One day I'm-a get me one o' them Tumblr things...

Here are some design bits'n'pieces for a recent project, "Fantasy Office Episode 2: Storage Problems", my first non-WobbleBox short for Channel Flip. This one had an insane turnaround time but it was good fun to knock out. I was given carte blanche in terms of style except to use clean lines and keep things basic. I didn't want it to be too much of a departure from episode 1 (which I wasn't involved in) but it's definitely different. Design-wise the characters are sort of in the "Bullies" style:

I also got to knock out some griffins and unicorns, the latter I aimed to make as nauseatingly cutesy as possible.

The personal highlight was one small shot I put some time aside to do some full animation on. Drawing upon my childhood fondness for the Games-era "Ren & Stimpy" years, the shot's of a warehouse worker getting his face torn off by a death bat.

It's amazing how simple Toon Boom makes the whole process. The lightbox and page rotation features make line tests a breeze. Ditto clean-up, between Toon Boom's intuitive controls and my gorgeous li'l Cintiq my line work is so much smoother than them bygone days of using actual pens for inking in.

The full short was written by Sarah Darling and went up today, if you fancy giving it a watch:
I quite like that the boss character talks a bit like Bane.

Riders on the Storm

Yesterday saw episode 4 of "Wobble Box", the Flip/HuHa animated sketch show I do some bits and pieces for go live. Here it is:

I did the animation for the final skit, "Discharge", which was a lot of fun to design. It's a little unfortunate that there wasn't a budget for some proper full animation as I would've loved to go proper Kricfalusian on it.

I'd planned to animate the 'money shot', so to speak, but was urged not to for whatever reason, possibly some YouTube content rule. Maybe by actually showing it it would've been overkill and taken some of the impact away from it, but here's what I'd had in mind:

The other segment I worked on was "23 Hour News", which was good timing as I've been watching a lot of "Powerpuff Girls" of late (as men do) so I was in the right headspace for some city-destroying monsters:

The highlight of this was getting to do the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Again, the budget was small but I came up with a pretty effective cheat, drawing on Eadweard Muybridge's photos of horses in motion:

Muybridge photography: The CliffsNotes of the animation world

Using these for reference I rigged up a rough horse drawing using the After Effects puppet tool. This works a little differently than boning in CG programs or other 2D applications, essentially placing joints on each still drawing of the horse's legs (which occupy their own layer). If placed correctly they can be moved and animated with some approximation to real life. This motion test shows what I came up with - you can tell there were some cartooney liberties taken but it has more or less the desired effect:

Then, using the rough sketch for reference I came to the really fun bit, coming up with detailed drawings of each demonic horse to match their respective horsemen. Then it's just a matter of applying the rigged animation to each design:

Fully composited with separate motion paths and timeline placement, it makes for a nice little payoff visual:

 Something tells me this won't win me much by way of appreciation from the Brony community.

Ben The Bully

I'm in what I sincerely hope will be the final stretch of the production of my fourth short "Bullies". Making this film has been a sporadic, on-again-off-again affair over the last couple years, chipping away at it between commissions, Skwigly taking off and "Throat" turning out to be more of a dominating force in my life than expected. But my sincere hope is for "Bullies" to be doing the rounds before the end of the year, as I've already started work on my fifth and sixth shorts and can only have so many plates spinning at any one time without losing my mind entirely.
So as it nears completion I'm putting together a series of webisodes on the making of the film. Episode 1 went up this week, documenting my spectacularly professional approach to voice directing. The gentleman being bullied is old paisan and bromance partner Chris Richardson, who plays Liam. Watch in actual awe below:

More to come.

Aural Favours

Two massive, simultaneous deadlines are kicking my sexy behind right now, so this one'll be brief. Just to say that April's Skwigly Podcast has gone up, with one day of the month left to spare.
Midst chat of Disney layoffs, LucasArts nostalgia and unexpected TV show cancellations Steve chats to Brian Cosgrove, one of the UK animation world's most important luminaries, as well as Kevin Schreck, director of "The Persistence of Vision", a documentary exploring Richard Williams and his doomed passion project "The Thief and The Cobbler".
Continuing in the vein of gifted youngsters chronicling troubled productions, I chat to Thad Komorowski, author of "Sick Little Monkeys" (the book I've championed previously, which tells the tumultuous story behind "The Ren & Stimpy Show").
We also have an update from Dan Greaves of Tandem on his Kickstarter success and a competition where you can win a copy of "The Art of Short Films", a fabulous collection of independent animated shorts artwork. Listen to the podcast for specifics on how to enter and get liking and sharing on our Skwigly Facebook page!

Toonstruck

It's another frightfully busy period o'time for me at the mo so here are a couple of quick updates. Firstly episode 3 of the Channel Flip/HuHa! series "Wobble Box" went up recently if you'd like to show it some love. I may put up some production materials for the bits I did later on down the line but in the meantime see if you can guess which ones they are.

In the physical world, there's another upcoming CineMe event in Bristol this coming Monday (the 22nd). Amongst the fine films being showcased are my patchy little shorts "Ground Running" and "The Naughty List". The screening will be at The Birdcage, one of my preferred new-ish local venues, so that's a nice plus. Come along, why doncha!

Rabbit Seasoning

Happy Easter, everyone!
As part of the spoils of my recently backing the wonderful Signe Baumane's Kickstarter campaign, to my delight I received two cels from her "Teat Beat of Sex" series yesterday. This one seemed appropriate for the season:

You can watch the animated segment this one is from on her Vimeo channel though she mentioned it may be taken down soon, so be quick. Alternatively I recommend you buy the DVD and get the whole batch.
I also got a lovely little animationey surprise from the brilliant Joanna Quinn the other day; While I don't think I can post it here I'm very appreciative. The women of animation are treating me very well this weekend. Which is nice as it's been a rough week and I needed the pick-me-up.
Chocolate Jesus time!

Ben Mitchell's Very Public Emotional Breakdown

It's new Skwigly podcast day, folks - that wunnerfull time o' the month where myself and Steve bring you some insight from the animation world's notable practitioners, sort of held together with our meandering wafflage in between. Everyone listen or risk societal shunning!

Insight-wise I got to talk to Richard Starzak, formerly Richard Goleszowski, known to most as Golly. He's currently the creative director at Aardman and has headed up "Rex The Runt", "Robbie The Reindeer" and presently "Shaun The Sheep", all of which - despite the title similarities - are separate endeavours. He also directed the "Creature Comforts" TV series, developed from the famous Nick Park short of the same name, as well as his own film "Ident" which is probably my favourite 'classic' Aardman short alongside Barry Purves's "Next".

Later on Steve chats to Daniel Greaves of Tandem Films, whose work includes the Oscar-winning "Manipulation", an early-90s take on the "Duck Amuck" character-vs-creator concept, as well as "Flatworld", "Little Things" and the in-progress "Mr. Plastimime".
Wafflage-wise, we discuss recent developments with the VFX debate, merrily gambol down memory lane and I rant psychotically about a recent nightmare commission. Hopefully we can get some listener stories of their own horrendous experiences dealing with clueless clients. It's good to vent.

Meanwhile, somewhere in my happy place, I've learned that HuHa! has been translated into German and French. Best I can tell only the German version of Wobble Box Episode 1 is up now, so treat yourself to the delights of "Assassinen Babies". It's like "Assassin Babies", just German-ier.

Freakin' windy out today, ain't it?

As I mentioned last month, the Frenchtastic folks over at the Roanne Animation Festival have informed me that my film "The Naughty List" will be part of their pre-festival 'Best Of' screenings, having been part of last year's line-up. I just had a look on their website and it seems like said screenings will take place this week at the Jacques Perrin à Tarare cinema on the 13th and the Le Méliès à Saint-Etienne cinema on the 14th, both at 9pm. Très bon, innit?
This year's official selection includes many personal favourites such as Michaela Pavlátová, PES, Francesca Adams, Tim Reckart, Bill Plympton and Rumpus, so if you're one of the 7% of people reading this from France I'd say you'd be a goshdarned fool to not check it out. Pardon my harsh language, there.

I just finished reading/reviewing a superb book on the legendarily troubled production of "Ren & Stimpy", inarguably one of my earliest and strongest influences. Unlike many, I retained a sincere affection for the post-Spumco era of the show and was hoping this book would give the Games era and its crew of talents like Bob Camp, Bill Wray, Chris Reccardi and Lynne Naylor (amongst many others) a fair shake. It does, in spades and with a lot of insightful input from all sides. You can read my full review of "Sick Little Monkeys" by Thad Komorowski over at Skwigly.
There's a new episode of "Wobble Box" over on HuHa!, for which I put together the Dr. Jekyll skit animation (about 2'15" in). The turnaround and budget don't allow for much full animation though I had some fun with the transformation sequence:

As with "Assassin Babies", this is the perfect type of fun, daft project I relish working on, especially as it came on the heels of a particularly wretched and staggeringly unprofessional debacle of a commission which will never be spoken of on here. But hey, getting the odd duff gig is part and parcel of being a freelancer. At the end of the day it makes you appreciate the jobs that go well all the more.

Body Talk

My aging - yet vexingly alluring - body has been ravaged by a series of ailments, each more pathetic and old-man-like than the last. Right now I've been embarrassingly felled by some kind of wrenched abdominal muscle. Thankfully it's not a hernia, as it turns out I'm just a little pissy-sissy fairy-mary girlie-girl (my GP's exact terminology there). The upside is the revelation that I actually possess abdominal muscles - I guess they've just been well hidden all these years. In short, I'm staying pretty immobile and popping Solpadol like Skittles. Before my insides collapsed completely I was able to get in a life drawing session on Monday, the first in a while. I haven't had as many opportunities to make it over there much over that past few months but here are a few stabs at it since last October.

Pregnant gal is, shall we say, 'augmented' in the chest region which carries with it the slight danger of the breasts coming off unnaturally spherical when drawn. I found one I hadn't put up before of the same model pre-pregnancy which sort of shows what I mean a little clearer:

Blame saline, not adolescent misogyny

Here are the results of Monday's most recent session, three angles of the same pose:

I figured I'd be pretty rusty but these turned out better than I thought. This particular model, though a little fidgety, is one we've had a lot which may have helped.

The importance of life drawing is amongst the many things discussed with Bill Plympton in the second part of our interview which is now online. Following on from January's Skwigly Podcast where we mainly chatted about his latest film "Cheatin'", this time around we go into the wealth of additional projects he's taken on in the last couple years, including segments for "The Simpsons", new short films and his restoration of the Winsor McCay short "The Flying House". It's pretty inspirational listening for those with an indie-filmmaking bent, so if you fit into that category I'd recommend you bung it on in the background.

"A Liar's Autobiography" - Not a Monty Python film, though you'd be forgiven for thinking so based on this cover...

We also take a look at a particularly interesting UK contribution to the indie features scene, the multi-studio collaboration "A Liar's Autobiography". Essentially a posthumous, quasi-fictional biopic of Monty Python's Graham Chapman, it came together last year with the involvement of fourteen animation studios, each working on separate segments that were edited into a single feature. While the end result is somewhat patchy it has some solid gags and inspirational visual ideas throughout. I was able to get a few friends who worked on it together to chat about the experience for the podcast - Jane Davies (director of the "Looshkin" short I did the music for) and Leah-Ellen Heming of A For Animation as well as Matt Walker and George Sander-Jackson of Arthur Cox. Continuing the prevailing theme of recent Skwigly coverage, their segments predominantly deal rather joyously with cartoon sex, penis puppets and all. Here for your delectation is a snippet of A For Animation's bit:

Assuming that's whetted your appetite (amongst anything else of yours that requires whetting) you can download the podcast now, subscribe on iTunes or stream it below:

Success Stories

Quick catchup post as I find that if I don't use the small slivers of time that present themselves to get stuff up on here I tend to just not bother - and none of you deserve that level of deprivation.
Firstly a massive congrats to Bill Plympton and Signe Baumane who we chatted to in the last podcast, both of whom were successful in their fundraising campaigns and knock wood will have their features out in the coming months. I'm certain they both would've made it without Skwigly's coverage as they're both hugely respected and well-known, but from the feedback we've gotten recently I get the impression we made a little bit of a difference which is still a nice feeling.

Tim Reckart, director of "Head Over Heels"

On the subject of Skwigly, back in December I was able to chat to a very talented NFTS graduate Tim Reckart, whose film "Head Over Heels" is a brilliant and deservedly lauded piece of stop-motion ingenuity. Since our conversation it's received an Annie award and Oscar nomination which is obviously huge. I'm not sure if we'll be able to incorporate the interview in a future podcast (though that would be ideal) as the Skype line was a little dodgy for some reason, but the written piece went up this week. I'd really recommend it as a read for his insight into the conception and process of the film. Also you can watch the whole film for a short period of time, so check that out while you can.

A Conversation With Tim Reckart

Lastly, I'm very happy to say that my short film "The Naughty List" will be getting another screening in France next month at Ciné-Court Animé in Roanne. It was part of their competition screenings during last year's edition and will be included this year in their 'Best Of' section which is mighty sweet of them. Not sure of the time/date specifics yet but as ever I'll post them when I get them.
Oh look, the sun just came out in reflection of my good mood. Pardon me while I go out and frolic!