Slurpy Studios - Animation and Web Design | Reviews, News, Updates, Art, Events, Awards

Fake Disney/ Royal Wedding Photos

2011-05-17T22:03:00.005+01:00

In my circle of friends, there are people of great skill, wit and intelligence. There are people who spend their weekends doing the cryptic Times Crossword, yell at the stupid contestants of University Challenge for being too slow, and are feared by pub quiz teams across the land.

However, when one of these fine people comes across a Disney related question, they all turn to me. (And this makes up for me spending most of my time nodding intelligently and frantically Wikipedia-ing in the toilet).

So it was this position as all round Disney Trivia Queen that led me, this week, to receiving no less than 22 emails with this image...

Despite being quite clearly a fake, this image went round the world faster than Susan Boyle. It's not a particularly good fake - actually, I don't think it was even meant to be a fake, more just funny comment about a terrible hat - but to clarify, here are the originals...

The images and positions are the same, but the colours are quite definitely not.

People make me laugh sometimes - I get asked to perform absolute miracles every day in Photoshop; (Sample: "can you just add this head (taken at 7pm) to this body (taken at 11am) - oh, I know one person it black and the other white, but can't you just 'shop' it? Shouldn't take more than a few minutes right? Isn't there just a button that does that...") and then the next day everyone is fooled by an MS Paint job!

...more Photoshop funnies

Making of Tangled

2011-05-14T10:44:00.002+01:00

Regular readers of this blog might remember my gushing over Disney’s Tangled a few months ago. It wasn’t gushing on the level of my Mary and Max review (which was in serious danger of embarrassing Niagra at one point) but I certainly made it clear that I felt Disney was back on track.

So imagine my delight when we found that there was to be a special ‘Making Of’ session with some of the creators in London Town!

(Probably I should’ve mentioned this before the event, but it was a bit of a last minute thing and frankly I could do without the competition for tickets).

Here’s the blurb:
Join Clay Kaytis (Animation Supervisor) and Mohit Kallianpur (Look and Lighting Director) as they share an insider's look at the challenges and triumphs faced from character creation through final composite. Starting with the establishment of ambitious and hopeful objectives, the story continues with hair-raising tales of experimentation, trial and error, and breakthroughs during the course of bringing ‘Tangled,’ the Studio’s 50th full-length animated feature, to the big screen.

This panel will provide an inside look at the challenges and triumphs faced from character creation through final composite.

And it was great. Clay Kaytis isn’t actually an animator that I’m familiar with, but he spoke with passion and clearly knows his stuff (although a large percentage of the talk revolved around how great my favourite animator Glen Keane is and how many times he saved the day). Tangled’s animation has more character than any of their recent films, so it was fascinating to watch that come to life through trial after trial.

Mohit Kallianpur was funny and managed to find the exact level of geekiness for the room (high). Despite spending my life animating (I actually honestly found myself animating in my sleep once) it still staggers me how much work goes in to a production like this, and the incredible detail that they go in to for everything. To maintain such high quality over the 4 years of a production and still be smiling at the end takes a very special type of person!

Truly awesome artwork for Pixar

2011-05-05T18:14:00.000+01:00

In decorating our new studio (did we mention we had a new studio? – oh, we did? Sorry.) we have been desperately trying to source some original Disney film posters. Not poster designed recently to promote a new edition of the original films, but replicas of the posters that were created in the 30s, 40s and 50s.

Turns out they pretty much don’t exist. Which sucks.

This is really just a long winded way of getting to today’s point, which is to show you some awesome artwork that we discovered for some of the Pixar films during our search for these posters, as well as the original ride posters in Disneyland California which were the inspiration for them.

(And also to put it out there on the world wide web that should anyone know where we can get the posters we want, we’ll either:
• Bake you some cookies
• Sing you a song
• Draw you a caricature that may or may not look anything like you )

WALL-E

The Incredibles

RATATOUILLE

They're by hugely talented Pixar artist Eric Tan, and are inspired by the styles of the 50s, and by these posters for the original rides at Disneyland California.

Barking Heads - comic strips

2011-05-02T13:02:00.000+01:00

We've been doing some work for organic pet food Barking Heads recently. The company uses a family of pets to represent their product, and they asked us to bring these characters to life through animation and a series of comic strips for their website and magazine adverts.

This project is a lot of fun to work on - although coming up with ideas for the strip has probably lost me a couple of fingernails! I thought I'd show a couple of the strips here, while we're working our little socks off on the animation for youtube.

Split Personality

2011-04-18T18:08:00.000+01:00

We’re currently trying to decorate our studio in a way that befits our split focuses of Animation and Web Design. Mostly this has involved multiple trips to Ikea.

One half (my half) represents our funky and creative natures – we have a mood wall for inspiration, paintbrushes that we’ll almost certainly never use, storyboards proudly displayed and of course, that staple of student bedrooms everywhere, a wooden mannequin.

Aaron’s side (or as I like to refer to it, the boring side) represents our technical natures. It has files and calculators, diagrams and charts, aspect ratios and financial projections. Bleurgh!

But it is at least all red and white, so it might be boring, but it is at least Slurpy branded boring.

New Studio!!!

2011-04-12T12:40:00.000+01:00

We are pleased and proud to invite you to a sneak peek at our new studio, in London Colney.

We’d been looking for a place considerably larger than our old studio in Harpenden, with better transport links and (all important) nice places to go during the rare moments when we lift our heads from our computers and feel like going outside for a few minutes.

The new studio fulfils all of those criteria. It’s big enough for the new animators and web designers that we’re looking to employ (and to do cartwheels, should the desire overtake us), it’s about as close to the M25 as you can get without being run over, and it’s situated on a beautiful river with willow trees and the all important ice cream van.

It’s also within short walking distance of the biggest Marks and Spencers I’ve ever seen!

This is a big step for our small studio, and we’re very excited about the future. Come visit us soon at Berkeley House, Barnet Road, London Colney, AL2 1BG.

We have cookies…

Dreamworks... oh dear.

2011-04-05T17:19:00.000+01:00

I don’t like to simply copy other people’s words for this blog without at least giving an opinion or a personal twist on them. However, in this instance the author has so perfectly captured my feelings on the matter that to edit his words would be to diminish them. So I shall make do with crediting him (Alex Collier. Nice bloke) and bowing to his superior ability to make pithy, cutting remarks, then copy pasting his words here:

"The new Dreamworks film has got me Turbo charged...

Whilst idly clicking my way through IMDb last night I noticed that a new film from Dreamworks is due out in the not too distant future. 'Turbo', charts the story of a snail who is the fastest snail in the world. I'm not sure what else happens in the film. I would have read on through the description, but unfortunately I had thrown my computer at a wall. Yet again we are to be faced with another dire sounding 'animal-characteristic-turned-on-it's-head' movie.

This is from the studio that brought us a movie about a bee that doesn't want to make honey. A rat what is all posh. A vegetarian shark. And a whole sodding zoo in New York that is filled with creatures that have hilariously juxtaposed character attributes; a lion that is a pussy, a hippo with a weight problem, a zebra who, despite not knowing if he is black and white or white and black, is in fact as black as Chris Rock, and a giraffe with a badly designed neck.

If all that doesn't sound bad enough, at least two of the characters listed above are ripped off from Pixar. (Well, obviously, I'm sure things are more innocent than that. They're probably just 'borrowed').

Animation is such an exciting medium to work in. But I'd rather be at a conference for monotone duster salesmen than sit through a Dreamworks ideas pitching session. Grey dusters, as well, none of your eye catching yellow cloths at this conference.

"Hey guys. Welcome to the Dreamworks pitching session. We're lookin' for only the most dynamic, whacked out zany ideas that the kids are just gonna go nuts for. Show me what you got!"

"Erm... well, actually... I kind of, erm... left my ideas on the bus..."

"Left them on the bus?"

"Yeah. And the dog ate them"

"I hope your ideas were more original than your excuses"

"They were! They were about, a... erm... a ...snail?"

"A snail? That doesn't sound very dynamic. Snails are slow, aren't they?"

"This one is fast! It's the fastest snail in the world!"

"Brilliant! Here's half a million dollars! Get that sucker in pre production"

"Don't you want to know the story?"

"That's not important! Hold on a minute though... snails.... aren't cute! How will we shift merchandise? I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to cancel this project."

"We can sell pots of slime or something, I guess?"

"Brilliant! Here's two hundred million dollars and a bank holiday weekend release date!"

Actually, if it's that easy then here's my list of film ideas for the next Dreamworks thinktank day.

Cheetah: A film about a cheetah who is the slowest cheetah in the world. His mum and dad are disappointed, so he, get this, get this, cheats to win a race. Then he's a hero, but has to admit his dishonesty, and all the other cheetahs learn that life is best lived slowed down, and that's what counts.

Ellie Funt: The adventures of Ellie Funt, the worlds most forgetful Elephant. Absent minded Ellie is bullied by the other Elephants and runs away from home. Unfortunately Ellie is so forgetful that she forgets where she lives, and moves in with a family of mice, because she forgets that elephants are scared of mice. The mice accept her as one of their own and when the Elephant herd accidentally stumble upon her they realise that it doesn't matter how small you are, it's how big your heart is that counts.

Baboon! Sadly, Bab the Baboon has been born with a normal arse. Without a ridiculous bright red hanging down arse Bab is unlikely to attract a mate, and is destined to be alone forever. However, the forest is under attack by man. The only way to stop them is to sabotage their machinery in the dead of night. Unfortunately though, Man can see the baboons coming a mile off what with their glowing arses and all. It's up to Bab to save the day with his normal arse. In the end the Baboons learn the valuable life lesson that it's not how red and hangy-downy your arse is, it's being able to sneak up on machinery and sabotage it in the middle of the night that counts.

From Me to Flu: Flo, the influenza virus, is cast out from the Orthomyxoviridae family when she decides she doesn't want to make people sick anymore. Instead, caring Flo wants to help people, and tries to develop a cure for the common cold. She goes to live in a petrie dish in the lab of Louis Pastuer. Unfortunately, before her work is complete her big brother H5N1 mutates into a human form of bird flu and threatens to wipe out the human race! Flo must return to her family and try to stop a pandemic before it's too late. Her big brother realises he must choose between his family and global domination, and chooses family, realising that the bonds of family are stronger than the bonds of a small infectious agent inside the living cells of an organism, and that's what counts.

Monkey See, Monkey Doo: A big room with an infinite amount of monkeys typing at computers are tasked to come up with the next Dreamworks script idea. They all manage it on their first go. Monkey Doo however has ideas above his station and wants to write the next Shakespeare sonnet. He disowns his friends and becomes a successful theatre scribe. However, he soon returns to his roots when he realises it is lonely at the top. His friends welcome him back, as they are primates for life. And that's what counts.

Remember, if these ideas sound terrible, the potential for merchandising is huge. And really, at the end of the day, that's what counts."

By Alex Collier

I’ve been NLPed!

2011-03-31T10:03:00.000+01:00

I’ve just completed a one week NLP Practitioner course which, according to the official blurb, means I now have “a FREEDOM from ANY limited, internal model of the world, which in turn, gives me the KEY to UNLOCKING your true potential…”

So that’s nice…

Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not really into ‘personal development,’ ‘spiritual empowerment,’ or any such self help book spouted crap. But I am interested in the power of the brain, and I am interested in being a better communicator, so when I found a teacher who I felt could deliver the more scientifically accurate bits without the fluff that denigrates so much of NLP I decided to go for it.

And it was… interesting.

Some bits I found overwhelmingly mediocre, but some bits so dangerously powerful that I wondered why doctors around the world weren’t raving about it. I saw a woman genuinely cured of a fear of public speaking so intense that she was shaking and practically weeping at the very thought of having to stand in front of a group of 18 people. But I also was expected to report profound emotional change when I stood in the centre of a circle of people spouting such platitudes as; ‘the meaning of communication is the response you get’ and ‘everyone does the best they can with the resources they have.’

I was also made to watch ‘The Secret’ which is never a good way to win my approval. (It’s called EDITING people!)

I find a lot of NLP, therapy and hypnosis is more about peer pressure and a desire not to make the trainer look foolish than it is about genuine change. This opinion lessened during the week, but I could not make it disappear entirely.

Because this review isn’t completely positive, I haven’t mentioned the name of the trainer or the company. This isn’t in any way to avoid endorsing either, because actually I think that any ‘not entirely convinced-ness’ was entirely due to my overly analytical mind and inherent scepticism of NLP rather than the course itself, which was excellent and well delivered… poor guy must dread people like me walking through the door!

Me being hypnotised (sort of):

Website: Elysian Weddings

2011-03-18T19:19:00.002Z

We've just finished a new website for Wedding Planning Company extraordinaire; Elysian Weddings.

Managing Director Sian Hornby was looking for a soft and elegant design, which befits the care and attention she spends on all of her weddings. We went for a luxurious colour scheme of creams and blues, with lots of white space adding a tranquil, sophisticated air to the site. We gave pride of place to the beautiful photography that Sian was able to supply us with, and made sure that the copy was displayed in a way that didn't intimidate the user or detract from the elegance of the design.

Like all our sites, elysianweddingsandevents.co.uk is a Content Management System, meaning that Sian and her team can easily add, edit or remove content as easily as writing an email. We also performed extensive SEO for the company, and have greatly enjoyed watching the site moving further and further up the Google searches for all of their chosen keywords.

We also created a blog for them, which is well worth a read for regular updates in to the fascinating world of weddings!

Herts Business Expo

2011-03-10T20:04:00.000Z

Just got back from the Herts Expo and I am completely knackered! It was a great day, exceeding all expectations in terms of attendance, business passed, speakers and enjoyment.

I had volunteered to help raise money for Comic Relief by selling packs of materials (paper, plastic cups, straws, string etc) for the frankly extortionate price of £20, that people used to create cars to race on our specially made racetrack. Little did I realise that this would result in me being dressed from head to foot in what can only be described as a condom costume (but was apparently supposed to make me look like a car mechanic) and harassing people as they tried desperately to avoid eye contact.

I shall look more mercifully on ‘chuggers’ from now on!

We raised about £400 for Comic Relief in the end, which, while really quite impressive, would certainly have been larger had the Expo been less darned good. With so many companies and so much business being passed in the room, we could hardly expect people to spend their day manufacturing small paper cars to race on our track. Frankly inconsiderate planning I call it.

But well done to Katrina Sargant and Karen Birch of the Business Club for organising a Business Expo against which all future events will be measured.

Tangled - Disney's back!

2011-02-09T10:32:00.004Z

In all honesty I've been completely dreading Tangled.

When it started production 8 years ago it was called Rapunzel and seemed like Disney were no longer ashamed of their fairy story roots. They had my favourite animator of all time (Glen Keane) in the director's chair and although it was CG, they really seemed to be trying to achieve something different with it.

Fast forward to a few days ago, and I was a nervous wreck of anticipation (ok, that's an exaggeration, but I did go through at least one finger nail). They'd changed the name to 'Tangled', demoted Glen Keane and pushed back the release date about a billion times. It seemed like they weren't sure about the appeal of the film, and that's never a good sign with Disney (Treasure Planet anyone?).

But it's actually a damned good film. It's funny, it's sad, it's beautiful, and it's memorable. It sits with the greats as a classic Disney film. And I don't mean that it's a film made by Disney, 'Tangled' is actually a Disney film.

And I can't give it higher praise than that.

Sure there were a couple of negatives; the music wasn't great, certainly wouldn't stand alone without the film like scores from Aladdin or Lion King; the ending could be considered slightly Beauty and the Beast; and the hair changes length from shot to shot with wild abandon...

But who cares?

Disney's back, and that's the best news I've had in a long time.Tangled review

Website review: Caloo Fitness

2011-01-08T19:35:00.000Z

Another website finished, another happy customer :)

Caloo Fitness are a Hertfordshire based Company who provide outdoor fitness and gym equipment. They approached us to design, build optimise their new site, which was to be bright, memorable and to reflect their product and company ethos.

The first thing we did in this instance was to pick a strong colour scheme that we felt really represented the company and product. Once we had that, a lot of the rest of the design fell in to place quite quickly. This was followed by the wireframe and final design. We always offer unlimited tweaks on all our designs, because we have no intention of ever letting a Client end up with a site that they're not delighted with, but in this instance there weren't any!

The concept for the design was 'serious about playing,' and we captured that through the unusual and fun layout, tempered by an easy to use navigation system and intuitive structure.

This site is to be the central hub of the campaign we're working on with Caloo, consisting of social media (blog, twitter, youtube), newsletters, and SEO. It's been very gratifying seeing the wonderful results that the new website has already created, and it's wonderful to work with a company who are so ready to listen to the advice of their web designers and take time to make social networking work really well for them

Happy Christmas!!

2010-12-15T20:20:00.000Z

Every year we like to create a Christmas card for all of our Clients, friends and anyone who seems in particular need of some festive cheer.

This is always a fun opportunity to spend some time in Photoshop without worrying too much about what happens, and this years design was a sort of long and drawn out experiment. I didn't really go in to it with a plan (other that than to draw attention to Aaron's hilariously bad ice skating skills!) but played around a lot with the composition and colour balance.

I did try to film myself creating it like last year, but the darned computer crashed halfway through!

Smile for London

2010-12-04T20:12:00.000Z

It's very rare that we get to create some animation for the sheer fun of it (and believe it or not, creating 24 images for every second can be the most amazing fun one can have by oneself!) but when we saw the brief for Smile for London we decided to have a go. And it only required 10 seconds, or 240 drawing - pah!

It's a competition to show animated films on the underground, to brighten up the drudging boredom of commuting, so we decided to create a film entitled "what do commuters think about?"

This was created in After Effects, with artwork created in Photoshop.

We know that we've got through the first round, which means a fancy soiree in that there London town for the final, which probably means we should go get a haircut...

ASIFA website and BAF 2010 review

2010-11-22T01:30:00.000Z

Despite only joining Asifa UK last year, we’ve become loyal advocates of the wonderful work that they do to promote the animation industry both here and abroad. As a result we will soon be making their brand new, very shiny website where you can find out the latest animation news, meet other similarly afflicted people, find jobs etc.

Until then, I shall leave you with this article that I wrote for the quarterly magazine 'Dope Sheet' summarizing my top bits of last week’s Bradford Animation Festival, and a recommendation to subscribe to Asifa UK as soon as humanly possible.

"For many of us in the fun filled world of Animation, November means a trip to the curry capital of the North, to be inspired by another healthy dose of innovative filmmaking. And Bradford Animation Festival 2010 did not disappoint. This was another year filled with captivating speakers, breath-taking films and enough animation heroes to make the student delegates salivate in awe.

It’s hard to mention all of my favourite parts of an event that included Gene Dietch and his diminutive wife, Tim Searle’s passionate review of British Animation, a long overdue Lifetime achievement award to Ray Harryhausen and a career choice affirming look at how animation can be used as a therapeutic tool. For me, the standout event in a very enjoyable week was Paul Franklin of Double Negative, who gave us a fascinating insight in to the world of visual effects within Inception and Dark Knight.

One of the things that makes BAF the most popular animation festival in the UK is the quality and number of speakers that they invite from within the animation industry and the peripheries. One example of this was Gary Jackson from Scary Cat studios, who gave an enlightening speech on his work making models for stop motion animation. Turns out that there’s a whole lot more to an armature than balsa wood and twisted wire.

Paul Mendoza of Pixar was informative and charismatic as he spoke about the production pipeline at the famous studio, as well as his influences and career. He then made the somewhat catastrophic mistake of mentioning that Pixar were hiring and was immediately lost under a swarm of student animators, never to be seen again.

Two first-rate programs from Clare Kitson invoked nostalgia and a fair amount of jealousy for the heydays of British animation, when Channel 4 was funding the films that won countless awards and recognition for our Industry from around the world.

As always, BAF showcased an impressive and eclectic collection of shorts, music videos, commercials, features and series’. Screening after screening left me impressed and inspired, both with the technical prowess on display and the rollercoaster of narratives. One moment I was sobbing in to my popcorn at Dustin Grella's “Prayers for Peace”, the next I was giggling like an infant at Alan Shorts “The Fly,” and then I was stunned by the technical wizardry and effects of Patrick Jean’s “Pixel”

The judges (Tim Searle, Clare Kitson and Mette Peters) made a few controversial decisions, causing loud and impassioned arguments directly afterwards as we all debated/ screamed the reasons why our favourite films should have won each category instead. But as no one person seemed to agree on which films should have won the newly named and highly coveted “Osgoods,” most had to grudgingly concede that the judges had done a pretty reasonable job.

Barry Purves, as always, spoke with wit, passion and an intriguingly patterned waistcoat as he delivered the awards. He also treated us to a sneak peek of his latest stop motion epic, which I sense I may need to watch with caution and tissues.

For me, the standout film of the festival was probably “The Little Boy and the Beast” by Johannes Weiland of Germany. Subtle, moving and beautifully poetic, this tale is both funny and sad as it moves towards the plot reveal that you eventually realise you knew all along.

As for the Grand Prix… well like I said, some controversial decisions! It went to Andreas Hykade’s “Love and Theft,” which is fun and bright and mesmerising, but not a lot else (in my humble opinion).

Grand Prix
Love and Theft by Andreas Hykade (whimsical and fun but didn’t create any kind of emotional response)

Special Jury Prize
A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation by Martin Wallner and Stefan Leuchtenberg (Powerful and beautiful, but keeps the audience at arms length rather than inviting them in.

Audience Award
The Little Boy and The Beast by Johannes Weiland (Stunning film, restrained but powerful)

Professional
Big Bang Big Boom by Blu (An incredible logistical accomplishment, full of energy and ideas)

Student
Prayers for Peace by Dustin Grella (A very moving film with a haunting vocal performance)

Short, Shorts
Pixels by Patrick Jean (A must see film for any child of the eighties or fan of what we now have to call ‘retro’ video games. Technically very strong)

Commercials
Heroes of the UAE by Ben Falk and Josiah Newbolt (Imaginative, well made and full of surprises)

TV series
Heirlooms by Wendy Chandler and Susan Danta (Great concept and well executed. Well done to the Commissioning body too for taking a risk)

Music Videos
The Tom Fun Orchestra: Bottom of the River by Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney (The best of a not hugely inspiring bunch, but still well worth watching for it’s important ecological message)

Films for Children
Monstre Sacré by Jean-Claude Rozec (A wonderful film with a great story and fantastic visuals. Made me want to have kids just to show it to them)"

Bradford Animation Festival

2010-11-15T16:20:00.001Z

This years BAF has been a hugely enjoyable event, filled with great films, passionate debates and really quite excellent curry. Congratulations yet again to Deb Singleton and the team for putting on an event that showcased the extraordinary abilities, artistic invention and downright surreal imaginations that make up the animation industry.

I’ve been asked to write a festival review for next month’s AsifaUK, so I wont go in to depth here, but will leave you with a few of my favourite films (or, the ones I liked that weren’t too hard to find on youtube).

Hope to see you at next years BAF, and if I do, mine’s an apple and mango J20 (hardcore I know)

The Little Boy and the Beast by Johannes Weiland and Uwe Heidschöetter
Stunning film, manages to be both funny and poignant

Out on the Tiles by Anna Pearson
Hahahahaaaaaa. Joanna Quinn's sense of humour, early Aardman style animation

Stanley Pickle by Victoria Mather
Best bit of pixilation I've seen in many a long year!

Website review: Made in Water

2010-10-20T19:55:00.000+01:00

Well we always say we like to make websites for 'different' products and companies... so we've spent to last month creating this ecommerce site for Made in Water birthpools!

The design is clean and crisp, with lots of white space and tranquil colours (baby blues and pinks to appeal to the target audience of Mothers). This clean, almost clinical approach is designed to make Mothers feel secure and trusting of the product, to subconsciously invoke the idea of a hospital.

Web Designer Magazine – Industry portfolio

2010-09-18T10:33:00.000+01:00

We’ve been getting Web Designer magazine for about a year now, so were absolutely delighted when they told us they were going to do an interview with us for this month’s edition.

The section is the Industry portfolio, so we were able to show off a few of the projects we’ve been working on recently as well as chatting about our studio, careers and web design ethos (don’t suck).

So here, in full, is a transcript of the article as a special treat for those of you who simply can’t wait until the squeak-splat that signals your copy of web designer coming through the door…

Katie Steed
http://www.slurpystudios.com
Creative Director
Flash, CSS, PHP, MySQL, ActionScript, Javascript, SEO, jQuery

Founded by Award-winning animators Katie Steed and Aaron Wood in 2007, Slurpy has grown to employ a team of creatively diverse artists, designers, coders, programmers and directors. It creates innovative websites that are engaging, eye-catching and enjoyable.

Animation and web design are linked by the limitless possibilities that both disciplines offer through imagination and knowledge. All of the staff at Slurpy love spending their days dreaming up and learning of new ways of delivering appealing and interactive experiences and staying on top of the never ending curve that is web design.

Katie Steed, creative director says; “we want to make the web a more enjoyable and beautiful experience. Although we believe in the old saying ‘the first bite is with the eye; we also know that a visually pleasing website isn’t effective if it isn’t user friendly., accessible and easy to find on Google.” Slurpy produces 100% bespoke work that has increased customers, sales and revenue for their Clients. It has won several awards for its creativity, design, programming and effectiveness.

Submitting To Festivals

2010-04-26T01:52:00.000+01:00

In our last blog, we mentioned some of the problems that students in particular suffer when entering film festivals- namely, the lack of communication on the festival's side. As we consider ourselves as something like experts on the subject of submitting films, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share our worldly wisdom on the very important subject of festival submisison.

Step 1: Finding out what film festivals are on.
There’s a site that I simply cannot recommend enough, called http://www.britfilms.com/festivals.It contains a very near complete list of all the festivals in the world, and they’re searchable by keyword. You can search for ‘Animation,’ and festivals that have their submission deadlines in ‘April’ to get a complete list of more festivals than you ever imagined existed. Some of them charge for submission, so watch out for that, and the information isn’t kept up to date particularly, but it’s still the best resource we’ve come across.

Cannot recommend enough that you keep a list of all the festivals you’ve submitted to, and keep a note if they tell you they’ve received your film, when you should know if you got in, and which ones you’re successful with.

Step 2: Submitting
Somewhere on the festival site (albeit sometimes hidden in a place that no normal person would ever look) there will be a ‘submissions’ link, which will take you either to an online form or to a paper download. The forms all ask for much the same information, but some ask for additional material. When we prepared copies of Death by Scrabble on DVD for festivals, we also prepared a CD with additional material. Some festivals ask for the additional stuff with the submission, some wait until they’ve decided you’ve got in, but all that does is add to your postage costs.

Our additional CD contains a synopsis, a script, a biography/ filmography and photo of the director, credits, screenings and awards and techniques summary, as well as 3 promotional images in good resolution and thumbnail resolution. Not every festival asks for all of this, but it covers everything we’ve ever been asked for, and is much easier than making specific cds for different festivals.

CHECK and double-check your dvd in as many players as you can get your greasy mitts on. A festival director friend of mine said that about 10% of the films they received didn’t play, and needless to say they did not get accepted!

Step 3: The waiting game
Once you’ve sent your film off, not much left to do but hope and pray! Some festivals you will never hear from again, some will say they’ve got your film and then leave it at that. The politer ones write to tell you if you haven’t made it, but the number of these is disappointingly few in our experience.

When you are successful, some festivals will offer you tickets plus bed and board for the duration, but at the other end of the scale, some of the smaller ones can barely afford to give you a ticket to the screening your own film is in. We recommend going to as many as possible- although watching your own film on the big screen can be painful, opportunities to mingle don’t come much better!

So that’s it. Good luck and we hope to see you at next years Annecy!

List of video sharing sites

2010-04-24T10:02:00.004+01:00

Viral marketing describes a promotional strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a message to other people.

This creates the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence, with people 'infecting' their friends and loved ones before they even know what they're doing.

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

When we make viral marketing campaigns for our Clients, they often expect us to simply upload the video to youtube and then sit back and watch it go three times around the world before supper.

In truth of course, there's a lot of work in making a video go viral, and in promoting it online.

Here's a list of over 50 online video sharing sites that serve as a good starting point. It's not a complete list, so please let me know any others that you know of so we can keep the list up to date.

5Min
Atom Films
Blip.tv
Bofunk
Buzznet Video
Clevver
ClipShack
DailyMotion
eBaum’s World Video
esnips
Flixya
Flukiest
Flurl.com
Glumbert
Google Video
Groovid
Guba
Heavy
HelpFul Video
Imeem
Imvite
Ipernity
JumpCut
Kewego
Kyte TV
Medicine Films
Metacafe
MixerCast
MSN Video
MySpace
Nelsok
OnfuegO
PhotoBucket Video
Revver
Scilpo
Self Cast TV
Seven Load
Sharkle
Smart Video Channel
SpyMac
Stumble Upon Video
Treemo
Twango
Veoh
Viddler
Vidiac
VidiPedia
ViewDo
Vimeo
VSocial
Yahoo Video
Yikers
YouTube

Business Club

2010-04-22T17:27:00.000+01:00

We have recently made the decision to join a networking group called Business Club. Despite having severely disenchanted with networking following our year with the severely cult-like BNI, this is a tentative step, but one that we take with confidence following a very fun and profitable first meeting.

After all, when a networking group pays for itself for the first 2 years in the first meeting, you feel as though you might as well join!

The meetings are lively, entertaining and educational. Although the focus is very much on business and networking, this is done in a relaxed and informal way, allowing real relationships to develop that aren’t strained by constant pressure for referrals.

Best EVER Animated Music Videos

2010-04-16T15:10:00.010+01:00

What makes an awesome music video?

It's not the song, because we've all seen some bad songs made bearable by great videos, just as we've all seen great songs let down by a terrible video.

There have been a lot of really creative, original music videos made over the last 50 years or so, that have combined with the song to make a truly seminal, memorable experience. The music video should enhance, evolve and explain the track. They are the visual translation of the lyrics, the tone and the meaning of the song.

Animation is the perfect medium for Music Videos, because you have 3 minutes to try something totally new and innovative. Lots of new animation techniques have been pioneered in the Music Video Industry, because artists are given so much freedom to express themselves visually.

This is my list of the top 20 animated Music Videos ever. Some are old, some are new, all are awesome.

20. Jason Forrest - War Photographer

Directed by Joel Trussell
2D animation
2005

19. Keane - Bedshaped

Directed by Corin Hardy
Stop-motion animation
2004

18. Nizlopi - The JCB Song

Directed by Monkeehub
Hand drawn animation
2005

17.Weird Al Yankovich - Jurassic Park

Directed by Mark Osbourne
Claymation
1993

16. Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution

Directed by Kevin Altieri and Todd McFarlane
Handdrawn animation
1998

15. Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance

Directed by Oren Lavie
Pixelation
2009

14. Johnny Reubonic - Word of Mouth

Directed by Chris Oatley
2D animation
2006

13. Santogold, Julian Casablancas, and N.E.R.D - My Drive Thru

Directed by Psyop
Photography and CGI animation
2008

12. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.

Directed by Passion Pictures
CGI and 2D animation
2005

11. Royksopp - Remind Me

Directed by H5
Isometric shapes 2D animation
2002

10. Oldelaf and Monsieur D - Le Cafe

Directed by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou
2D animation
2008

9. Team William - You Look Familiar

Directed by Michélé De Feudis and Joris Bergmans
2D animation
2009

8. Junior Senior Move your feet

Directed by Shynola
Pixel Art (using Microsoft Paint)
2002

7. Fujiya and Miyagi - Ankle injuries

Directed by Wade Shotter
Dice stop motion animation
2006

6. White Stripes - Fell in Love with a Girl

Directed by Michel Gondry
Lego
2002

5. Streetlight Manifesto - Would you be impressed?

Directed by Jurjen Bosklopper
2D animation
2007

4. Michael Jackson - Leave me Alone

Directed by Jim Blashfield
Mixed Media
1987

3. BBC Children in Need - Children in Need

Directed by Chapman Studios
Mixed
2009

2. Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

Directed by Aardman
Stopmotion animation
1986

1. A ha - Take on me

Directed by Steve Barron
Rotoscope
1985

I hope that you enjoyed this list of the best animated music videos. If you want to see other music videos, here's Wikipedia's list of All the Music Videos ever made with Animation. It's a long list,but if you're interested, it's a great way to spend an afternoon!

And here's the shameless plug part: Check out our recent music video for Sam Roman's song 'The Best Day We Ever Had.'

Writing for the web

2010-04-05T16:34:00.009+01:00

People don’t like to read information from a computer screen. They scan pages for important content, and click on the first link that catches their eyes or vaguely resembles the information that they were searching for.

The more content you have the less people will read. This is because too much text on a page is intimidating; it scares people away.

In addition to this, having a lot of text is bad for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), because it means that your important keywords are buried within a lot of less relevant text.

Short, succinct copy is the goal, and these tips are intended to help you write for the web, or review existing content with both optimization and readability in mind.

Most Important Things To Remember:

Copywriting is about selling first and writing second. This involves an understanding of your reader and what makes them tick.

Focus on the reader. It’s not about you, your company or your product. Figure out who they are, what they want, what will make them buy from you.

A good copywriter knows their product inside out. A great copywriter knows their audience inside out. Build a psychological profile of your typical reader, and keep it in mind when writing your text. Ask yourself:

How old are they?
What sex are they?
What are their hopes/ fears/ desires/ vices?
What is their occupation?
What is their income bracket?
What do they want more (or less) of in their lives?
Do they value money or less stress higher?
Do they value fashion or comfort higher?
What are their values?
How do they see themselves?
How do others see them?
Are they lead by their head or their heart?

The more insights you can gain in to your reader’s mind, the more likely you are to write copy that appeals to them in a way that they can’t ignore.

Tips:

Always refer to the reader as ‘you.’ Not ‘some of you’ or ‘all of you.’ Imagine that only one person is reading your copy
Use ‘you’ at least three times for every time you say “I” or “we.”
Don’t tell people what they are interested in, e.g. “as a busy managing director, you’ll want to know all about…”
If you state a fact about your product, follow it with the benefit to the reader.
Keep in mind the reader’s constant state of mind “What’s in it for me?”

Benefits selling:

You must provide plenty of objective reasons why your reader should buy your product, but remember that people buy mostly on emotional grounds. Benefits sell. Features do not.

Tell the reader how your product will improve their life, and they will care. Tell them that it has a 16 gigowatt engine and is made of a polycarbonate encrusted shell, and they will not.

Writing for the web is all about showing your readers that your product is the solution to their problem. That means the first thing you have to do is to work out what their problem is.

How will your product improve your reader’s life? Answer that question in the first 2 sentences and you’re off to a great start. Mention as many benefits as you can, and use concrete, specific examples to illustrate what you’re saying.

F – features - our websites are designed bespoke for your business
A –advantages – your visitors will be impressed and consider your business creative and professional
B – benefits - your revenue will increase dramatically

So, how is it done?

1. Put the most important information at the top

The “inverted pyramid” began in Journalism and is hugely relevant to writing for the web.

Identify your key message make sure it is within the first paragraph, because the reader could stop reading at any time. Most people read just 3 lines before deciding whether or not the page is relevant.

Ask yourself what you want the user to do with/find out from this page. Make this the most obvious part of your content. If your reader can identify quickly what each page is about, they can decide whether it is worth reading further.

2. Less is more!

A good rule is that you should be saying the same as you say in print on the web using half as many words. War and Peace, for example, will never be popular as an e-book.

Keep your language and sentence structure simple. This is not time to show off your vocabulary.
Dense chunks of complex text will put readers off.
Remember, short copy is good copy
Stick to one idea per paragraph.

3. Make web pages easy to scan

The web is a visual medium, so it’s very important to provide the visual clues for scanning

Highlight key information
Use bulleted lists
Break up copy into short paragraphs
Use headings and subheadings as visual clues

Example:

(click to enlarge)

4. Use brief and emotive Headlines

Headlines are one of the most important things you will write on the web. The first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers if you want your visitors to read on.

Be concise. They should not be longer than 10 words
Use clear and descriptive keywords. Remember that headings count very highly towards your optimization.
Use headlines to get your reader’s attention and provide information about what the text is about
Use powerful words to grab attention

Example Bad/ Good words:
Optimal / Best
Cost Effective / Cheap
Impact negatively / Hurt
Raison d'etre / Purpose

5. Use brief and effective Links

Links are great for helping people navigate around your site and around the wider web with ease. Longer links are harder to read than shorter ones, so be as concise as possible.

Avoid the use of “click here,” as the link text, for optimization as well as readability reasons
Text in links counts highly for search engines; try to choose a keyword or phrase as the link text.
Try to make links read as part of the text.
Links are good, but only link to reputable and relevant sites.
Don’t use complete sentences as links.
If you want someone to read important content, make sure you place the link AFTER the content, not before or in the middle.

6. Consider the way people search

Put yourself in the mind of your perfect visitor and try to use the language and words that they might use to find you.

This will make your pages easier to understand for the user and have a higher chance of being picked up in searches. The best thing about the web is that your perfect customer is the person who is searching for you!

Example: Use cartoon instead of animation if that is what you think your target audience will type in to Google.

7. Avoid scrolling pages where possible

Most users only scroll up to 2 web pages. To avoid scrolling:

Be ruthless - cut & edit unnecessary content
Break up large chunks of content into multiple pages with this,
Use ‘more information’ links for people who are particularly interested in the subject
Link out to supporting information

8. Use plain English

Plain English does not mean ‘dumbing down’ your text, it's about having a clear message that helps readers to locate key information. Avoid jargon and don’t write in a flowery, academic or marketing style. Don’t use prior to when before is just as good

9. Avoid welcome waffle

Never use the phrase “welcome to our website” or an equivalent. It’s like small talk, it doesn't convey any information; it’s an attempt to be welcoming and friendly. However, web users don't have time for small talk, they just want to find information (e.g. name and telephone number) and then move on. On the web it’s all about quick communication and getting fast results.

Your website section will actually be much more user-friendly if you avoid welcome waffle.

10. Last but not least: Proofread your text and check your grammar!

Summary:

Begin by planning your text carefully and thoroughly
Only write once you know exactly what you want to say in each paragraph and the tone you will take
Keep your imagined reader in mind constantly
Keep it short, but more importantly, keep it relevant
Use benefits, rather than features to sell your product
Read and rewrite as many times as necessary. Leave it for a day and come back to it before signing it off.

Web design competition - win $10,000

2010-04-05T14:15:00.006+01:00

Weebly are offering $13,000 in prizes ($10,000 1st place, $2,000 2nd place, $1,000 third place) for the best submitted themes. Sounds like a pretty good competition to me - you don't even have to slice and dice the design yourself, just submit the .psd.

Of course, they can use all of the designs submitted, so it's a good deal for them too, but it's still a great opportunity for any web designers out there! They also have a fairly impressive list of experts judging the competition, and will give credit on the designs so everyone should get a little something out of it.

Animation Showreel

2010-04-04T10:00:00.001+01:00

We are exceptionally pleased and proud to reveal our new showreel! It contains our work over the few years from projects including Title sequences, Music Videos, Short Films, Series pitches, Idents and Commercials, for Clients including Sky and ITV.

How to train your dragon

2010-04-01T18:06:00.007+01:00

Dreamwork's new film How to Train Your Dragon has not been on top of my years must see films. The films coming out of the studio (since the original Shrek, which I wont hear a word against!) have been generic, formulaic and, lets be honest here, designed with merchandising very much in mind!

The trailers haven't done a huge amount of improve my opinion of the film (although I have read some very good reviews), but yesterday I came across this concept art which shows where the film came from visually. I've always absolutely loved dragons and fantasy art, and this is no exception. It looks like at one point it was going to be a really dark, moody piece with atmosphere and drama.

I don't want to judge the film before I've even seen it, but comparing this beautiful concept art with the images of the finished film screams to me that someone somewhere took a very wrong turn!!

... and how it turned out. Very happy meal friendly!

Submitting your website to design blogs

2010-03-22T00:26:00.007Z

I mentioned in my last post that our new website slurpystudios.com has been listed in over 100 design reviews and blogs. Since then I've had several requests for a list of these design blogs so that other proud web designers can submit their sites for review.

Getting another site to mention your site is valuable in 4 ways:

People search design blogs for inspiration and will see your site, dramatically increasing your visibility
People will be able to comment and review your site, with the possibility of winning prizes and awards
Other sites linking to your site makes Google and other search engines think very highly of you and put you higher up the search rankings.
Submitting to a few of these design blogs can create a snowball effect; when other blog writers browse these sites for inspiration, they often repost your site on their own blog and increase your audience in that way. For example, we received hundreds of hits from the influential blog TemplateMonster '101 Awesome website portflios' although we didn't submit the site to them.

So here is a list of some of the sites which collect inspirational or beautifully designed websites that you can submit to:

Apologies if there are any duplicates - it is quite a long list! If there are any others that I haven't listed, please let me know and I'll update it to include them. I checked them all, but if any of them stop working for any reason, please let me know that too so we can make this a useful resource for everyone

New website!!

2010-03-20T00:18:00.000Z

Any regular visitors to this blog may just have noticed that the design has changed. Gone is the epilepsy inducing red, and here (we hope) is a slightly more tasteful design based on our new brand identity and website.

As is often the way with web design studios, our own site has been slightly neglected of late, and we've been meaning to redesign it for over a year. Just like the shoemaker's kids' shoes (or whatever the saying is), it's just something that we've kept putting off.

But now it's finally finished, and we're very happy with it. I hope you'll check it out and let us know what you think! The site has already been listed on over 100 international design reviews, and has been picked by several influential blogs.

Tex Avery

2010-03-13T00:07:00.000Z

Everyone knows Tex Avery. It's just that not everyone knows that they know Tex Avery.

Do you know Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny or Droopy? Then you know Tex Avery.

The man was a legend. He worked at Warner Bros and MGM for most of his prolific career, and created more memorable characters during that time than most other studios managed put together. He practically invented slapstick animated humor, and taught animators all over the world how much power they really had over their creations.

He stretched the boundaries, pushed the line, and created a style of animation that no longer looked to emulate live action, it looked to exceed it in every way.

So why am I waxing lyrical about this man 25 years after he died? Because I came across a website today which contains several of his character sheets, and it really brought home to me how ground breaking the man was. I'll post one here, but check out comicrazy for the rest.

Film Review: Princess and the Frog

2010-02-20T18:48:00.000Z

Most of my feelings about Princess and the Frog were those of relief that at last Disney had returned to what Disney do best (hand drawn animation telling heart-warming stories, preferably with the occasional song thrown in for good measure) and hope that it did well enough at the box office for them to make more.

I hadn’t actually got around to forming any hopes or expectation about the film itself, so was little more than a blank slate, waiting to be enchanted.

I thought the film was very good. The story was fun, the music memorable. The characters were believable and empathetic (I was a blubbering wreck at the end, but a quick look around the cinema made me realise that I was the only person emotionally devastated by the death of a firefly). Spoiler alert by the way. Sorry about that.

I thought the villainous Dr Facilier was particularly good – his movement perfectly captured his personality. Lead Animator Bruce Smith and his team did a great job on creating a character with distinctive movement and a tortured soul that stole every scene he was in.

If I had a gripe (and I do) it would be the over reliance on the supporting characters to the detriment of the development of the main ones. This is something that Pixar do so well – they trust their main characters to carry the story and provoke the necessary laughter and emotion, so they don’t feel Disney’s need to fill the screen with trumpet playing crocodiles or unusually breasted blind women with a penchant for snakes.

Not in the top 20 or so Disney films, but a great starting point on the road to recovery!

The history of pre-animation

2010-02-11T00:41:00.000Z

One of the extra activities that we do at Slurpy Studios, are animation workshops for Children aged 7 to 13. Animation is an incredibly fun, inspiring, yet educational activity that children of all ages can engage in, and it's always been a great privilege to be there when a child first sees their creation coming to life before their eyes.

The first thing that we always do with the children is to take them through a series of clips from the last 100 years of animation, from James Stuart Blackton's Enchanted Drawings, all the way through to Avatar. I think that it's only through understanding where animation has come from, and seeing some of the early experiments and breakthroughs that a proper understanding and respect for the medium is born.

I remember my first experiments with animation. We did a thaumatrope in class when I was about 9. A thaumatrope is simple a disc with string attached. On one side is a drawing of a bird (for example) and on the other side is a drawing of a cage. When the string is pulled and the disc is spun, it appears as though the bird is in the cage. This is because of persistence of vision; a flaw with the human eye which causes it to retain an image for a fraction of a second longer than it sees it. It is because of this flaw that both film and animation can work.

Needless to say, the thaumatrope got me hooked, and I spend all of that night making my bird sit inside the cage, before moving on t0 Zeotropes and Phenakistiscopes and (slightly easier to spell) flipbooks.

So, for kids who are budding animators, and for parents who are desperate to give their offspring something to do on a rainy day, here is a template for a thaumatrope that you can print (on to card) and make in a few minutes...

And for anyone out there who is no longer impressed by spinning disc (shame on you), I cannot recommend Dick Balzer's website highly enough. It contains information and images of all of the pre-animation animation toys, such as Praxinoscopes, Tachyscopes, Phenakistiscopes and other such dyslexic nightmares.

Propaganda and war time animation

2010-02-03T23:30:00.003Z

Yesterday I wrote a very short post which, after a fairly meandering journey, talked a little about propaganda animation produced during the war. Since then I've had several friends asking me more about the subject and, since it's something that I find absolutely fascinating and also something that I have a little bit of knowledge about, having done my dissertation on it, I thought I'd go in to the subject in slightly more depth.

Animation is the perfect medium for propaganda. Why? Lots of reasons:

- Animation is considered an innocent medium. It's associated mostly with children's entertainment, and the audience therefore lowers it's guard. We don't expect a political message to be delivered in an innocent medium.

- Animation doesn't have a class, a race, a sex or anything else that alienates part of the audience. A talking bunny is neither black nor white, neither upper or lower class.

- Animation is a clear and concise medium which allows you to say exactly what you want. The animator controls every single pixel of every single frame of the film, and can show only what they want the audience to see. This increases the power of the message dramatically.

And there are a million of other reasons. This is why animation is frequently used not only in propaganda, but also in advertising, which has many of the same requirements.

In Britain during the Second World War, propaganda was considerably more muted than it's American counterpart. Halas and Batchelor films such as 'Dustbin Parade' for example, reveal England's fighter spirit and everyone pulling together attitude. American films, such as Disney's Der Fuhrer's Face or Education for Death often revealed a more aggressively anti-Nazi/Japanese attitude.

I always believed that this was because the American people needed to be educated about why they were going to war, and why they should hate the Germans. The British already knew why they were going to war and only had to be taught how they could help. It could also be to do with the excessive amount of anti-German propaganda produced in England during the First World War, which had mostly been proven to be lies.

For more information on this fascinating subject, I recommend the films of Halas and Batchelor (and here I can squeeze in a plug for the Animation Research Center in Surrey, which I used to Manage, and which contains an extensive collection from the studio), the documentary Animation Nation from the BBC, and the collection of films from the Disney studio entitled On the Front Lines.

Here are the films contained within On The Front Lines, most of which are available to watch on YouTube:

Donald Gets Drafted

The Army Mascot

Private Pluto

Fall Out; Fall In

The Old Army Game

Home Defense

How to be a Sailor

Commando Duck

The Vanishing Private

Sky Trooper

Victory Vehicles

Der Fuehrer's Face

Education for Death

Reason and Emotion

Thrifty Pig

Seven Wise Dwarfs

Donald's Decision

All Together

The New Spirit

The Spirit of '43

Food Will Win the War

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Firing Line

The Grain that Built a Hemisphere

Cleanliness Brings Health

Chicken Little

Winged Scourge

ENJOY!!

The vital importance of Coke

2010-02-02T22:23:00.001Z

As I was working frantically (read: browsing lazily) on the internet today, I came across this advert for Coke from the 1950s which I found so hilariously funny that I had to share it with as many people as I could.

(Click to enlarge)

Just remember that it's never too soon to start your baby on a diet of caffeine and cocaine!

It did remind me though of some Disney films that were made during the war for various Government campaigns. I did my dissertation on the difference in war time propaganda films produced in Britain and America, and watched some creations from the Disney studio that no fan should ever have to see! One film that I stumbled upon during this time (although it didn't make it in to the dissertation) was called The Winged Scourge. It was made in 1943, and uses the Seven Dwarves to warn people against the risk of Malaria, and to inform them that the best method for reducing the risk was to... wait for it... pour oil on to every water source.

Scary huh!

And this film was just one of a great many films that the Disney studios produced during the war (despite the fact that nearly one third of their staff were drafted.)

There's a great DVD collection called Disney on the Front Lines which includes about 30 short films made about the war effort and introduced thoughtfully by film historian and mega Disney nerd Leonard Maltin.

Several of the films have not been seen since their initial release; and others were never shown to the general public. Many of the wartime entertainment shorts are largely propaganda, and many are educational. Donald's nightmare of working on a Nazi assembly line in "Der Fuehrer's Face" is still hilarious slapstick. The grimmer "Education for Death" and "Chicken Little" have aged less gracefully (and considerably less politically correctly!!).

It's a scary collection, but it's also fascinating for anyone with an interest in Disney, animation, the war, propaganda or the changing acceptability of gratuitous racism and health policies which actively push to destroy the environment.

Preparing a pitch - things found on t'internet

2010-01-31T12:28:00.031Z

For the past few months, we at Slurpy have been working hard to prepare a pitch for a BBC children's series. Obviously I can't say much about the series, only that it's aimed at the Cbeebies (very young) audience and that we're very excited about it. What I did want to share with you though, is all of the useful things that I've found on the internet while I've been researching this project, which I think any young studio or even independent animator will find useful. There's not always a huge amount of information available with regards to budgeting and planning a series, so here's some of what we've found useful...

Animation Production Process

Dave Redl, creator of the Family Pants series, has written an incredibly useful and informative essay on the Animation Production Process from beginning to end. It's geared towards people using Flash, but is an excellent general introduction.

"Imagine getting the script, "Fred gets a bowling ball from the closet.” A directors can kill a budget with a simple action like this. They'd show Fred opening a closet toward us, stepping out of the way to reveal 1,000 gags in the closet; a pterodactyl umbrella and such, then grab the bowling ball on the top shelf causing every one of the 1,000 items tumbling out toward us, in perspective, and finally having the bowling ball hit Fred in the head. A simple act, that might be funny, but has nothing to do with the story other than getting the ball.

Hanna and Barbara would have simplified this to; Fred walking left, asking Wilma, “Where’s my bowling ball?” Cut to Wilma sitting in chair, we only see her neck up, “In the closet Fred.” We hear a door opening off camera. Cut to Fred’s butt sticking out from behind a closet door with some rummaging sounds. “I can’t find it! There’s too much stuff in here!” Cut back to Wilma, “Try the top shelf dear… Fred look out!” A crash off screen, the camera shakes and Wilma’s eyes close. Cut back to a pile of stuff in front of a damaged closet door. Fred’s head pops up from the wreckage, “Wilma, one of these days, you have got to clean out this closet!” Then the bowling ball rolls off the top shelf onto his head with a “klunk!”

Dave also shows his animatic as an example, and offers to send the .fla to anyone who emails him. (Also, check out the Family Pants cartoons if you haven't seen them, they're very funny).

Animation Budgets for films, TV shows, shorts and DVDs

Researching budgets can be one of the most difficult parts of preparing a pitch. Going too high or too low can be disastrous, and without having made a series before, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Captain Capitalism doesn't answer this question for you (I'm afraid it's some pretty complicated maths mostly), but he does offer this fascinating graph which shows the budgets of animation films and cartoons throughout history, all adjusted for inflation.

Did you know, for example, that Steamboat Willie cost the equivalent of $173,886 to make (which in 1928 was $15,000) and was 7 minutes long, working out at $414 per second of screentime, or $23 a frame? Whereas Treasure Planet (which I believe comes second only to Final Fantasy in biggest animated financial disasters) cost $159,434,929 to make, working out at $1,553 PER FRAME!

Well worth checking out: http://captaincapitalism.com/blog/2008/11/animation-budget-history.html

Animation Budgeting Spreadsheet

This incredibly useful (and really quite daunting) budgeting guideline from Screen Australia is easily the most useful document I've found on the web. It breaks down every part of the production process in to possible expenses and contains all of the formula that means you're not going to spend your days poking at a pocket calculator. Under 'Publicity materials' for example, the list of options is:

Publicist
- Fees
Stills
- Stills Cameraperson
- Graphic Design and Photo Manuipulation
Press Kits
- EPK - see d.below
- Cover
- Typing
- Artwork
- Printing
- Distribution
- Copies of DVD Trailer/Clip
Electronic Press Kit
- Production
- Copies
- Distribution
Promotional Materials
- Graphic Design
- Printing
- Fliers
- Postcards
- Poster
- Distribution Boxes, Tubes for posters
- Other
Video Promo/Clip Selection
- Production
- Dubs
- Distribution
- Boxes, Labels, etc
Website Production
- Domain Name Fees
- Hosting Fees
Other
- Crew/Cast T-shirts
- Other

Now, would you have thought of allocating money for Crew t-shirts? Me neither! Thank you Screen Australia!!!

The Pitching Process

A lot of excellent articles have been written on the nerve-wracking process of pitching to a networking, here are a few... Screenwriters Daily - how to pitch a cartoon AWN - a perfect pitch Media Freaks - Cartoon series pitching Q&A And of course there are lots of locations where you can pitch to multiple networks at one time, such as; Kidscreen Summit, Cartoon forum, MIPCOM, and MIPTV

Commissioning briefs

Every network will have different commissioning briefs, because each of them has a different remit. Cbbc and Cbeebies both offer up their commissioning guides as .pdfs from their websites. CBBC and CBeebies. These documents give great insight in to what the different channels are looking for (basically the next Charlie and Lola), and what their intended budget is.

Other useful things

Everyone is used to using Stock Photography these days, but what about Stock Music and Sound Effects? For smaller budget productions these can be incredibly useful and save a huge amount of money. We use Audio Micro for choice, because their search engine works better than the others we've experienced, which allows us to save time.

As someone who's spent ridiculous proportions of their life contorting their body in the mirror so they can draw different positions, this photo reference library is incredibly useful. I've only just discovered it, but I can already tell I'm going to be going back there most days!

Avatar

2010-01-26T22:49:00.008Z

For the past month we've been allowing the hype surrounding Avatar build to a crescendo that was practically deafening us, and last night, finally, we succumbed.

We put it off because we really wanted to see it in Imax, but never found ourselves anywhere near one with any spare time. It's embarrassing enough for anyone involved in film and animation to have to admit that they haven't seen the film that the person they're in conversation is raving about ("oh my god, you haven't seen [enter completely obscure and probably Japanese film that no one really understands or particularly enjoys] - but I thought you were in to animation!"). It became clear quite early on that missing Avatar in the cinemas was going to cause a huge amount of future embarrassment for generations to come. So, in the name of research and to protect any potential offspring, we trundled off to the local cinema.

And we loved it. Of course we did. Everyone loved it, today it celebrated becoming the highest grossing film of all time, overtaking Director James Cameron's last film Titanic which took something absurd like $1.8billion. I like to think that our fairly extortionate ticket prices (£12.50!?!?!?) contributed to that record.

"Fox have confirmed that Avatar overtook Titanic on Monday to become the highest earner at the worldwide box office. Total global receipts have reached $1,858,866,889, $16 million ahead of the $1,842,879,955 earned by Titanic in 1997/98. Purists will point, of course, to the effects of inflation and increased ticket prices thanks to IMAX and digital 3D screenings. But Avatar hasn't finished yet. Next up will be Titanic $600 million domestic record, and $2 billion worldwide. More milestones beckon beyond that... at its current rate, Avatar has a shot at topping $750 million at the US box office and $2.5 billion worldwide. James Cameron has been vindicated again."
Numbers.com

(It should perhaps be noted that these numbers have not been adjusted for inflation, and neither has it been taken in to account that most people see Avatar in 3D and therefore pay more for their tickets. The announcement that Avatar overtook Titanic could infact be seen as another trick in the most impressive PR campaign that the world has seen since Obama's election campaign.)

It's an absolutely staggering film. The CG elements are introduced so subtly that Cameron takes you from reality to fantasy without you even noticing. Soon you're having the same emotional and intellectual responses to characters who are nothing more than pixels, that you were with the flesh and blood characters that share the screen. It's the sign of a good storyteller - one who can make you loose yourself so completely in the story that you barely notice that you've strayed a long way from the straight path of reality, but keep you feeling the emotions that you associate with real, living and breathing characters. James Cameron, director of Titanic, Aliens and Terminator 2, is nothing if not a great storyteller.

However, a huge amount of credit has to go to the special effects and animation teams of WETA and ILM. Most people know the story that James Cameron knew that technology had finally caught up with his vision for the film when he saw WETA's character Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and it will be the ground breaking effects for which this film will be remembered. Cameron described it as a 'game changer' and as an animator I can imagine that a whole lot of the CGI studios are going to be looking to raise their game. With a budget of $280 million and an estimated time of 47 man hours per frame of animation (and there are 24 frames per second of film for the uninitiated), studios are going to have to take a big gulp and dig deep if they want to even consider competing with Avatar.

Avatar is far from an original story. Infact it's Pocahontas. (Disney's Pocahontas that is, not the real story where she was a child of 10). Here's a plot spoiler that reveals some pretty compromising similarities. Change the odd name and skin colour and you've got yourself a pretty identical movie - talking tree and all!

This doesn't really bother me. I like Pocahontas and I like Avatar - one of my old University lectures once said that there is only one original story and everything else is a knockoff. Incase you're wondering, it's "a stranger comes to town..."

(Of course it's the ... that's the important bit.)

I'm not as loved up as some of the people in this really quite hilarious article who are quoted as saying

"It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen"

and "When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," .

(This curious side effect of the movie even has a name; 'Post Avatar Depression'

I loved the time I spent in the cinema watching Avatar, loved the world and the people and the message. If it's made even the slightest change in our attitudes to our wanton destruction of the Earth's natural resources then I am over the moon, but mostly I just enjoyed the film. I think you'd have to be pretty determined not to enjoy it to come out of it with any other conclusion.

The Simpsons celebrates 20 years, and Slurpy talk to BBC radio about the reasons behind their success

2010-01-18T16:29:00.009Z

In January 1990, The Simpsons left their slot on the Tracy Ullman show and began the first series of what was to become a global phenomenon. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and friends have starred in 450 episodes of the show, making it the longest running American sitcom ever AND the longest running American entertainment show, going over 21 series and spawning a movie that made $527 million at the box office, not to mention the merchandise which was reckoned to be worth $750 million in 2008 alone.

The show helped change the perception of animation being only for kids, and paved the way for South Park, Family Guy, King of The Hill and Futurama and all of your other favourite animation shows. Seth McFarlane, creative genius behind Family Guy has said "The Simpsons created an audience for Prime Time animation."

Fascinating Fact: On September 11 2001, Seth McFarlane was supposed to be aboard the plane that flew in to the World Trade Center and killed everyone on board. It was only due to a mix up with his travel agent that Seth missed his flight and was able to give the world Family Guy.

From the very beginning, the show has been multi-generational; enjoyed as much by children who can giggle at Bart's 'eat my shorts' attitude as by adults who can relate to the lazy but good hearted Homer or the long suffering Marge. These are real people, with real issues and real feelings (infact they're creator Matt Groening's real family apparently, he named all of his most famous characters after his own family except Bart!). The Simpsons all have their faults, but they're also a strong family unit who look out for one another and always end up making the right decisions. This is a show that adults can enjoy alongside their young ones, laughing often in completely different places as one set of jokes goes over the first generation's head and tickles the funny bone of the next. This is something we're seeing more and more of in animated films at the moment as Producers try to widen the appeal (and therefore the profitability) of their films - Shrek is a wonderful example of this (the first one is anyway - the only thing that the latter two are wonderful examples of is corporate greed and style over substance in my humble opinion).

BBC Radio Surrey and Sussex (formerly BBC Radio Southern Counties) rang us up on Thursday to ask us our opinion on why The Simpsons has gone the distance and to help them celebrate 20 years of yellow mania. The interview is below.

(It should probably be mentioned that I was quite nervous and somehow managed to say South Park instead of the Simpsons in answer to the very first question! Not a great first answer on National Radio, but the interviewer Danny Pike managed to maintain a very professional attitude and not mention it. Unfortunately my friends and colleagues all did!)

Enjoy!

Slurpy Receives Honors from American Design Awards

2010-01-11T16:46:00.009Z

Slurpy are pleased and proud to announce today that we have received an award from the American Design Awards for the design of its Retro Tuckshop website. Our entry was among 25 sites chosen from a pool of over 2,000 entries.

This award is a great tribute to our hard work, dedication and creativity, especially since it comes from fellow design professionals at American Design Awards. This concludes a wonderful year for Slurpy, after our Music Video 'The Best Day We Ever Had' toured the world's animation festivals, and our multi award winning short film 'Death by Scrabble' continued to garner praise and recognition.

We would also like to give our thanks to Kate Henning, the owner of the website for giving us so much freedom with the design, (and also for the large quantities of sweets which she gave us as a thank you present - my dentist may not appreciate them, but I certainly did!). Retro Tuckshop is a great business, and the perfect place to order your sherbet fountains, fizzy whips and aniseed balls. We're very happy to have been able to give Kate a great design and vastly improved visitor numbers through our search engine optimization work.

The American Design Awards looks at and grades hundreds of web design entries each month in their Monthly Design Contest. Grading is based on creativity (40 points), effectiveness (30 points), and practicality (30 points), for a total of 100 points. Slurpy scored a total of 73 points, winning ourselves a very shiny glass plaque.

Top 10 Photoshop fails

2010-01-05T19:37:00.003Z

I've spent a lot of time in Photoshop over the last few weeks, manipulating photos and making people look thinner and more plastic. It can be quite obsessive work, so I thought I'd emerge to share this post with you. My friends are always asking me to 'shop them in their holiday snaps etc, and I've slowly noticed that the general consensus is that Photoshop can achieve absolutely anything, and that it's a simple matter of opening an image in Photoshop and clicking a few buttons for the person in it to resemble Sharon Stone.

It's true that Photoshop is a phenomenally powerful program, and that pretty much anything can be achieved in it with sufficient time and skill. This photo shows how the program is frequently used and abused by journalists desperate for a story when there is none.

However, for anyone who still thinks that making someone go from 20 stone to the cover of Playboy is done with just a couple of mouse clicks, I thought I'd show some of my favourite Photoshop disasters. These are all available elsewhere on the web, and undoubtedly the work of highly proficient Photoshop users who simply found themselves up against a tight deadline or an unreasonable Client.

Top 10 Photoshop fails:

One of the most famous Photoshop mistakes, and quite definitely the result of a heavy drinking session the night before. Pretty hard to miss!

A miracle cereal that helps you lose weight and turns you white!!!

I'm betting that someone got fired for this one - how do you not notice when you chop off someone's head?

Either someone forgot to put this woman's jaw back, or she is about to devour her friend in one bite

This Photoshopper obviously just enjoys doing hands, or he got a bit confused by the dress!

Very sexy and everything, but is she perhaps missing something? ...maybe like a belly button?

The clone tool is a wonderful invention, but should perhaps have been used a little more sparingly by this particular Photoshopper.

Another classic from the world of sport. My guess is that the designer planned to finish this job later, but never quite got around to it!

Either that arm does not belong to that man, or that man does not belong to that arm! ...Or possibly he just has one massive arm that he waxes regularly.

There is just too much wrong with this image to even begin to make sarcastic comments. I'll start you off with
- The wing mirror is MASSIVE
- What angle of reflection is that??
- The text is the right way around
and let you go from there.

Let that be a lesson to all of us to double check our work before it goes to the printers! Probably time for me to get stuck in to my work again... I've a feeling I cut a head off a basketball player earlier that I should probably stick back on!

PS. The original source for many of these images is Photoshop Disasters, which is well worth the occasional perusal at your leisure.

Disney's Rapunzel - concept art

2010-01-02T17:06:00.010Z

Rumours about Rapunzel have been circling the internet for many years now, and slowly the excitement inside me has been growing to a fever pitch that now threatens to explode at the merest mention of the film.

Why am I so excited? Because Glen Keane; THE Glen Keane, the master animator responsible for Aladdin, Tarzan, Ariel, and above all the Beast, is directing. If that's not enough to transform any self respecting animator in to a puddle of excitement then frankly I don't know what is.

Glen Keane has always been my favourite animator. Even when I had no idea that the same guy animated so many of my favourite characters, they still stood above the rest as examples of perfect characterization and life. It's Tarzan and the Beast that particularly impress - watch the way they move, so powerful, so controlled and so perfectly fitting their personalities and histories. They aren't particularly vocal characters either, so all of their emotion and storytelling had to come from the animation.

"Tarzan is defined by how he moves, more than how he speaks. It's like Bambi. There are scenes in Bambi where there is no dialog. There's just a deer moving. And it stops. It's ears move. It turns. It's fascinating watching the deer move. With Tarzan, a story sketch may have shown him going from here to there, but it was the actual animation of going from here to there that was a beautiful thing to watch; to see him move like an animal. It brought Tarzan to life."
Interview with Glen Keane

Even though Keane is no longer directing the film (Nathan Greno and Brian Howard (from Bolt) took over directing duties in 2009) he has still been responsible for the unique visuals of the film, and developing the technology to help them realise his dreams for a fully textured 3d environment based on the art of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. By using non-photorealistic rendering, the movie will seem almost painted on the screen, while still allowing the depth and three-dimensional aspects of modern animation.

“The Swing,” by French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

So the film is 3D, but it's been made to look like it's 2D. Here's some of the concept art that Disney have released for the film that they've described as... "a stunning CG fantasy world complete with the iconic tower, an evil witch, a gallant hero and, of course, the mysterious girl with the long golden tresses. Expect adventure, heart, humor, and hair, lots of hair.”

It's due out this summer, and I guess I have little choice but to wait until then. It's worth mentioning that Glen Keane has a wonderful blog which has sketches and frames from all of his most famous creations. I can't recommend the site enough to any aspiring animator, his pencil sketches alone are well worth checking out.

He's written a book called 'Creating Characters With Personality', which gives detailed advice from the master and is available from all good bookstores. There's also new book by him called 'The Art of the Disney Princess' which I haven't actually read yet (although my birthday is coming up, and full details can be found on my wishlist). I'm sure it will be well worth a perusal.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

2009-12-18T12:30:00.003Z

Things are a little over excited here at Slurpy Towers - it's nearly Christmas, and we've been feeling the festive love for well over a month now. In fact we brought our Christmas tree on November 13th this year, and have had Wham's Last Christmas on repeat pretty much ever since!

We've put up the decorations, stolen some holly, experimented with mince pies (we didn't have a pan with the holes in, so they were more like mince pasties really), brought the presents, got our auto responder set up and ready to go, and made our Christmas Cards.

This was the first year that we sent out special Slurpy Christmas cards, and we designed one which featured our two Directors Katie Steed and Aaron Wood in a 50s style Christmas scene (with Katie doing all the work and Aaron sitting about shaking his presents!)

And here is a short video that we made on 'The Making Of' this years Christmas Card. It starts with a rough sketch on paper, which is then scanned in and coloured using Photoshop CS4. It has been sped up by about 800%.

RIP Roy E Disney, the world of animation will miss you

2009-12-17T12:15:00.005Z

The world of animation has lost one of it's greatest and most passionate individuals. Roy E Disney, nephew to Walt Disney lost his year long battle with stomach cancer and died yesterday, 16th December, aged 79.

Roy will always be remembered as the man who twice stepped in and prevented the Disney corporation from being consumed by their own greed and success. He twice ousted Directors who no longer had the companies best interests at heart, and he resurrected the dying company from the embers of what it had once been into the creator of such modern classics as Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.

Born just one year after Steamboat Willie was such a huge success for the company, Roy has been a Disney legend and an animation stalwart for his entire life. When he was a child he was often invited in by his Uncle and Father (Walt and Roy O Disney, the 2 founders of the studio) to judge whether they were appealing to their target audience. He ousted Walt's Son-in-law Frank Miller when he felt that the studio was not being true to his Uncle's wishes, and he ousted Mike Eisner when he became a power hungry, money obsessed and possibly slightly crazy (check out DisneyWars) beast.

Roy was the corporation's last link with their founders, and to the end he remained his Uncle's voice; their Jiminy Cricket, whistling at the new custodians if they were deviating from the legacy that Walt and Roy O left.

"On behalf of everyone at Disney, we are saddened by the loss of our friend and colleague Roy E. Disney. Roy’s commitment to the art of animation was unparalleled and will always remain his personal legacy and one of his greatest contributions to Disney’s past, present and future." Bob Iger

2D animation versus 3D animation

2009-12-15T14:38:00.004Z

Around this time of year, we at Slurpy are often sent emails by animation students asking our opinions on various matters for their dissertations. When we have time, and when the sender has asked nicely (why do these people think we're going to waste an hour of our time on their homework if they don't even have the common curtest to say please and thank you?) we answer them to the best of our ability.

And every year we seem to get one asking us whether or not we think the death knell has sounded on 2D animation. Partly because this is a question which I feel incredibly strongly about, and partly because I think it will save me effort this time next year, I have decided to answer one such email here on this blog.

- It's no secret that 3D has become the new medium of choice for animators, but why do you think this is?

3D has allowed smaller studios to make feature length films, because they don't need the same budget or talent pool behind it. This is a never ending cycle, because the more people see that most of the films coming out are 3D, the less inclined they will be to study and learn 2D animation. While this is a good thing in that it was widened the playing field and allowed studios other than Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks to show the world what they can do, it is also an incredibly bad thing because the smaller risk associated with making a 3D film seems to have come with a dearth in quality of storytelling. Less time is being spent in pre-production because it is less expensive to make changes to the film once a scene has been animated.

The current audience generally judges films and games primarily by how 'realistic' they look, and 3d films automatically look more realistic than 2d. It doesn’t help that 2D is always judged by the standards of Disney, and Disney were producing several of their worst films (ie. Atlantis and Home on the Range) at beginning of 3D, and people therefore equated better films with 3D and tired old films with 2D. I hold out strong hopes that the new Disney film 'The Princess and the Frog' will start to erode this opinion in people's minds, and films will be judged on their own merit, rather than by the medium in which they are made.

- Do you believe that in order to stay relevant, 2D animation must change and evolve? If so, how? If not, why?

I actually believe the opposite. I don’t believe that the medium is as important as the storytelling, and a good story makes for a good film. 2D can evolve all it wants to, but it’s never going to be 3D, so it shouldn’t try. Choose the right medium for the story, and the medium should quickly become irrelevant. Walt Disney was an experimenter, always at the forefront of any new technology, and I know that he would have been very keen to embrace 3D animation (and would probably have managed to do so before anyone else. But Walt Disney is not Walt Disney simply because he was an innovator, his main accomplishments were that of a storyteller, and his constant search for the latest technology was simply to find the best ways of telling his story.

3D has it's purpose, and it's been used to make some wonderful films, but it cannot relate to people in the same way that 2D can, simply because it is too close to replicating life without ever being quite perfect. Disbelief is automatically suspended when people know that they are watching a 2D film, yet a 3D film has to work extra hard to avoid the ‘uncanny valley’ to make people believe their ‘close but not quite perfect’ people, and the part of the brain that is aware of things that aren’t quite right with the model are not enjoying the film that is being told. Very few of the 3D films that have been made recently would have worked as well in 2D, and very few of the classic 2D films would have been better in 3D. This is because of media specificity - the medium in which a film is made dictates the emotions felt when watching it. For this reason, 2D should stick to what it does best, and 3D should do the same.

- Do you think that children as an audience have changed since the golden age of 2D (Loony Tunes, Disney Classics)?

No, I think it’s mostly the adults that have changed. Adults are more afraid of the violence depicted in cartoons, and don't always have a child's ability to disassociate it from real life.

Cartoons that were made in the 60s, 70s and 80s are still shown regularly on TV, whereas little other content from those decades still has the same appeal. The appeal of classic cartoons doesn’t change with passing generations, and the issues that affect children remain the same.

- Is there a future for traditional 2D animation?

Without a doubt.
It took people a while to notice that 3D films are necessarily better than 2D ones, but the hunger for good films will always be there. Disney’s current slate of 2D productions should reassure large studios that 2D is not a risk so long as it is supported by a strong story.

The Princess and the Frog

2009-12-15T11:25:00.003Z

I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am about the new Disney film 'The Princess and the Frog.' Not only is it a return to Disney's roots, it also seems to be an acknowledgment from the studio that they are not ashamed of their target audience. For Princess and the Frog is a fairy story, and what's more, it's an all signing all dancing princess related fairy story in classic Disney style, so if you haven't seen it yet, watch and adore...

For too long now Disney have been trying to break away from the type of films that made them so beloved by audiences all over the world. First it was Atlantis trying to emulate the increasingly popular art form Manga, and then it was Treasure Planet trying to get the teenage boy market. I don't even have a clue what they were trying to do with Home on the Range!

It was such a pity that this run of poor films (and I'm not including Lilo and Stitch in that assessment) coincided with the emergence of 3D, because it led audiences and studio executives to believe that 2D was the past and was no longer relevant to a world in which both films and games and judged primarily on how close to reality they look. So I have all of my fingers and all of my toes crossed that Princess and the Frog is an unashamed return to classic form, and that Disney embraces the loyal audience that it does have, rather than chasing after new ones.

Soccerex 09 Titles - Sky Sports 1

2009-12-10T19:44:00.005Z

We at Slurpy have just finished working on the title animation sequence for Soccerex 09, which is on Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2 and Sky Sports HD over the coming days. The sequence shows a football as it journeys down a pitch past various players before arriving in the goal and transforming in to a globe, which shows Africa where the Soccerex Event took place. The textures of the piece and the colours used also reflect an African palette, because we felt it was important to combine the energy of the sport with the importance of the geographical location.

Our friends suffer greatly for the privilege of knowing us. Some get frequent phone calls asking about different
types of music, others are forced to ensure that we eat and sleep a reasonable amount during tight deadlines, and some (most in fact) are asked to perform bizarre acts in front of a camera.

Let me clarify that. We often need live action footage as a reference for our animation, and this short title sequence was no exception. Several of our friends spent their lunch breaks performing headers and sliding tackles for us to provide the footage for this film. Their dedication and grazed knees are much appreciated.

We hope you like it, let us know what you think!

A warning

2009-12-03T23:48:00.005Z

In the life of every small studio, or every small business for that matter, there will undoubtedly be troubles with Clients not paying, or at least not paying within the decade that you sent the invoice. This is to be expected, and the minor cash flow problems that ensue, plus the annoyance of constantly finding clever new ways of politely reminding Clients that they haven't actually paid are all part and parcel in the life of the small business owner.

We've learnt a lot in the past 2 years, and would like to take this opportunity to share a few nuggets of wisdom with any one who cares to read them:

Always take 50% upfront. That way the Client is invested in the project just as much as you are. Why should you be the only one taking a risk?

Don't trust anyone who is not willing to give that 50%.

Many people will offer you a percentage of future profits in return for work that you do. Listen to these offers, but think carefully before accepting anything. What guarantees do you have that you'll make any money? Are they offering you a percentage of the gross or the net profit? Why are they willing to give up a percentage of their business?

Don't trust anyone who tells you their business will make a million in the first year.

ALWAYS get signed Terms and Agreements for every project. Even if the Client is your best friend.

Be upfront and honest with your project deadlines. Tell the Client about anything that may affect the delivery date as soon as possible.

Clients may expect you to work for cheap because of their 'great contacts' or their promises to recommend you on. If you do good work, it will speak for itself.

Don't try to be the cheapest. Try to be the best.

These things are all written in just about every business manual every written, but it's taken us 2 years to fully understand and take on board the importance of each. We went in to business thinking that we could and should be friends with all of our Clients, and that if we treated people well then they would do the same for us in return. Alas we've been proven wrong in a fairly painful way.

We started making a website for a woman we met once a week and were on friendly terms with. It was to help customers reclaim unfair credit card payments. As we knew the woman we didn't get T&Cs signed and we didn't get her to pay upfront. We saw her every week, where was she going to go?

Nine months or so later, and after every excuse in the book about why she hadn't paid (including cancer, a miscarriage, a car accident and an operation) we stopped work and sent a letter to her partner in business. We haven't seen her since this point.

That was when her partner started to realise there was something funny going on (her partner had paid her for the website and was shocked to hear that we'd never received anything for it). She did some digging and found things about this woman that you wouldn't believe. Not only was the name that we knew her by not her real name at all but also she had a fairly impressive 12 other names! She was quite possibly using the credit card website as a way of defrauding her customers, and she had already taken several thousand pounds off the partner. I asked around other mutual acquaintances and found that she had taken about £30,000 from people I know. In short, a con woman.

Hard to imagine that there really are people like this in the world. Needless to say, we contacted the police and they're investigating (very slowly), but we doubt we'll ever see proper payment for the huge amount of work that we put in on the site (not to mention a ridiculous amount of time chasing payment etc). A lesson learnt hopefully, but not one that I'd care to repeat.

Coraline

2009-12-01T21:58:00.005Z

Neil Gaiman is another writer whose work has proven difficult to translate in to the medium of film. I'm sure we all remember the debacle that was Mirrormask.

It helps then, that the director of the latest adaptation is Henry Selick, the genius behind The Nightmare before Christmas (and anyone who thought that accolade belonged to Tim Burton could probably benefit from a little research on the subject). What Selick can do better than any other director I can think of off the top of my head, is to remain absolutely true to the writer's vision while still producing a film that audiences love. I don't know why that skill is so rare, but far too often Hollywood films suffer from the ego of the director who feels an all consuming need to put his own creative stamp on the film to the detriment of the author's work.

Adaptations normally go in to 2 categories - ones which adhere too rigidly to the text without making allowances for the fact that it's a different medium (I'm going to site Harry Potter here, although the main fault with those movies is of course Hermionie's eyebrows), or one which pay little attention to the real core of the book and use it merely as a springboard or marketing tool (the recent Narnia series leaps to mind).

Henry Selick sits between these two categories. A rare breed - a director with so little ego that he allowed his most famous creation, and a film that took 4 years of his life, to be preceded with the words "Tim Burton's". Having realised the visions of both Tim Burton and Roald Dahl, he was probably the first name that came up in a google search for 'director, creepy, strange, macabre' and therefore he was clearly an excellent choice to direct Neil Gaimon's best seller 'Coraline.'

Coraline is the story of a young girl who walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life - only much better. But when her adventure turns dangerous, and her counterfeit parents (including Other Mother) try to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home - and save her family. It's a splendidly weird, funny and frightening book which deservedly sits next to Alice in Wonderland on any bookshelf.

It's also an excellent movie. It's beautifully hand crafted, and retains it's stop motion aesthetics while not allowing the technique to limit it in any way. There were no short cuts taken, and an absolute minimum of computer effects added in post production. What the animators saw on the set was exactly what we saw on the screen.

This beautiful film was made even more so by it's clever use of 3D. Coraline is the first stop motion film to have been made using stereoscopic 3D, and it uses it carefully, thoughtfully and to great effect. The claustrophobic feeling of the real world is heightened by the minimum depth used, causing a palpable relaxation and joy when the corridor expands towards the more spacious Other World for the first time. This is what 3D was made for - not cheap effects and finding every opportunity to wave a long object towards the audience, but to subtly enhance the experience. Old 3D (red and green lenses) gave a lot of people headaches, but the new stereoscopic 3D is a huge advancement in the field and was used successfully to add another dimension (literally) to what was already a excellent film.

We were lucky enough to hear Brian Van't Hul (the visual effects supervisor) at Bradford Animation Festival this year, and he explained some of the challenges involved in making a stop motion 3D film. For every frame they have to calibrate the distance between the left eve and the right eye (based on the amount of perspective that they want to include), then they set the camera to take one photo, move that distance and take a second. They do this for every frame (24 in a second) and put them together to create what we see on the screen. It's adds an awful lot to an already time consuming process, and Van't Hul practically admitted that it was done mostly as a marketing gimmick. I wouldn't like to see every film in 3D, but in cases such as Coraline, where it has been carefully thought out and used to improve the narrative and the audience experience, I think it has a place.

Teri Hatcher and Dakota Fanning voice the lead characters, with parts for Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French too, and they all put in a completely real and convincing performance. Teri Hatcher, who I watch avidly in Desperate Housewives each week, was excellent as both the Mother and the Other Mother, giving each both character (and the transformations thereof) such subtle naunces of expression and forceful character that she was completely captivating in every frame.

Many adults leaving Coraline have been heard muttering how it was too scary for their sensitive little cherubs, and that it's too frightening for it's PG rating (mostly while the aforementioned cherubs are jumping about happily next to them recounting how funny that bit with the Scotty dogs was). This is adults trying to protect kids from the type of films that formed their own fears; films like the Wizard of Oz, or The Witches (which literally had all the guests at my 6th birthday party hidden behind the couch). People need to experience fear early in life so that they're not crippled by it later, and Coraline fits perfectly in to that need. The young protagonist defeating the forces of evil will leave kids exhilarated and empowered, not petrified and hiding in their Mother's apron's for the rest of their lives.

I can't begin to mention every detail of what made this film great, but I cannot recommend it enough. The animation, direction, pacing, acting, plot and atmosphere are all outstanding and it fully deserves the awards that are being showered upon it. Go and see it. Preferably in 3D, but it's still a great film without.

ALSO, make sure you watch to the very end of the credits. There's a sequence there that took the animators 6 weeks to create, but which was then cut from the movie. Because it's so beautiful (and because the animators were probably threatening a nervous breakdown) they put it at the end as a reward for the stragglers.

Fantastic Mr Fox

2009-11-17T21:27:00.004Z

2009 has been a fantastic year for animated films. Up, Coraline, Fantastic Mr Fox, Monsters v Aliens, Ponyo, Mary and Max - all contenders for the Oscar and all amongst the most influential and memorable films of the year. The pessimist in me worries that this has more to do with a severe lack of half interesting live action films this year, but it cannot be denied that this year for only the second time in Oscar history, there are 20 films that made the shortlist for best animated feature, and therefore 5 films will receive nominations.

This is made all the more encouraging by the fact that even in a year without an Aardman release, 3 of those films are stop motion, and not one involves a hyperactive CGI rodent sidekick.

Fantastic Mr. Fox:

I've been eagerly awaiting Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox since rumours of it's creation first reached my ears a couple of years ago. Although I see myself as a filmmaker, I am first and foremost a lover of stories, and it is with severe trepidation that I await my favourite stories being turned in to films even by directors that I trust. Wes Anderson is not one of those directors. Quirky and idiosyncratic though his films may be, he seems to find it virtually impossible to tell a narrative that goes from A to B without meandering down meaningless alleyways to develop 1 dimensional characters that are based on lurid caricatures.

The film is, unfortunately, not a huge success. The direction is static, with virtually no camera moves, or interesting angles to move the film along. It reads like a comic book, with every scene shot front on in a series of plateaus. The script lacked the wit of Roald Dahl's words, it didn't savour the language or revel in the telling of the story - it was functional language without adornment or sparkle.

The script was not helped by mediocre vocal performances. George Clooney was fine, but too sympathetic and introspective as Mr Fox. The normally fabulous Meryl Streep was practically invisible as Mrs Fox, and the addition of 2 children (both of whom are having the traditional Anderson emotional problems) was nauseating to say the least.

Obviously the story was going to have to be expanded to make a feature length film, but having a cousin come to stay? The Simpson's team were once told by their network (Fox) that they should 'shake things up a little' by having a cousin come and join the family, so for one episode they did just that and had an inexplicable cousin hanging around. The Simpsons were having a joke. I don't think Wes Anderson was.

The animation on the film was a different style to what we're used to. The rustling of the fur as the animators handled it added a retro feel that worked well with the static shots and the 50s style clothing, and I enjoyed the feeling that I was watching a film made as simply as possible without a large Hollywood studio behind it.

One of the most important aspects of any film, and especially of an animated film, is the willing suspension of disbelief. The audience must stay emotionally involved in the film from the first frame to the last, and not 'come out' of the movie for any reason. Fantastic Mr Fox contained too many moments where I left the world of the movie because of a cheap shot, bizarrely forced perspective or bad line.

THAT SAID, it cannot be denied that the children in the audience seemed to be enjoying the film, and laughed hysterically at parts where I was tutting under my breath. So perhaps it simply wasn't made for grumpy old animators, and perhaps to it's target market it was a flawless piece of cinematic wonder. But I maintain that there was more wit in one line of the book, than Anderson managed to fit in the entire film.

Joanna Quinn's favourite films

2009-11-17T10:00:00.004Z

I love Joanna Quinn. From the feminist rap of Beryl to the Colonial rant of Britannia, I think that she is a a fantastic animator, and a fantastic film maker.

At Bradford, not only did they have an entire exhibition dedicated to her work (Drawings that Move), but she was also on the jury, allowed herself to be bombarded by student portfolios at 'Speed date the animators' and curated a screening of her favourite films.

Now personally I don't think that they were her favourite films. I think that she liked them, but I think that perhaps she used the opportunity to provide an education on important films that students should see. The list read practically as Animation 101, so I felt that I should pass on this list (with links where possible) as homework for any aspiring animators out there.

2 Sisters - Caroline Leaf
An incredible film, scratched directly on to 70mm film

Hill Farm - Mark Baker
Funny and poignant, try to find a better quality version than this

Your Face - Bill Plympton
Hilarious. The man is one hell of a caricaturist!

Who I Am and What I Want - David Shrigley / Chris Shepard
Psychopathic, but in the best way possible

Reci, Reci, Reci - Michaela Pavlatova
A surprise entry but a great film

Alternative Fringe - Candy Guard
Candy perfectly encapsulates the female experience

Un Jour - Marie Paccou
One day a man entered my belly

Flux - Christopher Hinton
Just plain manic

Egoli - Karen Kelly

The Man With the Beautiful Eyes - Jonathan Hodgson
Based on Charles Bukowski's poem

Swinging the Lambeth Walk - Len Lye
Fantasia style musical interpretation

King Sized Canary - Tex Avery
Because there had to be a Tex Avery one somewhere on the list!

So there you go animation lovers, that's Joanna Quinn's list of her favourite films, a veritable treasure trove of delights!

BAF stings

2009-11-16T23:17:00.003Z

In my last post I waxed lyrical about the fabulousness of Bradford Animation Festival, but didn't go in to much detail about what makes it the best animation festival in England (admittedly I've never been to Flip, Animex or several of the new ones that keep popping up, but it has to be said that Aurora, Exeter and Canterbury (while outstanding in their own ways) are merely pretenders to Bradford's throne.

I was particularly impressed by BAF's stings this year - a series of 10 second animations that emulated specific genres using the BAFMAN character, before revealing one of the letters in BAF. 'The stings are inventive takes on gothic horror, steampunk sci-fi, golden era Hollywood cartoons, and street-smart urban documentary' according to the BAF website

One of the animators (Kerry Drumm) was a good friend of ours at University, and ran the Animation Archive in Farnham before I took over when she left. She did a fantastic job at representing the Horror genre, with a grisly scenario that looked like a homage to one of the greatest animations of all time The Sandman. Aaron was able to use his meticulous attention to detail and love of model making by helping her with a couple of the props.

Animation being a fairly incestuous sort of world, we are also good friends with the guys who did the music for all 5 stings; Verbal Vigilante Music. They have been our frequent collaborators over the last few days, and scored both my and Aaron's graduation films. They did a great job yet again on these stings, making each one distinctive to the genre it depicts.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the BAF09 stings:

HORROR by Kerry Drumm

SCI FI by Gareth Howell

TOON by Caroline Parkinson

MO CAP by Andrew Chong

FINALE

These stings (created by the Animation Academy at Loughborough) interest me because they help challenge people's preconception about animation as a genre of film making. To my mind, animation is a technique through which genre can be explored, which is exactly what these stings achieve.

Bradford Animation Festival (BAF 09)

2009-11-16T23:15:00.003Z

We've just got back the Bradford Animation Festival in (surprisingly enough) Bradford. It ran from the 10th to the 14th of November and was, yet again, the hi-light of the British animation calendar.

Where else can students mingle with Oscar winning animators, producers and directors like Joanna Quinn, Priit Parn, Barry Purves, Jonas Odell, Brian Van't Hull and Claire Jennings?

Where else can you discuss animation theory with Paul Wells, watch great films from around the world, and meet other like minded people who share one common passion: animation.

It was a terrific line up, and 5 action packed days. My personal hi-light was probably the opening night film: Mary and Max by Adam Elliot (of Harvey Crumpet fame). It was the closest thing I think I've ever found to a perfect film, and I shall be doing a proper review next time I have a chance to sit down without a million practically identical, but ever so slightly different drawings that need doing.

Another part worth a mention was Brian Van't Hul's wonderfully insightful talk on the challenges that the Visual Effects team faced when making Coraline (the first stop-motion feature shot in stereoscopic 3D). A passionate and engaging speaker, he knew his subject inside out, and was able to summarize not only the obstacles and difficulties surrounding this ground breaking film but also the solutions that they found and the lessons that they learnt. Brian Van't Hul, for those who don't know, won an Oscar for the visual effects on King Kong, and has also worked on Nightmare Before Christmas, Forrest Gump, I Robot and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Tony Fish was honored with a life time achievement award, for his incredibly impressive CV as an editor (which were barely contained in not one, not two, but THREE retrospective screenings). Tony taught both myself and Aaron during our time at the University for the Creative Arts, and it was wonderful to see him being awarded this recognition.

(Aaron (who did his dissertation on Estonian animation) meets Priit Parn, Dangermouse joins Barry Purves to distribute an award, Tony Fish accepts his lifetime achievement award, Coraline puppets)

This is starting to sound a little gushy now, so on to some negatives. It rained almost constantly, and was thoroughly cold and dark when it didn't. The wrong film won the Grand Prix. The Professional film screening was of less quality than the Student films screening, and the Student films screening was made up entirely of films from MA courses (mostly from the RCA and Emile Cohl).

But these things are minor inconveniences when placed alongside 5 days of filmic delights and the odd glass of free wine.

We had a wonderful time at BAF09, and would like to thank the organisers Deb Singleton and Ben Eagle for doing a wonderful job.

Film Review: Mary and Max

2009-10-11T18:54:00.000+01:00

Warning: This post contains strong instances of hyperbole, and shouldn’t be read by the weak, the infirm, or anyone without the opportunity to immediately buy and watch the film in question.

Storytelling goes back to the very origin of our species, yet never has a story been told so wonderfully or so poignantly as Adam Elliot’s ‘Mary and Max.’

The film is a triumph. The first line has you laughing; the last has you weeping. The fact that it wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar is the reason why you will find me boycotting the awards and throwing eggs at any members of the Academy who happen to cross my path (a surprisingly rare event here in in Harpenden).

Mary is a small lonely child in Australia with an alcoholic Mother, a largely absent Father and a birthmark the colour of poo. She strikes up a friendship with Max, an asbergers sufferer in New York whose main concerns are a failure to understand facial expressions, litter and the recipe for chocolate hot dogs.

I can’t do justice to this film with a summary of the events in it, because it’s so much more than that. It’s a truly beautiful story with characters that you cannot help but love. I’ll give you the link, go any buy it, spread the word.

A true example of the power of animation.

Link:

Best Networking Event = thebestof Luton!

2009-09-08T09:22:00.008+01:00

Slurpy has been in full swing within the local networking community lately. Not content with just attending our weekly BNI Chiltern meetings, we have attended BNI Verulam (Hatfield), 4 Networking, and Business 4 Breakfast. But some of the best networking events local to us have been organised by thebestof Luton. Last night we attended a brilliant event - there were delicious nibbles, wine and even a personalised cake for each attendee (thanks to Fantasy Icing!)
We are starting to get our faces recognised within the local networking communities and last night was no different. After chatting with some old and new faces over some food and wine there was a presentation on NLP (Neuro - Linguistic Programming) by Lenka Majstrikova of Ultimate Mind.

We have been memebers of thebestof Luton for a couple of months and have made great use of their blog to list our parachute jump, their up to date listing of carboot sales (we are looking for bargin office equipment at the moment!) and their guide to whats on around Luton. We are currently working on a short web video to promote thebestof's networking events and it will be available online shortly.

Wild Animation

2009-09-01T15:25:00.006+01:00

Late July and August saw us begin our animation workshops - Wild Animation - for Wildchild Activities. We take a group of 6-12 year olds and teach them the history and craft of animation in a day of activities, ranging from stop-motion (or claymation as it is also known) to pixilation. Have a look at the movie above to see an example of what the children produced in one day! As well as showing them how easy it is to animate at home with some plasticine and a digital camera, we teach the importance of simple character design, and the children love it when I produce a model of Morph to illustrate one of the simplest, yet effective, charaters ever!

Sky Dive Postponed - Please Give Generously!!

2009-09-01T15:15:00.005+01:00

August has been a pretty hectic month, what with holidays, and teaching children and cramming work in. Unfortunately our sky dive for Harpenden Spotlight on Africa has been postponed until 30th September. But it has given us an extra month to raise the money. Our target was an ambitious £2000 and so far we have raised over £1400. We have surpassed our realistic expectations! Here is another publicity image which we will be using in the local papers leading up to the jump, and if you want to donate we would appreciate that VERY much! www.justgiving.com/jump4africa

Jumping Out A Plane...For Africa!

2009-07-27T18:46:00.003+01:00

Three blog posts in a little over a week...we are quite proud of ourselves! This time we want to tell you how in one months time we will both be jumping out of a plane 15,000 feet up to raise money for a local charity Harpenden Spotlight On Africa.

The charity aims to link the people of Harpenden with communities in sub-Saharan Africa to support local initiatives to alleviate poverty.

We spend last Sunday morning at Harpenden Farmers Market rattling our tins and raising as much awareness as possible on the HSOA stall - see the photo above!

You can read our story at the St Alban's Review's website "Harpenden Couple Take To The Skies For African Charity"!

If you would like to sponsor us (please do!) at our Just Giving page: Jump4Africa

Dark Blues Music

2009-07-21T21:10:00.004+01:00

This is just a short post but we have just started work for a band called The Dark Blues. Their music style is eclectic; covering Jazz, Blues, Soul, Pop and Rock and Roll. They have been performing for over 25 years and play charity balls, weddings, birthdays and have even performed at Royal Family parties!

If you can still like a song after listening to it all day for two weeks it must be pretty good - as we found with The Dark Blues' version of Respect! Check it out below, and if you like what you hear, check out their You Tube channel.

More coming soon!

Slurpy Jump 4 Africa

2009-07-18T22:19:00.003+01:00

Only a few short years ago, my partner Aaron and I jumped in to the world of business by starting up an animation and web design company called Slurpy Studios. After the success of that venture, coupled with a few suicidal tendencies and a good cause, we decided to make another jump, this time out of an aeroplane at 15,000 ft.

We first heard of Harpenden Spotlight on Africa during a BNI meeting, where we go on a weekly basis to promote our studio and to network with other local businesses. Every gets the opportunity to tell the group exactly what it is that they’re looking for, and on this one occasion, a gentleman by the name of Robin Nesbitt (who was representing the charity) stood up and asked if anyone knew someone who might be insane enough to jump out of a plane and hurtle towards the earth with nothing but a thin nylon cloth between life, and a very sticky mess.

Aaron and I looked at one another, grinned, and agreed instantly. We were insane enough.

Harpenden Spotlight on Africa is a truly wonderful charity. I’ve lived in Harpenden for most of my life, but on my occasional forays into less privileged parts of the world; Argentina, Morocco and Romania in particular, I’ve felt an overwhelming guilt at the lucky chance of my being born in such a place. Harpenden has so much, and Africa has so little. We are proud to be able to do something that will help.

And it will help. HSOA has already built a school, so that the children of Musoto (in Uganda) will educate themselves out of poverty. The charity now wants to build a well, and to establish small businesses in the town so that the people will not have to rely on charity or handouts forever.

We are trying to earn £2,000 with this jump. £2,000 will give so many people the chance at life that we take for granted. It will give them the opportunity to drink without fear, to learn and grow, to live rather than just survive.

Please donate anything that you can, thank you
www.justgiving.com/jump4africa

Inamo - Best Restaurant Ever

2009-02-17T13:05:00.000Z

We know that this isn't the most animation-oriented news that we could have posted but we felt it deserved a mention! At the end of last year a new type of restaurant opened in Soho, London, which we were amazed hadn't been created before. Simply put, Inamo is a restaurant that combines amazing food with new technology which gives you a dining experience like no other.

When we arrived to celebrate Katie's birthday we were shown to our table and were ready to embrace the new technology. The way it works is that there is a projector above each table that is linked to a computer which you control from your seat using a touch pad mouse and button. After a short demonstration by our waitress we were eager to play around on the interactive menu - we were like 2 kids on Christmas morning!

Aside from being able to order or cancel your drinks and food, you can watch 'Chef Cam' and see your food being cooked, play Battleships with the person opposite you while you wait, or see the total of your bill so far, You can even plan your evening after your meal by viewing maps, cinema and taxi information!

Apart from being dazzled by the technology, the food was first class. Inamo presents a relativley simple, but delicious, Thai menu. (Which you can see 'on-your-plate' in front of you before you order.) Also, the prices are very reasonable for a Soho restaurant. Inamo is far from just a novelty idea, and I hope to see more of these resturants popping up in the future. Speaking from an animation background (and interactive content background) there is a lot more that can be done with this idea.

Check out the Inamo Website

A Matter of Loaf and Death

2008-12-03T18:00:00.003Z

We first heard that a new Wallace and Gromit short was in production in Bradford last year, by none other than Nick Park himself. As we consider ourselves amongst Aardman's biggest and most obsessively fanatical fans (we genuinely considered tripping Nick Park down the stairs just so we could talk to him), we knew that it'd be a long wait til Christmas when 'Trouble at 'Mill' would be screened.

A year passed, and a few insignificant things changed (we started an animation studio, Tottenham Hotspurs got good, America elected a black President etc), and a few slightly more important pieces of information reached our ears: the short was now called "A matter of loaf and death," and Christmas was no longer the earliest opportunity to see it.

We no longer foresaw ourselves shunning our families and friends for half an hour on Christmas day to glue ourselves in front of the TV, or waiting with the rest of the animation community (suckers!). We got tickets to the Premier in Bristol, to support the Prince's Trust, and the best thing of all? We'd get another opportunity meet Nick Park and to chat with him/push him down the stairs.

Long story short: The film was brilliant, the whole night was perfect and Nick Park was just lovely. We even got goodie bags complete with Wensleydale cheeeese! (and, slightly randomly, multi-vitamins. They obviously know that animators don't spend enough time preparing nutritionally balanced meals.)

The film was faster paced than the other shorts, with habits picked up from the feature perhaps that didn't suit the short format quite as well. There were a few places where the plot was confusing and lacked exposition, which could have been the result of Aardman's shortest ever production period.

It lacked the charm of Grand Day Out, the plot of Wrong Trousers and the potential spin off characters of Close Shave, yet it made up for these with an abundance of wit, fast paced action and puns and movie references galore. The new characters fit in to the world of Wallace and Gromit well, and Gromit was even given his own love interest (is it just me, or is Wallace turning in to a bit of a floozy?), although the scale of the aforementioned love interest made animation difficult and at times this could break the illusion.

The story is funny and clever, and with the attention to detail and characterisation that have made Aardman world famous. No opportunity for a pun was missed, yet they were able to keep dialogue natural. Peter Salis once again brought Wallace to life with charming ineptitude, and Gromit's eyebrows were as long suffering as ever. The film will perhaps not take its place amongst the very best of the studio's output, but it'll outstrip anything else showing on Christmas Day, and will be the contender to beat at next year's Oscars.

War Horse - National Theatre

2008-11-11T14:51:00.012Z

Last night we both attended the National Theatre's production of War Horse. It is the second time round for the production, and was recommended to us by a good animation friend of ours Barry Purves. Barry is an extremely talented animator who has created some fantastic films (and puppets) such as Next, Screenplay and Verdi's opera Rigoletto, as well as animating at Cosgrove Hall for over 30 years (Wind in the Willows, Postman Pat, Fifi and the Flowertots).

It was Barry's rave review that whet our appitite, but when he compared the emotion he felt for a 'puppet' to the realistic CGI creations that come out of animation studios today, we really wanted to see for ourselves how powerful this puppet could be.

Well, we were not disappointed! Based on a novel by Michael Morpurgo, the story follows a young boy who rasies a horse which is later sold to the war effort by his father. Upset by this, the boy sets off to join the army and find his horse. Without spoiling anything for you, there are a good mix of emotions thrown in, and I would be suprised if anyone came away having not shed a tear (even for the big burly men there!)

As you can see from the images - the puppets were amazing. It may be hard to beleive, but the three people operating the horse became invisible and it was truly a horse acting on the stage. From an animation and performance point of view, there was much to pick up from such a performance, and I cannot do it justice in words.

This is completely true - but towards the end there is a moment when the horse gets caught in some barbeb wire - and I honestly caught myself thinking "Oww, they can't do that to a real horse live on stage"!

Oh, and the goose puppet/performance made it worth the admission fee on its own!

We would recommend it to everyone. Thank you Barry!

BBC Southern Counties Radio

2008-10-17T20:50:00.005+01:00

Stop screaming hysterically people, we will sign your autograph books and various body parts LATER!

That's right, Slurpy Studios shot to international mega fame yesterday, with an interview on BBC Southern Counties Radio. The only question remaining is; will the unparalleled fame and hoards of screaming groupies go to our heads!?

We were interviewed by a DJ by the name of Alison Fern at the station's headquarters in Surrey. The program title was 'Mr. and Mrs,' and the idea behind it is to interview 'interesting couples' (for those of you who don't know, Slurpy Studios comprises of Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - an 'interesting' couple who live and work together.)

The interview was a great experience for us and a lot of fun to do. We were a little surprised to discover that Alison Fern was not to be seated opposite us in the studio, but in Brighton! We were placed in a room with microphones and headphones, and went on air at 1pm. This relaxed approach suited us very well, and we were able to chat with Alison in a casual manner about animation, Slurpy and (slightly worryingly) marriage!

It was probably not the most intimate interview possible, the depths of our souls and psychological make up were definitely not plunged, but we answered all of her questions about how hard it can be living and working in such close proximity, about animation in general and the successes that we've had so far. We talked about our heros and inspirations (mostly Joanna Quinn, Nick Park, Suzie Templeton, Richard Williams) as well as our own work and where we see ourselves in the future.

We're hoping to get hold of a copy of the interview, which we will post here. Apologies to anyone who tuned in a little late and spent all afternoon listening to them talking about male hygiene and hedges!

Blogging

2008-10-08T23:36:00.004+01:00

The more observant of you may have noticed that Slurpy are not the most consistent or regular of bloggers. It tends to be something which takes a back seat behind trying to earn a living and occasionally sleeping. However, it is a subject about which we know an awful lot (whether we manage to put it in to practise or not is a different matter). For this reason we wrote a little manual a while ago for a client who wanted to learn more about the subject, and we thought we'd share it with you now.

Enjoy!

“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.”
(Blogger.com)

SO WHY WRITE A BLOG?
First and foremost, blogs are incredibly “search engine friendly.” That means that search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, reward good (ie relevant) blogs by putting them high in their results. This is because:
- blogs are frequently updated, resulting in a more up-to-date and appropriate match to the search query
- the are relevant to the search query, because they are predominently text based.
- blogs typically contain many ingoing and outgoing links, which widens the amount of information that the search engine has about the site.
- people can comment on other people’s blogs, making them interactive and more impartial.
Infact, Google (the most popular search engine) owns Blogger (the most popular blogging site) so it’s no wonder that they rate their results highly!

Blogs are fast to write, easy to use, and completely free. They attract over 50 million regular viewers in the US alone, and those visitors tend to be young, of above average income, have high speed connections and be considerably more likely to shop online. Customers can find businesses via their blogs, and start a relationship through the informal and interactive medium that gives a human face to a company that may be on the other side of the globe.

A regularly updated blog makes you site considerably “stickier” – meaning that it sticks people to it for longer periods of time, and gives them a reason to return. Wherever you are, whatever you do, you have knowledge and insights that are fascinating to a group of other people, and a blog is one of the best ways of finding these people and making them return to your site again and again. It is an opportunity to show off your expertise, and to prove, rather than tell, your potential customers how good you are at what you do.

Social networking relies on the fact that buzz creates more buzz. If you can attract a small but regular amount of traffic to your site, those people will soon link to your blog on their own, helping other people to find you and then promote you themselves. Why spend time and money on expensive promotional campaigns when writing a few interesting paragraphs about your business a week online will soon get people clambering over one another to promote you. Good word of mouth over the internet, once established, can continue expenentially with minimum effort.

SETTING UP A BLOG:
There are many blogging facilities online, including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Word Press, Blog-City, Xanga, and MSN spaces. All of these have their unique advantages and disadvantages, but for this tutorial, we’re going to deal with Blogger.com, because they are owned by Google and are therefore most likely to be rewarded with good search results.

• Go to http://www.blogger.com
• Click “Create your blog now”
• First you will need an account with Google. If you don’t already have one, then fill in the form as requested.
• Signing up will take you to your “dashboard,” the hub of your blogging world, and you can now create a blog by clicking on the button.
• Enter your chosen Blog name, and Blog URL (this is the place on the web that the blog will be located)
• Choose a template. If none match your brand identity, you can always ask Slurpy to design one for you.
• Start Blogging!

It really is that simple, from now on all you have to do each time you want to write a new blog entry is return to www.blogger.com, and click “New post.” You can add photos and videos, change fonts, add signatures, anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifd a whole host of other things to make your blog one that people want to return to again and again!

It is worthwhile playing around with the settings in your blog, to customize it to your preferences and make sure that it is as optimized as possible for search engines to find. Click on the “settings” tab at the top of the page, and go through the different options, making sure that they are set to allow everyone to view (if that is what you want of course) and that you use all description and keyword opportunities.

Blogger.com has the added advantage of allowing you to host the blog yourself from your own domain. To do this you will need Blogger’s FTP feature, full instructions can be found here.

HOW TO WRITE A BLOG – DOs and DONTs:
Although these guidelines for writing a blog are little more than common sense, they are broken often enough for it to be worthwhile setting them out in black and white.

• Do use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar. Don’t be deceived by the informality of the medium, it is always important to come across as intelligent enough to follow basic linguistic rules.
• Write in the first person
• Use lots of headings, because a lot of internet users are there to browse
• Hook your audience in the first sentence
• The ratio of interesting content to promotional material should be no less than 90-10. Don’t just tell people how great and knowledgeable you are, use the blog to prove it!
• Engage with your audience to earn their respect and their regular readership.
• Your blog will fail if it is obviously phoney- keep it real
• Post at least weekly, no more than daily. Blogs require a lot of maintenance
• Read and comment on other people’s blogs as much as possible, and link to them in your blog where relevant – people will soon reciprocate. Reading other blogs will also give you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t
• Try to respond when people take the time to comment.
• Keep each paragraph fairly short – alot of text on a screen can be pretty intimidating
• Link to other blogs within your own, and also link to previous blogs of your own so that people who are new to the site can browse the topics that interest them more easily. Every time you mention a new idea, try to link it to something- links are what makes the web work.
• Ask for comments on your blogs. Most readers are more interested in what they have to say than what you think. End each blog with “tell me what you think”
• Add pictures and videos. There are hundreds of royalty free stock images at www.sxc.hu that you can download, or make your own (or ask Slurpy to make some for you). Just don’t steal them from Google Image Search – it is illegal to use an image without permission.
• Fill in your profile with as much information as possible. The more people know about you, the more likely they are to trust you. Try to include a photo as well.

• Don’t make your language too formal- this is supposed to be the human face of your business where you communicate with people as equals. Don’t talk down to people, and don’t use corporate language
• Don’t use hard sell techniques- people don’t browse the internet looking for advertising, they look for information and entertainment. Providing one of these will get people returning regularly.
• Don’t be derivative, and if you do quote from other sources then reference the source.
• Don’t spam other people’s blogs. Use the comment system to communicate and introduce your ideas and blog space, but just adding a link will not make you any friends.
• Don’t write when angry. Although you can take down a blog whenever you want, you’ll have no idea who’s seen it and possibly copied it before you do.
• Don’t expect a million hits overnight, it takes time to build up a regular readership. In the next section we’re going to discuss how to speed things up a bit.
• Don’t preach, lie, or pretend that you know more about something than you really do – odds are that someone out there will catch you out.

A blog can take many angles, and each one will attract different readership and fans. You could talk about new developments, new products or services that you’re offering, the day to day running of the business, big issues of the day or you could be responding to other blogs or media. Say you were writing a blog on organic Gardening: your blog could include responses to questions that you receive regularly, links to new books and magazines, meal recipes, maps of the best places to grow organic food, reviews of cookbooks; anything it takes to establish you as a leading authority on the subject will bring business your way.

Your posts can be any of the following things:
- Informational – A news oriented blurb, such as a new development
- Question/ Answer – get bored of answering the same email five times a day? Stick the answers in the blog. Remember that if lots of people are asking you, lots more people are probably searching for the same thing
- Instructional – A how-to article or tutorial on a particular aspect of the business
- Link posts – Find an interesting blog or article, link to it and review it
- Rant – Don’t be afraid to take sides! Interesting blogs don’t sit on the fence, but offer opinions and reasons. Feel free to let off some steam once in a while, just avoid making offensive personal comments.
- Book/ Product Reviews – Give an honest review of a book relating to your field, people will respect you for your opinion and if their’s differs, you have an excellent opportunity for communication
- Lists – Top 10s are always popular, and will help establish you as an authority. You can also critique other people’s lists
- Interviews – Chat with other people in your field, or let someone else interview you. Chances are that questions will come up that you’d never put in writing before.
- Stories and Anecdotes – Keep them relevant, but all stories add a personal touch to the blog. How did you get in to the business? What difficulties do you find?

HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG:
Probably the most important and time consuming part of starting a new blog is promoting it on the web. Although there are fewer blogs in the world than there are websites, the number is constantly increasing as more and more companies realise the vast exposure they can obtain through increasing their online presence in this simplest of ways, meaning that competition is becoming fiercer

Ping-o-matic
Search engines work by sending out “spiders” about once a month to check for any updates to your site and to re-evaluate how relevant you are to each search criteria. You don’t want to go a whole month before search engines recognise that you’ve updated your site, so you can now “ping” them to make them aware that they need to send the spiders round again. Go to http://www.pingomatic.com/ and fill in all of the relevant information, before checking all of the boxes and clicking “ping.”

Take part in the community:
This is the aspect of creating a blog that can take the most time, but can also be the most rewarding. Read other people’s blogs; comment on them; post replies to questions; interact with other bloggers; post links to interesting articles. The more you can become part of the community, the more people will link to your site, and the wider your readership becomes. To find blogs that interest you, just search in http://blogsearch.google.com/ and start building buzz around you!

Blog to email Subscriptions
By far the easiest way for readers to receive your posts is via email subscription, to save readers the effort of returning manually to your page to see if you’ve updated recently. Feedblitz.com offers a free blog-to-email service that inserts a ‘sign up’ box on your blog so readers can provide their email addresses. Subscribers then receive an email digest of every new post, and can click through to read the entire blog. Only about 15% of internet users understand and utilize RSS, so email subscription is still something your can’t afford to forget. The other advantage of this service from Feedblitz is that it provides you with reporting tools showing how many of your emails are opened and which headlines get the best results, showing the content readers value most.

• Go to http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?AddBloggerWidget
• Fill in the form with the email address that your blog is registered to, correctly replicate the CAPTCHA and click Install
• Go to the email that was automatically sent to you, and click on the link to confirm registration
• You can now login to Feedblitz (although you may have to request to have your password sent to you)
• Return to http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?AddBloggerWidget and enter your email address etc again.
• When you click the link this time your will be taken to Blogger, where clicking “Add Widget” will add the blog-to-email widget to your blog.

Widgets:
Want to get more out of your blog? The Internet contains literally thousands of free ‘widgets’ that you can add to your blog to make it stickier and more user friendly.
Search “widget + blogger” to find widgets that do every task imaginable, from collecting email addresses to listing all of the websites you check out (not always advisable). When you decide on one that you want to add to your blog, it is generally a simple matter of entering your website’s URL, followed by a few more pieces of information. You will be presented with some coding, which you can just copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) in to your new blog.

Publish your articles in e-zines:
The life of your post does not have to end when you post it. If people are enjoying reading it, why not try submitting it to online journals and publications? There are hundreds of magazines and newsletters that are scouring the web for content to fill their pages, so try submitting your best posts to them. Sometimes, the success of a blog can be a story in itself!

If you have any questions or any other aspect of web promotion, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@slurpystudios.com

A busy (and depressingly rainy) September

2008-10-08T22:39:00.007+01:00

Personally I have little or no idea what happened to September. One minute I was looking forward to it because some optimistic newsreader promised me an Indian summer, and the next minute I was looking back on it pulling on my thermal underwear. I just hope October takes a bit longer because otherwise I may have to start hunting out my hot water bottle.

Slurpy were busy in September. We created an entire brand identity for Unibutler, including their web site, logo, graphics and animation. If you want to hear a funky tune you wont be able to get out of your head, feel free to check them out at www.unibutler.com. They were a great company to work with; two guys just out of University with an idea, who were totally passionate about their business and who, we think, have a great future ahead of them. If their web analytics are anything to go by they will anyway!

Unibutler intro from Slurpy Studios on Vimeo.

Slurpy won a competition a few months ago on ITV to create a 10 second title sequence for them, and from that came a commission for three short films, two of which we have now finished. These films will be broadcast later this year, but here's a sneek peek for anyone who has read this far:

ITV Fixers - hoodie scares Gran from Slurpy Studios on Vimeo.

We've spent a lot of time recently on the promotional side of the business. Although we've managed to get as far as we have with just word of mouth, combined with the power of social networking (and people who don't believe in social networking should know that we met our first Client through Facebook and our third through Myspace). We felt that now we were a lot more confident in ourselves and our abilities as animators, we were ready to face the big bad world and start actually promoting ourselves.

With this in mind, we spent this morning at a BNI (British Networking Institute) meeting. BNI are an organisation which groups different businesses together and encourage them to be mutually helpful, with the idea that the better you know other businesses, the more likely you are to refer them to family and friends (and they you). We had a lovely morning (and we're not naturally morning people), collected a ridiculous number of business cards, and met some thoroughly nice people. So we joined. We'll let you know how it goes!

In other news, we're currently working on some ecards (which we love doing because we get to be in the Christmas spirit two months early and before all but the most organised of shops), as well as an advert for a weight loss diet, a website for a property developer and a whole host of other little projects to keep us bent over our lightboxes.

Speaking of which, I should probably get back to mine!

Summer Time...

2008-08-31T17:33:00.002+01:00

It doesn't seem that long ago that we posted the music video and were looking forward to a few days off! August has been a quiet month, very much tying up loose ends, promoting ourselves and straightening out some 'boring' business-type things.

We have finished our 2 short animated pieces for ITV (30 seconds each) on the misrepresentation of youths who wear hoodies. This is not available on our website yet, but is due to be broadcast in October.

Best Day We Ever Had is currently being submitted to various film and animation festivals around the world. One of the schemes we have joined is a new Channel 4 inititive called 4mations which showcases animation talents. Slurpy were one of the first to join, hence the strange cat 'badge' we were given (above)!

Apart from the work, August has seen us audition for Tim Burton's new film 'Alice in Wonderland', vivst the Edinburgh Fringe and do a mini sight-seeing tour of the North East. We thought it worth mentioning a wonderful second-hand bookstore in Alnwick, Northumberland. Barter Books is housed in the old railway station and is the 2nd largest bookstore in the UK. It retains an old railway station atmosphere and there is plenty of space to sit and browse your books. If you are up that way, it is well worth a visit!

"Best Day We Ever Had" Music Promo

2008-07-26T18:00:00.005+01:00

"A newsreader announces the end of the world. The human race accepts its fate and finally finds peace. But is that really a meteor heading for Earth, or could it be something else?"

We have just completed our first fully animated music video for the song "Best Day We Ever Had" by talented singer/storyteller Sam Roman. The video chiefly uses traditional 2D animation, but with an added blend of special effects and composited layers. The video draws on a 1950s comic book style and the science fiction films of the era. See how many references you can spot!

Sam Roman is a soul singer who is about to release his second EP, entitled "Singer/Storyteller". He has performed alongside Jamelia and Lemar, and also supported funk legend, Don Blackman to a sell out crowd at the Jazz Café.

You can check out Ian Lumsden's review of the video at the Animation Blog.

June Update

2008-06-30T23:03:00.001+01:00

We have had both a quiet June, and a very busy June. We started the month off by going to Annecy Animation Festival, where Death by Scrabble was being shown in the graduation films competition. The film recieved a great reception and has spurred us on to produce something for next year's festival. We did the usual meeting, eating, film-watching and sight seeing that you tend to do in Annecy, although this year's festival did have its share of bad weather. Our recommendation of the festival would have to be The Three Robbers, mainly for its great German music!

On our return from Annecy, production began on our latest project - the music video for soul singer Sam Roman's new single "Best Day I Ever Had". The video will be based on a 1950's comic book style, incorporating both animation and live action elements.

Although this has kept us busy, we still found time to do a bit of publicity work. Following on from the ITV Fixers competition, we have been written up in a couple of local newspapers (Farnham Herald, and Farnham Diary), as well as appearing on the UCCA website ("Animated Couple Win ITV Prize"). Finally, Slurpy have had their first animation 'exhibition'! We have assembled a small collection of our past work, including puppets, props, drawings and storyboards, which are on permenent display at Halliford Film Studios, Middlesex.

Slurpy's First TV Broadcast!

2008-05-25T00:03:00.009+01:00

Slurpy Studios has just completed its first animated piece to be broadcast on TV. The piece, a 10-second title sequence based around an environmental theme, will be shown as part of a new TV show called ITV Fixers - "a major campaign where young people can take action on any issue they feel strongly about - changing things for the better."

The show airs at 6.15pm every weekday evening between 23 – 27 June 2008 on ITV Meridian, Thames Valley and West.

This may have been a very small project, but it has already lead to another producer at ITV wanting to collaborate with us on a new show involving live action and animation. Watch this space...!

WINNER - Stoke your Fires best 2D Animation

2008-05-17T10:19:00.013+01:00

Yesterday a Slurpy Studios representative (Katie Steed) took the day off from drawing thousands of practically identical pictures, and spent the day at the Stoke on Trent Animation Festival, somewhat ingeniously named 'Stoke your Fires.'

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day with guest speakers including Chris Bowden from the world renowned Cosgrove Hall, master puppet-makers MacKinnon and Saunders, and Greg Lynn from Chapman Entertainment. At the Award Ceremony later, the day was made even better with the announcement that DEATH BY SCRABBLE picked up the award for Best 2D animation.

Considering the exceptionally high quality of the competition, we are delighted to have won this award which is an exquisite porcelain work by Jerry Warmsley Pitts. It will look very nice on the studio mantelpiece (...just as soon as we get it back from the taxi that we accidentally left it in).

With yet another Award behind us, Slurpy are excited about the future. We are currently working on a website, a title sequence AND a music video. If you want us, we'll be at our desks!

East End Film Festival, UK

2008-04-23T01:45:00.002+01:00

Today saw the Slurpy Studios team visiting one of the newest of the British festivals; the East End film festival. This festival, only in it’s second year already boasted a varied and well thought out program of films, including a Polish animation event and films made specifically about the East End of London, not to mention the 32nd appearance of our very own ‘Death by Scrabble.’

Some excellent films featured in the program that we were able to attend. After much debate on the train ride home we decided that Johnny Kelly’s film “Procrastination” about the same subject was the favourite, for its all to familiar behaviours and well thought out design. A film that goes so far as to embody everything that it discusses, and touched a nerve with the entire audience.

Also on the Slurpy Studios list of really very excellent films were ‘Like me, only better’ by Martin Pickles and Sally Arthur’s ‘A to Z.’ Both are RCA films (unless I’m wrong, and I could quite easily be) and both entertained while educating- something we very much admire.

‘John and Karen’ by Matthew Walker is a film that I can find something else to love about every time I see it, but it suffers from the unfortunate condition of having beaten ‘Death by Scrabble’ to the grand prize at a different festival, so sadly we’re sworn to hate it forever.

All together an excellent program of films, and the East End festival were a joy to work with from start to finish. All too often festivals are falling over themselves in an attempt to get people to submit their films, but then don’t feel the need to communicate with the film maker again until the day before the festival, when they mention that your film is in the program and would you like a free ticket…oh you can’t come? Shucks.

The festival will probably never be one of the big ‘must attend’ English festivals, but then neither does it have pretensions to be. It’s a small film festival, which aimed to increase local resident’s exposure to a wide variety of films, and in that it succeeds marvellously. Just don’t go there expecting to meet Nick Park or Joanna Quinn.

First Blog!

2008-04-18T21:56:00.004+01:00

Hello, and welcome to the first Slurpy Studios blog. We intend to update this page with any news, events, photos and projects that we are involved in.

So thank you for taking a look!