Seriously, where's the butter?

Well hey there, gang. Hope your August has been positively majestic.

Been a quiet spell for Speed but we've got ourselves a couple September screenings comin' up. First up is the 16th edition of Breda's BUT B-Movie, Underground & Trash Film Festival over in the Netherlands. I've always had a soft spot for these folks going back to when they screened my old student short House Guest in 2009; more recently they gave my 2018 gore-fest Sunscapades an airing and it's reassuring to know that, six films in, I'm still pretty trashy. This looks like a hybrid festival and Speed will be part of the Shorts Block 2: Mean Girls with the physical screening taking place September 5th 7:30pm at the Nieuwe Veste arts centre. Alas the online program is only available to locations in the Netherlands, but if you're so geographically blessed you can find out more at their website.

Later in the month will see the 10th anniversary edition of FIFIGROT Festival du Film Grolandais over in in Toulouse, France. Speed can be seen in Au bon moment as part of their Bar-Bars Cine-Bistrot et concert programme on the 24th September 8:30pm at O Bohem. Check out their full programme here.

In our latest episode of Intimate Animation Laura-Beth catches up with Will Anderson, whose film Betty was just released online this month following a festival run including screenings at Pictoplasma, Encounters, Animafest Zagreb, GLAS and PÖFF Shorts as well as a BAFTA Scotland win and Scottish Short Film Award at the Glasgow Short Film Festival. As with all of Will's films it's funny and unique as well as being genuinely quite touching. This was one of my favourites of the last couple years and I was privileged to get to screen it as part of Cardiff Animation Nights back in March - definitely give it a watch and have a read of Laura-Beth's longer interview from around this time last year.

Also discussed in this episode: The evolution of Lisa Hanawalt's Tuca and Bertie having moved to Adult Swim for its second season, BlinkInk's E4 miniseries Blind Love on First Date Island, Adeena Grubb's stop-mo short Dating is Shit, Sacha Beely/Strange Beast's animated Gillette spot A Song For Pubes and Diablo Cody's inscrutable “sexying up” of The Powerpuff Girls. Stream above or download 'ere, why doncha?

Lastly it's worth a mention that my book Independent Animation is again available to nab at 20% off as part of the publisher's Social Science sale. In fact for the next little while you can whack that discount all the way up to 40% if you enter the promo code X001 at checkout. Not too shabby, eh? You have to buy it from Routledge, mind, but they cover your shipping so why the ever-lovin'-heck wouldn't you?

Love, Death and Rabbits

In the first episode of a brand new season of our podcast series Intimate Animation,  Laura-Beth and I meet illustrator, animator and designer Caitlin McCarthy. Since graduating from Camberwell Caitlin’s work in illustration quickly expanded to experimental moving image projects and animation, ultimately leading to her involvement with London-based production studio Strange Beast – alongside such artists as previous podcast guest Anna Ginsburg. Having created animation for clients including VOW, Red Bull, School of Life, Nike and New York Public Library, Caitlin’s work also often deals with themes of love and intimacy, includes animated segments for The Female Orgasm, an episode of the Vox/Netflix production Explained as well as the independent short films Paraphilia and Coldsore, the latter of which will be screening at Bristol’s Encounters Festival next month.
Also discussed in this episode: The curiously short lifespan of Lisa Hanawalt's promising new adult animated sitcom Tuca and Bertie as well as ongoing Netflix shows Bojack Horseman, Big Mouth and Love Death + Robots. We also pay tribute to the late great animation legend Richard Williams, whose body of work includes bringing the iconic modern animation ‘bombshell’ Jessica Rabbit to life. Download here or stream above.

 

On that subject it's been a very emotionally-charged couple of days seeing on social media just how impactful the work of Richard Williams has been and how many top-tier players in the industry owe a debt of gratitude to his work and legacy, from The Animator's Survival Kit to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and beyond.
I was enormously privileged to get to speak with him during my coverage of the Encounters Film Festival's 2015 edition at which he premiered Prologue, an Oscar/BAFTA-nominated offshoot of a continuing passion project made at his Aardman base where he spent his final years. This would sadly turn out to be his final appearance on the podcast, but as with all our interactions he was warm, witty, open and honest and I remain immensely grateful for the opportunity. We'll be discussing his work more in the next episode of the podcast but in the meantime I wanted to give this chat another share - again you can stream below or download here.
The last time I saw Richard in person was a year or so ago during a presentation of Aardman's character animation course graduates in which he gave a very impassioned speech about how impressed he was with their work, which I can only imagine made their decades.
He will not be forgotten anytime soon, that's for sure.

Triomphe

Some good news on a day where one might be feeling, I dunno, without a paddle: My new film will get its French debut at this year's edition of Croq'Anime Animation Festival in Paris. I don't think anything of mine's played in that fair city, if my memory serves, so lovely news indeed. The fest takes place September 9th-13th, as ever I'll post more specific info when I get it. In the meantime keep your eyes on their official site, Twitter and Facebook page. Merci mes amis!

Meanwhile in Skwiggletown I've put up a written version of my chat with the very cool Lisa Hanawalt, artist behind a number of webcomics, graphic novels and the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman. The show's second season (which was in production at the time of the interview) went up in full a few days back so it seemed like an apt repurposing, plus it has to be said it was one of my favourite interviews from last year and a joy to revisit. Have a read of it here and check out more of her work at lisahanawalt.com

The "What the hell happened to October?" Blog Post

Despite my semi-regular declarations of being snowed-under with life, work and other fabricated commitments, it's actually quite rare to let over an entire month go by without forcing my inanities on the blogosphere. Things have kicked into gear in an amazing and, at times, slightly terrifying way and my time is rarely my own. Probably for the best as when I have free reign over my own time I tend to use it playing emulated SNES Lemmings while eating dry cornflakes from the box. I'm not even talking name brand here, folks; I'm talking ASDA's own. Eeyup.
All in all, life is good. Faith No More are plugging away in the studio and Twin Peaks is coming back, so those two alone should give me a will to live at least through 2016. Work-wise I'm back in the bits and pieces world of animation freelancing alongside the now quite full-on Project Group Hug (it's a book, by the way, though I doubt there was any lingering mystery as it's been up on my LinkedIn for a while now).

Whilst researching for this film I lived with The Stig for eleven months

This follows a quite long contract with the fabulous folks at Slurpy Studios doing a series of educational videos for Oxford University Press. It wrapped up in September and you can have a look at a couple of the vids I worked on at the Activate Kerboodle site.
Skwigly is still maintaining its stride with some great coverage up since I last posted. New articles include reviews of Signe Baumane's wonderful Rocks In My Pockets (which I'm delighted to see is performing brilliantly) and Floyd Norman's quasi-autobiographical animation handbook Animated Life.

Interview-wise there are new chats with Canadian NFB directorial duo Nicola Lemay and Janice Nadeau (No Fish Where To Go) as well as Australian animator Anthony Lawrence (Grace Under Water), both of whose films were screened as part of this year's London International Animation Festival which I was able to swing by. Another NFB film which premiered in the UK recently was Seth's Dominion, a brilliant feature documentary on Canadian cartoonist Seth directed by Luc Chamberland (interview here).

Also worth catching up on are the latest episodes of Lightbox, with J.G. Quintel (Regular Show), Mikey Please (Marilyn Myller) and Dan Ojari (Slow Derek) of Parabella Studios and experimental, drawn-on-film artist Steven Woloshen (1000 Plateaus). 

October's podcast has a fabulous line-up also: Animator Craig Smith interviews Tonko House (who made the amazing Dam Keeper), Julia talks to Jorge R. Gutiérrez (director of Reel FX's The Book of Life) and I chat with artist Lisa Hanawalt, designer on Bojack Horseman, a show I have to say I'm quite tickled by.

All the usual listening options are here for you, folks. Stream below, download for keepsies or subscribe, whydoncha?
This marks the twenty-fifth episode to date (not even including the various specials and minisodes) and I have to say the continuing support and feedback over the years has been amazing, so thanks so much to all for keeping us going. From my perspective there's no danger of it slowing down soon, so here's to twenty-five more!

Gawd 'elp us...