'DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE' BOOK TRAILER

This is the latest book trailer I have been working on, this time for 'Daughter Of Smoke & Bone' by Liani Taylor. The trailer features illustrations based on themes from the book all animated in a kaleidiscopic fashion, dramatically setting out the plot of the story.

The book itself has been getting fantastic reviews with Entertainment Weekly listing Daughter Of Smoke and Bone on it's must read list and Amazon.com naming it best book of the month for September. If you view the book on Amazon you can also see the shorter teaser version of the trailer on show along with an introduction to the book from author Liani Toylor.

GIVE A SHIT

I recently worked with The Viral Factory on this campaign for the VH1 Do Something Awards show that celebrates young people's commitment to social change. We created a charity called Give A Shit which works on the premise that just by giving a shit about something you can make a difference.

The project is very funny and enables anyone to get involved, you can check out the website and see how you can give a shit here.

HIS DARK MATERIALS AND HARRY POTTER

I have recently finished a really cool animated book trailer for the 'His Dark Materials' series by Philip Pullman which is currently being shown in cinemas before screenings of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part II in the US.

With Harry Potter now having made over 1 billion dollars worldwide I think it is fair to say that the trailer must have been seen by a lot of people! A slot before Harry Potter is an incredible platform for a piece of my work and I'm pretty amazed that it is actually happening but on top of that I'm really pleased to be involved with the Dark Materials books. They are a world famous series, beloved by thousands of people and I hope that the trailer I animated does it justice!

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

This is the most recent of my animated trailers and it is for 'Twisted' the latest book in the 'Pretty Little Liars' series by Sara Shepard.

This one is doing very well on Youtube with almost 5000 views and seems to be provoking a fair amount of discussion. I'm not at all familiar with the series but it obviously has a large number of fans and I'm glad the trailer is being received well.

One thing is for sure... It will certainly brighten up my showreel!

RAINDANCE INDIE TIPS ARTICLE

Recently I had the opportunity to write an article for the Indie Tips section of the Raindance Film Festival website. It is a great honour and of course I leapt at the chance to contribute to my favourite filmmaking resource.

I decided I would draw upon my background in animation settled on an article called '7 Things Animators Can Learn From Animation'. You can read the article here.

There are a lot of things I have leant during my time in animation that I felt would translate well into the film production process, although the two processes can be very different I thought it would be interesting to try and bridge the gap. Hopefully it will prove popular and people will enjoy it!

SUDDENLY FROM SLEEP

For many months now I have been planning a short film project and now the time has come for me to reveal the details! Suddenly From Sleep will be my third short film and marks a huge leap forward in terms of the scale and ambition of the production.

It is going to be a tense thriller about a young farmer struggling with the arrival of a mysterious predator on his land. It will be mostly live action but will also feature animated sequences that will give the film a really unique look and feel. We want to produce something really special and we would love to have you come along for the journey!

Here is the film's poster that I hand painted myself.























For more information about cast and crew check out the links below and help us spread the word!

The film website: www.suddenlyfromsleep.co.uk

You can also follow the film's progress on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

NIGHT ON TERROR ISLAND BOOK TRAILER

Another book trailer, this time for 'Night On Terror Island' by Philip Caveney. The story is about Kip, a young boy who finds himself trapped in a horror movie trying to survive Sabertooth Tigers and rampaging Neanderthals when his father hires a mysterious new projectionist to work at his cinema.

















The trailer was shown at the book's launch event at the Stockport Plaza, attended by 500 school children. By all accounts the trailer went down a storm and the launch was a great success. You can read more about the launch and Philip Caveney at the Bookwitch blog here.














I'm really enjoying the recent book trailer work I've been doing, they're a lot of fun and they allow a lot of room to be creative. I've got another exciting project coming up for a really prestigious series of books and I think it is going to be a really good one.

I'll post more information when I can!

CHRONICLES OF THE RED KING BOOK TRAILER

Take a look at this book trailer I animated for Brighton based Crush. The book is 'Chronicles of the Red King' by Jenny Nimmo author of the best selling 'Charlie Bone' series and is the beginning of a brand new series about Charlie's heroic ancestor.

The animation features plenty of dramatic camera swoops and some pretty cool text effects. It was a lot of fun to work on and I hope it does the job of getting young readers excited enough to go out and buy the book!

ASTHMA UK WEB BANNERS

Recently I worked on some Flash banners with digital agency Kanoti for Asthma UK. They form part of a campaign called 'Get it off your chest' that encourages asthma sufferers to post stories online about their asthma related experiences.

These will then be displayed on a map of the UK offering a snapshot of the way Asthma affects people across the whole country.

The animations themselves are simple but fun, using inhalers to represent different emotions associated with the condition. As always with web banners the biggest challenge is keeping the file size down, hopefully I managed to cram in as much animation as possible and that they will do the job of attracting people to the site, which you can visit here.

FLICKER NYC

On April the 17th at Southpaw in Brooklyn, New York's only Super 8 film festival will celebrate it's 10th anniversary. This year's festival features an international line up of films including my Super 8 wonder 'Robot' which has managed to surprise me once again with another prestigious screening.

To mark the occasion IndieWire the independent film website has featured an interview with Flicker founder David Teague, you can read all about it here. In the article David talks about how the festival is put together and comments on the rise of Super 8 in a digital world.

All in all it is a great event to be part of.

VFX ADVANTAGE AT BAFTA

No, I haven't won a BAFTA.... But I did attend a brilliant event at BAFTA the other day called VFX Advantage!

It was a day packed full of great advice from some of the best visual effects companies in the world. Speakers included Double Negative (Quantum of Solace, Green Zone) Framestore (Avatar, The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes) MPC (The Wolfman, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of The Dawn Treader) and many more.

We were given an insight into how some of the effects are created, what it is like to work in the industry and how to approach visual effects in our own projects.

Some of the FX we saw were incredible, not to mention the technology. I was lucky enough to have a go at using one of the 'cameras' used to capture the performances in Avatar and the forth coming Spielberg film TinTin.















It took a few moments to get used to but was basically like playing with an Xbox controller, something I am very familiar with thanks to Halo Reach on Xbox Live! That's not me in the picture by the way, that's the fellow who had a go after I finally handed it over.

The highlight of the day however has to be the talk by Gareth Edwards & Colin Goudie. Gareth is the Writer / Director of the hugely successful 'Monsters' a Sci-Fi film for which he created all the vfx himself and Colin was the man who edited all the footage and added all the sound to make it one of the most exciting debut films for a long time. All in all, their talk was inspirational stuff and has left me in no doubt of the possibilities when it comes to creating highly ambitious and visually stunning films on a budget.

LITTLE WHITE LIES FEATURE

Little White Lies have featured me as part of their Grass Roots platform, an initiative that allows up-and-coming filmmakers the chance to showcase their work.

This is very exciting since Little White Lies is a fantastic independent film magazine, published bi-monthly since 2005 it has become the home of inspirational film journalism and a wonderful example of creativity. The design for each issue is based around the theme of a single film, most recently Attack The Block and before that Black Swan which was my personal favourite and can be seen below.

















You can read the full interview with me where I discuss my career thus far and my plans for the future here.

Massive thanks to LWL for the feature and you never know, one day it just might be one of my films on the front cover!

2011 SHOWREEL

Another year brings another Showreel. I'm very pleased with the work done over the last year and I'm proud to be adding it into edit, if this year goes half as well as the last then I will surely have a 2012 showreel suitable for the end of the world!

IDEAL ANIMATION

Below are some screenshots from the animated sequences I did for BBC Three sitcom IDEAL with BabyCow Productions and Director Ben Wheatley.












'Moz' the character played by Johnny Vegas takes a drug made from powdered Amazonian cockroach abdomen and starts to hallucinate. The world around him starts to appear as swirling lines and organic shapes that shift and pulsate.























The animation was done painstakingly frame by frame and was a lot of hard work. It was also a pleasure to work on and I had a great time doing it. I had some help from two other animators by the names of Melissa Bramley and Rosie Miles.

The animation has had a great response so says writer Graham Duff which is great to know.

If you want to see the episode you can do so by clicking here. It's split into two parts and all of the animation takes place in part two so if you can't wait then click here for part two and skip to around 3:00 and then 11:20 for the second sequence.

'LOSING IT' ON SET PHOTOS

Above is a couple of shots taken during the production of my promotional trailer for 'Losing It' published by Andersen Press. The trailer involved live action combined with animation, which of course was yet to be added at this stage. Below is how the same scenes looked after some digital trickery.























Watch the trailer here to see how it turned out once all the animation was finished. Photos supplied courtesy of Melissa Bramley.

ROBOT AT THE LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

As part of the London Short Film Festival Straight 8 are holding another Retrospective screening featuring some of the best films entered over the last decade. This time it's being held at the famous Roxy Bar and Screen on the 10th of January at 8pm.















My 2008 entry 'Robot' once again has the honour of making the selection and will be screened alongside another Straight 8 film with the audio on switchable headsets. Sound crazy?

It does indeed, but I have it on good authority that it will be a lot of fun too!

Tickets are £5 on the door which is pretty good when you consider you are getting a decades worth of Super 8 goodness.

For more information click on the event and the Roxy Bar and Screen click here.