More excuses to leave the house

Exciting developments here in Bristol as the briefly-dormant Encounters Film Festival will be returning later this month for its 30th edition. Having worn a bunch of different hats for this event over the years, it was a privilege to take the reins as Animation Programmer and put together five programmes packed with incredible new shorts, as well as consulting on the festival's genre programmes and industry events. More info on each programme below (all competition screenings take place in Cinema 1 at the Watershed and will be followed by a Q&A with any attending filmmakers):

• Animated Encounters 1 (1pm Sep 24)
  From a father grappling with his son's emigration to a woman literally birthing her reproductive organs, these animated stories confront life's awkward realities head-on.
• Animated Encounters 2 (5:30pm Sep 24)
  A European traveller sketches her way through Cape Verde, a cat seeks enlightenment, and a mother weaves memories through colourful sweaters. These contemplative works range from Nordic winter poems to drag queen revelations, united in quiet contemplation.
• Animated Encounters 3 (10am Sep 25)
  The messy realities of minds and bodies under pressure. Characters battle screen addiction, explore their own anatomy, and confront childhood trauma through bold animation techniques. These unflinching stories tackle everything from teenage pregnancy to language identity, using surreal visuals to make the internal external.
• Animated Encounters 4 (2:30pm Sep 25)
  Tender stories celebrating memory, family bonds, and the search for belonging across generations.
• Animated Encounters 5 (12pm Sep 26)
  Eight exciting works push animation into uncharted territory, unafraid to go places live action cannot. Ancient Chinese erotica inspires an Estonian tale of vanity, while nude models battle mosquito stings and a hypersensitive woman navigates a harsh world.

The 25th will also be a dedicated animation industry day, and kicking off proceedings will be a special presentation on mine and Laura-Beth Cowley's new book Intimate Animation, featuring special guests Baz Sells and Ben Jackson of One6th who'll be discussing the production of their recent short Two Black Boys in Paradise (also screening in competition); we'll also be selling books at an exclusive Encounters discount if you haven't yet snapped it up and want to save a few sheckels. Also on the docket throughout the day are presentations from the likes of Dan Ojari, Tanya Scott, Karni & Saul, Dane Winn, Neeraja Raj and Chris Shepherd as well as dog life drawing, a stop-mo workshop and a showcase and reception for the newly-launched UK branch of Women In Animation.

Capping off the day will be another edition of Bristol Animation Meetup (BAM), again teaming up with our pals at Festivus and taking place at the Three Tuns pub from 7pm. 

The next day at Watershed Cinema 3 I'll be hosting an Artist Masterclass with storyboard artist Jay Clarke, discussing his career with a focus on his work for acclaimed director Wes Anderson. Other events you might want to check out include a special screening of the modern classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman in attendance, a UK premiere for Gondry's new film Maya, Give Me a Title, the legendary Late Lounge featuring some stunningly twisted animation and a preview screening of Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese's Australian animated feature Lesbian Space Princess. In fact, there's too much good stuff on offer to list here, so give the programme a peruse and grab your passes now.

About last year...

After some ruminatin', I think there might still be a few last gasps of life left in this here blog. Ahead of a big announcement coming up next week (that will probably explain why my energy for writing has been depleted of late), here's a roundup of some fun stuff I was involved with during the quiet spell that may be of interest.

Back in May Laura-Beth and I were at the always-wonderful Cardiff Animation Festival to host their brunch sessions and chat with attending filmmakers Tanya J Scott, Gerald Conn, Hannah Fisher, Naomi Crame, Lleucu Non, Josh Hicks, Tova Persson, Hoching Kwok, Gus Andrews, Qianhui Yu, Samantha Moore, Greg McLeod, Robert Brown, Katie King and Faye Craig. For those who weren't able to make it, these were recorded and put out as podcast minisodes, so brew some coffee, grab a croissant and have a listen. It'll be like you were there, boy-howdy.

Animation Podcasts | Skwigly · Skwigly at CAF 2024

Skipping ahead to November, Manchester Animation Festival was great shakes as ever. More of a flying visit this time but I did manage to cram in hosting duties for three events, including an all-new Skwigly Screening, the ever-bloodthirsty Skwigly Quiz and a special event wherein emerging talents from the Ukraine presented their animation projects in development. The event was part of a mentorship initiative brought about by Skwigly's collaboration with the Linoleum Festival and the UK/UA Animation Lab, which also yielded a series of free online lectures seeing industry professionals dispense invaluable advice. I was privileged to host one with producer extraordinaire Helen Brunsdon (below) and you can check out all six here.

To my delight, everyone's favourite stop-mo nightmare-weaver Robert Morgan (of Bobby Yeah and The Cat With Hands fame) had his first feature film Stopmotion released. A live-action/animation hybrid tale of an animator's relatable descent into madness, the film is hideous and horrible in all the best ways and definitely worth checking out. I was very happy to host a special CAF screening and discuss the film with the director himself, which you can check out below:

Robert and I discuss the film further in episode 113 of the Skwigly Animation Podcast, which is still ticking along. Other episodes we put out last year include a British Animation Awards special, a celebration of Cartoon Saloon's 25th anniversary and chats with the talents behind 2024's holiday features and specials.

On the guests front we've also featured Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) with Nick Park making a welcome return alongside fellow Aardman-ites Merlin Crossingham and Ben Whitehead to chat all things Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. In our Animation One-To-Ones strand, which has continued to be a fantastic vehicle for our contributors to get some facetime with the movers and shakers of the industry, I also caught up with industry stalwarts Torill Kove and Job, Joris & Marieke. Speaking of contributors, I would be remiss to not shout out the fantastic work being created for the site by our wonderful team including Ryan Gaur, Martyn Warren, Jordan King and Kévin Giraud. 

On the written features side of things, a couple pieces you might want to check out include chats with the fabulous NFB producer Maral Mohammadian as well as Zach Woods (creepy Gabe from the US version of The Office) and Brandon Gardner on their stop-motion NPR tribute sitcom In The Know. More recently I wrote a little summary of the late great David Lynch's own dabblings in animation over the years. Not an easy write as, being such a massive influence and all-around mensch, the news of his death rattled me. But ultimately it was a gratifying exercise and a rare excuse to lump together a bunch of factoids floating around my head that wouldn't necessarily have had much use otherwise.

Throughout the year Skwigly, Rumpus and Sun & Moon also continued our Bristol Animation Meetups (BAM), with four hugely successful seasonal events that included our established industry one-on-one sessions in the Spring and Autumn, a big chunky BAM quiz in the Summer and a seasonal collab event with AnimInspo to cap off the year. We have some fun irons in the fire on the BAM front, so keep your eyes on our socials to not miss out.

As to why I didn't bring any of this up at the time, well...here's the culprit.

Her name is Ivy. She saps all of the time I used to have for blogging because she's so adorable and her demands are both constant and merciless. Kind of lowkey ruined our life at the beginning, but hey, at a certain point you come around and fall in love. Dogs, what are they like? 

So I think you're about caught up now. Stick around, more news a-comin'.

Update (nah, that isn't satisfying)

Hi there folks, it's been a minute. In fact I don't think I've ever gone over a month without finding some excuse to talk about myself on here. So, y'know, time to overcompensate. 

Over in Skwiglyville we have ourselves a new, (mostly) Annecy-focused episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast featuring animation royalty Joanna Quinn. Joanna's been one of our biggest supporters in every respect since the earliest days of Skwigly and we've been eagerly waiting for an excuse to bring her on the podcast (although she has appeared previously on a podcast minisode from back in the days of BAF) since before it even started, so what better than to discuss hers and Les Mills's long-gestating new Beryl film Affairs of the Art? On top of receiving the Special Jury Distinction for Direction at Annecy the film, co-produced by the NFB, has won awards at Clermont Ferrand, Animafest Zagreb and Kaboom among others and is easily one of the most technically stunning films doing the rounds this year. Download link here or stream it below:

Also discussed in this episode are Annecy shorts highlights, Mikey Please and Dan Ojari's upcoming Aardman/Netflix special Robin Robin, Erick Oh‘s immersive short Namoo, Marq Evans’s Will Vinton documentary ClayDream, Alberto Vázquez‘s Unicorn Wars, Jorge Gutierrez’s Maya and the Three, Netflix’s adult animation slate including the stop-motion anthology series The House and the announcement of Robert Morgan's feature film debut Stopmotion.

Our new interview series Animation One-To-Ones is coming along nicely with our latest episode welcoming back the uniquely wonderful Anna Ginsburg, who previously appeared on Intimate Animation to discuss her film Private Parts. Since then she has done some brilliant work including What Is Beauty? for CNN, A Love Hate Relationship for Breast Cancer Now (which recently screened as part of Annecy's Commissioned Films programme) and Typically for Bloody Good Period alongside fellow Intimate Animation alum Caitlin McCarthy. You can download the podcast here or watch below:

We have a whole bunch more of these planned for the foreseeable, so to be sure that you don't miss any you might want to go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We also have the tenth and, for the time being, final episode of Visible in Visuals up on the site, in which organisers Tanya Scott and Hodan Abdi discuss what progress has been made and what still needs to be done with a panel of contributors - Bimpe Alliu, Mohamed Orekan and Paula Poveda-Urrutia - who were instrumental in getting the series off the ground. Download forevs or stream to your heart's content:

It's been a real privilege to have been able to give this series a podcast platform through Skwigly and if you've not yet listened I strongly urge you do so. Fingers crossed that it will continue in some form once they've had a regroup as there are many more discussions that I'm sure need to be had.

If you're in more of a readin' mood than a listenin' mood then prepare to be effervescent with excitement that my book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films is available at 20% off until August 1st as part of the Routledge/CRC mid-year sale. Another CRC book worth checking out is Andrijana Ružić's Michael Dudok de Wit: A Life in Animation, a thoroughly-researched overview of the director's filmography and working process that I enjoyed a great deal (you can read my full review here). There are also a couple of recent interviews you might want to check out, including my catch-ups with Claude Cloutier (Bad Seeds) and Michelle Kranot (The Hangman at Home/We Are at Home), who have both made stunning new work worth keeping your eyes open for.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ben Mitchell (@benlmitchell)

Since my last post I actually clocked that the end of April marked ten years of my involvement with Skwigly, beginning with my first book review of Bill Plympton's autobiography, followed shortly after by an interview with the man himself. I hadn't planned on doing more for the site (much less one day taking it over) and, given how crucial discovering his work had been to my switch of career direction from graphics to animation and films, meeting Bill felt at the time like everything coming full circle. But, as is often the case in life, it turned out to be the beginning of something far grander. The current team would eventually take it over a couple years later and I'm hugely proud of what we've grown it into and the wealth of relationships that have branched out from it. I posted up a bunch of memories that stood out over on my Instagram including crossing paths with other inspirational figures Joanna Quinn, Signe Baumane, Peter Lord, Billy West, Rosto, Richard Williams, Tomm Moore and some previously unseen footage of chats with Adam Elliot (another crucial artist who helped shape my career direction) and a then up-and-coming Rebecca Sugar, not to mention the ongoing relationships with organisations such as the NFB and Cardiff Animation Festival and some unexpected excuses to sit down with folks outside of the animation sphere like Kaada, Charlie Kaufman and Caroline Thompson.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ben Mitchell (@benlmitchell)

The fact of the matter is that's just the tip of the iceberg and there are a ton of other wonderful memories I didn't have time to post up, such as organising an interview and fan Q&A with legendary Jan Švankmajer; speaking with inspirational talents Bob Jaques, Stephen DeStefano and Jim Gomez for a Ren & Stimpy special; literally hundreds of chats with artists whose work I love (see the big ol' list under Skwigly Interviews on the right there); getting to bring on my amazing friends who've been smashing it like Jo, Jane, Lauren, David, Phil, Mary and Matt; driving folks nuts with Steve's MAF quizzes; interviews conducted in lightning storms; bringing my dad on the podcast to chat about his work on Yellow Submarine; curating programmes for Encounters, BAF, MAF, CAN and CineMe; working with other festivals including Animafest Zagreb, ITFS Stuttgart, DAFF and Anima; appearing on TV to talk about dirty cartoons with Steve; teaching the world to sing in Brussels; teaching the world to sing in Manchester; even being stranded in Geneva waiting for a bus to Annecy after my flight from Bristol was delayed by 4+ hours has, by virtue of the folks I met along the way, become a fond memory...just about.

It isn't all roses though and unfortunately doing this kind of work means you occasionally encounter the odd nutjob or angry little raging bellend. And sometimes someone you admire when you first meet/interview them turns out to be, well, not so admirable. While those stories do make for better anecdotes, I'll save them for me memoirs. What is clear is that those instances are completely eclipsed by the comparative wealth of joyful moments and that's an important thing to hold onto. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ben Mitchell (@benlmitchell)

More important than anything else is that it was through running Skwigly that I met my favourite lady person Laura-Beth when she came on board as a contributor and eventually our main Features Writer. I'd never have suspected that indulging what started as a hobby for niche animation journalism would have brought somebody so wonderful into my life and she continues to surprise, impress and inspire me every day.

Fun fact: our marriage was such a legendary event within the animation world that acclaimed director Wes Anderson included a replica of our wedding venue in his stop-motion adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox...nine years previously.

Now go follow her Insta if you haven't yet because it's much more interesting than mine. 

Monday Mindfulness

If you're after something to help break up the day then there's a new episode of Visible in Visuals to watch/listen to. This time around the subject is mental health, marking the first (and possibly only) panel to include myself, alongside organiser Tanya Scott, director Evgenia Golubeva, psychotherapist Sarah McCaffrey, animator Mohamed Orekan and Steff Lee of Kino Bino Studio.

Animation Podcasts | Skwigly · Visible In Visuals 07 - Mental Health in Animation

In this episode we discuss the realities of taking care of yourself while working in a competitive and often stressful industry, and how we can improve our understanding of mental health at work. Swing by Skwigly for some additional resources and be sure to keep in touch with Visible In Visuals if you have any feedback or are interested in getting involved with them down the line.

It's been pretty quiet on the festivals front, with the only news being it's about to get quieter as the Brussels Independent Short Film Festival: Courts Mais Trash (which this year includes Speed) will be postponing its March dates to instead take place April 21st-28th as a hybrid event. Honestly it's anyone's guess what will or won't be able to go ahead by then but I'm keeping my fingers crossed as they're a lovely bunch. Updates when I have 'em.

Visible Listenin'

Happy new year, gang. Hope you made it through the shackled season with some degree of merriment.

The first podcast we're putting out for 2021 is a new episode of Visible in Visuals, this time around focusing on working in the animation industry from the perspectives of an all-female panel. As always it makes for fascinating and, as a CIS white fella, revelatory listening - in fact if you've not yet caught up be sure to watch/listen back to the other panels Tanya and the team have been putting out in the interim, including Diversity and Inclusion in Animation: An LGBTQ+ Perspective, A Discussion on Brexit and the recent Career Advice panel held at last year's Cardiff Animation Festival.

There are a whole bunch more panels in the pipeline, so if you want to be kept up to speed and maybe participate down the line be sure to follow them on Twitter.

End o' month bits o' business

Following on from episode one, the second Visible in Visuals podcast has gone up today in which panelists Esther Ajibade, Bimpe Alliu, Mel Garber, Mohamed Orekan, Rizwan Rafiq, Tanya J Scott, Ash Wu and Beverly Yeang are chaired by Hodan Abdi to discuss the question “Why is fair and diverse representation within animation important and how can we improve it?”

In this panel, representation within animation content – and how these representations impact the audience watching it – is discussed from a POC perspective. Download here or stream below:

To get in touch with – or learn more about – Visible in Visuals you can follow them on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and email visibleinvisuals {at} gmail.com.

While you're on Skwigly you might want to catch up on some recent interviews as it's been a minute or two since I've mentioned any on here. Recently I spoke with Cliona Noonan when her film was part of the Cardiff Animation Nights August screening; her film Wet & Soppy has since been released online and nabbed a Vimeo Staff Pick so give it a watch and learn more here. 

I was also able to catch up with Daniel Gray whose previous film teeth (co-directed with Tom Brown) was a major case-study in my book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films. In our latest interview he discusses his spooky solo follow-up HIDE, made in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, La Cellule Productions and CUB Animation, in anticipation of its premiere at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last week.

Two other NFB productions screening at OIAF this year are Robin McKenna's Thanadoula as well as 4 North A, which brings together the talents of Jordan Canning and animator Howie Shia (whose previous work we've covered includes BAM and Marco's Oriental Noodles). They're all visually stunning pieces and well worth learning more about, so give the interviews a read and keep your eyes peeled for the films as they're sure to be hitting the festival circuit in a big way.

More nifty news for Laura-Beth Cowley's The Gift in that it is among the Finalists in the Salem Horror Fest's Wicked Shorts programme that takes place this weekend! You really couldn't imagine a better pairing. Looks like there's a lot of great things on to sink your teeth into so take a peek at the full programme here.

State of the world

A couple new podcasts for your listenin' ears, folks!

Firstly I'm enormously proud to present the first podcast from Visible In Visuals, a new organisation pushing to make the animation and visual effects industries more inclusive. Following on from animator Tanya Scott's Skwigly piece Inclusion & Diversity in UK Animation Workforce: A Response, and subsequent online discussions including the recent panel Inclusion In Animation organised by ScreenSkills, UWE and the Cardiff Animation Festival, Visible In Visuals has been developed by Tanya and Hodan Abdi as an online platform pushing to make the animation and VFX industries more diverse and inclusive through honest, open conversation.

Animation Podcasts | Skwigly · Visible In Visuals 01 - Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace: A People of Colour Perspective

The first Visible In Visuals panel Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace: A People of Colour Perspective features panelists Bimpe Alliu, Rizwan Rafiq, Mohamed Orekan and Tanya Scott. Direct download here or stream above.

We've also wrapped up another batch of Skwigly Film Club podcasts this week, with our latest episode seeing us watch-through another Raymond Briggs weepie When the Wind Blows, directed by Jimmy T. Murakami. These have been a lot of fun to do and I reckon it's very likely they'll continue once we're all a little less busy later on in the year. Certainly it looks like this lockdown lark isn't easing up anytime soon so it's a nice little series to have bubbling away. Give us a shout on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or regular-ass email if you have any film suggestions for when it kicks off again. In the meantime you can stream the episode below or get it downloaded here.

Animation Podcasts | Skwigly · Skwigly Film Club 21 - When the Wind Blows

Yelling with my mouth shut

Some more podcasts to sink your ears into, if that were how ears worked. It's been a minute but there's a new episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast up now in which we meet four of the rising talents at Walt Disney Animation Studios who have recently made films for the first season of the Disney+ exclusive shorts series Short Circuit.

Participating in the roundtable discussion are Jennifer Stratton (Zenith), Trent Correy (Drop), Kendra Vander Vliet (Downtown) and Jeff Gipson (Cycles).

Also discussed in this episode: The welcome return of Animaniacs, the unwelcome return of Ren and Stimpy among other recent Gen X Comedy Central reboots, Don Hertzfeldt's teaser for World of Tomorrow: Episode 3, the curious pushback against the creator of A24's new acquisition Hazbin Hotel as well as the rapid adaptation of the animation festival landscape midst the continuing pandemic. Direct download link is here or stream below if you're the streamin' type:

Maybe it's lockdown or maybe it's the heat - or maybe that we're nearly 100 episodes in - but listening back while putting this one together it feels a little more contentious and didactic than usual. As always if anyone out there has any thoughts on some of the stuff we go into feel free to get in touch, even if it's to tell me what a grouchy melt I'm being.

If that still leaves you wanting then there's good news in that the Skwigly Film Club is still clubbin' along. Recent episodes have included watch-throughs of such fine fillums as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Roger Mainwood's Ethel and Ernest as well as Chris Butler and Sam Fell's ParaNorman. The polls are still open for which film we'll babble over during this week's episode, so be sure to cast your vote and assist in determining our fate.

On the subject of a possible future podcast strand, some of you may recall Tanya Scott's Skwigly article Inclusion & Diversity in UK Animation Workforce: A Response addressing the findings of a prominent industry survey. It's prompted a lot of discussion and through podcasts and panel discussions Tanya's been expanding on some of the conversation points in the months since, such as a recent Inclusion In Animation panel back in June. The reactions have been very encouraging and hopefully it will prove to be something Skwigly can assist with further. In the meantime Tanya will be conducting a follow-up panel further discussing BAME issues within the industry and if you're interested in hearing more, helping out or contributing questions be sure to follow her new organisation Visible in Visuals. If you missed the original panel unfortunately it wasn't recorded but the Cardiff Animation Festival put up an excellent infographic series breaking down the points and insights that came up.

Speaking of the ever-wonderful CAF team, Laura-Beth and I will be mucking in with their next Cardiff Animation Nights screnning in a Skwigly capacity for some filmmaker Q&As. The event will take place August 27th via their YouTube channel, kicking off around 8:15pm so be sure to tune in.

As my brains are melting out of my ears right now I think I'll wrap up this post here, but swing by again soon as there's some more good news a-comin'...

What will or won't be

A little backtrack on the last post that went up here, it turns out that Speed won't be seeing its Japanese premiere this month at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival as the event has unfortunately been cancelled due to the growing COVID-19 coronavirus concerns. It's disappointing but I completely understand their position in a difficult time and it's an honour to have been officially selected for such a highly-regarded festival in intent at least. They haven't ruled out the possibility of a future screening outside of the proposed dates so I'll keep you folks posted if that comes along.

Cheerier news is that the Cardiff Animation Festival, scheduled for the first week of April at the fantastic Chapter arts venue, is so far still going ahead and has this week unveiled its full programme of events. As well as Speed being part of their Shorts 3 screening (2:45pm April 2nd and 12:45pm April 5th) and Laura-Beth's new film The Gift in Shorts 2 (1pm April 2nd and 1:45pm April 3rd), there's a ton of brilliant events to check out. A few highlights off the top of my head are an Aardman exhibition, special editions of Cardiff Animation Nights and Animation Grill, talks by animation talents Lorraine Lordan, Simon Chong, Avgousta Zoureldi and Kyle Legall as well as panels on storytelling, producing animation and industry inclusion (on the back of a very insightful recent Skwigly piece by Tanya Scott, who'll be participating).
As with the first edition of CAF I'll also be hosting the Animator's Brunch sessions along with Laura-Beth on the Saturday and Sunday morning at 10am, so swing by to hear about the amazing shorts being shown from the filmmakers themselves.
Passes are sold out but individual tickets are still available so act fast!

Chocolate Substitute

Our Skwigly advent calendar has wrapped up for another year, and what a thing of beauty it has become!
Here's another sampling of brilliant contributions:

Tanya Scott

Ross Butter and Louis Hudson

Rok Predin

Blue Zoo

Charlie Miller

Elliot Crutchley

Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi

Massive gratitude again to everyone who took the time! Until next year, boys and gals.

Further Advent-ures (Eh? EH?!)

Recycling old material. I'm nothing if not eco-conscious.

Following on from last month's post, here are some more personal favourites from our Skwigly Advent Calendar:

David Ridges

Ant Blades

Rok Predin

Signe Baumane

Fatima Yasrebi

Jardine Sage

We're in the last stretch of it now which, given that the 25th has already come and gone, may seem a bit confusing. Last year we had a lot of people getting in touch asking if they could get involved after all the slots had been filled, so we extended the idea of contributing illustrators to include the 12 days of Christmas. This year we've done more or less the same thing:

Julia Young

Robyn Liebschner

Tanya Scott

Fatima Yasrebi

Seb Burnett

Laura-Beth Cowley

For the last one I helped out a bit on the animation (such as it is) front, using some basic After Effects whatchimajiggery. For the benefit of those who may not know, the guy leaping about in the picture is Aardman co-founder Peter Lord (who I interviewed a little while back when his film The Pirates! had just been released), which seemed appropriate. We kind of put it together spontaneously without mentioning it to him beforehand but I'm pleased to say he was sporting about it: