Real wrath-of-God-type stuff

Bit of a manic week with a deadline today and two more Friday, so gotta make this one quick. BEHOLD - new Skwigly podcast: Discussion in this episode mainly focuses on the various upcoming awards ceremonies, dotted with the usual tangents such as Croods crudity and fond frog-cock memories. As always you can stream, subscribe or download directly. Guests include the recently Oscar-nominated Daniel Sousa, whose beautiful film Feral is now available to buy online. Also Skwigly correspondent Tom interviews Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi (he who wrote a rather nifty little book called Cartoon Modern) and Steve talks to British Animation Awards director Jayne Pilling.

Jayne also has a few pretty darn decent books on animation under her belt, you can read my recent review of her latest Animating The Unconscious: Desire, Sexuality and Animation here.

On the subject of book reviews, I recently picked up Don Hertzfeldt's wonderful new graphic novel The End of the World from Antibookclub. The capsule review is that I can't recommend it enough, but the full review also went up on Skwigly this week. I also got wind that the man himself reposted it, which is mighty nice indeed.

Post by don hertzfeldt.

Social Meh-dia

Back when I first independently released my graphic novel Throat I set up a Facebook page to help promote it and put up some exclusive extra content. Ultimately what really shifted copies came down to the old-fashioned, in-person approach of self-debasement through flyering and convention appearances. The extra visibility of the new, serialised editions of Throat gave things a shot in the arm but I don't have a whole bunch of extra material to keep the Facebook page updated, and given how much slower it's going than anticipated (had things gone to plan all three would have been out by now) I very rarely have news updates.

So I've basically made the Facebook page about everything I do, just so there's stuff to actually talk about on a regular basis. There's also a trove of character designs, sketches, videos and whatnot I have littered about the place that could all go up over time. Mainly it's so I don't have to go through the rigmarole of setting up a different page to promote each new film/book/album/whatever when they come out, this way things stay in one place. It's another branch of social media to channel my thinly-veiled narcissism through, but at this point enough other creative types do it that I'm not going to pretend to be meek about it. Instead I'll opt for painfully needy:
LIKE ME!
I MUST BE LIKED!
CLICK 'LIKE'* TO SHOW ME YOU LIKE ME!

Ben Mitchell - Creative Offal

While you're liking things on Facebook (you contemporary soul, you) here are a few very decent artist pages to check out in a desperate bid to not come off as entirely self-involved:
 
Chris Reccardi 
Clive Barker
Robert Morgan
Leah Heming
Fatima Yasrebi
Sophie Klevenow
Kris Genijn
Don Hertzfeldt
Tine Kluth
Philippe Vaucher
Rumpus
Bill Plympton
Bros. McLeod
Eric Drooker
Skwigly Online Animation Magazine (what?)

*Also make sure you click 'Follow'. They're sneaky, those scurrilous li'l Facebook elves...