“Ch-Ch-Changes…”

I’ve just slept off this year’s Animated Encounters, our town’s local showcase for established talents, up-and-comers and, on occasion, lucky gobshites who get their films in purely by chance. While me falling firmly into the latter category of last year’s edition saw me making a pest of myself akin to a mild dust irritation, this time around my constant presence was that of an all-body skin rash, froghopping from screening to screening to event to workshop to screening to masterclass to restrospective to scree– okay, you get it. This was down to my first outing as an ‘official’ member of the press. OooOOOoooh!

Yep. Officially a scumbag.

You can read my day-by-day coverage of the festival over at Skwigly, with a podcast special in the same vein as our Annecy episode to come next week. Continuing our trend of sheer good fortune I was able to land a particularly awesome, high-profile guest, while simultaneously my co-host Steve managed to nab himself an equally terrific get for the episode that’ll come after. All told, we’re finding ourselves on a bit of a roll and the whole Skwigly operation is gradually morphing into a significantly bigger deal. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that Steve will be taking over the run of the ship very shortly, with myself contributing in a more expanded capacity than before.
Contrary to what I’ve recently been informed is a widely-head presumption, I’m not the guy behind Skwigly, nor was I ever – in fact its first incarnation predates my own professional interest and involvement in animation by at least a year (well, sort of - it was back when I was still doing strictly mograph stuff). Since I got on board last year my role has always been limited to content producer – writing reviews, interviewing people I admire, producing the podcast and so on. In truth I was never fully aware of what the grand plan of its owner was. Sometimes I even felt that distancing myself from the ‘persona’ of the magazine would help avoid a conflict of interest. Ultimately though I’ve approached it as an opportunity it would've been foolish not to embrace, and I’m still amazed that in such a short space of time I’ve been able to talk to quite an in-depth degree with so many amazing talents and even some industry heroes.
At the end of the day, either the direction or overall scope of Skwigly has proved irreconcilable with its creator’s full plate of other work and so he’ll be stepping aside to let Steve and I do with it what we will. I don’t see this leading to any changes, aside from amping up its consistency and, knock wood, broadening its appeal beyond an audience who just happen to have taste that matches mine exactly. Whatever happens, we wish Mr. Skwigly the Firste a fond ta-ra and we hope to do justice to the venture he began.
¡Viva la Revolución!
ANYway, back to Encounters. I had myself a great time thanks largely to Jude Lister, Kieran Argo, Fraser MacLean, Paul Bush, David Sproxton, Jane Davies and Paul Hill who all made the effort to help out with my coverage, not to mention all the lovely friends old and new who kept me company throughout the week. You can read my daily reports via the links below:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• The Award-Winners

Of course the main point of these festivals is the short films that stand out and make me feel all a-tingly and gooey with inspirationeyness, so here's a few trailers for some personal faves:

HEAD OVER HEELS - Trailer from Timothy Reckart on Vimeo.

Don Hertzfeldt's IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

1-KALi, the little Vampire -Trailer from Regina Pessoa on Vimeo.

"A Different Perspective" Trailer from Chris O'Hara on Vimeo.

THE PUB - Trailer from Joseph Pierce on Vimeo.

Oh Willy... trailer from Emma de Swaef on Vimeo.

Feral trailer from Daniel Sousa on Vimeo.

I'M FINE THANKS - trailer from eamonn o neill on Vimeo.

Also some of them are online in full already:

The Goat Herder and his Lots and Lots and Lots of Goats from Will Rose on Vimeo.

Gotye - Easy Way Out - official film clip from Gotye on Vimeo.

Phone Home from Lupus Films on Vimeo.

Bendito Machine IV - Fuel the Machines from Zumbakamera on Vimeo.

'Casting Off Again

It’s podcast time again, though this edition has been somewhat delayed for a number of vague and slightly frustrating reasons. The overall Skwigly operation has had an overhaul on the cards that will benefit all involved, including its audience, though progress on this has been halted for some reason or other. At the end of the day it’s stuff I’m simply not in the loop about so until I know what’s up I can’t really elucidate further. But I’m confident things will get pretty exciting sometime in October at the latest.
Until then give this latest episode a listen and, if you so desire, download it for keepsies! There’s the usual dollops of cartoon geekery such as 90s cartoon nostalgia and Wacom Cintiq love, but as ever the real highlights are the fine folks Steve and myself get to interview. These include Neil Boyle, protégé of Richard Williams and director of the fantastic and nearly 100% traditionally animated film “The Last Belle”, along with Richard Randolph of Komixx, producer of the new kids’ show “Toby’s Traveling Circus” who has some very valuable insight into that side of the looking glass for any aspiring producers out there (who I consider myself to be amongst). Also there’s part two of my interview with John K, which I’m still over the moon about and expect I will be for a good long while to come. Now that his Kickstarter campaign has come to a successful close, this portion of our chat covers several other means of his pre-“Cans Without Labels” career, including a heartwarming tale of Bob Clampett’s…hormones. You can listen to the whole thing below or subscribe on this newfangled iTunes thingy the kids are all talking about.
Skwigly Podcast 05 (19/09/2012) - John Kricfalusi, Neil Boyle & Richard Randolph by Skwigly Animation Podcast
On a final note, I’ll be the beardy face of Skwigly at this year’s Animated Encounters, which is fairly convenient as the Arnolfini where it’s held is pretty close by. I’m in charge of pretty much all the festival coverage for the magazine so if you see me in the crows all on my lonesome then come say hi. Or just point and laugh derisively, as well you should.

Cover your damn mouth...

More line tests for the “Throat” promo. I’m not sure if calling them ‘pencil tests’ would really apply as the lines will still be penciled in the final animation. In fact to match up with the style of the book, the line quality is actually being coarsened and made scratchier rather than being cleaned-up, so if anything these tests are smoother than how the animation will eventually look when it’s done.

This one was really fun to do, especially the extreme poses:

Once it was all timed-out it made for some pretty interesting in-betweens.

In my head this shot would’ve been one sweeping hand motion, picking up the glass along the way to throw the contents in her face. This is how the panel looks in the book, as you can see there's not much to go on:

In reality to do that in one single move would be a borderline physical impossibility, so I acted out a few ways to go about it and came up with this fairly obvious breakdown:

This last one’s pretty basic, although the motion of the hands pulling up the sheets is a little too mechanical so I’ll probably add in a couple frames to the final animation to give it more of a natural settle.

That’s all for this post, so I’m going to stop writing. That’s how I roll. Though by all means, feel free to watch these all night if you like. Nobody judges here.

Return of the Magical Moving GIFs

It’s that fabulous time again: Line test season! That wonderful stage of an animated project (the animated "Throat" promo in this case) where the awful things I draw obtain the glorious power of movement (and with it, I can only assume, hopes and dreams). I’m a little miffed to note that Sitesled, the site that had hosted all my prior line test GIFs, decided to disappear without a trace taking all my files with it.
Those wonderful, glorious bastards.
While I’m sure they’re backed up somewhere it’s gonna be a pisser locating them, re-uploading them and fixing the embed links in all the prior blog posts. Which doesn’t mean anything as fair as these new ones go, I just like to complain because I’m a big complaining complaineypants.
On with the pixelly-pencilly stuff:

There’s something vaguely eerie about watching these characters trapped in their limbos, doomed to constantly repeat the same handful of seconds over and over until the end of time. By ‘eerie’ I really mean ‘gratifying and immeasurably pleasurable’; I’m so horribly empty inside.

Something new for you readers out there...

While writing for Skwigly has, on my part, taken a bit of a backseat to the podcast work, most of the interviews we do warrant separate write-ups or editorial pieces. Ideally I’d like to get at least one done a month but it’s proving somewhat tricky, available-time-wise. With the deadline for the “Cans Without Labels” funding goal looming, however, I’ve fast-tracked a piece on John K which went up this morning:

A Conversation With John Kricfalusi

He has lots of great stuff to discuss, some of which wasn’t included in the podcast last week, so I’d heartily advise any Kricfalusi (or general animation) enthusiasts to check it out. There’s also some rare, unbroadcast “Ren & Stimpy” animatic footage up there which he very graciously provided. As a certain metabolically-challenged feline once exclaimed, “I’m so happy I can hardly contain myself!”

I also want to take the opportunity to thank all my friends, Twitter comrades and complete strangers who have shown such support for what Dave, Steve, myself and the expanding pool of talented Skwigly contributors have been working so hard on. It continues to go from strength to strength and the sense of encouragement we’re getting has really gone a long way to keep us enthusiastic about persevering. So thank you all, and here’s to the growing community of cartooney fools such as we are!

Oh my...

Guess who's a happy fella today?

As manly as a case of Labatt's 50

Hi everyone, I hope you’re having as happy and joyous a day as I! I’m pleased to report that the latest Skwigly podcast is now up. To date each episode has been more satisfying than the one that came before, and after the awesomeness of Podcast #3 this one would have to be pretty special to top it. Fortunately, thanks to a very impressive guest roster, that seems to be exactly how it’s turned out! As Steve and my respective work schedules have been ricockulously busy all through July we didn’t get time to record much by way of our chattier segments, so this one’s fairly interview-oriented. Which ain’t no bad thing.
Firstly there’s Steve’s interview with Ant Blades of Bird Box Studio, who has been knocking out some fabulous short-form animated masterpieces that have proved to be huge online hits of late. These include “Sketchy Guard” and "Chop Chop", although my personal favourites are “I’ll Get the Ice-Creams” and especially “Dinner” (because it puts me in mind of the adorably stupid little dogs in my life).
Steve also talks to Jonti Picking of Weebl’s Stuff, something of a Flash animation tour de force who has been going strong for a decade and counting. Sort of like our nation’s Homestar Runner.
I myself have an interview with Robert Morgan, someone who I’d been itching to talk to for years as he’s one of the most visually inventive stop-motion animators out there. I saw a bunch of his films at a Watershed showcase a few months back, including his student piece “The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph”, which won me over instantly for A) sharing a title with a particularly obscure Mike Patton track and B) evoking a good-years-of-David-Lynch sense of unease I hadn’t felt since, well, the good years of David Lynch. It’s hard to explain why being made to feel uneasy is actually kind of desirable, I imagine it’s down to the majority of film and TV out there leaving me completely unaffected, so any emotional response grabs me pretty tightly by the short’n’ curlies. By which I of course mean my facial hair.
Morgan’s latest film “Bobby YEAH” is no exception, with an added layer of unexpected but very welcome absurdist humour. It was made pretty much entirely on his own, which is an impulse I have monumental respect for and, given it was nominated for a BAFTA this year, I also find it pretty inspirational.
Closing this month’s episode is my aforementioned John Kricfalusi interview, or rather some of it. With the Kickstarter deadline approaching I wanted to make sure to get the word out , so part one focuses on “Cans Without Labels” and the backstory of George Liquor, with some brilliant industry musing and “Ren & Stimpy” nostalgia thrown in. I’m still ecstatic that I was able to talk to the man and he brings a fantastic energy to the podcast. Part two will go into some of his other projects, including his work on “The Simpsons”, the ill-fated “Art of Spumco” coffee-table book and a rather heartwarming tale of Bob Clampett’s ‘hormones’. So until then, here’s Skwigly Podcast #4! Skwigly Podcast 04 (01/08/2012) - Ant Blades, Robert Morgan, Weebl & John Kricfalusi by Skwigly Animation Podcast
As always you can direct download or simply subscribe on iTunes!

JOY.

First, let’s get the self-appreciation horseshit out of the way: “The Naughty List” will be on TV again next week (12:15pm Wednesday, August 8^th) on Canal+ Xtra. I suspect the high degree of Catholicism in Spain may account for their showing of my Christmassy whimsy all the year round. I’m all for it.

Bully Backgrounds (Part 1)

Here's something for a merry Friday afternoon that you can all shove in your eyeholes should you so desire - the first batch of backgrounds for my fourth short "Bullies", a film which is defying logic and expectation by inexplicably coming together.
Ain't they purty? It's a bit of a departure from my prior background work as far as the level of detail goes, though the general approach to construction and design has stayed the same. I owe a big hearty back-slap of gratitude to the lovely Luca, who has been lending a hand here and there for no reason other than being spectacularly awesome. She's also been a massive help with my animated "Throat" promo, which should be online sometime in August, so get out the zester and keep those eyes peeled. In the nearer future I'm off to London to indulge an extended weekend of Faith No M'awesomeness, so steel yourself for some fanboy gushing over the next few posts.

French Connections

A little hotter on the heels than usual from the last podcast, Steve from Skwigly and I have put together an Annecy special, which focuses on said festival – a rather major one, which took place in June. Really all the material is down to Steve as I didn’t make it over there, I just put the podcast together and threw in some of my usual on-mic grumbling’n’mumbling. Our plan is to do more ‘special’ podcast editions that will be a separate stream from the normal episodes. This way we can focus more on specific themes, practitioners or events and play around with the structure a bit. As well as a bunch of general film discussion there are interviews with Matt O’Callaghan (director of the contemporary “Looney Tunes” theatrical shorts) John Kahrs and Kristina Reed (director and producer respectively of the highly anticipated new Disney short “Paperman”) as well as a rundown of the festival’s ‘unofficial’ component Annecy+, curated by Bill Plympton and Nancy Phelps who were awesome and gracious enough to include “The Naughty List” in last year’s edition. You can download the podcast directly or stream it below: Skwigly Podcast Special 01 - Annecy (02/07/2012) by Skwigly Animation Podcast