Duddle

Here's an ident I animated on for Sarah Cox for the television channel five.



Was made up of found doodles from around the studio and people's houses which we then animated on paper with pens and pencils and composited in After Effects. I've never actually seen it on television but I do like it a lot.

Rain, rain go away - come again another day

Been slowly working away on some scripts for my new webseries. First episode comes out in January so please subscribe to my YouTube channel to make sure you see it! Spent all of yesterday fixing my steam powered computer but apart from that the animation and a nice little website are coming along nicely.

When it stops raining for five minutes I've also been going outside this building and then back inside other buildings before it starts raining again to pitch ideas to try and get to make a TV series. I hope I get to make one because then I could think "it's raining - but at least I'm making my own TV series". Right now a webseries will do though - subscribe!

End of Encounters 2009

Encounters 2009 finished yesterday and Francis Cooper was a runner up for the SW Audience Award. Super. The winner of the audience, and the jury award, was Light and Dark by Tom Stubbs and Michael Smith. If there was an award for best acceptance speech they probably would have won that too!

International College Peace Film Festival intro and Encounters 2009

Here's the little intro I did for the International College Peace Film Festival...



This week is Bristol's Encounters Film Festival and I will probably be there for most of the week. Francis Cooper is in the Best of British: Made in the South West category. So is Wallace and Gromit and a Matter of Loaf and Death which will probably be the best of the South West (not seen the others though so who knows). Am looking forward to Mary and Max tonight though!

500,000

After six years, five months and one day my stick figure animation, The Pan, has gotten over half a million views on Newgrounds. That's about nine views every hour, or one every seven minutes. I think so anyway; I'm no mathematician.

Falmouth, THE INTERNET and a mouldy Tom Cruise

Pretty much nothing has continued through to November. The other day I did get to go to Cornwall to be on a panel to talk to the third year Falmouth Animation BA students though. I quite like doing teaching and being on the other side of the pitching process but it is strange giving a "professional" opinion when you've only graduated 2 and a bit years ago yourself. Hopefully I was at least slightly useful to one person. There was some impressive stuff there though and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished things.

With my other time I've been making Powerpoint presentations to help pitch ideas to people and also been developing a new web thing because I miss having stuff I can put up in full on the internet and just making things by myself in general. Hopefully I'll have something exciting to say and show in the new year. January. Hopefully.

In case you were wondering: Tom Cruise went mouldy so I threw him away.

Celebratory Tom Cruise in Top Gun pumpkin head

Finished the little Korean intro yesterday - it should be online somewhere soon. To celebrate I carved a Hallowe'en pumpkin in the style of Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

Everyone is just redesigning their website

For the last few days I've been working on a little festival intro for when Sarah goes off to a festival in Korea in November. Been quite fun so far.

Nothing else has happened. Might have time to carve a pumpkin for Hallowe'en at this rate.

Lille festival international du courte metrage 2009

Lille was very good. Sadly I only survived two hours of the neuf heure animation marathon but above is one of the posters, from my last post, in action at the event. Amazingly not only did they decorate the walls, they decorated the tables too:

I had to stand in front a crowd of French people (1,000 at one point) and talk English at them three times. This went ok for the first time, but the second time I thought it'd be silly to say the same thing as before so I tried to think of a second interesting thing to say. By the third time I didn't have anything very interesting to say at all. The moral of this story is that it's better to repeat yourself three times than to say sequentially less interesting different things.

Also worth noting is that when my film finished playing in front of the 1,000 strong crowd they started meowing - I assume because of le chat in my film but a small part of my brain was wondering whether people from primary school were back and mocking me for being called Felix; as in Felix the cat. I slept in the Fetal position that night.

A good festival if you get the chance to go.

Next up for The surprise demise of Francis Cooper's mother is the International Short Film Festival, Berlin at the beginning of November. Then it's in...
...here in Bristol in the middle of November.

With time off

The last couple of weeks have been event free. Mostly I've just been bumbling around. Next week however I'll be bumbling around in a whole new country. I'm off to the fourth largest metropolitan area in France - that's right, Lille - for the Lille festival international du courte metrage. I think there is a competition screening somewhere on Friday 9th at 5pm and then nine hours of animation (?!) on Saturday from 9pm until 6am. Then there's a closing ceremony on Sunday. I will be around for all of those - probably gazing at the wonderful poster featuring Craig McKay from The surprise demise of Francis Cooper's mother: