Stoke Your Fires

We've just had a visit from Stoke Your Fires Animation Festival Who pitched their event at the end of Feb beginning of March next year. They also spoke about the possibilities of getting some Graphic Illustrators in to perform some workshops. Hopefully I wanted these to be based on drawing skills and possibly visualising the narrative. The poster above is a new one and shows the new hand in is 24th December now for short animated films, but there is also an option of entering the 48 hour film competition which I think would be excellent for animators to help them build up their speed while animating, it will stop them being to precious over the design and an over long and complicated storyline, Simple is smart!!

Paul Wells from Loughborourgh Animation Academy also did a talk at the event. I've already written a short bit on him at the Bristol Encounters and will probably expand on what he has said in future posts as I do believe in what he says about script writing and how, especially animation students don't actually understand the format that they are using. Anyway I'll leave that for the future

To get us back on track of cartoon and comics and a possible area that students over look as an area where they may actually break into the industry is story boarding. Above Curtis Jobling one of the lead storyboard artist for Bob the Builder scribbles a character down at last years Stoke Your Fire Event.

Last year saw an increase in Stop Motion Films being plugged as Coarline and the Fantastic Mr Fox were released. Above one of the lead model makers from Coraline. Below are 2 legends of British Animation Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, to show my age again, they brought us Chorlton and the Wheelies and Dangermouse to name a few.

Finally the Event will take place in the Hanley Museum and also the "Air space" Art gallery. Last year Stop Motion Students puppets were exhibited at the event 

 

The Spanish Invasion

I'm also happy to say that mark Webster from the Arts and Culture part of the university is introducing me to Nacho Casanova (http://nachocasanova.blogspot.com/) a Spanish illustrator  along with Nacho is Rosa Martí (http://www.edicionesglenat.es/) and Peri (published novelist and writer of children’s books) and his partner all of whom I'm hoping can help out on the content of Cartoon & Comic Arts Award and also build some international ties with!! So the new award is going from strength to strength and hopefully will soon have some international recognition as well.

The scribbles of a mad man

While being away for the last couple of weeks I've taken my sketch pad with me and I've been frantically drawing away and I thought I'd post some of the stuff up on line and write the ideas behind the concepts.

When I popped down Forbidden Planet in Bristol I was surprised to see Wacky Racers and I ended up thinking to myself, "Now there is an Animation due to a make over, after all they made a live action Flinstones!" OK maybe not the best choice as an example but I'm sure you get the idea!
Dick Dastardly was the main protagonist and he reminded me a lot of Graham Hill or Leslie Philips in appearance at least! I also thought about his car and thought that must be due an update as well!

Another idea basically lifted from Jonah Hex, I brought the Blue Ray disc to watch, while it wasn't a half bad film it did lack a little punch and the main characters flaws weren't really given the air time they needed. The main character is a mercenary, a hired killer not a nice bloke who basically confronts death and realises that he's heading for a nasty place when he dies. He tries to change his life, but he is what he is, a murderer and hired killer. The film doesn't really pick up that these are the skills that God has given him and there is more than one way to be redeemed, by using these skills for good.... as good as killing gets! Anyway, rant over, but in one scene he gets crucified and what really struck me was the look of the human figure hanging there, how do you draw weight in a character, I know a bit morbid and yes my feet have fallen off the bottom of the page!

I was recently on line seeing what Mark Millar of Kick Ass fame was doing, and he's running a new comic called "Clint" (Yes as in Eastwood!) But one of the things he's offering is for everyday folks to have a 4 page spread included in the Mag! The theme this week was based loosely on "The Twilight Zone" (This is where I start to feel old) as I remember these. There were one off stories not interconnected in anyway where something paranormal would happen! I was watching "Primeval" where all these dinosaurs come in from these parallel universes, and there was an hint that this may have happened a hundred times through out mankind's existence and this is what things like the Loch Ness Monster are and why we can't find them, same with the Yeti and Big Foot!

This is a quick comic strip I knocked up, I had a new pen that draws excellent lines and you can quickly colour in big areas in pure black. I'll write a bit more about that characters in time as I've got an urge to go and drink beer!

Interest in the New Cartoon & Comic Arts Award

I've just come back from London where we went to pitch and recruit people for the Cartoon & Comic Arts at Staffs University. I'm happy to say that after a slow start there were actually people there who had done a bit of research and found the award and asked some interesting questions about the award! I'm off to Manchester Monday 29th November - Tuesday 30th November for the UCAS fair there! This is the main recruiting area for the university so I'm hoping the award will take off there, though I need to get a bit more of a presence on the internet and website!
I'd just like to write a few notes down that I took about script writing that applies to both Animation and Comics, as these 2 forms of media do share a common form. Paul Wells delivered an excellent lecture that though brief was very insightful. 
The main problem that scriptwriters seem to forget is the fact that there are writing for a medium that has some many possibilities, so why animated a man walking into a room and talking when there are some many other possibilities. Our art form allows us to travel in time! We can control how fast things happen! We create incredible and impossible characters (though they need to be rooted in reality so we can relate to them!) Symbols can represent the invisible, think of a wind or a force field. An arrow on a map can represent a marching army.  Our art form allows us to penetrate the impossible, to see the internal workings of the human body or view the smallest microscopic element or the largest and most incredible construction ever. Some time people forget these basic principles and fall into a indifferent story. So bare this in mind when designing characters in future and what they do!
 

John Charles Ill

I've been informed today that John Charles will not be able to come in to the university this Friday due to illness. I can only hope he has a speedy recovery and wish him all the best. Hopefully we will arrange this for next semester.
Get Well Soon

Andy Serkis talk

Here I am blogging live from the andy serkis blog. Peter Lord is in the building along with a few members from the Aardman CGI department.

I had a great time in Bristol and it was great to catch up and talk to some old friends about what they are doing.
Above is a picture Peter Lord drew for me while we were propping up a Sailor Jacks Rum Bar. The one thing I always remembered about the Bristol event is how much alcohol flows freely and I mean freely. The first time I met Peter he had just finished shooting Chicken Run and he was planning his next feature film that was the Hare and the Tortoise. Unfortunatley this never happened and Flushed Away was made in the USA. Anyway this is one of the characters from Aardmans new film Pirates to be realesed sometime next year. Quiet a few ex students are working on it so fingers crossed for it being a success.

While in Bristol I caught up with Jon Lendrum from Aardman modelling department and here I am with some of the goods. Recently Dave Sproxton from Aardman came and did a talk on the making of the Ware Rabbit. I'd actually saw he do a similar talk at the IBC Conferance in Amsterdam a few years earlier when there was a buzz about it's realease! Jon is above with my Collegue Laura Weston.

I also attended the Andy Serkis talk on Motion Capture, Sorry, Performance Capture! I managed to get a talk with Andy and asked him if there was ever a conversation during the filming of Kong where they thought about putting a Gorilla into a motion capture suit.
"Know Peter (Jackson) I'd be surprised if there wasn't! After all you put dogs in motion capture suits! But I don't think you would have gotten the performance with the emotional archs with a real Gorilla!"

Andy has set up his own motion capture studio to help games companies to employ actors who can use motion capture.

Bristol the saga so far

just to bring you up to speed, we arrived in bristol with out much to report, though I few people got side lined because of ticket problems... We all got here in one piece. Result! Unfortunately yha didn't have list of staff and we were initially put in with students. After much disagrements between staff n students the problem was resolved and we headed off to our first function and first party. Meet up once more with Peter Lord straight from the set of Aardman feature film Pirate. I need post up some of his artwork once I'm back in the office. Met with jamie. Typing this from iPod hence the spelling mistakes.

Leaving for Bristol

As we speak I'm just getting ready to head of to Bristol in teh pouring rain. I'm Armed with my trusty pencil case and a new A5 Sketch pad and a rolled up copy of SFX for the train journey. Already we've been networking and been invited to several after festival drinks....sorry networking dos! I'm going try and keep this blog up to date while at the festival to see if it is possible to blog on the go, so wish me luck. Hopefully I'll post something when we get there!