Slurpy Receives Honors from American Design Awards

11 Jan 2010

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.


Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 4:46 pm 1 comments
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Top 10 Photoshop fails

5 Jan 2010

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.
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 7:37 pm 0 comments
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Disney's Rapunzel - concept art

2 Jan 2010

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.
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 5:06 pm 1 comments
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Merry Christmas to one and all!

18 Dec 2009

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%.

Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 12:30 pm 0 comments
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RIP Roy E Disney, the world of animation will miss you

17 Dec 2009

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
Posted by Aaron Wood and Katie Steed - at 12:15 pm 0 comments
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