There is a clearer version if you go to the YouTube site itself and click on “Watch in High Quality.” YouTube seems to have increased the contrast quite a bit so it’s lost a lot of detail in the picture. Oh well, not much I can do about that.

Here is one of the first that I designed and created.

You can watch it in higher quality at YouTube, just click on “Watch in high quality” underneath.

Yes, yes, I know it’s been another age since my last post. I’m sorry. Thanks to David Evans for nagging me about it. I plan to add a couple of extra things to the site soon. In the meantime here is a little book recommendation for you. In fact it’s a BIG book recommendation.

Charlie Harper: An Illustrated Life is a wonderful book. It contains 60 years worth of illustrations by the American artist. Which obviously means it’s a huge volume. Certainly not the sort of thing you can rest on your lap. It’s another book that I don’t have room on a shelf for.

The illustrations themselves are beautifully simplistic geometric representations of animals, nature and humans. A lot of it looks like the kind of stuff you’d see produced by modern day computer illustrators. However, as far as I know, all the images were printed by hand. I may even consider buying an original print for my wall.

Go check out this preview of the book.

This is the title sequence to The Box of Delights shown on BBC1 during Christmas 1984. Not only does watching it give me a huge sense of nostalgia but I’m also still impressed with how sophisticated it is for a children’s programme. True, the movements might be a little rough, due to the limitations of the technology at the time, but everything else is spot on. The use of still images with simple transitions combined with the haunting music is fantastic. I love the way the music is unnerving to begin with but then changes to a more comforting style with the appearance of Patrick Troughton and the box, before finally transforming into a traditional carol to give it a familiar Christmassy feel.

Excellent stuff.

Oh well.

Happy Christmas!

The Encounters Short Film Festival is coming up in November and I was lucky enough to be asked to make the trailer. This years trailer had to be slightly different from my previous Animated Encounters Trailers. As the festival features all kinds of short film. So the trailer needed to be a mix of live action as well as animation.

Go to the Projects page to read more or view it here.

Check it out.

Now here is some French animation to rub it in further. Follow the link to see some lovely animations by students from the Gobelins animation school in France. Some, if not all, of them appear to have been made for the Annecy animation festival. If I could read the French on the page I could probably tell you for certain.

Anyway click here to have a look see. Au revoir.

In the meantime take a look at the latest animation from Adam Phillips. It’s some of the best Flash animation you will ever see.

Click on the direct link below. It’s about 8mb and you’ll need Flash Player 8 to view. It’s well worth it though.

The Yuyu

Link

Once on the page click on ‘Quicktime’ to view the final commercial.