At least I'm wearing clothes this year

Be merry, y'all.

Adventageous

As with last year we at Skwigly have been implementing our online advent calendar where we showcase a particularly impressive animator/illustrator each day in the lead up to the 25th. They're all smashing so head on over to the front page of the site and check them out. Here are a smattering of what's gone up so far to whet your whettable bits:

Will Anderson

Jurate Gecaite

Bianca Ansems

Can't Be Bothered Man

Brothers McLeod

Leah-Ellen Heming

We've also joined forces with Corrie Francis Parks who's brought her own Advent Animation Showcase to Skwigly this year, shining a spotlight on a different seasonal short each day (and having the good manners to pimp my own holiday short so I don't have to a fourth year in a row...oh wait, I guess I just did).

Interestingly enough, this year has seen a surge in similar online advent ventures, one of which being Jonti Picking (aka Weebl)'s calendar which I've done a couple of mini-animations for:

These were knocked out in roughly a day each, so as with the HuHa shorts the animation was super-simple and a lot of fun to design. Although the kid in the second one is doubtless plagued by the ennui of being designed by a grown man who's watched way too much Powerpuff Girls and South Park:

Yam Handed

You look down in the dumps, old friend. As well you should, if things are so dreary that you've come here of all places for distraction. How about a heapin' helpin' o' HuHa to perk you up, misery-tits?
Episode 9 of Wobble Box went up earlier this week, my wee contributions to which being the deoderant (1:01 in) and escalator (2:09 in) skits.

The former was an entirely Toon Boom affair, including the backgrounds which I kept loose'n'colourful'n'simple.

As per there was a lot of fun design work coupled with minimal animation. Get some sketches down ya:

That last one is for the escalator bit, the assets for which were also done in Toon Boom. I wanted to do something less identifiable as my style and so went with something more cartoon-modern.

The colour approach was thought up on the fly - rather than solid colours I scribbled them in on their own layers on a boil, exporting them separately from the character animation before compositing both with textures in After Effects.

Over in Skwigly land we have a new podcast after yet another unexpected hiatus. There was one scheduled for September but we hit our first genuine snafu when our lead guest inexplicably rescinded permission to be included. First time for everything, I suppose.
Far better sports are Chris Landreth - the Oscar-winning NFB director known for Ryan, The Spine and now Subconscious Password, a wonderfully-relatable tale of a man's inner turmoil as he struggles to recall the name of an old acquaintance he's bumped into at a party - and Chris Shepherd, the chap behind the much-loved shorts Dad's Dead and Who I Am and What I Want among others. Shepherd has recently been involved with 12foot6, Random Acts and Autour de Minuit, the latter for his new live-action/rotoscoped short The Ringer, a genuinely touching father-son tale and one of my favourites from this year's Encounters.

Thrown in the mix are musings on shows like The Simpsons outstaying their welcome, general Encounters chitchat and my usual sanctimonious pontifications on filmmaking. You can do the streaming/subscribing/downloading thang at your leisure and discretion. Whichever option suits you best. There are no judgements here.

Roundup

With this year barreling by at a scrotum-tighteningly terrifying speed, I keep falling behind with the whole blogging thang. Currently my existence is an impenetrable soup of what's happened/what hasn't, what's online/what's not, what's public/what's private etc, so it can all get away from me a bit. I'm gonna be 30 in a few seconds so give me a break.
There've been a few HuHa! updates in the last couple months worth rounding up. Firstly the plucky Assassinen Babies (as they're known in Germany) make an appearance on their own in a standalone version of their debut skit. Those who speak the language will gather from the comments that its whimsical subtlety didn't play quite as well to the German YouTube crowd.

There's also the French version, Bébés Assassins. Good god, it's like Muzzy up in here.

To an altogether more positive reception here on their home turf, the English Assassin Babies made their thrilling return to Wobble Box in episode 6. Who knows what peril and adventure they'll face this time around? Find out below (around 2:13 in)!

Here are a few yummy mummies I sketched for it. These are all loosely based on some real-life new mothers I know. From what little time I've spend with their respective young'uns I expect they're just as effective in a combat situation.

 Two more skits I did the visuals for show up in episode 8 which went up today. Starting with High Seas which is a fun, concentrated 15 seconds of swashbuckling that was a joy to design.

I liked how this one came out so much I took the assets and made an illustration piece out of it. What an onanistic delight I am:

Secondly is High Winds. That's wordplay humour, son, let it wash over you. Like the pirate one, this was quite simplistically animated with some special sauce courtesy of After Effects.
The skits show up at 0:36 and 1:53 respectively, but why not go ahead and watch the whole ep? It's only wee, sure it is.

There's also a more recent episode of Fantasy Office, which saw me charged with designing some 'Salesman D-bags'. The main antagonist was loosely modeled on Michael Douglas in Wall Street.

Check out the full episode here:


Also, as I don't want to leave what I'm certain is a monstrously high percentage of this blog's readers who live in France hanging, you can watch the French translation L'Office de la Fantaisie episodes 2 and 3 below:




Hourra!!

"Coffee please, Doris..."

At the end of last week the fine folks at HuHa discreetly put up "Fantasy Office" episode 3, following on from episode 2 back in May. While I did the animation for both, this one features a few characters from episode 1 which was designed by another chap, so I've attempted to bring the two styles together.

This one was written by Joel Jessup (apparently the credits at the end are wrong) and got some nice feedback over the weekend. Personally I found it quite satisfying as lip-sync on a skeleton is a f***ing breeze. Here are a couple of new character sketches:

As always I was up against it so the backgrounds were a bit rushed, that being said I'm quite happy with the crypt one:

Okay, that'll do for now. Frankly I've spoiled you enough as it is.

Buon'anima

First off, respect where it's due. RIP Mr. James Gandolfini. I've been in the midst of a massive Sopranos DVD rewatch, boring everyone with how amazingly it still holds up, and truth be told I'm a little shellshocked with this whole business. I'm not an actor but his performances taught me a lot about the power of how to carry oneself, that it's possible to be suave and overweight at the same time; What little game I had in secondary school I owe to my blatant imitations of his onscreen persona. Not only that, he was fucking hilarious. To pick one Sopranos scene that epitomised what he brought to the table would frankly be daft, so instead here's a clip from my favourite of his feature roles opposite Peter Capaldi in Armando Ianucci's In The Loop:
In the spirit of sentiments voiced during the show's multitudinous funeral scenes: "Waddayagonnado?"
On the HuHa! front, here are some sketches for a quick skit that I managed to crowbar in before I left for Annecy:

There really was hardly any time to knock this one out, so the animation's possibly even more limited than usual. That being said, the script gave me a chance to have some fun with the designs and I'm pretty happy with the end result. The only thing I'd maybe have done differently had there been time would be making the 'imagination' backgrounds a little more crazy/detailed.
The full Wobble Box episode it's featured in (second-to-last skit, around 3'35" in) went up this afternoon. Overall I'd say it's one of my favourites:

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!