The Brunch Bunch

It's been a week since the Cardiff Animation Festival wrapped and when all's said and done it was an absolutely brilliant first edition, with some of the best overall energy and enthusiasm among the attendees that I've encountered doing the ol' festival rounds. It was a real honour to have been as involved as I was and I have nothing but gratitude and massive respect for the team who pulled it off so well.
For those of you who weren't able to make it, once you've scrubbed the stink of shame off you Laura-Beth has a great write-up on her personal highlights you can check out, while Steve and I will be going through ours in the next podcast due out this week.

In the meantime I was also able to get recordings from the Filmmaker Brunch sessions in which festival guests whose films were playing in competition were able to chat a bit about their work. These included:

• Phil Brookes – Composer, Enough
• Roos Mattaar – Animator, Sparks: Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)
• Myles McLeod – Marfa
• Oscar Barany – Thirsty
• Christina S. Nerland – Leave A Print
• Dotty Kultys – The Hunchback and the Swan
• Thomas White – Cretin
• Yoni Salmon – Niggun
• Ilenia Cotardo – Lemon and Elderflower
• Evgenia Golubeva – I Want to Live in the Zoo
• Sophie Dutton – Lost
• Jake Harvey – Lost
• Anna Eijsbouts – Hate For Sale
  
• Somnath Pal – Death of a Father

What a haul! You can listen to the three-part podcast minisode series I've produced from these below:

Another limp offering

The migration of my old tunes to Spotify and other various platforms continues this month with another EP, this time the 2016 Silverfish release Limp and Numb.
For those who missed the original release, this one's a mix of remastered songs from around 2007 with a couple of exclusive tracks thrown in. It's a mix of me being loud/daft and quiet/creepy, something to start off your week on a confusing note with. If nothing else it's nice and short!
Stream below or alternatively check it out on iTunes/Apple Music.

If they call you 'butt' over there it means they like you, I recently learned

It's Friday! We made it to the end of another week! Go us!
That means there's now a mere six days to go before Cardiff Animation Festival kicks off and I'm very excited to be heading over there alongside Skwigly brethren and animationey pals alike.
There's a packed schedule of amazing events from Thursday 19th through to Sunday 22nd and while it's worth taking the time to peruse the full programme here are a couple I'm involved with:
As part of the Industry Day on the 19th I'll be on the 2pm panel Getting To Market with Helen Brunsdon, Adam Bailey and Huw Walters where we'll be discussing "the fine art of promoting and selling your work, from TV ideas to short films, at markets around the world". You can pick up an Industry Day pass here if you've not done so already.

Kim Keukeleire

On Saturday 21st I'll be chairing the Q&A session Making Isle of Dogs at 8:45pm, which will directly follow a 6:30pm screening of the film itself. This will be a great opportunity to learn about the crafting of the exceptional new Wes Anderson film from artists Joshua Flynn (puppetmaker), Kim Keukeleire (lead animator) and Kerry Dyer (puppet repairs), so you won't want to miss it.
I'll also be speaking with some of the attending filmmakers in competition for the Animator's Brunch Q&A sessions that will take place on the 21st and 22nd at 10:30am. Not only will you be able to meet/grill these splendid folks but you'll get to do so with coffee and croissants to hand - plus both sessions are free to attend, so treat yisselfs!

Other festival highlights you'll want to check out include a festival-long exhibition and Friday night special presentation for Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires, the spectacular stop-mo feature I contributed some VFX bits to last summer, as well as a talk by all-around top bloke Grant "Hey Duggee" Orchard, a writing for animation panel, the official launch of Anim18, life drawing, a Bring Your Own Animation session (at which I may attempt a sneaky preview of my latest film Sunscapades), screenings and Q&As for recent features Early Man and The Breadwinner - not to mention a heap of parties and networking events you can get sauced at. Then there's the official selection itself, which as a member of the jury I can assuredly say is packed full of absolutely top-shelf work. Say hello* if you're there!
*Not an obligation. In fact an across-the-room-half-nod is already above and beyond.

Updateables

The fine folks at CRC Press are having themselves a sale so, should you be so inclined, you can pick up my book Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films at 20% off! Well that's surely better than a kick in the pants. In fact if you buy two or more CRC Press books you get 25% off, so go ahead and have yourselves a little browse. Here's one I recommend. And another. And another. And another.

Also, having previously mentioned that the first Bertram Fiddle game A Dreadly Business was coming to Nintendo Switch, I can cheerily confirm it's available now on the console's official store for a measly fivepoundce. Get fiddlin'!

Onward and Upward

Our latest podcast is a little more heavygoing than most, what with there being a certain big, creepy, Canadian elephant in the room. It's probably been hard to miss the aftermath of Ariane Lange, Katie Rice and Robyn Byrd's speaking out against John Kricfalusi, and while a fair few folks have been asking me about my thoughts on the matter, Ren and Stimpy enthusiast that I've been over the decades, I haven't had a whole lot to add to the discussion that doesn't merely echo the same mix of disappointment and sadness that so many others in the animation community are feeling. That being said, this podcast has grown over the years into a platform to spread awareness about key issues that we hope said community can rely on as well as being, as Steve puts it, "therapy for the both of us", so for those who are curious about where we stand it's pretty much all in there. Even more stuff has come out since the episode was recorded, so I have a feeling this saga is far from over.

Thank you @skwigly! This shouldn't be something women have to say, but... Thank you for believing us. https://t.co/hewjs9UrkT

— Robyn Byrd (@TopographicFish) April 5, 2018

To lighten the mood some we were able to include Steve's excellent recent chat with Simon Tofield, creator of the indie-animation-turned-merchandisable-behemoth Simon’s Cat, recorded during last month's tenth anniversary celebrations. We also give YouTube's ‘Copyright School’ a deserved smashing and go through some upcoming Cardiff Animation Festival highlights. As always you can direct download or stream below:

Easter Mundi

Another update from the Lendas Animadas camp - one of my episodes Como Surgiram as Estrelas will be featured as part of a special series of programmes taking place at the Rio Creative Conference this weekend. Put together with the lovely folks at Anima Mundi (where this episode screened in competition last year and was picked as one of the 10 best Brazilian films of that edition) the screening kicks off 11am on April 7th at the Cidade das Artes in Rio de Janeiro.

Multiplied Objects

In the third episode of Independent Animation, the companion podcast series to my book I meet David OReilly who, in the past decade, has amassed a significant fanbase through the international success of his independently-produced auteur animation projects.
While in the UK to present a retrospective and lecture at the London International Animation Festival, David and I found some time to discuss the atypical path of his career that, alongside commercial work for Spike Jonze, Adult Swim and Adventure Time, has seen him build an international following through his multi-award-winning independent projects RGB XYZ, Octocat Adventures, Please Say Something, The External World, 109645790437692847650 and, more recently, the abstract gaming experiences Mountain (2014) and Everything (2017).
In this interview David elaborates on the circumstances of his most career-defining projects as well as the nature of success, managing expectations and staying grounded while being true to one’s work and artistic direction.
Stream the episode below or direct download:

Kid Friendly

Happy news for Spring - I've been informed that Laura-Beth and I will once again have our work screened at the same festival, this time in Hungary for Cinemira - Budapest International Children's Film Festival which takes place April 6th-8th. Both Klementhro and Boris-Noris will be screening in the Ages 10+ Section II programme that takes place 12pm on Sunday 8th at the Akvárium Klub. If you fancy swinging by you can grab yourself tickets here.

Boris-Noris will be racking up some more screening dates in the coming weeks and months as it finds itself going on another tour! As part of La Boîte Carrée's touring programme of sort-of silent films Le Plein de Super the short will be screening in various towns and cities in France and Portugal from next month on. In the meantime the first screening of the 2018 season will take place at the School of Fine Arts in Nantes this Thursday, April 19th. I'll post more dates as they come but in the meantime check out the tour's official site for more info.

Old Chestnuts

Happy Monday all!
A few oldies that I worked on have recently resurfaced. Firstly the latest of my old discography to finally make its way to Spotify, iTunes et al is the 2010 EP Digital Stimulation.

This one originally came out in the run up to the LP The Book of Women that would be released at the end of the same year and features six exclusive alternate mixes/edits of songs from that album as well as its 2006 predecessor Agnosticaust (which will hopefully get itself a full reissue soon). Check 'er out:

On the animation side of things I saw that a collection of highlights from Jonti Picking (aka Weebl) and Sarah Darling's webseries Wobble Box went up over the weekend, with a couple of the segments I animated thrown in. So that's something to keep your company on your lunch break:

More good news is that Rumpus Animation's first step into the world of video game adventuring The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle - for which I provided the voices of That Guy Who Sounds Like Ben Mitchell and That Other Guy Who Sounds Like Ben Mitchell But A Bit Nasally among others - will be getting itself a Japanese release on the Nintendo Switch on March 29th, so fingers crossed for a wider release in the not-too-distant. You can learn more about this version here and there's a slightly more Nintendo-ey version of the trailer you can watch below:

Polarisation

Our podcast continues this week with a pair of fantastic special guests - speaking with Laura-Beth are director Paloma Baeza and producer Ser En Low who just won the National Film and Television School its fifth consecutive BAFTA win (not to mention picking up a McLaren and Annie Award among others) for Best Short Animation with their film Poles Apart. Give 'er a download or a listen below:
It's a brilliant, Wes Anderson-esque stop-motion film about the friendly/tense relationship between a polar bear and a grizzly that really stood out among last year's NFTS crop so it's great to see it continue to do so well.
These podcasts are always more fun to do when our blood is a little stirred up, so thanks to another disappointing Oscars year for helping us out on that front.

On another note, just a reminder that later on this week the British Animation Awards, will return to London tahn on the 15th. I was once again part of the jury although I won't be able to be in the city for the awards themselves, but it should be a fun one. Well, as fun as anything can be in my absence. Soldier on, my brave little soldiers.
If you haven't yet got tickets it's probably a little close to the wire at this point, but you might get a place on the waiting list if you shoot them an email via their official site.