Man In A Cat Teaser Clip

I bet you’re so teased.

I keep meaning to do a succinct, satisfying round up of All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat), but instead you’ll just have to swat up on the film on it’s official page, follow it on Facebook, check it out on IMDb, and read the story so far on the blog.

Lotsa fun!

Looping, Pulsing Innards

I made this to put on the background for any screenings we put on for Man In A Cat.

Other People’s Stuff – David O’Reilly

If you’re an animator you’ll probably know David O’Reilly. If not, he’s a maverick, BUT HE GETS RESULTS GAD NABBIT!

Now Man In A Cat’s finished (I’ll do some de-briefing soon), it was really reassuring to read this blog post by David on post-film fatigue and dealing with critism. This line struck home the most:

When something’s gonna take over a year of your life, fill you with paralyzing self-doubt, destroy whatever social life you have and empty your bank account, what’s the point on re-doing what you’ve done before?

It’s just a shame that David’s similar age and incredible intelligence, respect and success also fills me with paralyzing self-doubt.

Here’s the post: http://www.davidoreilly.com/2011/02/thankyou

…and here’s the motivational gin.

PITStop Campaign Animation

Here’s a fun little promo I directed and produced for Zinc Design and the Lymphoma Association aimed at raising awareness in the under-30s in a light-hearted way. It’s part of their Take a PITStop campaign.

Matt Partridge did a fantastic job of designing the final backgrounds, character designs and animation. As budget was quite tight it was a pleasure to take a step back and guide someone else having fun with that side rather than forcing them into an unfamiliar style. In terms of hands on animation I just did a few character animation tweaks and the final title sequence.

It was also a cosy little Dice collaboration too. Ian Ravenscroft wrote the script, and Tom Reid and myself did the character voices.

Now get checking those lumps!

Viva Los Birmingham

Man In A Cat’s set in Birmingham dontcha know? More specifically New Oscott – it’s got a big Tesco.

Hmm… If you count all of those trees I’d say there were more trees per capita then any other city in the UK (Sutton Park skews the figures).

Behold the Swively Thing…

I’ve bought a new thing! It’s a monitor stand that tilts, swivels and adjusts height. Yeah, I’m that cool.

The reason being is that quite often I want to trace something off my computer monitor. Lately it’s been mainly used to do rotoscoping for Man In A Cat (coming soon). The problem with nearly all monitors is that they can only tilt up and down a little and it looks like only HP made these types of ergonomic beauties as standard. Fingers crossed this should make the experience more natural, as long as the hinges are tight enough to not wobble around while drawing.

Here’s me thumbling with a fixed monitor like some sort of cretin.

John Lennon Animation for BBC Comedy

Last week BBC Comedy asked me to animate to a rap by the very clever Dan Bull to commemorate John Lennon’s 70th Birthday and a blue plaque unveiling. After working out how to avoid some massive copyright litigation parties, I smashed it out in about 3 days. Dan crams in as many John Lennon/Beatles songs and albums into the narrative as possible. So as a big Beatles fan it was fun to geek out all over this baby, and of course I managed to crowbar in a bit of scat-laugh.

There’s always something you could alter, but we’re pretty chuffed with how it turned out in the small amount of time we had. Enjoy…

*Update*

And it turns out Yoko Ono ‘loves it’. Wowee!

Aliens at the Hairdresser’s

Click on the picture to see a bit of character animation I did a while ago. The fantastic key poses were done by the almighty Toby Jackman, I did the stuff in between.

Cast for Man In a Cat is Revealed!

Kevin Eldon, Josie Long and Isabel Fay are on board for Man In A Cat and we’ll be recording next week! For the full article and extent of my fanaticism over Kevin Eldon go THIS WAY.

How Many Circles Does It Take To Work Out Yorkie?

… A lot.
This is just a fragment of the development gone into Yorkie, let alone Man In a Cat. On paper it doesn’t look like all the options were explored, but by God believe me we did! The seed of this whole story came from one picture, that one in the top left of him punching the inside the cat.

From there we had to work out what kind of story this was and how that was going to work best. That got really nauseating. I still think of all the possibilities and the knock on effects. Ian and I came up with so many scenarios, settings, relationships, arcs and loop-da-loops that we had twenty or so spin offs by the end.

After we had finally decided what was best for Yorkie’s future, I had to design him to fit with every aspect of the story perfectly. I don’t normally draw big round eyes, but apparently this is what this film called for. And scale! Don’t get me started! Even the shape of Yorkie’s skull is carefully considered.

This has been in development now for 3 YEARS, and I can finally say that I’m completely happy with it… I think… I do still like the idea that he’s Super Mario at, literally, the arse end of his career. I’ll try get some more bits and bobs of this kind up here, but the ideas phase was was so loose and wordy that it looks more like the random doodled conspiracy theories of Mel Gibson.