Pod Pals

Some new podcasts for your waitin' ears. In episode 106 of the Skwigly Animation Podcast we welcome back pals o'Skwigly and all-around good eggs Matthew Walker and Jane Davies, directors of the new Aardman series Lloyd of the Flies. Beginning on CITV this week, the project marks the continued expansion of Aardman’s project roster as its first “in-house” CG production with a major brand push planned for the show and its characters.

Also discussed: The premature demise of the Young Audiences Content Fund, notable projects from the recent Disney D23 Expo, the South Park 25th anniversary concert, excitement for upcoming Netflix features Wendell & Wild and Pinocchio, Mike Judge’s second Beavis & Butt-Head reboot, fake/scam festivals and mysteries surrounding the production circumstances of the new Ren & Stimpy Show.

Our series of podcasts minisodes in association with the Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival programme I'M FINE! continues with episode 3, in which I speak with Fabienne Priess (Tick) and Jakub Krzyszpin (Inertness) about their work and mental health in general.

If you're based in the UK you can catch the full I'M FINE! programme at the Bolton Film Festival on October 7th 10:45am at the Bolton Museum. You might also want to check out some companion written interviews over on Skwigly with participants Yen Liang Chen (Am I Oright), Angel Wu (Drawn Undrew Draw) and Anna Samo (Conversations with a Whale).

Some festival news for you France-dwelling folk, my film Speed will be among the line-up of the 2022 Festival International du Court Métrage de Lille's all-night animation programme Nuit de l’animation. This takes place September 24th at Théâtre Sébastopol from 9pm and goes through to 6am, so maybe bring a thermos.

Much love and gratitude to the folks out there who've supported the new album My Head Is Too Small for My Body over on Bandcamp the last few days. If you're a milleniboomer like me who still holds on to such archaic methods of music consumption as iTunes then the album is also available via Apple Music, and if you're more of a streamer than a buy-for-keepsies-er then it's available now on Spotify:

Blessed Days

First things first - Radio 1 debuted Faith No More's new single 'Superhero' last night. This is the one I've been most vocal about being on tenterhooks to hear - having been at its first ever live performance last year - and it's so unbelievably goddamn great the English language frankly comes up pathetically short when it comes to existing adjectives that might describe how utterly elated I am.

Their new LP Sol Invictus (their first since 1997) isn't out until mid-May, so fingers crossed my skull doesn't pop in anticipation before then.
Another reason to be cheerful was discovering my animation had made an unexpected appearance on The Anthony Cumia Show when my old O&A/Jim Norton short (the dancing chicken one) recently got played by accident. To my relief it got a good response, have a watch here my friends:

Post by Ben Mitchell - Creative Offal.

While I'm still typing things I'll point you in the direction of Skwigly where fellow cartoon-making personage Matt Walker has done this month's site banner:

Matt Walker

Also worth mentioning the other two excellent 2015 banners, Rumpus for January and Tony Johnson for February. Talented bunch we're amongst, us Skwigly lot:

Rumpus

Tony Johnson

Making Pests of Ourselves

I'm all a-quiver with girlish glee as I get prepped for my first jaunt to Annecy next week. It's one of the top five major fests on my wishlist I've yet to get a film in, along with Ottawa (the other three being Encounters, Clermont-Ferrand and Stuttgart, who all threw me a bone). Despite making it into Annecy Plus in 2011, my plan had been to make the jaunt when/if I got something into the main festival - but frankly that could take years, if it ever happens at all. Luckily I now have a fallback position: Journalistic scumbag.

"We don't need no stinkin' - well, they are quite nice..."

 Given the surge of positive Skwigly developments since myself, Steve and Aaron took it over, it's only logical to show my face at one of the industry's most important events. We're hoping to get some podcast and written content out of it, obviously, with maybe some video footage to boot. We're also aiming for some extra reach in general, so to that end we'll be pestering folks with fliers, badges and other tote-filling goodies. For our flier design I really wanted to pool resources and convey the community vibe Skwigly's cultivated over the years. I reached out to some of my favourite animators and illustrators for character designs I could group together in a big crowd shot. Here's how it came out:

Front

Back

I'm really pleased with it and feel happy to have so many talented friends and associates involved. Here's a breakdown of their contributions - click their names to see more of their work as they're all smashing pumpkins worth checking out.

Francesca Adams

Jamie Smart

David Hutchinson

Jane Davies

Joanna Hepworth

Kat Michaelides

Katie Steed

Matt Walker

Robyn Liebschner

Sam Morrison

Seb Burnett

Signe Baumane

Sophie Klevenow & Darren Walker

Steve Henderson

Tanya Scott

The remaining designs are from my own archive of characters I threw in to fill in some spaces. And because I'm an egomaniac.
Given how much fondness people have had for the Skwigly Podcast I've also produced an exclusive sampler CD of some of our personal favourite moments from our first year. It's borderline-impossible to group all of them and have it fit on an 80 minute disc but hopefully this selection does justice to all the amazing interviewees who've given us their time and insight. It's nice to have a little physical souvenir to show for an endeavour I had no clue would still be going strong after a year, especially in these last few days before the entire planet completely forgets what CDs are. Here's the sleeve design:

Front

Back

If you'll be at Annecy yourselves drop us a line at skwigly.com!

Body Talk

My aging - yet vexingly alluring - body has been ravaged by a series of ailments, each more pathetic and old-man-like than the last. Right now I've been embarrassingly felled by some kind of wrenched abdominal muscle. Thankfully it's not a hernia, as it turns out I'm just a little pissy-sissy fairy-mary girlie-girl (my GP's exact terminology there). The upside is the revelation that I actually possess abdominal muscles - I guess they've just been well hidden all these years. In short, I'm staying pretty immobile and popping Solpadol like Skittles. Before my insides collapsed completely I was able to get in a life drawing session on Monday, the first in a while. I haven't had as many opportunities to make it over there much over that past few months but here are a few stabs at it since last October.

Pregnant gal is, shall we say, 'augmented' in the chest region which carries with it the slight danger of the breasts coming off unnaturally spherical when drawn. I found one I hadn't put up before of the same model pre-pregnancy which sort of shows what I mean a little clearer:

Blame saline, not adolescent misogyny

Here are the results of Monday's most recent session, three angles of the same pose:

I figured I'd be pretty rusty but these turned out better than I thought. This particular model, though a little fidgety, is one we've had a lot which may have helped.

The importance of life drawing is amongst the many things discussed with Bill Plympton in the second part of our interview which is now online. Following on from January's Skwigly Podcast where we mainly chatted about his latest film "Cheatin'", this time around we go into the wealth of additional projects he's taken on in the last couple years, including segments for "The Simpsons", new short films and his restoration of the Winsor McCay short "The Flying House". It's pretty inspirational listening for those with an indie-filmmaking bent, so if you fit into that category I'd recommend you bung it on in the background.

"A Liar's Autobiography" - Not a Monty Python film, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so based on this cover...

We also take a look at a particularly interesting UK contribution to the indie features scene, the multi-studio collaboration "A Liar's Autobiography". Essentially a posthumous, quasi-fictional biopic of Monty Python's Graham Chapman, it came together last year with the involvement of fourteen animation studios, each working on separate segments that were edited into a single feature. While the end result is somewhat patchy it has some solid gags and inspirational visual ideas throughout. I was able to get a few friends who worked on it together to chat about the experience for the podcast - Jane Davies (director of the "Looshkin" short I did the music for) and Leah-Ellen Heming of A For Animation as well as Matt Walker and George Sander-Jackson of Arthur Cox. Continuing the prevailing theme of recent Skwigly coverage, their segments predominantly deal rather joyously with cartoon sex, penis puppets and all. Here for your delectation is a snippet of A For Animation's bit:

Assuming that's whetted your appetite (amongst anything else of yours that requires whetting) you can download the podcast now, subscribe on iTunes or stream it below: