Time for a Halloween Animation

It's that time of year again when everything gets a bit spooky and we await the arrival of the dreaded trick or treaters. Obviously it wouldn't be right not to share a Halloween animation with you all.

A year or so ago now I had the pleasure of coming up with a promo for River Film's excellent competition Four4. Make a film on a given subject that has four shots at equally four seconds. Thats only 16 seconds in total, a very very short film competition. That years theme was horror so I was briefed to create a horror themed animation, or for the sake of this post a Halloween animation, to promote the competition. We tried to come up with a scenario that included some of the best known horror characters and we fit quite a few in. See if you can spot Frankenstein, Freddie Krueger, Chucky, the girl from the Exorcist and many more. Check it out below for a chilling surprise.

If you've got a Halloween animation then let me know in the comments below. Would be great to see them.

Fred Blunt the Illustrator

Twitter seems to be my portal into the illustration world and this week I uncovered this little diamond in the form of Fred Blunt.

I'm a sucker for children's illustrations. There is always so much life, appeal and the more they border upon the strange and surreal the better. I think it goes back to my childhood and reading a ton of Roald Dahl and looking at all the crazy Quentin Blake illustrations. Revolting Rhymes being one of my favourite books!

Fred Blunt certainly captures the essence of illustrators like Quentin Blake in his work, with his quirky nature and love of the strange. It's the freehand lines and sort of untamed line quality that really appeals. You can see the thought process behind each work and how organically its gone from his imagination right onto the paper. As an animator myself Fred really hooks you in and you can start to imagine how these characters would move and interact. I'll certainly be keeping an eye for more work so keep it up Fred Blunt!

It took me aaaages to find my favourite images so I hope everyone enjoys them. If you want to, and you should, head over to Fred's website to see all his work www.fredbluntillustration.com

Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas - Announce cast

Possibly the greatest Christmas film EVER! (apart from It's A Wonderful Life of course) Elf is back this year with an all new cast and all new medium. 

In an hour long feature set to broadcast on the smaller screen this Christmas comes Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas starring none other than Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons as the over grown elf Buddy. The cast announced a few days ago also includes Mark Hamill, Jay Leno, Gilbert Gottfried (Iago-Aladdin) and Kate Micucci. From this line up it looks as though the film is aimed at a typically American audience which may not bode too well for a UK release, DVD only I think guys.

The most exciting bit about it all is that it will be based on "classic stop-motion Christmas specials with a modern-day holiday film sensibility". This is great news for all the older generations and animation geeks. Everyone loves the magic of stop-motion and what better time to relish in its craft than Christmas, wrapped up warm stuffing yourselves with mince pies. Also with 9 musical numbers throughout we could have some new Christmas tunes to set the holiday season to.

For all those stateside Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas will be aired December 16th over on NBC at 8pm. UK, well we'll just have to wait and see.

Kevin Pearce - Bedlam - Our new short film

We've released our new short film to accompany singer/songwriter Kevin Pearce's new song Bedlam. It's a chilly encounter set in a vast icy cavern. An insurmountable wall of ice separates a man and a woman. They must find a way to reach each other before it's too late....

I once again collaborated with co-director William Long for the first time since The Robin, so it was great to get back so soon and create another film. We started off with Kevin's thoughts of a man stuck in an icy palace. Our brains started ticking over and once Will's brother sparked us with the fact that comets are icy we were off. It went quickly from small story to epic short in a matter or hours and we're so glad it did.

We're so pleased with how it has gone so far, having been out in the world for a month now. We've already received showmetheanimation.com's Pick of Day and Film Shortage's prestigious Daily Pick and we couldn't be prouder. Please give the film a watch below, it would be great to hear your thoughts.