One roll for the whole shebang

A Film about Poo has been nominated for an award! In July, we'll all be going to the Limelight Arts Awards in London - Emily and I, Billy and Tom, and Dayo (who helped with the music at the start), and lovely Mat (of FX & Mat genius). We are up for Best Animation, how awesome. The ceremony takes place at the Troxy in London, and we do already have our dresses picked out. (Yellow and green for Emily, pink for me. Or maybe yellow and grey. Then we would be matching! Or too matchy matchy? Hmm...) I'm really looking forward to seeing the other films, especially the other three animations in our category, I've not seen any of them before. There will be food too I believe, and I am especially hoping there will be prawns.

Cross your fingers for us! (For the winning, rather than the prawns. If there are no prawns I will get by.)

Webbyness

Wowee I have updated our website!
http://www.emilyandanne.co.uk/

Oooooh...

Rock and roll

Here is a post about lovely Billy, super talented musician and composer.

Billy has done the music and sound design for this new viral for New Balance trainers. It has some lovely banjo in it, which accompanies some lovely stop motion. I strongly urge you to watch it, and I have dutifully made it very easy for you to so, because I have embedded it here...



Props to Kim too, for some very sweet animation.

Acting like nothing ever happened to me ever

Hello, not written for a while, which I am sure has kept you awake at night wondering about our exploits. Well, I am now (sort of) recovered from the ending of Lost (it was so sad and bittersweet), and so I can tell you.

First up, we've been showing at a lot of festivals and screenings this month, and there are lots more to come. I am quite surprised by this; I thought A Film about Poo would be at the end of its festival cycle as it's 9 months old. So this is a nice thing! If you'd like to go along to any of the screenings, just take a click on the right on Forthcoming Screenings, as I am pretty good at updating that section of the blog. Thanks to all the nice festival people who have selected the film so far!

The other thing is our funny old Bolton project, Stories of the World. We have started production!! Definitely an event worthy of two exclamation marks. Still tweaking the storyboard though, so at the moment we are just picking off bits to animate that we know are staying. We've been working with Dan and Matthew at the Bolton Museum, and it is going really well I think. Hopefully Emily and I will be taking another visit to the archives in a week or so. Here is a picture of a cotton plant:

Not the most exciting thing, but there you go - there will be more plants, it will look pretty. I will ask Emily to give me the leopard and put that up instead - he is supercool.

And the final thing is that, incredibly, Emily and I will be teaching a masterclass in animation! This will be for the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, as part of the Stories of the World celebrations. We're still planning what we are going to do, and talking with Wendy at the venue, so I can't say much, other than if you are 14-19 years old and in the vicinity of Manchester on 24th July, you should come. Yes!

Happy news

One of the best things ever happened a little while ago, but I didn't mention it in case it turned out to be a dream. Anyway, it's definite now, so mention it I shall: Emily and I have been commissioned to make a film. This is very wonderful for us as we have never been commissioned or funded before to make anything. It's going to be a five minute animation for Bolton Museum, celebrating their industrial textile past. They are refurbishing their local history section, and wanted a new piece of art for it, so we pitched for it, and won it, and here we are. I really am so excited about it, I am just holding back on ending every sentence here with an exclamation mark.

I guess I will put up designs and developments and stuff as we go along - the film will be completed by September, and the private view is around October I think. We're working on the animatic at the moment. In the meantime here is a picture of me taken by Emily, as we did some research in the Museum Archives.

Blue gloves, very important.

Say the right thing when electioneering

Please would you like to vote for A Film about Poo?

It's in the Babelgum Online Film Festival, and if you go along to the website here you will see it there. Give it a thumbs up! Or not. But preferably do. You could also take a look at this one about singing dustbin bags. It looks like paper cut out animation, which I do like a lot. Lovely colours too, and excellent music. Another one with very good sound design is Yonder.

Should I be saying these things? Maybe I should be telling you that ours is the only one worth voting for, and if you don't vote for it and you don't play nice I will never speak to you again? Would that work? I am not good at these things.

The Beatles & the Stones made it good to be alone

Well, A Film about Poo will be showing this month at a couple of places around the world. World domination people, that's what it's about. Anywhoo, one of these screenings is at the East End Film Festival, which is in lovely London. I looked at the programme today and on the same bill as us is the wonderful film, Mixtape by Luke Snellin.

I watched this film last night, having heard about it on BBC 6Music a few weeks ago, and it is just ace. I wish I had made it. It's a sweet, sweet story about a little boy who makes a mixtape for a little girl. It's very short, which is a bit rare for "short" live action films, which I think helps make it brilliant. It's not indulgent or trying to hard to fit too much in. The production values and the acting are also very good... But mostly, it's just a lovely story. I have many times been a-wooing with a mixtape in hand. I hope Luke Snellin goes on to make more stuff this good; I'm really pleased to be in the same category as him. Watch Mixtape and love it too!!