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.

Train Attack!

Take a look at this video posted on YouTube the other day, what do you think it could be?



The creature definitely has a beak of some sort and a large round body/head. I commuted from Redhill to Brighton for two years and I've never seen anything like it. I have a feeling there's more where that one came from...

MOFILM: Philips - We Heart Light

My entry to the MOFILM User Generated Content competition is now online!

The competition was run in conjunction with 12 brands including Visa, HP and Vodafone amongst others. Each brand set a brief based on their core values and hundreds of people from all over the world entered, all hoping to bag the top prize... a day on set with director Spike Lee.

I chose to create a piece for the brand Philips, mostly because I liked the brief which was to 'get people to think about light in a new way and to create emotion through light.' I tricky one, but I thought there was a lot of potential to work with light in some interesting ways.





























I came up with the idea of two characters made out of light interacting with each other in different ways trying to express themselves. The light that formed the characters was to be refracted from two prisms set up in some sort of magical light experiment taking place at night.

Interesting facts:

Filming the video part of the piece actually took place during the daytime and was converted to night using computer trickery. Also , the two prisms I baught failed to refract any rainbow coloured light what-so-ever so all the rainbows were animated along with the two characters.














Unfortunatley the entry did not win. Not to worry though, I'm really happy with the finished piece and you can check it out below:




A few days later I get an email from the folks at MOFILM telling me that because I was one of the first 30 people to enter in the Philips category I am entitled to a prize and that they would be sending it to me in the post in the next few days...

So here it is!


















MOFILM Prize winner after all! Some lovely Philips white candle lights. Only problem is they've got a european mains plug and I live slap bang in the UK. Oh well.

Bamboozled? Video Footage

Here's some video footage taken on the night. Take a look if you managed to come along, you might see yourself on there. If you couldn't make it (like me) then take a look to see what went on.

It looks like it was a great night, well done to Kanoti for organising it all. Hopefully more of the same soon!

Modern Toss presents An Evening of Edwardian Chamber Filth

Another animation event in Brighton! This time its "classic Modern Toss sketches projected onto a big screen and re-interpreted with a LIVE string quartet and piano." Sound good? I reckon so!

I hear they've got the voice of Drive-by Abuser doing a bit of live shouting as well, which should be brilliant. I'm not going to stand near the front though incase he directs some of it at me.

Ignore the dates on the flyer, its been moved to the 29th and 31st of May so there's still time to get yourself a ticket to this unique show. Click here to book now.

I think, although this is not confirmed that one of the sketches getting the live treatment will be the Sneezeman animation I did for Modern Toss series 2. I certainly hope so, it would be great to see it up on the big screen!

BAMBOOZLED? Outdoor animation screening

If you're out and about in Brighton on the 9th of May 2009 between the hours of 9 and 10 pm then why not check out a night of animated shorts including work from Local Talent including Kanoti, Modern Toss / LSM, Tokyo Plastic, Crush and Cyriak.

It is part of the Brighton Fringe Festival and is all in aid of promoting alcohol awareness plus it's FREE!!!

I was involved with two of the pieces being shown, the first is the DIMA Award winning "Work Experience" by Modern Toss and LSM, I was the Supervising Animator and second is "Winter Song" the music video for Grammy nominated singer Sara Bareilles for which I was again the supervising animator, this time working with Crush Design and LSM.

For more information click here.

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.