FIREFOX FLICKS WIN!

I am thrilled to be able to tell you that my animated entry into the Firefox Flicks competition has won the animation category for Europe! The competition, run by Mozilla challenged filmmakers and animators from all over the globe to make a short video to help share the story of Firefox with the world, I entered a piece called 'The Firefox and The Snake' focusing on the fact that Mozilla is a non-profit organisation, which you can see by clicking here.

The entries were judged by actor Edward Norton and various other high profile Hollywood producers and to celebrate the results Mozilla hosted a special event at the Cannes Film Festival, which I was lucky enough to attend. Here I am in the line up with some of the other winners and Ed Norton himself, then below with the real-life Firefox!

Overall the experience has been incredible and I am thankful to Mozilla and everyone involved for picking my animation to be one of the winning entries, what a result!

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!

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!

NEW Home-Clubber Book

Modern Toss have released a brand new book featuring all the best Home-Clubbers including this one here:



















The book is out now and available for you to buy here.

Home-Clubber appears every week in the Guardian Guide and has done since 2004, so that's well over 200 cartoon strips to chose from when putting the book together so they quality will be high, I'm sure!

One of my first jobs was to animate the Home-Clubbers for use as mobile downloads, I did over 60 of them. It was great fun trying to squeeze as much animation as I could from a single drawing, I really learned my craft doing so many of these, the trick was to communicate the original joke but to also add something to make it worth while paying for.

To celebrate the release of the book I have posted one of the episodes onto YouTube, you can view it below.



Keep a look out for it in all good book shops. Not the bad ones, they won't have it.

Robot at the Movies

More success for Robot! This time it is going to be screened before showings of Michael Caine's new film "Is Anybody There" at the newly refurbished belsize park cinema, starting this Friday.

For more information and bookings click here.

Needless to say this is very exciting, sharing the same screen with the legend that is Michael Caine is quite an honor and I can't quite believe it!

The film has had great reviews (Michael Caine's film that is) and will hopefully attract a discerning crowd that will enjoy my little story of a Robot who finds himself replaced by a newer model and evicted from his home by his elderly owner.

Its good to hear that shorts are getting screened before features as well. Its a great boost for the film makers and is a treat for the audience too. I remember when I went to see a film at the cinema when I was younger with my family and they showed a short cartoon about some ducks, I was very confused as I wasn't expecting it and thought even then at my early age that someone was trying to con me. When it finished I remember about half the people in the room getting up to go home murmuring "Is that it?" as they went, luckily the film started before anyone made it to the door and they went back to their seats.

Hopefully some small child will go through the same roller coaster of emotions as me when my film is shown, then twenty years later they'll be writing about some weird short they saw once about cardboard.