The Last Coiner

I've had the pleasure to be involved with what is promising to be an incredibly exciting project - The Last Coiner. Peter Kershaws production company, Duchy Parade Films are developing a graphic novel inspired by a true story of coiners, counterfeiters of gold and silver coins, that took place in Yorkshire in the late 1700's.

What makes The Last Coiner particularly exciting is not just the great story, but the exciting way it's being made availble. There's a ground breaking MySpace site highlighting the making of the film with beutiful costume designs by Charlotte Aspin. There's also an evolving website which promises an interesting way to see the evolving art of storytelling in action.

I spent a couple of days acting alongside some wonderfully accomplished actors in my first experience in film work. To create the look of a graphic novel, all sets are being drawn or created in 3D, with the acting against blue screen, which was an interesting challenge – although very similar to studio theatre which traditionally uses minimal to no scenery, which I’m much more familiar with. I play John the Informant, so I'll be keeping in character over the coming months informing you of developments on this blog!

Development of the Last Coiner screenplay has now attracted support from the UK Film Council through Screen Yorkshire and a production ready script is expected by the end of 2006. Be sure to check out the website and this short film with an interview from yours truly.

Camping

I finally got the chance to enjoy the amazing heat wave by going camping for the weekend with some friends in Scarborough. I have a ridiculously romantic notion of camping which is probably entirely myth as I haven't been camping for years. Apart from the shock of trying to sleep through outrageously loud snoring and waking up to outrageously loud bird-song, we enjoyed it so much we are making plans tocamp some more later in the summer. I may just have to get ear plugs.

Susan is a graphic designer and drew this quick sketch of me as a romantic camper, which I thought was so funny I should share it with you. Susan and Graham are a wonderful couple who have the enviable position of being able to work and live together. They just returned from their honeymoon in Italy.

Animating the Zidane way

Well, I was working at St Mary’s college last week with artists from Creative Partnerships on a scheme funded by Arts Council England. I was mainly teaching year 10 pupil’s animation for their websites. There are lots of good methods to introduce animation principles, but I couldn’t resist using the Zinedine Zidane head butt as an illustration. In fact it’s amazing when you study the motion, how many principles it shows - Newton’s laws of motion, anticipation, action and reaction, weight – all of that. It always amazes me how well students apply these principles when they are taught well. We even got a couple of Zidane animations!

What a week!

Hi. This is a flying post, as it's all so incredibly busy at the moment with so much great stuff going on. On Tuesday I started my first job with Creative Partnerships at St Mary school in Hull, taking a cartoon illustration class for the students web sites. I'm just about to get the train up to Hull to spend a week with them doing storyboarding and animation. Can't wait!On Thursday I was back at Bricknell School doing voice recording for "The very Hungry Caterpillar". The girl who recorded the French track was just five! I've got so many nice comments from people about how the Hungry Caterpillar is shaping up and I’m looking forward to delivering it tomorrow.

Saturday was an awesome day. I had my own tent at the Northalerton Youth Festival, running a flipbook workshop. We had everyone from children to adults come along and try their hand at animation. As well as everyone being able to take their flipbooks away, we managed to film most of them and build it up into a little film. The festival catered for 4000 young people and had everything from live bands, painting, music and film tents, to skateboarding, rock-climbing etc. It must be the summer! Brilliant to be part of. Big respect to CYC for organising it all. Hopefully, I'll get the chance to do some more good work with them before long.

The very bad blogger

OK, I don't want to make excuses, but I have been very busy this month with lots of projects that I really couldn't talk about until now.

Anyhow, I've just got back from Hull last night after spending a fantastic week working with the BBC and Bicknell Primary School helping year 4 pupils animate Eric Carle's wonderful book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", and record dialogue tracks in several languages.

It's been wonderful working with BBC learnXpress over the last year and in many ways this project feels like the result of a growing realization of how successfully we can use animation as a fun aid to learning. Being able to use such a classic piece of modern children’s literature has been, of course, amazing. We screened the first few language versions to the children yesterday and I hope to be able to give more good news and links to the creation of this project very soon, so stay tuned for developments! In the meantime, here's the official link to Eric Carle's web site, a legendy hero of mine and children everywhere.

Worlds End

I made this simple puppet for the short play Worlds End, written by Harrogate Theatres junior age writers for the Write On. I made an entire family of cacti and, best of all, actually got to be a puppeteer for a couple of them! The eyes, which bounce around, make all the difference!

Little Monsters

Expanding the "Little Monsters" franchise was a large part of my work at Splash and these sketches show the development process of a couple of the new children's books I worked on with my rough sketches on the left and the final illustrations by illustrator Joanne Byatt on the right. It was great fun developing these characters with the team we had on board.

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation

I've just come back from a London and managed to see the Pizar exhibition at the science museum. Wow! I spent two happy hours goggling at the most extraordinary animation exhibition I've ever seen in my life. The centre piece is a staggering state of the art zoetrope using strobe lighting to create the illusion of movement. It you possibly can get there, then go!

The Science museum are also hosting an animation competition to win a limited edition Toy Story image and have an absolutely superb animation tool to use on online. In fact it is one of the best pieces of software I've seen available for children!

You can have a go for free here!

If all that's not enough, then you can see interviews with Pixar production designer Ralph Eggleston here.
The exhibition is on open till the 10th June.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/Pixar/

Animate! Exhibition in Hull

Here's one for all you Yorkshire boys and girls. An animation exhibition in one of my favorite stomping grounds from the fine people at Animate! It's at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. I'll have to pop over the next time I get a few minutes.

Eclectic Collective

My friend from Bournemouth, Sam Jacobs of Stilton Studios is hosting a contempory art exhibition at Brighton Marina this coming weekend. I sadly can't make it personally, but it looks fantastic.

Book links available

I've now added links to animation books at the bottom of the page. I know a lot of students and young people access this site and I thought it would add to the richness of information in addition to the links pages already available. Every one of theses books is a classic and part of my personal collection.

Write On 06

Harrogate Theatre's festival celebrating new writing starts today. It cumulates on Saturday with Gone in 60 Seconds with Harrogate Theatre and Brooklyn College, New York hosting the world’s only international play festival. You can see me in 4Play, Worlds End and Lifescape!

Bill Peet

Here's a great site about legendary story artist, illustrator and children's author, Bill Peet.

RTS/Screen Yorkshire careers event

Animation censorship

Here's an absolutely fascinating article about censorship in golden-age Hollywood animation. I've giving this article from the letterbox and widescreen advocacy page a rant alert but it's well worth a read.

There are plenty of articles about "Tom and Jerry" and "Song of the South", but I never knew that the pastoral symphony in "Fantasia" was cropped and digitally manipulated to remove black centaurs in typically racist caricatures from the time. I understand why Disney feels the need to remove these for a family audience today, but as a piece of cinema history it is a shame it's not available to see in another version. However some of these clips are available. Click on the still to see a clip of the black centaur polishing the white centaurs hooves. I find it a disturbing scene but I'm not sure that means we should blot out the past. As the author says, if we do not learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it.

RAUL GARCIA

I've just discovered this website from French ex-Disney animator Raul Garcia. If you've had fun animating and are wondering how you to make it that bit better, this site has some good tips and tutorials from an animation master. It's also has art galleries featuring drawings and cel paintings from classic animation history.

It is a shame that some of the lessons, like the man getting up from the chair, suffer from some classic mistakes (like twinning) when Raul Garcia knows much better. Nevertheless, it's still a very good site. I've added the site to my links.

Louis Labeck

I managed to find some time over Easter to knuckle down and do some character design work for what's probably going to be my next short film about a mime artist. The inspiration came from a brilliant 1 minute theatre play by Jack Goodstein which I saw at the 'Write On' 05 writing festival between Harrogate Theatre and Brooklyn College, New York. I think I like the (top) design, but please do comment. After all, that's the joy of blogging, right!
The sketch above was one my fist drawings. I like the rhythm and flowing lines but I've tried to achieve a more cartoony sense of caricature, particularly in the face.
I like the head in this concept (left) but I decided that definite bones, instead of 1920's rubber-hose arms, would make for clear poses. I've also settled for more minimal clothing which I think emotes a more impressionistic design. And I wouldn't want to get bogged down in all that CGI cloth!

Much more on this film over the next few weeks and months.

Live Music at Harrogate Theatre

My friend Mark, of Pumpleton Sonic Landscaping fame, has sent me this message. His work has contributed to the variety and vibrancy of the arts at Harrogate Theatre and is well worth supporting, wherever you live.

Hey up everyone. As you may or may not know we've been stopped putting music nights on at Harrogate Theatre. Please show your support by signing this petition to get live music back in the Theatre's programminge, and please pass it on to as many people as possible. This is as much about supporting grassroots live music as it is about our specific cause.

It's a small world after all!

I've just got an email from an old friend from animation college at Bournemouth. Andy Grisdale, who now works as an animator at Blur Studios in LA, saw my blog and got in touch. Fantastic!

The last time I saw Andy was in London when I was working on "The Tigger Movie". It was the opening weekend of Star Wars Episode 1 and everyone was hoping it might be good. Tickets sold out in Leicester Square for the show, so I went to idle some time away, get an ice cream and sat under a tree in one of London's parks - and bumped into Andy and some other friends by complete chance! Weirder still, they just happened to have a spare ticket for the very Star Wars performance I wanted to see. Crazy! We had such great day it took another viewing of the film to decide it actually wasn't very good!

Andy has a fantastic website and blog with some brilliant short films. Well worth a look.

John Paul II remembered

I was listening to the news yesterday about the 1st year commemorating the death of Pope John Paul II.

I was in Lithuania last year when he died so and I've found these photographs.

It was extraordinary and really very moving to be in Lithuania at such an important moment for so many people in the country. It was at that moment that Lithuania stopped being merely a place of cultural interest and actually became something incredibly powerful and tangible. It's one thing to do the tourist thing but it's quite another be caught up and be part of a national experience. Some of the images I will never forget.