July Shmuly

The biennial British Animation Awards has opened the first categories of its 2024 call for entries. I'm proud to be working alongside the team again for its next edition, which will take place in March of next year. The BAAs are now accepting entries in the categories Best Undergraduate Student Film, Best Postgraduate Student Film and Best Short Film, so if you've got a film burning a hole in your pocket then be sure to get submittin'.

In the latest episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast we welcome Peter Sohn and Denise Ream, director and producer respectively of the latest Disney/Pixar feature film Elemental.

Also discussed: Annecy highlights, MAF developments, the return of Futurama and the strange new phenomenon of animators being spotted in the wild. Check it out below or download it forevs.

Springtime frolics

If everything's all a bit too quiet for you in these times of global peace and serenity then here are a couple podcasts to break things up a bit. In our first Skwigly Animation Podcast of 2021 we reminisce about the before-times, bemoan uninteresting movie versions of characters best suited to shorts and pick through the animation highlights of the current awards season. 

On the guests front we also welcome the teams behind the Oscar-nominated films Soul (Pete Docter, Kemp Powers and Dana Murray) and If Anything Happens I Love You (Will McCormack and Michael Govier).

You can also check out a new panel from Tanya and Hodan's brilliant Visible in Visuals series. Following on from the first Women in Animation panel, this episode brings together animation professionals with over 50 years of experience between them, including some dear friends whose voices I hadn't quite realised how much I'd missed, discussing their experiences with inclusion, struggles women face in the workplace, and ideal working environments.

As with all of these discussions it brings about some genuinely surprising revelations and there's a ton of food for thought as regards workplace impropriety, casual misogyny and, well, toilets.

Some festival news in that The Gift, Laura-Beth Cowley's BBC Arts film on which I contributed some character animation and shouty bad language, is currently part of CineMagic's On The Pulse Online Short Film Festival until the end of the month. Festivalgoers can check it out as part of the screening programme Tales of the Unexpected.

Finally a quick reminder that this Thursday (March 25th) at 8pm you can catch the special Skwigly edition of Cardiff Animation Nights, curated by Laura-Beth and I. The full selection is as follows:

• Oh, Darling! (Dir. Cornelius Joksch, Germany)
• Betty (Dir. Will Anderson, UK)
• Bubble (Dir. Morgan Powell, UK)
• Mountain Heart (Dir. Uncle Ginger, UK)
• Just A Guy (Dir. Shoko Hara, Germany)
• The Edge (Dir. Zaide Kutay/Geraldine Cammisar, Switzerland)
• Nod. Wink. Horse. (Dir. Ollie McGee, UK)
• Peepin (Dir. Haein Kim/Paul Rhodes, Australia)

We'll also be including this year's Cardiff Quick Draw winner Not OK Cupid (Dir. Friend Party Studios) and exclusive Q&As with directors Shoko Hara, Haein Kim, Paul Rhodes and Will Anderson. Tune in to the Cardiff Animation YouTube channel on the night to check it out and hopefully catch some of you there!

Next Leg

Gute Nachrichten! My latest film Klementhro will be paddling its way across Germany throughout July as part of the touring programme Shorts Attack, put together by the fine folks at Interfilm. It will play alongside other films linked by the theme 'Travel Stories' by such excellent directors as Fluorescent Hill, Mark Lomond, Zsuzsanna Kreif, Borbála Zétényi and Jossie Malis among others. Things kick off this Saturday (July 2nd) 9pm at the UT Connewitz venue in Leipzig, followed by three simultaneous screenings on Wednesday July 6th at the Kinobar Prager Frühling (8:30pm, again in Leipzig), Berlin's Acud Kino (9pm) and the Medienhaus in Hannover (9pm).
Later in the week the programme will play in Hamburg at Filmraum (Saturday July 9th, 8pm) and the following night in München at the Werkstattkino. Check back here for more dates/venues later in the month!

I'm particularly pleased that the film is continuing what's been a long-running and very harmonious relationship between my work and European territories, especially given the recent outcome of the EU referendum that's left a lot of us shaken. In the latest episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast myself and Steve attempt to make some sense of it all and talk through the potential ramifications Brexit may have on the animation industry should it go forward. If nothing else this is one of the more cathartic episodes we've ever put out. In a sunnier second half we also welcome the talents behind the latest Disney/Pixar box-office smash Finding Dory as well as its accompanying short film Piper, both of which we were able to catch at this year's Annecy festival. Stream below or direct download (of course you can always subscribe and never miss an episode).

Blizzard

Here are some more Skwigly advent calendar contributions to help you get your holly and jolly on:

Claude Cloutier

Sean Cox

Stephen McNally

Ross Phillips

Blue Zoo

We've passed the halfway point but fret not, there's still plenty more goodness to come. In the meantime you may wish to peruse some other Skwigly offerings such as Lucinda Parry's recent interview with Peter Sohn (director) and Denise Ream (producer) of Pixar's new feature The Good Dinosaur:

Also Laura-Beth has some holiday gift suggestions for the animator in your life, as well as interviews with Pa director Lawrence Rowell, Snowfall director Conor Whelan and Cooped director Mike A. Smith, all fantastic films from this year (and the latter we had the pleasure of screening at MAF last month). Meanwhile Steve Henderson has interviewed Fresh Cut Grass director Rob Cullen, Stephen Cavalier has added some more entries to his ongoing 100 Greatest Animated Shorts series, Johannes Wolters brings us a chat with Pete Doctor (director) and Jonas Rivera (producer) of Pixar's other 2015 film Inside Out (now out to buy) and new contributor Heather Wiggins gives an overview of MAF's inaugural edition as well as the feature film highlights of 2015. Meanwhile I recently caught up with Canadian director Howie Shia of PPF House about his latest NFB film BAM (a fabulous piece of work indeed) along with a Q&A with Tom Gran of Spin Kick Bros about their new webseries Lone Wolves.

I was also kindly invited by Marco de Blois to contribute again to Revue24's end-of-year animated short film critics' lists, my personal top ten being: 

1. World of Tomorrow, Don Hertzfeldt (États-Unis / USA) 
2. Teeth, Tom Brown, Daniel Gray, Hungary (Hongrie-États-Unis-Angleterre / Hungary-USA-England) 
3. Splintertime, Rosto (France-Pays-Bas-Belgique / France-Netherlands-Belgium) 
4. We can't Live Without Cosmos, Constantin Bronzit (Russie / Russia) 
5. Ernie Biscuit, Adam Elliot (Australie / Australia) 
6. If I Was God..., Cordell Barker (Canada) 
7. Stems, Ainslie Henderson (Royaume-Uni / UK) 
8. Sonámbulo, Theodore Ushev (Canada) 
9. Very Lonely Cock, Leonid Shmelkov (Russie / Russia) 
10. The Story of Percival Pilts, Janette Goodey, John Lewis (Australie / Australia) 

Interesting to note that there isn't quite as notable a disparity between my picks and the other critics as last year. Have a read of the full article and see what you think. I'm looking forward to checking out the films others have picked that I've not yet come across so far.

Miss Us?

You've probably all noticed that the sun is shining brighter and food is tasting sweeter today. That's of course because it's NEW PODCAST DAY!

Alright, alright. Contain yourselves.
After a not-especially-intentional summer break, we've come back with some pretty great guests on offer. Steve interviews Eric Goldberg and Lauren MacMullen from the Disney camp on their new Mickey Mouse short Get A Horse; Laura-Beth talks to Saschka Unseld, the director of the Pixar short Blue Umbrella that's been accompanying Monsters University; and swarthy Bieber-alike Tom chats to Teri Hatcher on her voiceover roles in Planes and Coraline. That's Teri Hatcher as in Lois & Clark and Desperate Housewives, which is pretty damn surreal. We also have a more Planes-centric video of the interview which should help explain the 'swarthy Bieber-alike' comment:


As well as all this we chat with director and fellow podcaster Aiden McAteer on the Annecy film selections and read out some listener stories of freelance nightmare commissions.
Good, wholesome content all round. As always you can listen below, subscribe on iTunes and/or direct download!