Skill-et Accreditation

More good news in regard to my zombie duck's gradual world takeover, 'House Guest' is one of the films included as part of the Film Skillet International Film Contest. I'm very excited as it's a great opportunity for the film to be viewed by a potentially large online audience, and getting it seen is really what I'm after. That being said, I'm not above admitting that two boxes of ziti wouldn't be a tremendous help in these lean times.
It's a pretty standard process, the general public and filmmakers/producers alike can cast a vote per category (comedy, drama, documentary and, in my case, animation). I don't want to rally votes here, but I'd encourage everyone to check the whole contest out as a lot of the other films are pretty decent and you'll have a jolly old time watching some free entertainment if you visit the site. To vote I think you need to register, but it takes no time at all, is completely free and it's a great means of networking with other filmmakers and producers.
Watch 'House Guest' online!

Bangkok Dangerous

The duck goes to Thailand next, with 'House Guest' being selected for the 7th edition of the World Film Festival of Bangkok this November. This is probably the most advanced notice I've ever been given of any festival inclusion and as a consequence there's not much published in regards to exact times, venues or dates just yet. But the website is here and shan't be going anywhere for a while I'd imagine.
Many thanks to festival director Victor Silakong for the opportunity. Now I'm off to whip up some Thai duck curry in celebration.

Feeling Festive

Just to follow up on some of the recent festival news, I now have dates and times for when each one will be showing ‘House Guest’. I figured that, rather than post a separate entry for each one as I found out, it’d be better to just go through them in one post. Excessive blogging is very wasteful to the environment, doncha know…
Fresh Film Fest will include the film as part of their ‘Ordinary Madness’ panorama screening at 10:15pm on Friday, August 14th. More info here.
The Monterrey International Film Festival screens ‘El Invitado’ at 6:30pm on Saturday 22nd, at 9pm on Tuesday 25th and at 4pm on Thurday 27th. All screenings are at the MM Cinemas Leones, screen 8.
Among the other films included is a personal favourite of mine, ‘Our Wonderful Nature’ by Tomer Eshed. If you can’t make the festival I’d recommend you go ahead and watch it on Youtube. It puts the kibosh on any possibility of ‘House Guest’ winning a prize, but it cracks me up regardless. This is the kind of film I’d love to be able to do a few years down the line.
At BornShorts in Denmark, the film is being shown at The Old Mill on friday 28th. The screening starts at noon, for further info and a complete schedule go here.
At the Busho Film Festival ‘House Guest’ will be screening as part of their Informational Screenings throughout the festival, 2nd-4th September. Truth be told I’m a little unclear as to how this will be presented, but the festival can be contacted at their website for more info.

I'm not going blind. Which is nice...

I visited the eye hospital this week and was finally given the name of a visual condition I've experienced for the last four years or so. It's a type of entoptic phenomenon and is apparently quite common. I'd venture to dispute that, as in four years no doctor has ever been able to give me an explanation until this week (and I'm pretty sure the guy I saw only knew because he experiences it himself). Essentially I can see the billions of blood vessels traveling through my eyeballs when looking at brightly-lit areas, like the sky during the day or a computer monitor turned all the way up. It's one of several inner-eye visuals I am aware of, including the always creepy Purkinje Tree and vitreous floaters. Generally these aren't noticeable, or at worst nothing that sunglasses can't take the edge off. On overcast days, though, they all combine and it can be a bit like walking around in a shook-up snow-globe. 'Rosebud', yo.
The reason I'm babbling about this all is that I was initially misdiagnosed as having a degenerative condition of the optic nerve that would have led to blindness by my thirties. I never really bought into this as the symptoms didn't quite match up, but it's still a huge relief to get confirmation that what I have is, in itself, harmless. Sometimes you don't acknowledge just how much things can gnaw at you until you don't have to worry about them anymore.
So, with my vision intact (knock wood next month's Glaucoma test will be clear) I'm able to carry on boring the world with more blog entries and animation-ey crap.
Here are some follow-up sketches for the retro-style music video I'm working on, including the earlier character designs put together with textures. It really makes a lot of difference in terms of creating a faux-cutout look:


To end with, here's a quickie After Effects test to see how the Photoshop characters might work in a moving environment with visual effects. For this test the motion is very random and not indicative of the way things will look in the end, but with more attention to detail in that regard I think that there's some promise.
Hopefully you haven't clawed your eyes out.

Forever Blowing Bubbles

Sophie Klevenow's film 'Noesis' (for which I did some work on the sound mixing and mastering) is playing at this year's Canary Wharf Film Festival. It's part of the Mix:UK screening, which runs every day of the festival (3rd-7th September). Times vary, so best to check out the website for details. It's a great film, very Robert Morgan/Quay Brothers-esque and I'm glad I was able to get involved with it. I'm hoping to be at the festival on the 3rd, from the trailer it looks pretty interesting.
For more info on the film have a look at the 'Noesis' website.

So it only took me fifteen years to finally finish this...

The full-colour reissue of the first 'Mitchells In England' anthology is done and can be purchased through that oh-so-fine website Lulu. I'm really stoked to see old comics I drew up to fifteen years ago all cleaned-up and coloured-in, and by filtering out the horribly unfunny ones (I started when I was ten, so you can imagine a lot of it doesn't date too well) it makes for a pretty decent retrospective.

In the really old strips, adding colour goes a long way to making the comic more legible.

I've modified this second edition somewhat - aside from colouring it all in, while the cover is the same save for some additional shading, the back design has been tidied up a little since the original 2006 release. Also, the option to create a full-wrap design with Lulu means the spine is less generic, with a more fitting typeface.

The 2006 edition front/back design, compared to the slightly-modified 2009 reissue.

Inside I've now included new introductions to each chapter, as well as an afterword describing the 'restoration' process.

An example of a 1994 (drawn at age 10) strip in its original form, and the end result after the cleanup and colouring stages.

So if you feel the urge, go to the checkout page and buy yourself and everyone you know several copies each! As with 'House Guest', the book is available in paperback and as an eco-friendly digital download. Plus you can read sample pages online to gauge whether or not it's up your alley.
Buy 'The Best of "Mitchells In England" Volume 1: 1994-1995'

Snowballing...

'House Guest' screens at the BornShorts Film Festival on Bornholm Island (Denmark) this August. Cheers guys!
Dates/Times to follow, in the meantime have a look at their site or check them out on Facebook/Twitter.

Ben Vs. Contentment

The Republic of Hungary is the next stop for 'House Guest', which has been included as part of Busho 2009, the Budapest Short Film Festival. Dates and times haven't been listed yet, but will put them up when I know. Official website here.
On a less encouraging note, the last month and a half has been strangely decadent - between the awards, the Faith No More show and some unexpected perks in my personal life, June 2009 will probably go on record as one of the best months of my life. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that my weight has gone unacknowledged until now, and I'm back at 96kg after reaching my target of 95kg last month. Not a huge setback, but I need to start thinking more conscientiously so I can throw it into reverse again. See, I'm not wired like most fat guys, I don't eat when I'm down because I can't be bothered. When things are going really well, though, bring on the dim sum, JD and porterhouse steaks.
So, ironically, it's harder to lose weight when I'm in good spirits. It makes a kind of sense - when I was monstrously huge I was always pretty content, and I started successfully losing weight only when I got anxious about my health. Then when I was settled in Bristol and happy again, the loss more or less plateaued.
Psychologically speaking, I could surround myself with negative stimuli and make myself all depressed to start losing weight quicker (y'know, get all paranoid about swine flu, the economy, tick-infested chipmunks that are coming to kill us all, that kind of stuff) but then I'd be a misery-guts and just bug all my friends. So unfortunately the only other option is boring, sensible eating and boring, sensible exercise. But I guess I'd rather be bored than morose.Here we go again.

Fresh!

Hot on the heels of "Ground Running"'s tour inclusion, "House Guest" has been selected for another festival in the magical land of Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.
The Fresh Film Festival will run from 12th-16th August, so pencil in a Czechoslovakian (wait - it split up? When?!) detour in your summer schedule so you can catch the screening. Seriously, do it already.
More info at the official site, and there's a MySpace page too! Remember MySpace?

Goin' On Tour!

'Ground Running' (the original, black & white version) has been selected for the International Low & No Budget Short Film Festival Tour 2009. The name doesn't really warrant much further information as to what it's about, save for places and dates. Best I can tell the festival tours throughout Germany, beginning tomorrow (friday 10th) at Kulturverein Merlin in Stuttgart, and again on the 17th, both starting at 9pm.This is pretty sweet as I can now say that my animation has been screened at Stuttgart and technically be telling the truth (see, inclusion in the Stuttgart festival - which this isn't - is kind of coveted by us animation geeks). Not that I'm not chuffed, it's a great opportunity for me to show off my naked baby antics, plus mine appears to be the only British film selected. Reprezentin'!
The tour will also have a screening at Kuz Kulturzentrum in Mayence on July 15th at 8pm.
You can download the program here - according to the cover, the tour actually began on June 26th at Club Mobilat, Heilbronn...which isn't much use to you now, but hopefully those Heilbronnians were satisfied with what they got. Hopefully it will attract a gaggle of German groupies.