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:

Not-so-pale September

A clump of pleasant news to kick the month off with. Firstly I'll be speaking with one of my heroes Joanna Quinn at the Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival in a couple weeks. Be sure to pencil this one in as we'll be speaking candidly about all manner of subjects, from navigating the emotional pitfalls that come with industry success to dealing with imposter syndrome, burnout, staying motivated when life gets in the way and the pressures the younger generation face in the current social media climate. Plus you'll be able to ask her questions of your own which is worth the price of admission alone (especially as it's free).

The lecture will be held within the I'M FINE! project and is supported by the British Council Ukraine under the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture and Projector Library. It will take place September 8th 6pm CEST (4pm UK time) and is available internationally, just be sure to register in advance.

On a related note, the second of our I'M FINE! podcast minisodes produced in association with Linoleum has gone up over on Skwigly. This episode features insights from Catherine Lepage (The Great Malaise), Julia Skala (Sommeregen) and Johnny Kelly (Procrastination). Give it a stream or a download, whatever works for you.

Lastly, in anticipation of the impending new album my most recent Struwwelpeter EP Piggy (originally a Bandcamp exclusive put out on Inauguration Day 2021) has had an expanded release on most major streaming platforms including Spotify, YouTube and Amazon Music.

Be a pal and give 'er a listen 'cause my stats are a shambles at the moment and I need the boost.

Don't it all spin by quick

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I realised, thanks to the cruel joys of social media and their respective 'On This Day' thingies, that today marks the ten-year anniversary of my fourth Struwwelpeter LP The Book Of Women. After the soaring (scraped quadruple digits, phwoar) sales of the not-as-good previous LP Agnosticaust in a post-MySpace world this one quietly came out digitally (with a physical release the following week) to a more tepid response. My G5 had crashed two weeks beforehand so I'd lost a bunch of the masters as well as virtually all the assets for a couple of animated music videos that would have gone with it and ended up cobbling the released album together from a mix of partially-recovered files, earlier demo versions and a couple tracks hurriedly remixed from scratch. Even still it was a fun one to piece together and had some great guest musicians. 

History has repeated itself with my iMac shitting its stupid iMaccy britches earlier this year so my plan to have released a new LP by now hasn't happened, but the EPs have been going down OK (once the stats are aggregated, at least). At any rate if you've yet to give The Book of Women a whirl it's available Bandcamp, Spotify (below), iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, Tidal and Deezer. 

Fun fact: while this album didn't set the world alight, the main single Set You Free did get played on BBC Introducing back in the day - although the hosts kind of took a dump on it, which seemed slightly at odds with picking it in the first place. Comme ci, comme ça.

Another little'un

New music for your Monday!

Hell For Leather, my latest EP in anticipation of the still-cooking Struwwelpeter album My Head Is Too Small For My Body, is up now on a bunch of platforms to stream/purchase. As well as an instrumental version of the title track it also features alternate non-LP versions of Act Right (which originally appeared on my 2015 LP The Birdcage) and the previously-unreleased Worst of You, which will be a bit longer and ruder on the album proper when it comes out.

Depending on where your loyalties lie you can check it out on Spotify (below), Bandcamp, Google Play, Apple Music, Amazon and Deezer, with more to come.

Listenables

Guess who liked "Weird Al" album covers growing up...

It's been a minute or two since the last one but today sees the release of the second single from the upcoming sixth Struwwelpeter album My Head Is Too Small For My Body. The album's still a ways from being cooked but it's taking shape and unlike any records I've produced it's actually turning out to be quite thematically consistent. In the meantime this song is called Progressive and it draws on an affection for alternative synth-pop I developed during my time on Trampires. It also lyrically felt like a prescient choice given the recent convergence of cancel culture and societal uprising that kicked off a couple weeks back. To that end, if bought/streamed from Google Play, Apple Music, Spotify or Amazon then 100% of any sales revenue will be going directly to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Color of Change (so 50% each), two organisations doing particularly important work amidst all of this uproar. For those of you on Bandcamp they will similarly be donating revenue to NAACPLDF if you buy on the 19th of the month moving forward.
The EP also features an exclusive remix of the song as well as a re-recorded acoustic version of an old track Staying In, a song about...well, staying in. Although the original version was less about social responsibility and more about being anxious and lazy it felt like a fitting topic either way.

If you're after some more lockdown listenin' then there a bunch more episodes of our Skwigly Film Club series in which we watch and discuss animated features. We'll be resuming the podcast from next week for another batch if you want to get involved but in the meantime you can listen back to our watch-throughs of The Iron Giant (Brad Bird), Corpse Bride (Mike Johnson/Tim Burton), South Park (Trey Parker) and The BFG (Brian Cosgrove).

Stormy May Days

It's sort of reassuring that, even when the world is at an unprecedented standstill, if I wait long enough between blog posts I can maintain the illusion that it's all-go.

If you didn't manage to catch the BBC4 programme Get Animated! featuring Laura-Beth's new film The Gift - or if you want to see it again - it will be available on the BBC iPlayer for nearly a year from now, which is grand news. I hadn't realised earlier but the channel also had a repeat showing of Secrets of British Animation, a documentary in which my beardy face occasionally makes an appearance to talk about dirty cartoons, so that's also back on iPlayer but just for the next few weeks. There's some fun stuff in there so definitely give it a look if you didn't catch it the first time around.

Some really nice news in that Slovakia's Fest Anča International Animation Festival, one of the events who screened my very first film back in the day, have announced that my new film Speed is among the official selection for their 2020 edition. It's scheduled to take place from August 27th-30th so it's hard to say whether or not it'll go ahead as planned or make the switch to digital, but in intent my film will be part of the Extremely Short Section of Extremely Short Films. Will keep you posted with any updates that come between then and now.

Speaking of switching to digital, another event that has recently kicked off is Lift-Off Global Network's Genre Content Extravaganza, which includes both Speed and my preceding film Sunscapades in their Page 2 section. The programme can be rented and voted on through May 14th - with over 100 films to check out you get a lot of bang for your buck and, to be honest, it's not like you've got anywhere to be right now - so grab some popcorn and check it out. I'd originally submitted my work to this one as selected filmmakers get to visit Pinewood Studios and I was hoping I'd get to swing by the Channard Institute, so it's a bit of a shame that's not happening - but waddayagonnado? Nice of them to include the work either way.

 

If you need some audio goodness to accompany your extended weekend then - huzzah - we've got some podcasts for ya. The latest episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast welcomes back previous guest Kris Pearn to learn about his new Netflix film The Willoughbys and our Skwigly Film Club series continues with watch-throughs of animation classics The Land Before Time (Don Bluth) and The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet). Keep following us on Facebook, Twitter et al to get involved and help us decide which films we watch in future. We've also recently expanded our distribution platforms a touch so, depending on which floats your boat most buoyantly, be sure to follow us via Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn or Acast and never miss an episode!

Montage!

In these final months of its festival eligibility there are two events left on my wishlist that I'm waiting on before I start thinking about an online release for Sunscapades. One of them - the fantastic Anima Brussels Animation Film Festival - has just announced their official selection and I'm very happy to see they picked it for their Animated Nights category. Especially humbling to see it in such good company, alongside some brilliant new work by Erin Kim, Laura Jayne Hodkin, Fokion Xenos and Mirai Mizue among others. Don't have the specifics just yet but the festival runs from February 21st to March 1st; fingers crossed I'll be able to head over to this one in person.

Some non-film news is that I've just put out the first single from my upcoming sixth Struwwelpeter album My Head Is Too Small For My Body that I'll hopefully have done by mid-2020. This one features special guest guitars by my old chum Ed Richardson and is a Spotify exclusive so it can't be bought or streamed elsewhere, at least for the time being. Give 'er a whirl:

I'd always suspected there was a delightfully corny action movie montage song in me somewhere and I imagine that working on Chuck Steel a couple years' back knocked it loose. For the b-side I even did a special "80s Movie Montage" remix for it to amp up the cheese.

After taking a brief break from being on sale after Black Friday, my book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films is once again, yep, on sale! From now through to the new year you can get it at 20% off if you order direct from CRC Press, and if you act fast you may even get it in time for the holidays. This is another publisher-wide sale so it applies to their other books - and if you get two or more of then it's a meaty 25% off! Plus free shipping, of course. What are you actually waiting for?

I like pink

Original phonograph cylinder release

Some good news in that this month sees me finally ticking off a big ol' ticklist item. What with physical media being pretty much utterly redundant when it comes to independent music distribution, I'd wanted to migrate my back catalogue of albums to the platforms I've been using more recently. The slight issue being that everything prior to 2010 was mixed and mastered pretty abysmally and it's been hard to justify putting too much time toward sprucing up old music that was never that big of a deal to begin with.  So getting them all remastered and freely available on today's newfangled streaming platforms will be an ongoing, protracted endeavour - but one that's finally underway.

A week today will see the rerelease of my 2006 Struwwelpeter album Agnosticaust. This has been out-of-print for over five years since the CD sales dwindled to non-existence but back in the very brief days of MySpace convincing its youthful patrons to arbitrarily buy anything with the word 'indie' in its metadata this album did pretty well, relatively-speaking. It's a bit of a shame that I subsequently made two far better albums (The Book of Women and The Birdcage) that never quite found a similar wave to ride, sales-wise, but revisiting this record having not heard it in a very long time I was relieved to find it didn't make me puke blood with embarrassment. That being said, it took a lot of time to get it remixed to a listenable standard alongside the newer records. I won't bore you with a track-by-track breakdown; basically it's a bit louder, a bit fuller and some of the multitracking on the vocals has been redone from scratch as they were a rushed mess at times.
It will be available to buy from Bandcamp and various other outlets on the 20th but in the meantime you can already stream it on a variety of platforms including Spotify:

Despite the revamp it's still a pretty warts-and-all, no-budget affair with some ludicrously corny moments (inexplicable white-boi rap moments? Check!) but there's hopefully some stuff in there to enjoy. Mainly I'm glad it's back out in the world for the fond memories of a time when I could just spend my days just slapping a record together with my mates.
Well, my mates and that one bag of shit who stole my rare Dillinger Escape Plan EP for drug money, but hey - water, bridge etc. Needless to say I'm glad my social circle these days is mostly people who make cartoons and drink tea.

Another limp offering

The migration of my old tunes to Spotify and other various platforms continues this month with another EP, this time the 2016 Silverfish release Limp and Numb.
For those who missed the original release, this one's a mix of remastered songs from around 2007 with a couple of exclusive tracks thrown in. It's a mix of me being loud/daft and quiet/creepy, something to start off your week on a confusing note with. If nothing else it's nice and short!
Stream below or alternatively check it out on iTunes/Apple Music.

Old Chestnuts

Happy Monday all!
A few oldies that I worked on have recently resurfaced. Firstly the latest of my old discography to finally make its way to Spotify, iTunes et al is the 2010 EP Digital Stimulation.

This one originally came out in the run up to the LP The Book of Women that would be released at the end of the same year and features six exclusive alternate mixes/edits of songs from that album as well as its 2006 predecessor Agnosticaust (which will hopefully get itself a full reissue soon). Check 'er out:

On the animation side of things I saw that a collection of highlights from Jonti Picking (aka Weebl) and Sarah Darling's webseries Wobble Box went up over the weekend, with a couple of the segments I animated thrown in. So that's something to keep your company on your lunch break:

More good news is that Rumpus Animation's first step into the world of video game adventuring The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle - for which I provided the voices of That Guy Who Sounds Like Ben Mitchell and That Other Guy Who Sounds Like Ben Mitchell But A Bit Nasally among others - will be getting itself a Japanese release on the Nintendo Switch on March 29th, so fingers crossed for a wider release in the not-too-distant. You can learn more about this version here and there's a slightly more Nintendo-ey version of the trailer you can watch below:

Ben and Women

Continuing the migration of my musical back catalogue to some of these modern distribution channels - what with me being so hip and down with the youth and all - February's re-release is my 2010 album The Book of Women.
This one was originally put out when my attentions were mostly focused on The Naughty List and, in a limbo between the eras of MySpace and Bandcamp, didn't really get much momentum compared to the albums that came before and after. It was a lot of fun to do, however, and has a lot of great musician pals of mine guesting on it, not to mention fond memories associated with it. So if you're in the mood check 'er out for free on Spotify (you can stream below) or grab it for keepsies on iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon, Bandcamp or even on compact disc if you like your unfashionably retro music formats. The CD has the added bonus of featuring a photo of me on the back looking like a bell-end if that's an incentive at all.

If you have 48 minutes to kill

Happy new year, ya filthy animals.
Alongside the usual animationey chunks I'll be expectorating into the world over the coming months I'm keen to have 2018 be a year for some new - or, at the very least, unheard - music of mine. Rather than get ahead of myself and outline what I have planned - because whenever I do that on here it pretty much guarantees it won't pan out (remember when Sunscapades was supposedly going to be done by last May?) - I'm first going to tackle the long-overdue expanded digital release of some old albums.
Kicking things off I'm happy to say the fifth Struwwelpeter album The Birdcage, originally released May 2015, is now available on a wider variety of platforms as of today. These include iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon and Spotify among others. You can give the Spotify version a whirl below - it's free, fun and the health risks are slim:

Hopefully some of the other Struwwelpeter albums will see the light of the day as well, which would be nice as a lot of them have been OOP for a fair few years now. I'll play it by ear. In the meantime the original digital release is still available on Bandcamp and, for you old-fogeys, compact disc. Whatever's your pleasure.