New Friend (I hope)

I made an interesting friend today, supose he is still an aquaintence at the moment. Started talking to the guy, who is called David by the way, who lives just at the end of my street. Started talking today about my old fasioned sledge as I walked past his house in the very heavy snow that we have had up here this morning. Anyways turns out he has spent years working in tellevision independently. He seemd pleased to be spaking with someone who was into a similar subject. Anywho of the manny things we talked about, predominantly film and software he told me that I should deffinetly have a look at the film Nocturne. A short film shot on a DSLR, the point being that technology has advanced so far that we can now shoot footage of a similar quality to "Raw film cameras" (I hope I have got my terminology correct their). He mad a point of explaning that the opening sequence of "Slum Dog Millionair" was shot with a stills camera in order to avoid having expensive camera equipment damaged or stolen in the rough slumms that they fillmed in. In David's opinnion this will be a great aid to some film makers reducing the amount of equipment that they need to take with them especial if they are filming in remote regions. I believe he feels that this is the way that our tecnology is changing and that the quality of footage obtained by these still image cameras is simply amasing.
Also, an interesting competition starting in a few days that cannon has set up. I bellieve that it will run for about 8 months.
Oh and bellow are some shots of the snow that I was talking about today.

Star Wars

Ok so the work is I am showing bellow is quite old now. I produced these drawings late in the summer of 2009 and finished putting them up on my first day back at university in 2009.
This was in a way my last act, working at Next Great Northern in Huddersfield.

Basically over the sale season at the end of the summer Next had a sci-fi theme to their internal sales competition. I designed this board with some of the managers redrawn as Star Wars characters. I know it looks a little crappy but I put quite a lot of work into this and I managed to pull off a few of the likeness quite well.

The Staff visible in the images are as follows, Lian as Leawock the Eawock. Rachel as princes Lea, Laura as a Storm Trooper, Saleem as Luke Skywalker, Nickie as C3PO, Sophie as Han Solo and Lia as Darth Vader. These names not mean anything to you but are hear for the sake of my shoddy memory.
Oh, to be honest the look and style of these is like something I wolud have done when I was back at school, but it was just a little bit of fun.

Christmas Card

Hey, here is a photo of a Christmas Card I made for my partners Brother.
Didnt have my camera available before I posted it but here is a snap of it that she got for me.

Morir de Amor

Ok I just finished watching the short animation "Morir De Amor" by Gil Alkabetz. The title taken from the song by the group 'Primavera' which features in the animation.
Morir de amor, means dying in love. I saw the 12 minute animation here on veoh.com.

Watch Morir de Amor - Ultraman in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Catharsis

I have been trying to track down footage of an 8 minute animated film created at the "National Film School of Denmark", directed by Anders Michael . It took me a little while, it doesn't seem to be posted anywhere major but here are the firs 2 minutes of it. It has a beautifully serene look to it, and the shot that pans up towards the landscape looks absolutely superb. Check it out.

Father and Daughter

I just finished watching this animation "Father and Daughter" over on google video. I first heard about it and its creator whilst reading Paul Wells "Drawing for Animation" (2008) which describes 'Father and Daughter' as Michael Dudok De Wit's finest work. I did enjoy watching it, I fond that it had a narrative that was compelling enough to keep me watching and found the metophoric death at the end of it very interesting. It seems to be a piece more about the creation of mood, atmosphere and in evoking an emotional response in the viewer. I cant see it drawing out as strong a response from everyone as it did with me. I was aware before watching it that Michael's intention was to create a piece about the feeling of longing. This may have influenced my opinion and the impact it had upon me.

"It was my aim to use the feeling of longing as the main emotion; in fact, that drove me to make the film in the first place. I find deep longing quietly painful, but also increadibly beautiful, and I thought: wouldn't it be amazing to make a film about pure longing?" Michael Dudok De Wit


This made me think of the work of Charlie Kaufman, in perticular "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Minde" a film that I would recomend to anyone for its near gut renching sense of longing and lonliness, and also some very stiking images and scenes.
For me personaly this feeling was enforced by the content of the animation. The use of a bycicle as a symbol to identify the rolling on and passage of time as a sort of internal rhythem spoke to me quite strongly. I am a keen cyclist and have a great many feelings and memories attatched to my experience of cycling. In perticular my summer before coming to university, which was characterised for me by lots of cycling late in the evenings and early mornings (which I realy- enjoyed), and a constant longing for change. Those feelings are summed up for me in an advetisement by Orange, "Ride" which features the song "Time to Let You Go" by the Funky Lowlives.


The Image of the bycicles lamp in the dark in "Father and Daughter" reminded me a little of this advert but it struck a stronger chorde with my own experiences of riding at night. It prompted a little laugh and a smile out of me whilst I was watching.

Bradford Animation Festival 2009

Ok, so the title of this post is slightly misleading. I went to the festival with the intention of only attending one single workshop. I went in this morning for the scriptwriting workshop with
"Alan Gilbey". His class had been recommended to me and was expected to sell out very quickly. Unfortunately that was not the case today as only a few places had been booked, in addition Alan was not feeling to well. So unfortunately the class was cancelled. However Allen helped me get into some of the other events that were taking place today, free of charge. I have also been invited back tomorrow to for another opportunity to attend the script writing class.

The other events that were on today that I managed to get into were "Mette Peters" Dutch Retrospective, which introduced me to some work that I have never even heard of before and which was very interesting.

In addition I managed to gain access (with the help of some cheeky volunteers at the event) to "Priit Parn in conversation with Chris Robinson" event, although Chris Robinson was not able to make it in today so Paull Wells took his place speaking to Priit instead. We were shown some clips of Priits work as well as a complete showing of his recent (I think 2008) piece entitled
"Life Without Gabriella Ferri". I will talk more about how I felt about this piece very soon.
Infact I will make a larger post summing up all the notes I took whilst I was their.