I'm on a plane, I can't complain

Ta-ra! Emily and I are on a plane right now (hopefully), on our way to Romania for Anim'Est 2011, a lovely animation festival who have decided to show Spin Spun Span. We were invited to go the festival, so off we have gone. I love Eastern European animation, so am really looking forward to seeing some unusual stuff you don't see so much in the Western festivals. Neither of us have ever been to Romania either, so it will be nice to look around somewhere different. I think this is probably one of the last festival appearances for Spin Spun Span. Hopefully this time next year we'll be taking our new film out and about.

Got me a movie, I want you to know

Very happily, Emily and I have won funding to make a new film. It will be our third film, and the second to be funded, which is great. Cornerhouse, Mackinnon & Saunders and Vision & Media are the generous people helping us out. We've been working on it for quite a few weeks, but didn't want to post something until we were a bit further down the line. The film's story was partly inspired by our colleague Nikky Norton, who is a poet and playwright also based in Manchester...but the exact narrative details will be a surprise! However I will say that it is an abstract, experimental film.

I will try and post regular updates in between the actual animating, and here is the first: a little linetest. Don't blink or you'll miss it. (I probably should have put it on a loop!)

She is somewhere in the city

Sheffield Zine Fair was super cool, and for once we took some photos of our stall:

We met lots of nice people, including another illustrator called Anne, who not only spelt her name correctly, but was also born the right side of the 80s. This is very unusual, we both agreed. Most Annes you meet are either school teachers, librarians, or council workers, and they are in their 50s, and often have no 'E'. I bought a two-headed stegosaurus necklace from Anne, (a.k.a Annie Atkinson of Caribou) and she bought a zoetrope from us.

We also sold out of our new zine, Les animaux etranges! We shall make another batch and get it into the shop as soon as we can.

You win gold medals for when you're with me

On Saturday Billy and I went to Screen Stockport Film Festival, and guess what! We won three awards! We won third place in the Best Animation category as chosen by the jury, plus Most Original Concept and Most Original Soundtrack as chosen by the Festival Selection Committee, all for Spin Spun Span. As you can see from the picture below, I am very pleased about this, as is Billy and Emily. 

As Emily took possession of the last award we won, I will keep the medal, and probably wear it around the house as I please. As an extra piece of fun, we also got to take home a couple of Screen Stockport mugs. They look like this:

IT'S CHARLIE FROM LOST! As soon as Billy and I arrived at the Festival, we spotted Charlie on their poster. We later found out that Dominic Monaghan's image is appropriate as he grew up around Stockport: it makes so much sense now! A Lost-related endorsement just makes Screen Stockport even cooler, and I love the medal, and three awards is just amazing. Thanks to the judges, and especially John, Joe and Rosemary for creating such a great event!!

Pretty bird, pretty bird, why you so still?

We're working on a couple of animation and illustration projects at the moment, but none of them are really at the point where we can show anything moving, which is frustrating. However, here is a sneak peek of something we're in the middle of:

It's just a little personal project we're doing in our spare time, but hopefully we will be finishing it in the next few weeks and have something more exciting to show!

So I'll be holding my note and stomping and strumming and feeling so very lucky

More exciting news for the Back To The Future music video! Our work has been featured on Directors Notes, a website dedicated to independent filmmaking. I did an interview podcast with MarBelle from the website a few years ago for Sun in the Night Time, and now he's decided to put up a post about our music video for Jumeee. You can read it here. And in fact, I just did a little bit of scrabbling around, and you can still read the post on Sun in the Night Time, right here. I wouldn't recommend listening to it though, because my voice is just so annoying.

And where do we feature?

Excitingly, supercool music video website Radar Music Videos have decided to feature two of our films on their homepage! Check out Spin Spun Span and the music video we did for Jumeee right here. Whoop! And thank you to Caroline at the website for picking us.