Quickies

In my continued effort to keep the holiday season alive ('cause I just don't know when to let go) I'm happy to say there's another 2011 screening for "The Naughty List", this time at the 6th Athens Animfest. It's really nice to find this out as my second film "Ground Running" screened at the 4th edition back in '09. It's being shown as part of the Tributes 2011 Panorama section, haven't worked out the date/time just yet but check out their website and Facebook page for more info.
On another note I've finished the first of several supplemental showreels, these are spun off from my main showreel which kind of lumps all the animation stuff together. The idea being that I can submit tighter, more theme-specific reels when certain job applications call for it. Plan is to have one each for character animation, digital animation, motion graphics and VFX work, which will give me an excuse to create some new content in all those areas. In the meantime here's the first version of the character animation showreel (which features the first looks at some in-the-works projects such as Alpaca Gals and Erica):
Any thoughts always appreciated, especially if you can somehow use the opportunity to tell me how handsome and sympathetic a fella I am. Not sure how that would work exactly, but roll with it.

Woah. Happy new year to me...

The latest festival to inform me it's screening "The Naughty List" is a biggie, and in all honesty I'm kind of out-of-my-mind ecstatic to be a part of it. It's the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, one of the more coveted animation festivals out there and definitely in the top five of my fest wishlist. It's kind of like asking out the hottest girl in school because you figure there's nothing to lose, and despite all odds she actually says 'yes' (particularly welcome news as a couple of her younger, less glamorous/popular sisters had recently told me to piss off...okay, I'm bad with analogies).Another major benefit is, unlike most of the other higher-end festivals that have been a little too far away to feasibly attend (or the timing didn't pan out) the comparative locality of Germany hopefully means I'll get to be there in person. One of these years I was always going to head over there to check it out whether anything of mine was screened or not, so you can appreciate why I'm doubly-stoked to have the excuse.
A billion thanks for the inclusion and another round of gratitude for everyone who helped me get the fillum done. This has been a pretty great start to what'll hopefully be a pretty great year.

Déjà Vu

Falalala...eh, you get the idea.Admittedly it's pretty much the exact same image as last year's blog-card-thing, but sort of interesting to see how it developed from the original concept illustration. 'Interesting' being, as ever, a pretty subjective word.
Glad tidings. And all that. Innit?

Festive Frolics

Some news that comes as something of a comfort given my concerns that "The Naughty List" might die on its arse once the holiday season is over - it will get its first (so far) screening of 2011 at Canada's Victoria Film Festival on February 6th. If memory serves, this is the first time any film of mine has been shown in the massive, sprawling land-mass that is Canada (outside of me forcing every friend and relative through it). As a Canadian myself I'd been hoping I'd get something shown there eventually, so grand news all around, eh?After my monthly self-googling I've also learned that the film received its tenth screening at Serbia's Film Front festival in Novi Sad last Saturday (18th). Even though I'm late to the party it's good news as I was keeping my fingers crossed that I'd get ten in by the end of the year. They also apparently screened "Ground Running" (the 'lost' Ben Mitchell film) on the 16th. Sweet, a twofer - they're good eggs, them Serbians.

The Miracle of Xmas

Defying all odds, including the Great G5 Crash of 2010, I've finally finished and released "The Book of Women", sticking with the planned date of the 13th just in time to probably be too late for Xmas. But fuggit, it's done!
I probably won't start promoting it properly before the new year as I have a buttload of work/seasonal crap to get done, plus some bizarre and seemingly unresolvable issues to do with my usual distribution company's print process means there are presently two versions to buy. One is via Lulu, who do my books (very well) though I've never used them for publishing indie music so I'm not sure how they'll measure up. Off the bat they have a strangely truncated runtime for CDs of 70mins which means a hidden (not so much now that I've told you) track had to get lopped off. They also only seem to print one-sided sleeves so some booklet and tray artwork had to go too.
While the Cafepress version has the additional artwork and the extra track, problems with the site have rendered the tray cards useless so people - myself included - will have to print off their own. A pain in the balls and one that I'm a little floored by given it's such a small issue that they have absolutely no desire to amend (I'll post the customer service exchange at some point).
So both versions have their advantages and disadvantages:
Lulu - cheaper but you get slightly less content - £6.99
Cafepress - inexplicable tray screwup but overall you get more of the good stuff - £11
So I'm considering these prototypes, until January when I'll look into a better option for selling print-on-demand CDs, ideally with more leeway for visuals and possibly even a lyrics booklet.
The artwork itself was the absolute last element of the project, completed the weekend before the release date. While I had some vague ideas of how to interpret the title of the album, with time running out I figured I'd just go the literal route and have the main recurring image be a book...of, y'know, women..Beginning with a somewhat modified and stylised female/Venus symbol, I imposed the image over photographs of a wonderfully oversized and delapidated tome of illustrations.Using the heavy texture of the book cover as a guide this visual was easily replicated for the same book seen at different angles, open, closed, being held etc. Some shots have distincly female arms/legs emerging, these just taken from stock libraries as I didn't have the time or pull to either hire a model or convince any of my friends to hike up their skirts.To complement the simplistic retro/surreal style I wanted the backdrops to have more of a colourful, illustration-type feel. I sketched out some semi-abstract background designs and, in a similar vein to the backgrounds for "The Naughty List", used heavily layered textures to brighten them up.The sketches and typography were hand-drawn while I was waiting for my computer to recuperate the week before. While the lengthier credits are typed, the track listing and album title have a bit more personality, sort of cartooney but in a way that hopefully works with the rest of the visuals.In keeping with my atrocious habit of inserting myself into more or less every visual project I do, the obligatory shot or several of me makes its way into the artwork, in an equally rushed sense. While I usually go with photomanipulation (last album I was a hassidic-rabbit-thing, the one before I was a man-foetus) this time I'm just a creep in an overcoat. Sort of an Ozzy/Lemmy/Brad-Dourif-in-'Deadwood'/Bad-guy-from-Ghostbusters-2 hybrid. I think the moustache sells it (Movember being long over and, well, I appear to have kept it. Interesting...).This was entirely a case of grabbing a coat too big for me, grabbing glasses too small for me, holding up the book and shoving a camera in my unsuspecting Ma's hand and instructing her to snap away while I struck a series of awkward poses. It was weird and unsettling for both of us. But I like the result, especially against the backgrounds:One thing I've found as I get older is a decreasing fondness for oversaturation when using colour. It certainly has its place when considering your audience, but in this instance after some contemplation I decided to tone down the intensity and give the album more of a faded quality.
While it was a product of mad, deadline-looming panic, sometimes that's just the thing that pushes a designer to come up with something different yet effective and time-feasible. I really feel that this goes well with the music on the CD, it's colourful and cartooney but not in an over-the-top way, it's bizarre but not in the sense of being too dark or inaccesible. Hopefully it's something that appeals for what it is and can appropriately represent what I'm doing musically, which in all honesty I think is more marketable than any other album I've made. Maybe the fact that it's been marinating for over four years while I've had my animation work as a focus is the reason why. But I don't know really, it's very possible that its appeal is hugely limited and I'm just looking at it with the type of fawning adoration that only the parent of a hideous, malformed child can. Whichever way, I'm glad that after ten years of the increasing demands and expectations of real life I'm still able to do these from time to time.
Here's the full tracklisting, click on each title for clips. Ah, g'wan:
1. Absent Friend
2. Sibling Ribaldry
3. Drunk Lady
4. Hello Kitty
5. Miles Away
6. Anticancer
7. Spy Vs. Spy
8. Smartass
9. Cut & Run
10. Get Off Me
11. The Other Man
12. Set You Free
13. Start Again
On a closing note I'd like to give credit to all the musicians who helped flesh the album out and make it all the more listenable: Celia Claudie, Alison Eire, Analisa Hamilton, John Harris, Hans Hess, Todd Lynes, Melissa o'Dell, Jennifer Rayne, Verity Ross-Smith and Helen Shaw. I also want to thank Veronika Broscheid, David Hutchinson, Erica Mitchell and Chris Richardson who, along with a number of the musicians mentioned above, helped out rather crucially with the final stages of mastering by giving me feedback on my progress in the lead-up to the release. I probably would've finished the album sometime around 2013 had it not been for the final push, so it's hugely appreciated.
Look at me, all full o' seasonal cheer.

"No more singing a cappella..."

I'm really pleased to say that recently I had the privilege of being involved in a very nifty mass collaboration for Plymptoons. As I'm a huge Bill Plympton fan you can appreciate that this was something of a dream opportunity and a great excuse to familiarise myself with lots of incredibly talented animators.The project is "Guard Dog Global Jam", a multi-animator shot-by-shot re-imagining of one of Plympton's best shorts, the Oscar-nominated "Guard Dog". Of the chosen applicants, each animator was assigned a shot to reproduce. Mine was a quick cutaway of a mouth gearing up to sneeze.

Concept still

As it was only two seconds I decided to do it on ones (24 frames-per-second as opposed to 12, which is what I usually stick with). The fluidity of movement is really appealing, almost to the point where I'm considering having my next film be an entirely on-ones affair. Composition-wise, the shot combines full animation (the lips) with tweened animation (the teeth), the throat being the background. Here's a quick vid of the various stages, beginning with the original shot as animated by Plympton, then the line test, coloured mouth animation, teeth animation and finally the fully composited shot:

I was also able to jump on board Mike Schneider's incredibly ambitious flicker-frame concept in which a different illustrator tackles each individual frame of his allocated shot.Mine simply resorted to the fabric-texture-with-relief-shadow look I've been pulling out a lot lately, most notably with the Channel 4 project last spring. It's kind of practice for the ever-growing Struwwelpeter music video I'm still working on. Here are some other, more visually adventurous takes on it by some of the other illustrators:

From top-left: Grant Fuhst, Sameul Guin, Steven Archer & Christopher Panzner

The choking mouth of the first shot is coincidentally apt when considering my ongoing graphic novel project "Throat", the next progress update for which I'll save another entry, however for similarities sake I thought I'd throw up the finalised cover design:
The main artwork has been posted before, but the added bandage/subtitle came from smearing an Ace bandage with hot chocolate mix, blending/warping/blurring the typography to match it and then tweaking the colour to make it look like blood (trust me, it's a far more distressing visual when it's smeared brown). Hopefully it represents the story well, sort of a mix of goofy and grim.

Back to "Guard Dog", I'll leave you with an animatic (consisting of concepts and the odd finished shot) that was recently uploaded to give a preview of the wide range of styles used:

The Mancunian Candidate

It recently occurred to me that any expectation of "The Naughty List" continuing to do well after the holiday season might be on a par with that old Simpsons episode where Homer buys stock in pumpkins at the beginning of October, expecting it to peak in January. But I'll enjoy it while it lasts. D'oh.On that note, said film will be screened this December at Kino Shorts, an offshoot of the Manchester International Film Festival aka Kinofilm. The event is being held at Greenroom on the 8th, give it a look-see if you're in the area.Another Kinofilm event Toast: Live will be including "House Guest" later this month on the 28th as part of the Animated Shorts screening beginning at 4pm. It takes place at the Antwerp Mansion and seems like a pretty neat day out if you're of artsy ilk, definitely worth checking out. Thanks Mancs! Hope that isn't a slur of some kind...
You can also get tickets to the two Bang! screenings on the same day at the links below:
Bangimation - 6pm
Main Event - 8:30pm
Hell, Nottingham's not that far away from Manchester, right? You can go to both. It'll be a grand day out.
Yep, I got nothing. Uh...not sure how to end this one so I'm just gonna bail-out in a panic.

The Not-So-Fine Print

I recently tweaked some issues with last summer's book release "Brain Spillage". Mainly just to fix the layout and alignment on some pages, but I also took the opportunity to create a downloadable preview sampler to give the world a taste before they commit (not that they'd ever regret purchasing such a marvellous tome, sight unseen).

My bibliography to date, minus a couple of pending reissues.

These samplers are something I've done with all my books, though I don't think I've brought them up on this blog before, except for last xmas when I announced the reissue of "That Isn't Funny, You Stupid Child". So, if you're in a literary mood have a glimpse at:
"The Best of 'Mitchells In England' Volume 1: 1994-1995"
"That Isn't Funny, You Stupid Child"
"House Guest: The Graphic Novel"
"Brain Spillage: Excerpts from the Sketchbooks of Ben Mitchell" Changing the subject, I've been informed that "The Naughty List" will get an additional screening at Bang! on on the 28th, as part of the Bangimation segment. Double your festive pleasure, although hopefully it won't annoy people who go to the main event afterward and have to watch it twice. I was asked to record an intro for the festival which I tried to make succinct and of course ended up a stutterin', mutterin', ramblin' fool. I've given them carte blanche to edit it at will but here's the seemingly unending monologue I sent over:

Of course the virtue of the vid is my SPECTACULAR MOUSTACHE. It is quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever been responsible for, including my illegitimate daughter (oops...said too much). If you'd like to nurture its growth into a 'tache of resplendent beauty, don't forget there's still time to donate to Movember!

Xmas in Movember

More good news! It just spills out of me these days.Another UK festival inclusion for "The Naughty List" will be at Nottingham's Bang! Short Film Festival later on in the month. Bang! was the first festival to accept "House Guest" two years back so I have a lot of fondness for it and am really grateful to be involved again this year! It will be shown as part of the main screening on Sunday 28th, starting 8:30pm.Don't forget, the US debut of the film will be at the Red Stick International Animation Festival which goes from Wednesday 10th to Saturday 13th. It looks like a really exciting festival overall so if you can conceivably make your way to Louisiana by then I'd highly recommend it.Meanwhile I am seriously putting the 'Mo' in Movember as my decision has been made: I'm going full handlebar. Don't all rush me at once, gals...If I raise over £200 I'll actually buy wax and curl it at the ends. So make sure to donate!

'Maikos, Mallets & Mo's...

Some early seasonal cheer to go with the premature decorations and mince pies already on sale, plus I suspect that the rest of the world is a veritable cauldron of misery. "The Naughty List" won Best Animation at the Thermaikos Film Festival over the weekend. Hollyness and jollyness!
Of course, if you actively dislike me and the notion of anything I do being well-received bugs you, then I appreciate that might not be the cheeriest news. But then, why would you be reading this? That's just creepy and stalkerish, dude. Knock it off.
Anyway, hugs and kisses to the Thermaikos fellas and everyone who attended and showed some love. I shall be gorging on μεζές in celebration!With bizarrely fortuitous timing I learned via Twitter that the film has also been included as part of the Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival, a comparatively local event showcasing digital work (animation, filmmaking, photography and so on) by South Westerners like my doughy self. This is fabtastulous and it means the film will be viewable in its entirety during the course of the festival, so pass it around while you can. My only concern is that, in justifying why it fit the festival criteria, this is what I wrote:
While the film is primarily presented as a comedic, narrative piece, its main theme is the subversion of a known cultural icon, reconfiguring our former notions of it and presenting it in a setting analogous to the stresses and influences of contemporary culture. This redefines and expands its audience and appeal, working hopefully on a visual level for a young audience and a satirical level for an adult audience. The film's simple premise aims to bring a new relevance and familiarity to a long-established holiday institution.
Now, while that's all true, it was late when I worded it and my brain was in pretension overdrive. I completely understand any impulse you might feel to want to punch the smug face of whoever would write such self-aggrandising drivel. Even I want to backhand him, and he's me. Hopefully, juxtaposed against the film itself, people will see some humour in it.
All told it's great exposure, so cheers again, pixelly-sheep-thing! Check it out here.On a closing note, I have made the supreme sacrifice and shaved off my facial hair, which I desperately need to maintain the illusion that my head isn't shaped like an overcooked gnocchi dumpling. This is in preparation for a month of moustache growth, as I'm taking part in this year's Movember to spread awareness for men's health issues. Predominantly prostate cancer, a pernicious fellow that's hit my own family and is probably waiting in the wings for me down the line. If you have the inclination please donate, even if it's just a couple of quid it'll help. Plus you'll be rewarded with the knowledge that for the next month I'll look like a right tit.Well, y'know, more so.