So full of twilight, dreams that glitter

I went to Blackpool a couple of weeks ago to see our new film That Night up in the Illuminations.

Here I am, with poet and judge Polly Atkin, local Councillor Christine Wright, and winning poet Sarah Leavesley who wrote the very beautiful That Night. It was a bit cold outside by the sea during the screening, you can probably work that out from our hunched postures, but it was a very clear night, and a great atmosphere.

The evening kicked off at Blackpool Central Library, with poetry readings and the announcement of the winners. There was also hot pot!! Despite living here for five years, I have somehow never had this Northern delicacy; I liked it. So did my dog Freddy, who accompanied me and Billy, the film's composer. Freddy kept sniffing the air and looking around him quite optimistically.

From the library we took coaches to the Illuminations, and onto a big screen watched the film projected. Suprisingly, I took photos:

Would you like to see the film in question? It's actually still showing at the Illuminations every night for a week more I think, but hey here it is on the inter webs:

That Night from Wordpool on Vimeo.

You can read more about the evening on the Wordpool website here and here. Thanks to Clancy Mason and Lynne Pattinson from Blackpool Council for working with us; we loved it!

The time was passed so pleasantly

Hey, remember ages ago when we said 50% of Emily&Anne were going to Vienna to teach a week long animation workshop as part of Tricky Women Summer School inspired by the poem The secretary chant by Marge Piercy? Well that happened! And there are photos to prove it:

Okay, so one photo. Promotion is not our forte.

That's Phillip up there. I advised him to paint his hand and animate it and he did! Would you like to see the finished film, including the above animated hand, and many other animated goodies besides? Well, guess what, it's embedded here, just for you:

The secretary chant made at the Tricky Women Animation Summer 2014 from Emily&Anne on Vimeo.

It was a really wonderful week in Vienna; I loved it. Everyone I met at the Summer School was lovely, and working with the workshop participants was very, very fun. I hope they are proud of the finished film. They gave me a load of chocolate at the end, so I guess they were happy too!

The rhyme is losing to the riddling

We used to be pretty good at maintaining this blog and our "notable" activities, and lately (and by lately I mean the last 12 months or more), we are just rubbish. Well I don't know if that is about to change, but here is a new post nonetheless!

We've been asked to make a film for Blackpool Council's WordPool Festival of Poetry. As everyone knows, we love a reading and libraries and words, so we are very happy to working on this project. The short (very short) animation will be screened at the Blackpool Illuminations in the evening on October 2nd, which is when the winning poem will be announced and read by its author.

Details are here, and lookit, it's a poster:

Sitting in the darkness, what a world to see

We've got a couple of film screenings going on at the moment. The first is this Tuesday 25th at Hebden Bridge Picturehouse, as part of Uncanny Valley Animation Festival. We have got two films in competition, Spin Spun Span and A Film about Poo! To get tickets, check out the festival at this link.

The second screening is today at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Sun in the Night Time showed there a few years ago, and it's on today as part of a commemorative screening in memory of Scott Ward, who spent ten years as one of the animation programmers for EIFF. He kindly selected Sun in the Night Time to screen there back in 2008.

I fought in a war

For the past couple of weeks I've been working with FACT and Holy Cross primary school in Liverpool to create a couple of animations as part of the Battle of the Atlantic celebrations. This May will be the anniversary, and there are plenty of commemorative events going on in Liverpool.

I was commissioned to work with a class of 8-9 year olds. We were visited by John and Jack, two veterans of the Battle, who kindly talked to the children about their experiences. Inspired by these, the children are creating two animated films, helped along by me.

Here's a sneak peek of some illustrations which will be displayed at FACT. I collaged together different children's drawings to create the pictures, one for each film.

The animations will be finished in the next week or so, so I will post again about their exhibition.

I could be dreaming

Sounds like the Sleep Paralysis Project had a good screening the other week. Our film Hum was showing. Here's a nice review of the events, at this link.

A slow down show for you

For the Northerners amongst you, Emily and I will be part of a short film screening this Tuesday at Sheffield Showroom. It's Tuesday 22nd 7:30 - 9pm, and it'll be a first for our short educatioal/anti-smoking film called Invited Guest. Educational AND anti-smoking! What a sell! Well not to worry, it's not preachy or full of cancer statistics, it's part of a pilot scheme that's currently running in schools around Bolton and Sheffield. The film is shown as part of English lessons, and talks more about the experience of smoking, using the idea of an invited guest (the cigarette) that has now out-stayed its welcome (the addiction).

Here's a couple of stills to whet your appetite, and for more information, please do click here.

This Autumn seems to have been filled with workshops, and all of the Liverpudlian variety.

Back in September, I ran an animation workshop with a group of military veterans, at FACT. They were a larger group than I have worked with before, and it was more like back-to-back sessions, so a bit of a different timetable from usual. On the morning of the first session I helped the group to come up with their story idea, and after some healthy debate (!) they wrote a script imagining the statues of the city discussing art. The military veterans do a lot of art-based workshops, so this script was a natural extension I think of their meetings.

A couple of the group members are keen photographers, so the animation style and process was based around that, however I mixed that in with some drawn bits and bobs, including lip sync. The script features the voices of the vets, which we recorded on a little digital dictaphone. I showed some of the group how to edit the individual sound snippets together and cut it with the storyboard frames to create an animatic. From there we pieced in bits of stop motion and animated whatnot, and now we have a finished film!

Statues Taking Liberties will screen later this month at FACT, along with photography and poetry by the vets (I told you they were an artistic lot). In the meantime, here are some stills from the film, featuring John Lennon, Ken Dodd, Queen Victoria, Liverpool Resurgent and Bessie Braddock, in statue form:

La cu-ca-ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha!

It's exciting times as myself and Anne begin work on our next short film, when I say short I really mean  long as it will be closer to 15 minutes, a daunting prospect! For now I shall say it is going to be a film and a musical about an outspoken and troubled cockroach who goes by the name of Archy, inspired by the fabulous series of poems by Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel.

We are developing our film with the scheme Filmworks, and we are part of a lovely and inspiring group. You can read everyone's blogs here and find out about all the wonderful ideas that are formulating:http://www.filmworks.org.uk/participants-blogs/

We are all at very different stages in our production but it's very exciting to see how things are developing...

And ain't it a beautiful day

Hum will be showing in Bournemouth at BUtiful Film Festival. It's on in a couple of weeks, so if you are around that way you should go and see our film! I command you.

BUtiful is only in its second yeah (I think), so if you fancy showing some support and liking their Facebook page, I am sure they would be happy. While you're at it, you can like us too, hahaha.

Tate Collective Project

Anne and myself have been busy bees recently what with workshops and such. We very much enjoyed working with the Tate Collective of 2012, a group of talented young artistes. http://collectives.tate.org.uk/collectives
We used our animation and film knowledge to assist them in creating a short and fun experimental film for the Tate Liverpool.  There was plenty of ideas from one and all and some great animation had, from paper cut out butterflies on a skies of blue, to face painted body parts escaping gallery walls. Here's a couple of clips from the sessions:

Hoorah!

See you gotta work it out

Emily and I have recently been accepted onto this new pilot scheme called FilmWorks. It's a development/mentoring programme for producers/directors who have made a start and got into festivals and whatnot, and are looking for the next step. So that's us to a tee! haha.

The programme has three divisions based in Sheffield, Nottingham and Bristol, with 15 participants at each hub; we're in Sheffield. It all kicked off at Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol, with a live stream of events. Each session will take place at a different hub, with a different masterclass being streamed and beamed across the miles for everyone to see. Modern technology...

We met the other participants at the first session a couple of weeks ago, and have since attended the second. The programme runs until Christmas, and our plan is to use it to develop at least one of the many ideas lodged in our heads, with hopefully an animatic and a full creative package ready to show off by the end.

Along the way, both Emily and I are blogging about the experience - as indeed are all FilmWorks participants - so, in case you're interested, you can read more about my thoughts here, and Emily's thoughts here. And why wouldn't you be interested, when all of our thoughts are so interesting?

It's a shame I can't remember his name

For almost a year, I've been running a once-a-month workshop with a community group in Liverpool, called Tenantspin in association with FACT. We've been making an animated film, based on a script they had written before contacting me. It's been such a fun experience, and I think everyone in the group is really excited about the film we've finally finished! It's just a small group of three participants, all retired, and the film is about a local character one of the participants remembered from the '50s around Anfield. The film is called What's His Name?

Each month we'd work on a new section of the film, starting with an introduction to short animations of different genres, then a storyboarding session, then a lot of lip sync and character boils, and picking out patterns and a colour palette. We also did some stop motion animation using plasticine, paper cut outs, clothes, and shoe polish! Like I said, it was a lot of fun!! On the shoe polish day, we got a bit of a funny look when a visitor popped into the room we were using at Breckfield Community Centre...

The film will be screening at a special event in October at FACT. In the meantime, here's some stills from the finished piece:

Rain pours on everyone

Hum at Raindance this weekend! Don't forget to check out the trailer, hope it whets your appetites...

Girl get busy

Well, time flies. In the last two months Emily and I have moved house; we're now both based in Manchester, which is bad for National Rail/Megabus' profits, but good for us. It is nice to be in the same neck of the woods, and indeed the same flat!

We've been busy beavering away on animated adventures too. We are separately working on some television series. I am animating on a CBBC one, and Emily is illustrating on a CBeebies one. We've also got a couple of commissioned film projects which are almost done, so we shall certainly be shouting about them soonish. Soonish = in a month or two I guess.

But anyways, right now we have a screening coming up! Our old Poo film will be showing at Manchester's Cornerhouse cinema later this month, on the 15th, and Emily and I shall be both be there to introduce our film. The programme is called Filmed Up and features North West filmmakers. We are first on, so if you come along (and it would be lovely if you did) make sure you get there on time! That goes for me too; I don't often get to places on time. Here is a link from which you can purchase tickets and find out more: this link here!

Right, dinner time now. Here's a picture of a beaver.

You know how to get along humming

We have finished our third film! It's called Hum, and it's an abstract animation about sleep paralysis.

We developed the idea for the story after meeting with Nikky Norton, a playwright and poet based in Manchester. She's working on a big project with Contact Theatre, mixing sound, animation, illustration, theatre, poetry, and performance art, which Hum will have a part in.

That's not until next year though. In the meantime we have plans... We're pleased to announce that Hum will premiere at Exposures Film Festival at Cornerhouse in Manchester next month. The film will show on Tuesday 21^st at 5pm, along with a live action drama also commissioned by Cornerhouse at the same time as ours. Afterwards there will be a Q&A session with me and Billy (Hum's composer), as well as Mark Haig, who directed the other film. Emily can't make it unfortunately, but hopefully Billy and I will be enough. Tickets for the premiere and Q&A event can be purchased here: http://www.exposuresfestival.co.uk/programme

Hope to see you there!

Now who here among us still believes in choice?

I'm really chuffed to say that Spin Spun Span has been nominated for a British Animation Award in the  People's Choice category. Leading up to the BAAs in March, our film will be showing across the country and loads of venues in pretty much every city. We are in Programme 3, along with a bunch of other very good looking animations, and screening throughout January and February. Yey! Check here for the venues, I think I will try and go along to the Cornerhouse one in Manchester.

I read the news today, oh boy part 2

I'm know I'm slow with these things, but here's a nice link to an article about the OneDotZero screening we were in at the end of November. Read it here at Red Mist Reviews. The author describes Spin Spun Span as "some colossal mash-up of a Magritte exhibition, Fantasia and a trippier moment from Sesame Street", which I'm definitely fine with.

You stole the sun from my heart

Earlier this year, Emily and I worked on the new film by director Charlotte Boulay-Goldsmith, called The Man with the Stolen Heart. We setup the character rigs in After Effects, took ages, but it's a lovely looking film and is now complete! It's about a sad man who loses his heart only to find that someone else is using it. It's got a real painterly look, very sketchy too.

The film's shown at a few festivals already, but it's showing this week at Encounters in Britsol, which is very cool. Emily is there this week at the festival, so if you see her say hello!

When mama was moth

We finished our stop motion shoot today, and we actually managed to do all the shots we planned. We then started working on a few experimental, unplanned shots when our new strobe light broke. Stupid strobe light. However, before it broke the strobe light did help us light this linetest of a moth, which we are quite pleased with:

Here is a photo of the moth model when he is not flapping about:

I didn't enjoy making the moth much. I hate moths a lot, and to make this one I had to look at a lot of pictures of moths in close up. It was disgusting.