June Update

30 Jun 2008


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.
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 11:03 pm
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Slurpy's First TV Broadcast!

25 May 2008


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...!
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 12:03 am
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WINNER - Stoke your Fires best 2D Animation

17 May 2008


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!
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 10:19 am
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East End Film Festival, UK

23 Apr 2008


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.
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 1:45 am
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First Blog!

18 Apr 2008


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!
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 9:56 pm
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