subject of shilling my wares, the extraordinarily short run of the My Head is Too Small for My Body physical CD editions is nearly depleted; there are just four copies left so if you don't want to miss out (just imagine the unbearable, wide-reaching shame) be sure to hit me up on Instagram or Facebook and we'll sort you out.

That's enough now. That's enough.

Cheer. Brimming with it.

If you're in the mood for a holiday movie marathon on this most Xmassy of Eves - or if you just want to drown out the family squabbling - you could do worse than catching up on our seasonally-themed batch of Skwigly Film Club podcasts we've been putting up this month.

Head over to the Podcasts section of the site and get caught up on our watch-throughs of Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon), Dot and Santa Claus (Yoram Gross), Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith and Barry Cook) and our latest episode where we press play on The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) joined again by special guest Joseph Wallace. 

Another staggered update

Some very happy news regarding my latest film Speed is that it's part of the official selection at this year's Pictoplasma conference. This is an organisation I've been an enormous fan of since before I even started making films so to finally have work included is a real coup. It'll run from September 18th-19th, naturally it'll be an online iteration but their guest line-up and fellow official selectees are all top-notch, plus it's completely free, so it should be pretty damn great. You can check out what's on offer here.

Those wonderful folks over at Routledge are having themselves a summer sale, which means that my chunky book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films is along for the ride at a glorious 20% off until the beginning of August. Don't forget there's FREE SHIPPING on top of that, friends. Grab yourself a copy today and stave off them pesky lockdown anxiety attacks with 440+ pages of indie animation wonderment!

Speaking of books, I've gotten wind that all of the paperback editions of my independent graphic novels have disappeared from Lulu. After a bit of lazy sleuthing it looks like there's been some big update over there and a bunch of stuff's been thrown out of whack, so I'll look into getting them back up but from what I gather their customer service has been lax lately so don't hold your breath.

In truth I'm not really sure if I'll bother as sales of all of them have slowed to a crawl and, while it was a pretty nifty thing in my early 20s, the thrill of the self-published indie comics scene has waned a touch 10+ years on. You can still buy the non-Lulu version of Throat, which I remain kind of proud of, as a three volume set via Amazon and various other outlets. There might be something in re-releasing that as a single book again down the line, we'll see.

A graphic novel project I'm altogether more excited about is the long-awaited print edition of the late great Rosto's absurdist, metaphysical opus Mind My Gap, which finally arrived alongside a stunning vinyl soundtrack to his Thee Wreckers tetralogy and various other goodies. Before he passed away I was peripherally involved in the book as a proof-reader and it's wonderful to see it made flesh by the folks at Autour de Minuit who have really done the fella proud. I'm not sure what future plans there are for non-backers to be able to buy a copy but if I hear anything I'll definitely post it up as it's turned out beautifully and the more people who own it the better.

If you haven't swung by Skwiglyville in a while then you might want to catch up on some of our recent Annecy 2020 coverage, including a new interview with Andreas Hykade about his latest film Altötting. The Skwigly Film Club has also been continuing and the last few weeks have seen us do watch-throughs of Chicken Run, Isle of Dogs, James and the Giant Peach (featuring special guest Joseph Wallace), Watership Down and The Little Prince. Swing by the podcasts section of the site to check them out and get in touch if you have any future film suggestions.

Think that's all I got for this month so far. As you were.

Semi-Brief Encounters

It's been a fun first few days at the Encounters festival here in Bristol, and for the second Q&A Skwigly podcast minisode we meet filmmakers whose work screened as part of the animation programmes The Weight of Humanity and Top of the Class. Recent graduates Jennifer Zheng (with her Kingston University film Tough) and Jodie Haslam (with her UWE Bristol School of Animation film The Race) are joined by Ben O’Conner, director of A Terrible Hullabaloo. Then animator Joseph Wallace and Meryn Cobbin of Picasso Pictures discuss their work on the stop motion James music video Dear John, directed by Péter Vácz (you can learn more from Joseph and Peter about the project in my recent feature article on the project). Also we meet Luc Gut (OS Love) and Gábor Osváth, the producer of Réka Bucsi's gorgeous new film Love.
I'll be taking the weekend to break things up a bit, so all being well episode 3 will go up on Monday. In the meantime you can stream episode 2 below or download for later listenin'.