Director:
Laurie Hill

British Panorama
Saturday 26 August, 9pm
Curzon Soho, London

‘Featuring an eclectic mix of remarkable British animation from the past year, this programme includes the most up-to-date snapshot of all that is great about British animation and shows off what our most talented animators have been getting up to.’

London International Animation Festival
22–27 August 2006
www.liaf.org.uk

Director:
Laurie Hill

Rooftop Film Festival, New York, USA
Home Movies
Friday 25 August, 9pm
http://rooftopfilms.com/show_06-shortshome.html

On the lawn of Automotive High School
50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.

www.rooftopfilms.com

Fri 28 July, 7pm
Greedy Magpie

late night fridays – adventures in music

YEBOROBO+agaskodo teliverek+fanfarlo+jack shirt

animations by RCA graduates + friends

installation by RUN GALLERY

Magiepie is getting greedy, hunting for filmmakers, musicians, performers, magicians and shoe-shiners. A night to lay-out a shiny stash of bright young things. GreedyMagpie@whitechapel.org

£5/4 concessions and Whitechapel Members
Advanced bookings strongly recommended

‘The Adventures of John and John’ will be screened at Edinburgh Film Festival, in the ‘McLaren Animation 1′ programme, on Wednesday 16th August, 15:00, Filmhouse 1, Animation Section. Please come along if you can and Whoop.

for wills personal site see
www.wrongboy.com

Wrongboy.com

Below is an extract from www.designweek.co.uk

“State of play
Published: 13 July 2006

Today’s animation students have more sophisticated technologies available to them than ever before, but many still opt for traditional techniques, such as hand-drawing and model-making. Yolanda Zappaterra visits four colleges to see what their graduates are up to

IF animators had a bumper sticker, would it say ‘animators do it 24 times a second’? If it did, it would be a great way of advertising just how intensive and laborious the process of animation is – particularly when that animation is hand-drawn, painted or crafted from clay, paper, fabric or any other of the seemingly huge array of materials being used to create the work for this year’s graduation shows. But trying to get a sense of what’s happening in contemporary animation – the trends and developing techniques – by looking at as broad a range of work as possible is a difficult task.

So where to start? London’s Royal College of Art seems obvious. Here there’s as diverse a range of styles as you would expect from postgraduate students working closely with practising film-makers, and the standout pieces reflect their maturity and confidence. Will Bishop-Stephens’s John and John, for example, is an accomplished piece of storytelling that uses an impressive array of techniques and styles, cleverly framed, in a nicely plotted storyline. The predominant technique, model making, is as good as anything you’ll see professionally. Christopher Eales’ Five Angry Things also uses model-making, but it is very different. It’s a delightful piece of work that has shades of the Quay Brothers in the skilful crafting of both its surreal, slightly disturbing figures and its weird, off-kilter world.

But the RCA does wit too; Rowena True’s How the West Was Won, for example, is a painterly film, set in the Wild West, where Clint Eastwood and his cowboys ride the plains with their herds, until something weird crosses their paths. Coyotes and wolves they can deal with, but a takeaway hamburger joint is another matter. The bulk of the RCA work is hand-drawn, showing a rejection of computer-generated imagery in favour of more expressive, experiential and personal work. Ian McKinnon’s poignant Adjustment illustrates this very well, not only capturing the pain and confusion of the break-up of a relationship, but doing so through a clever exploration of the very nature of animation.

The evidence of a trend for hands-on crafting is visible at other colleges too…” {article continues}

for wills personal site see
www.wrongboy.com

Wrongboy.com

Director:
Laurie Hill

My Life At 40 will be screened as part of Blink at Gasworks Gallery, London – a ‘showcase of animation works from some of the UK’s most exciting and innovative artists’

Preview Screening: Thursday 3 August, 7pm
Exhibition: 4-6 August, 12-6pm

GASWORKS
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7582 6848
Fax: +44 (0)20 7582 0159
info@gasworks.org.uk
www.gasworks.org.uk

Director:
Laurie Hill

My Life At 40 was awarded an ‘Honourable Mention’ at Darklight
Darklight Festival 2006, Dublin, Ireland
www.darklight.ie

All our films are finished and are ready to be SEEN.

The first comment to this post is a list of the screening times of the full Animation Showreel, to be seen at Lecture Theatre One of the Royal College of Art.

Also showing are all our films individually, on monitors in the gallery space, and Showreel DVD’s and accompanying booklet.

Come along- June 22nd to July 2nd

Director:
Laurie Hill

22 June – 25 June 2006
Darklight Festival 2006, Dublin, Ireland
www.darklight.ie

Our graduation show will be open at the Royal College of Art between 23 June and 2 July, from 12pm to 9pm each day.

Animation promises to be the fastest moving, most flickery medium on display and can be found underground in the lower gallery. Just ask a steward where the good stuff is.

Director:
Laurie Hill

17 May – 28 May 2006
courtesy of British Council

the last few days…Still animating. I have been editing as I go along so it’s not so bad. but there is a lot to do. Have to composite Model animation green screen- literally a green screen- with 2d animation. Am enlisting the help of Martin Pickles and Nuno Costa… Have discovered the joys of Final Cut Pro. I think I love it. I like Editing and I like Writing- I must be weird. I wish time was more elastic. Neeed Slleeeeeep.

14 days to go. much of the model animation done, much still to go. still much of 2d funnystuff to be done too. less sleep. here is a picture of the boys in front of the screen, with the green screen colour which I will do a colour key composite-like when actors stand in front of a bluescreen for special effects.

Director:
Laurie Hill

27 April – 4 May 2006
East End Film Festival, London
www.eastendfilmfestival.com

Animation programme
30/04/06 06:30 pm
Genesis Mile End, London

It’s the easter holiday at the College and I am about 1/4 of the way through shooting. I have , um, let me see, 32 days left before it has to be finished, so I am not in the holiday spirit. Today I am doing 2d digital stuff at home.

Today’s photo is of my model shooting set-up at college which I am sorely missing these four days.

compact ay.

and with all the buttons and bells.

If you look carefully you can see the tiny room and tiny John sat at his table reading, and the other John tinkering with the CONSOLE

how about ‘The Adventures of John and John’ ?

Nice profile in March / April edition.

Director:
Laurie Hill

27 April – 2 May 2006
13th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film
13. Internationales Trickfilm-Festival Stuttgart
www.itfs.de

Planned screenings are:

Young Animation
01/05/06 11:00pm
02/05/06 07:00pm

International Competition
30/04/06 08:00pm
01/05/06 04:00pm
02/05/06 09:00pm
02/05/06 07:00pm

Director:
Laurie Hill

13 –22 April
Images Festival of Independent Film and Video

Screening:
Tuesday 18 April, 9pm
Workman Theatre

www.imagesfestival.com

March 23 – April 23, 2006
Between You and I (2006)
Produced by Peer
Installation: Round Chapel, Hackney
Lower Clapton Road at Glenarm Road, London E5
Thurs & Sat 2-9pm; Sun 5-9pm

Drawings: Peer Gallery
99 Hoxton Street, London N1

worth seeing.

one of my characters, John, now with a body and a thoughtful demeanor.

SHHHHHOOOOTTING MY FIIIIIIIILLLLLLLMM.

it’s bin a long time coming, but I am now shooting my film. Many of the faces I made for my models didn’t come out of the mould properly, so I may have to pause and do some more, but I have actually done some animation now. I am so happy.

http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/George_Mather/Motion/index.html

check it out
an interesting website to find out more about the basic of motion preception

Kinetic Depth movie

For some reason items of news keep on dropping off the bottom of these pages so I’m going to try to bring them back somehow!

April / May 2006

East End Film Festival, London, UK

13th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, Germany

February 2006

Finalist & awarded Runner Up in Experimental Animation – Animex Student Animation Awards, Middlesbrough, UK

January 2006

Eat Our Shorts, National Film Theatre, London, UK

Halloween Short Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts / Curzon Soho, London, UK

Oh dear. Model making is a very long proccess of trial and repeated error.

This little chap is going to have to have replacement mouth parts and eyeparts for stopframe, and I had wanted to have models done for the start of the new year.

Nevermind, I hear that stop-frame animation is really easy and never at all problematic, so I am sure everything is going to be fine and not at all ropey.

I’ve just been to Ronald McDonald’s house in Ahmedabad. He wasn’t in. His helpers did provide me with a McSashi Chicken, though.

And fries, obviously.

I’ve just been to Gandhi’s house. He wasn’t in. As I was walking down the path that leads past the house to a prayer garden, a young Gujurati man waved at me and said, “Hello, handsome.” Had ol’ Gandhiji been around he would probably have had to hunger-strike for a fortnight in protest of such a carnal outburst on his own grounds. I adopted a stern disapproving face and kept walking, but I did feel partly responsible. I suppose when you’ve got it, you’ve got it.

Anyway, this bald beloinclothed man said some wise things, such as:

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.”

Nice.

This evening I braved the streets and managed, with the help of two generous students, to accomplish one of my Indian shopping goals: tailored suit. We pulled up outside this plush looking glass building on a supremely dusty street. The sign read “Raymond’s Seconds”, which seems a bizarre for a bespoke tailor. Inside, I was lead upstairs to a vast room of wall-to-wall fabric shelves and mirrors. The guy behind the counter starts billowing cloth at me across a vast table, while another guy clips a fake shirt front around my neck, and from behind a little waiter guy appears with a selection of chilled drinks on a tray. Sweet.

After paying, I was gliding out the shop with fairly strong post-purchase euphoria, amid six or seven well-wishing assistants, when I swear, on solemn oath, that one of them said “come again”. It’s just about conceivable that it was a postmodern-Umberto-Eco-have-your-cake-and-eat-it “come again”, but I am choosing to believe not.

Tailoring was amazingly inexpensive, but I ended up spending a small fortune on cloth. I felt a little guilty until I started calculating what the cost would have been in London, and realised that I had made an obscene saving. I can’t work out whether I’m screwing this developing economy over, or doing it a favour, but whichever it is I shall look rather smart doing it.

I began teaching today. My students turned up at 2pm and require regular tea breaks, so this is probably the most comfortable job I ever had.

So I’m planning to spend a little recreation time while I’m here. “What shall I do? Ah! The internet. The internet will know!”, I thought (utilising the popular philosophical acronym, WWTID?). Imagine my surprise as I discovered that most tourist attractions, shops and services in an Indian old town do not have websites. Where do people get this sort of information from around here? The mouths of friends? Walking around and looking at things? Where!?.

I was about to abandon my bourgeoise western ways and try out one of these crazy suggestions, when I discovered reassuring proof that I should not leave the safety of computer screen (where I risk, at worst, exposure to pictures of naked people or accidentally joining a terrrrist cell). A final brief Google search (“Ahmedabad tailor”) to find a starting point for my street wandering reveals the following sage shopping advice:

…Last night, Abdul Razak, 60, a tailor in Ahmedabad, limped in to the musafirkhana. His legs suffered acid burns during a mob attack on the slum where he …

…A 35-year-old man, reportedly a tailor, was found with his throat slit near the …

I mean, I don’t really need step out into this beautiful and exotic city I travelled eight-thousand miles to visit. What I need is not to be limping into a hotel with acid burns. I need to stay away from tailors. Those guys are bad news.

Perhaps I can build a protective army of tea-saturated students. But I have go into town to buy my Authority-Beard! What a bind!

Despite the efforts of the local auto-rickshaw drivers I have arrived in NID unhurt. There was some incredible scenery during the journey, including crazy buildings, enormous rivers, giant wildlife, and three old men riding a rickety vehicle of their own construction the wrong way along the adjacent railway tracks.

Most of my students are away at a film festival in Mumbai until Tuesday, so I have three days to cobble together some sort of syllabus. My plan is to as much cobbling as possible today, and then hang out in the gardens, among the peacocks and monkeys, with a real book and an imaginary gin & tonic.

I met the first of my students last night. He grinned at me welcomingly and said, “I was expecting some big professor”. Tomorrow I am going to the market to buy a false beard with which I shall assert some authority. Local beards are quite impressive, so it will have to be a very big one.

One of the cinematographers I may be working with recommended I hire one of these gizmos. It allows you to use 35mm film lenses on a Sony HDV camera, so you get film-look focus, depth of field, and film-quality images. I’m too scared to find out how much it costs.

Rumours that Disney may buy Pixar prompted poor metaphors in the Independent today. Who would have thought a cartoon factory might be worth $7,000,000,000? Animation is so hot right now.

I have begun learning Hindi. It is a lot like being on the phone to someone a bit boring and squiggling about aimlessly with a biro on a notepad.

So far, my book has taught me to give a false identity and lie about the size of my house. What deception these clever squiggles can harbour!