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
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.
It's been quite a while since my last film festival inclusion, but I've gotten word that my newest film will be screened (possibly premiered) at the Odense International Film Festival in Denmark. I always liked them Denmarkivians - a solid bunch, the lot of them! Worth noting that the film being screened is not the infrequently-mentioned Bullies, which is still mired in its distribution limbo, but another short entirely - a secret, mystery short, if you will, for I am so appealingly secretive and mysterious. At any rate it's good news, especially as I'd been feeling somewhat...without a paddle, I daresay.
On a completely unrelated subject, check out the latest animated Skwigly banner from notorious ghost'n'rock enthusiast Sue Dunham:
Keep your eyes on the site next month as June's banner is gonna be a corker. In the meantime swing by to check out the latest episode of Lightbox, in which I meet Greg McLeod, the visual half of BAFTA-winning sibling team The Brothers McLeod whose work includes Codswallop, 365, Isle of Spagg, Phone Home and the upcoming animated travelogue Marfa:
