Back for good

This is one of those 'yeh, haven't posted for ages' posts, where I apologise for not posting and promise to do more! I was pleased to discover that it's a common ailment amongst blogging types. Perhaps it needs a word, like 'Bloggered' or something...

Why haven't I been posting? Well, I guess as time went on, the blog was getting more and more personal, less about work - which is/was fine, until I discovered the joy of Facebook...

So, I've decided to return to more work focussed posts here, and if you want to find out more about the mundane day to day aspects of what I'm up to, you're more than welcome to Facebook me, especially if you've become addicted to Scrabulous, potentially the most brilliantly timewasting internet application ever invented, and want to throw down the gauntlet!

Over the past few weeks and months, I've begun a number of new projects, which include a commission for a nativity animation, organising Mayhem Horror Film Festival, and teaching MA students in Second Life... Watch this space for updates.

Loving the Love (and Rockets)

I just spoke on Tuesday at 'Reassessing the Aesthetics of Trash' at MMU. It was a great conference, especially Bryan Talbot talking about Alice in Sunderland. There was a really interesting set of papers, which I'm too tired to write about now, but will post some highlights soon.

I spoke about digital (online) narratives and comics/animation, and as part of the presentation, reworked some bits of Love and Rockets stories into sites to illustrate the points. Here's the fake pages I made, posted here because I think they look cool, especially Maggie's Facebook page.











Because the conference was in Manchester, I stayed at my Mum and Dad's in Chorley. We went to the oub last night after all the conferencing was done and dusted, and my dad told me the weirdest story. Last weekend he was in the pub with his mates (bear in mind at this point that he and his mates are all over sixty - kind of like Last of the Summer Wine in Lancashire), and there was a bloke in there with a lovely little dog. So, being the animal loving type, my dad goes over and strokes the dog, and says to the bloke, 'That's a nice dog, what's it's name?', to which the bloke replies, 'Are you a Manc?' (as in Mancunian), so my Dad says 'Yes'. The bloke spits back, with no joke intended, 'Well, FUCK OFF!'. My Dad just walked away, bemused. Is that the most asking for a fight thing you can think of? It turned out he was a copper too!

A bit like this;

Self Portrait in Yellow

Courtesy of the Simpsons Movie Website.

The Boys of Horror

If I was on some TV talent show, I'd say the last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster. My Nana died a couple of weeks ago, and although it was a long time coming, and ultimately a relief as she was so ill for so long, it's still hit us all hard, especially after the funeral was done. On a positive note, Our Paul asked me to be the godfather for his new baby, which is brilliant, and has given everyone the chance to do awful Marlon Brando impressions, which is no bad thing.

So, it was great to go away last weekend and get my head together, locked in a flat with no heating or hot water in Whitby watching horror films with the Boys of Horror...

Boys of Horror embark on Whitby's inaugral manned Space mission. L-R: Matt, Steve, Chris, John

Whitby is great, and our flat was about 500 yards from the centre of town. We did all the touristy bits; got soaked on a boat trip, climbed the 199 steps up to the church on the hill, and me and Chris went to the Dracula experience - only £1.95 for one of the most shoddily put together exhibitions ever! That's not to say it wasn't absolutely fantastic. Imagine if you had a job lot of old mannequins, and some sensor lights from Wilkos. Then you decided to turn your tiny 2 up 2 down terrace into a leading attraction, you could build this show for about 150 quid and just watch the money roll in. It's essentially the key scenes from Coppolla's Dracula set up in different rooms, which light up when you go in. Nothing about the original story, Stoker or other interpretations, just a few dummies dressed up, with the added bonus of the ghost face killer from Scream jumping out at you (which I think was cut from the original Dracula) now and again, the worst Summer Job in the world.





As I said though, it was great, I'm going to open up my garden as the Honey I shrunk the Kids experience by leaving some Lego and Playmobils on the lawn.

The highlight of the weekend though was watching a rough cut of Steve's film, Mum and Dad. It was, even in its rough state, a great piece of low-budget British horror. I can't wait to see the finished version, as it's already so powerful and shocking. The acting is really good, and it doesn't do the usual characters for 20 minutes, running around for 70 minutes plus tacked on potential sequel scene, it's got strong characterisation and story developmnet throughout.

I also bought myself a Whitby Lucky Duck. I've decided to document Duck-related luck, to see if it works, and so I can get my letter in the window of the lucky duck shop.



Me and Matt have gone into competition to see who's luck works best - he has joined Match.com, I have bought a small piece of duck shaped glass. Surely my wishing on an inanimate object has more chance of bringing luck than practical life altering steps? We shall see...

Must get back to Whitby soon, there's still a fortune teller and a victorian photo studio I have to waste cash on...

Spook in 3d

Here's some pictures of my basic model in Maya for Spook, the main character from the new film. Looks half baked I know, but I'll put up some rendered and coloured versions soon...





Note to self - make everyone bald next time.

The Blog of the Damned

I started a new blog today, The Blog of the Damned, inspired by a blog post by Bruce Mason on the PART blog.

It's called Blog of the Damned as a punning tribute to Charles Fort's Book of the Damned, his collection of tales of weird beasts, strange sightings and odd goings on. The Blog of the Damned aims to find and reblog the odd, spooky and anomalous aspects of the internet...

Have a look, and please contact me if you discover any ghosts out there in Cyberspace....

Cartoons and Compost

I've just spent the day in the garden, tending my veg patch! It's quite a laugh this amateur gardener business, although my hatred of slugs and snails has reached epic proportions - there has never been a wronger thing, what is the point of them? They're just big lumps of congealed phlegm with stomachs. Stomachs that, if they come anywhere near my tomatoes, will be squished into the path!

Here's some pictures of my feeble green fingered attempts;





I made an animatic from the storyboard for the new film the other day - it looks good. I also modelled the main character in MAYA, which also looks good. We're going to work with limited props and sets, so that it feels like a soundstage - Robert Fuest at Bradford talked about the concessions to budget they had to make for The Final Programme. They would hang window frames and set a table in a blackened space to create rooms. I like that idea. There's a temptation to add detail in CGI, but I'd rather have Pocoyo than Gollum anyday... Here's a few sketches from the storyboard;






Oops, that one looked a bit rude didn't it? Errr...




I've also been getting back into Flash in quite a big way, mainly because of my teaching at Loughborough. I've been building, with one of my classes, a virtual version of the building where they work. I'll post a link once it's up. In the meantime, I'm working on this virtual map for the Harris in Preston. It's just a prototype for now, but I'm excited by the possibilities it opens up. Hmmm..., I can feel a little project coming on.

Parched Peas...

Here's the Parched Pea van in Preston. Parched Peas are a weird dark brown pea/lentil thing that you buy in a tub with loads of vinegar. It sounds disgusting, but they are great, and as far as I know seem to be particular to Preston. I heart 'em.

Space travel's in my blood, there ain't nothing I can do about it...

I've been reading a book by Andrew Smith called Moon Dust, about the lives of the Apollo astronauts. It's a mix of biography, autobiography, travelogue, and history, and it really takes in the hopes, madness and aftermath of the space race. Smith was about 8 when the first Moon landing happened, I guess near enough to my age for his story to have a lot of resonances for me.

During, and after my time at University, I was fairly obsessed with the Space Race, on a number of levels. There's something incredibly lonely about the idea of a human in space, which has obviously been a feature of Science Fiction and Pop Culture before and since the first manned rockets were launched. In Moon Dust, you're even more struck by that, not only by the stories by the astronauts, but by the fact that the whole thing was done on such a wing and a prayer, and with such flimsy technology, you wonder how anyone not only got there, but how they got back. There are some hair raising moments in the book, and some extremely close calls, where you can imagine that intense feeling of desolation where having landed on the Moon, and looking back at the whole earth, you know that the chances of getting home safely are slim. There's a story about Buzz Aldrin jamming a pen into a broken switch on the Lunar Module just so they could lift off again, and plenty more besides.

I got a book years ago called the Home Planet, a collection of stories and photographs from astronauts, describing their experiences in space. What's striking is how difficult it is to describe that image, and that feeling, of being out there, looking down on the earth, 'Lost in Space'. Some of the writing was so clumsy, like bad poems sent into in the paper, but beautiful too for that.

During that post-Uni time, in the mid/late nineties, the seemingly misplaced and romantic adventures of Apollo etc. chimed with the fear of a new century, the pre-millenial tension that ratched up to fever pitch, and was dispelled by a global night on the lash and lots of fireworks. In that end of a century moment, we didn't know what the 00's would bring us - what if all the computers in the world died, taking us with them, because of faulty clocks? Were we on the brink of global environmental disaster? Would the new century hurl us into the actual future, given that the real future just kept creeping up on us and becoming the past before we even noticed, and would that be the future we wanted? All those dreams, hopes and fears we were feeling then were like those of a post WW2 world, and the Space Race was at once Cold War territorial pissing, and a totem for a better future - if the world does end, don't worry, cos Humans are great, and we'll find a way, even if we have to go somewhere else! It's not just symbolic, though - of course Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking and loads of others are constantly making the case for Mars even now.

If all this waffle about the space race and the nineties seems over nostalgic and sentimental, perhaps it is. It seems odd that the Space Race has fallen so far into the sepia tinted past (when it was such a futuristic gesture), and that the passing of a new years eve should send us all into such a spin. I guess there was a certain naivety to both, both fearful and optimistic. And while the 00's seem to be driving us further into chaos and fear, I hope we've got enough bile, cockiness and magic left in us to still think that something incredible can happen, that we can all allow ourselves a moment of wonder...

In the words of Frank Sidebottom, 'Space is Ace'!

Aaawww...

I've a whole list of things to write about on here, including the lecture by Peter Lord from Aardman which we hosted last week at work, my PhD plans and some new ideas about the Maya animation project I'm working on with Andy Chong, as well as my burgeoning Amazon addiction (the Confirm Order button couldn't be more tempting if they wrote 'DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON!!!' on it), and a beautiful book I'm reading called MoonDust, about the post Apollo lives of the Moon walkers...

I'm off up north this weekend, so I'm going to sit down and do some heavy blogging.

In the meantime, some sentimental cutesiness from Japan and Chorley:

Japan
Stu and Nicola recently got back from their travels, and came up to Nottingham last weekend. They brought us all bags of bits and bobs of ephemera they'd picked up along the way, including;

This lovely picture, which is now the wallpaper on my phone, which makes me a bit soft I guess;



These little painted wooden people, kind of a mix of Russian dolls and weebles;




Chorley
This is my brand new nephew, Joel, born on 29th April, which is also our Paul's birthday (his Dad), which is a bit weird in a nice way. Ain't he cute? That's why I'm heading North, because I haven't seen him yet. He's probably got an ASBO by now.



Actually, probably not...

Rednecks and Wrongness

On Friday, Me and Chris visited the set of Steve's new film, Mum and Dad. It's his first feature and contains some of the wrongest things you could ever hope to see.

It was amazing going round the set. The art direction is brilliant, every room looks horrible, in the best way. We saw some shots that the stills photographer had taken, and they looked really good, even if they were pictures of hardcore gore.

It's weird the hidden places in a city though, the house they are shooting in is massive, and set back from the road - the thing is, it's about 300 yards from my house and I'd never even realised it was there. Maybe I should keep accidentally turning up at 1 o'clock, so I can get fed! - It was strange, I was stood talking to Steve in one of the sets, and John Turrell (one of the runners) came up and asked if I ate meat. I told him er....no, and thought what a strange question, maybe he thought the gore might be too much for my delicate herb munching constitution. About 20 minutes later, he returned with a big sandwich and salad. Bargain! At the lunch break everyone was sat in the garden having a lovely lunch and cups of tea, while inside the house was a den of bloody wrongness. It reminded me of that brilliant picture of Colin Clive and Boris Karloff having tea on the set of Bride of Frankenstein, with Karloff in full on monster gear.

(I just realised I've broken blog rule one here - 'Nobody wants to know what you had for your tea', but to be honest, I can't say anymore about the shoot in detail, because it would ruin the surprise/shock/revulsion)

I took loads of photos on set, but I'm not going to publish any, lest I give the game away, except this one, which I took in the darkness while Steve explained to Chris the workings of Dad's tool room with the aid of a torch...



I'm really pleased the film seems to be going well, and everyone is into it. You can find a detailed day by day account of the shoot at Steve's blog. I know Steve wouldn't ever say it, but I was speaking with Chris afterwards an we're both really excited and confident that Steve is onto something really good here - a genuinely good piece of British horror that will probably reignite some tabloid panic about video nasties! Which is great, because that's exactly what makes people go and watch...

Last night, in a moment of uncharacteristic spontanaeity, I went to Rock City to see Hayseed Dixie. They were fantastic, and amazing musicians. It was humbling to see people who play so well, and make such a brilliant racket. I always liked listening to Hayseed Dixie on the radio or whatever, but I worried that they were just essentially a novelty band, like a bluegrass Barron Knights, and that it'd get quickly boring. It didn't though, it was excellent, as well as funny and raucous - they kind of reminded me of a bluegrass Pogues, in that it was noisy, wild and punk as you like. Best bits - You shook me all night long, Walk this way, and I don't feel like dancin'.

Scruffy Doodles and Insomnia

Update to the doodles I uploaded last night...


I got sturck by insomnia last night, so ended up messing around with the built in edit tools on my phone, and made these. Nice, ain't they?

Scruffy Doodles

I've been working fast and scruffy on some character designs for the MAYA film. These are really scruffy, I admit, but I kind of like that... I'm meeting Andy tomorrow to start to see where we go next, and I'll be starting on a storyboard/animatic soon. Sorry for the quality, I took them on my phone off the living room floor!

Seeing What Sticks

I’ve been absent from the blog for a while. I’ve been trying to work out how to move forward with things now the MA’s finished, and how to tie all the things together I’ve been working on and thinking about.

I’ve spoke before in here about convergent culture ideas – fan cultures, A.R.Gs and ideas around the web as a space for development of creative work which is narrative, ‘interactive’ (for want of a better word) and which, while not dependent on audience involvement to exist or develop, is at least aware of how the audience might read, or work with stories presented across a variety of media.

Alongside this, there’s also been the development of animation and comic ideas, some of which I’ve mentioned before. I guess I’ve always seen my ambitions with these as fairly traditional, as in creating single screen pieces, but in reality, I can’t really see how I would take them forward without taking on the ‘transliteracy’ ideas which informed so much of my MA work.

I guess this blog has been about chucking ideas about and seeing what sticks. Some of the ideas I’ve come up with I can’t imagine carrying on with, but at least they’re there to look back over if I need them.

At work, I’ve been learning MAYA, motion capture and Motion Builder. I suggested that me and Andy should work on a short piece to bring all those elements together, and get some kind of output rather than just becoming software jockeys. I started to storyboard a story that I’ve had in my head for a while, a little thing about a drunk ghost set to a Be Good Tanyas tune. At the same time, I’ve been blocking out some comic things, again a little ghost story. As I’ve been going through them I kind of realised that they were joined in some way, there was a narrative connection between the two, not just the ghost theme. I realised too that they linked directly back to ‘How it was that we got to be Angels’, and that in a way, Angels was an ‘origin’ story, like the origin stories in comics (how Bruce Wayne got to be Batman for example)

I was excited by this, because it began to build a bigger world, and that it opened up a freedom, in that it doesn’t matter that the stories may be made in different ways (2-d, 3-d or comic/flash game/text message), or that they may not fit together in terms of continuity, as long as they are described as part of the same ‘story’, then that’s ok.

I started thinking about long-running comics, especially superhero comics like Superman, Batman et al, and how they have dealt with changing perspectives/styles/characterisation brought about by different writers and artists. In those worlds, the inevitable inconsistencies don’t matter, and are all ‘explainable’, albeit sometimes clumsily and seemingly insanely. So there’s a tension and opportunity which develops between continuity and truth to the overall story. I think there’s a playfulness to that which invites audience participation (through fan fictions and fan art, etc.) and gives artistic freedom.

I’m not suggesting that it’s a good idea to throw the continuity rulebook out of the window, and I think it’s important that single elements of any multi-layered/media hold together, but it’s I think it’s entirely possible to relate stories to each other without a slavish devotion to some kind of ‘bible’.

Here’s a tenuous example; A while ago, while I was storyboarding “In spite of all the damage’ (the maya piece) – I drew a girl looking out from a bus window. She was wearing a beany hat and had curly hair. The other week, a way after drawing the storyboard, I saw Steve’s latest film ‘Deliver Me’, which featured a scene with the main character on a bus – wearing a beany and with curly hair. I’ve decided to re-model my bus character to look closer to Steve’s character, and although it doesn’t join the stories together in a way that audiences need to be aware of - anyone seeing the two together will probably recognise the link, it places the two timelines in the same world and gives a sense that the film is not simply a standalone object – that it is linked to a wider narrative. – Sort of tagging applied to film.

Slightly off from that, I read a great post on PART about the idea of Abominable Snowman 2.0, which suggests that the way we create links and things from tagging and internet use are similar in some ways to the mythmaking, confusion, rumour and miscommunication that led to the creation of the Bigfoot myth. I think there’s a sense that that’s what I’m trying to get at, that from small stories, pictures and ideas, there is the possibility to create a tangible ‘thing’.

Bear Killer Strikes

A shocking discovery on the streets of Loughborough.

Cardigans On!

I just got back from an internet-free week in Wales, staying in a cottage just outside Cardigan.

It was a 60th birthday present for my Mum, and the first time in about 17 years that we've all been away as a family, as our Paul and his girlfriend Amy were there till Monday.

I was worried it would be a bit weird spending so much time with my Mum and Dad, for the following potential reasons;

a) Becoming a teenager again, and moping around being generally uncommunicative, except to the people I'd be texting constantly.

b) It being a bit like some kind of weird Alan Bennett thing, 30-something man shuffling around out of season run down seaside resort with pensioner parents, enjoying silent brews in greasy spoons.

24 hour party people

Luckily, it was none of the above, and we had a good time. Admittedly, we did spend a lot of time in rundown seaside villages, and enjoyed more than our fair share of greasy brews in greasy spoons, but it was nice, and we share a common nostalgic romance with these blustery, faded places. I think it's because of when we had the guest house in Blackpool, and would look forward all through summer to the time when the holidaymakers were gone, and you could walk up and down the prom getting torn apart by the wind and breaking up the journey by regular arcade stops to play the penny waterfalls.

Before I went away, I started learning Maya, under the tutelage of Ben at work. I can't wait to get back to it. - I'll post some screengrabs. I'm using the same character I've mentioned before, and I'm enjoying the process of developing her through comics, Maya, Second Life, Illustrations etc. We're going to use this Maya model to test out some rapid prototyping too, as a kind of dry run of a potential research project later this year.

I am 1 durrr

Ok, so I was going to blog throughout the day. Except my laptop was on stage the whole day, and I knew that days ago, so yes, I am a durrr. So of course I didn't. However, it was a superb day, and although I missed quite a lot, running around Broadway, plugging stuff in and making sure the catering was ok, etc. (Which is a blog post all to itself, which I have resisted, in case in a Dooce way, someone read it and spat in our rice salad).

The Pizza the night before was excellent, and it was great to meet everyone beforehand, and I think everyone felt happy to be there. Jean and Robin (John's wife and Son respectively) were both there, and it was emotional, especially when we showed Robin the catalogue we had made which contained some of John's drawings, which brought dewy eyes all round.

I'll blog in detail about it soon, but I wanted to say something immediately about the conference, and it's a statement that Phil Mitchell from Mainframe (ReBoot) made 'The reason that I'm doing what I'm doing is because of John' - I hope no one from Animation Academy will mind me paraphrasing that to say the reason that we are doing what we are doing is because of John. That's as good a reason as any in my book.

x

Pizza and Insomnia

It's the night before the conference, and fingers crossed, I've thought of everything and it's all gonna be ok... Didn't really sleep last night, and I reckon there's another night of that on the way. Not that I'm worried, but I just keep playing out every scenario over and over again in my head...

We're off for Pizza in an hour or so, which is lucky as I've never tried to book a table for 30 on Valentine's night before, which was a bit like Joseph and Mary trying to find a B+B on Christmas Eve. It's kind of got that Christmas Eve feeling, that fatalistic calm that comes after the shops have closed where you think, 'Well, if I've forgotten anything or anyone, too flippin late'.

There's wireless at Broadway, so I'll try to blog the day as it goes, but I'm not promising anything!

Doodlin'

Here's a tryout of a doodle for the comic, admittedly hastily done, but it was a test of using a Wacom tablet to draw with. I've never really got the hang of that hand-eye-monitor-tablet thing, and end up fighting the mouse and the pen which I have in each hand, like a prog rock keyboard player. It's a left handed thing I think - I've got so used to controlling the cursor right handedly (?) with the mouse, that when I get the pen, and default back to leftness, i feel like a toddler trying to copy Escher, and the cursor flies around of it's own accord.



I kind of like it, although I think the line is a bit too brushy, too painted, but I think that might be some of my own clumsiness causing that. I'm so used to dragging my vector lines around to make outlines, that it feels a bit uncomfortable, and like I'm not getting on the screen what I get on the page, but I'm going to stick with it for a while...

The bigger question I'm asking myself is about the character design, and whether this kind of design can carry a longer, more mature narrative. I've always held that there's enough weight in really simple characters to carry stories, that part of why I wrote 'Angels', to kind of take the deadpan playmobil characters and see how they'd hold up in an 'adult' narrative. I kind of think these new style characters may be too cute to carry yet another spooky tale of grief, loss and loneliness. The look a bit er, card-y to me, or like they suit a single shot panel or 3-frame strip. Oh, I dunno, I guess I wont be able to tell until I've done more work on it. I'm also concerned that it might be a bit self conscious to force difficult themes on cutesy characters like when people deliberately gross-out sock puppets or fluffy bunnies. And I don't want that, I want people to care about the characters, have an emotional connection, and perhaps the cutesy thing just knocks people back...

In other news, and I'm not going to go into too much detail, I talked yesterday with the Harris about the idea of a game based around one of their collections, a kind of Monkey Island point and click adventure which would reveal the history of the collection and the person behind it. That is so deliciously Web 2.0/ARG/Transliteracy that it makes me feel a bit sick with joy and so on. I'm loving working with the Harris, it's like having a big fat digital canvas to play on, and everyone seems to be getting really excited about the potential for their Internet work to become a significant part of their plan.

Fridge Soup

I just started on a new comic strip, inspired by the great stuff I've seen on ComicSpace, and the recent re-readings of my Love and Rockets collection. I've even started going back into Page 45, and I'm pleased to have overcome that weird fear!

I'm still trying to work out whether to go for old style pen and ink, or to go for redrawing my pencils in Flash. I've done a bit of both over the past few days, and I'm still stuck. I think it's obvious that I'll be doing both for a while, so I'm not so concerned about making a definite decision. Add to that the fact that I'm not doing this for any other reason but my own amusement, and the pressure of that decision all but disappears. Me and Steve and Chris talked late last year about creating a comic, and spent some time trying to construct a 'world' or overarching scenario that our stories would fit in to. However, as Steve's Horror career has suddenly become really hectic, we've not had the time to bring it all together, so I'm going to plough ahead, and invite Steve and Chris to join in wherever they like, once I've begun to get a sense of what it is I'm doing.

I'm relieved that we didn't 'set' the world ultimately, as I think it was a really self conscious way to go about it, and would have restricted our freedom. I think it'll be better to have the opportunity to grow the strip organically.

Here's a picture of some initial doodling...



I said I'd post some webcomics I've enjoyed, so here's some links;

Shrouded - The first issue of this is great, a bit Ginger Snaps, a bit American Werewolf, and even a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Issue 2 promised soon.

Geek Blather - This comic is written collaboratively using a Role Play process through Live Journal. Very Web 2.0! I'm wondering if that's the way that me, Steve and Chris might develop our own comic.

Eekeemoo - Really nice sketchy strip. Monsters, little eskimo characters, what more do you want?

Thumpculture - Fight Club meets Street Fighter, in a sort of fantasy Soap romance thing.

A spooky story about a great man

We're busy organising the John Grace conference at work and on Thursday, we had a really spooky moment. John died in March 2004, but his presence still affects us every day, and the conference has really brought home how much we miss him. Me and John used to talk about spooky things all the time, he was a real fan of anything Fortean, and talked at length about past lives and extraordinary people and phenomena.


When I joined the University, I was still really interested in all forms of ghostly electronic communication, mainly because of the EVP stuff I'd used on 'Angels' and a pitch I was working for an animated documentary about an EVP researcher.

John was convinced that his illness and suffering was part of the cosmic plan, and that this was only a part of a longer set of lives and forms, something I have to say I was a little uncomfortable with, but fascinated by, and we'd share ghosty, psychic and mediumistic stories throughout the days.

A few days after his death, I went back into work and as I sat at my desk, I heard John's monitor spring to life. I looked round and true enough the monitor was on, and on the screen, the cursor was moving around, clicking open emails, documents and folders. I was absolutely petrified! I backed out of the office and nearly ran to the other side of the building where Andy's office is. Luckily, rather than run into Andy's office burbling lke Shaggy trying to explain to Fred that there's a ghost behind him, I looked through the window, and saw that Andy was using remote desktop to access John's computer! I skulked off, releived that I hadn't made a first class idiot of myself. I think it took me about 6 months to admit that to Andy!

The other day, we had another spooky moment. Me and Andy have both become slightly obsessed with Pocoyo, and Andy has been talking to Zinkia for the book he is writing about CGI, as well as filling his office with Pocoyo vinyl toys. Anyway, on Thursday, we were talking on the phone about images for the booklet for the conference, and as we spoke, Andy began to sift through the backup of John's hard drive, looking for Portland Bill images. Suddenly he stoppped, I thought the phone had got cut off cos he went completely silent. Then, after an interminable pause, he said 'I don't believe it'. He had discovered three script outlines by John for Pocoyo from 2003! The format was the same, except the character names were different (Pocoyo was the same). None of us knew anything about it till that moment. Were the scripts ever commissioned? Did John create Pocoyo? We were in a real tizzy, and I guess we'll never know what actually happened. The thing is, one of the reasons Andy loves Pocoyo is because he always says 'John would have loved this', as he was a brilliant pre-school writer; Pablo and Zoo Lane are still on now.

I don't quite know how to finish this (and I've wanted to blog about John for some time), but without sounding mawkish, those spooky stories are SO John and seem to ensure his presence is a constant in the Fairbairn. I'm not suggesting for a minute that he is haunting us, which would be crass, but it's a seductive notion, and one that he would have found delicious. What I think it has done is made us determined to fight to continue the legacy of his work, which was the inspiration behind the Animation Academy and this conference.

Befriendification

I just joined www.comicspace.com, a MySpace for comic makers, drawers, fans etc, which I read about on Drawn. It's great, and also a wee bit humbling when you see all these fantastic artists out there. I've never joined a kind of 'open' networking site before, especially one that has 'Befriendification' (as comicspace calls it), as it's always seemed a bit - well pointless i guess - and a bit wrong for a 36 year old! But I'm really interested in the way webcomics have grown, and the idea that a non-print comic can have a global audience, it's kind of perfect Web 2.0, so I joined, cos i figured that it makes sense to join a network like this, one where you're sharing work, rather than just hanging out, and it's exciting because it feels like being involved in a Zine culture, which I always imagine the web should be - ie free, homebrew, social.

I've been getting back into the comic subculture, which I've missed. I used to make a comic called Eek!, a small press thing that I used to pay for with my housing benefit cheques just after leaving University. It was a great thing to do, and linked me in with a whole network of really nice people who were really into making, reading and sharing underground leftfield comics. After a while though, I couldn't sustain it, writing 36 pages bi-monthly and dodging the landlord on my way to the copy-shop. And when I stopped, I felt a bit embarrassed, for no good reason really, and didn't enter Page 45 (our local comic shop) for about 10 years, thus missing out on so much good stuff.

I guess getting back into comics has partly come from Steve, who buys comics like I drink coffee (many and often), and his links to sites like scans daily, which puts up obscure strips from yesteryear, and from reading Drawn. I realised that the web is a perfect structure for comics - for instance the chronological nature of a blog allows the release of a comic in small, episodic chunks, whether that be your 12 part graphic novel or daily (syndicated!) 3 panel strip.

I'm going to add a webcomic links bar down the side, so I can show off what I've found, and if you find any gems, please let me know! - by the way, my comicspace page is http://www.comicspace.com/garethhowell

McWrong

This was parked outside work today, just on the edge of campus where thousands of students walk every day.

How wrong is that? You might as well save those tuition fees, and just get straight on down to McD's at 16 (if you're a bit posher, try Pret). You'll need those fees for the buckets of Clearasil you'll need to get the grease out of your increasingly disappointed face.

Predictive Text

My brother gave me a fancy phone at Xmas, with Flash Lite player on it, and I've started making some little experimental games/novelties on it.

The first thing I made (and am going to develop it with nice graphics etc.) was a little wish machine, essentially a randomly selected response to a question. It was basically to work out what Flash Lite can do, and to re-learn old-school Flash programming, rather than fancy stuff it can do now.

I've always been fascinated by oracles and seers, and the idea of predicting the future, and especially in January, there's a wealth of fortune telling fun to be had. One of the highlights of miserable old January is Mystic Meg's guide to your year ahead, which is in the News of the World. Mystic Meg is the absolute queen of Horoscopes, her predictions are absolutely ludicrous, but they are brilliant! What I like is that she is always really specific, suggesting that for instance, every Taurean in the country will be linked romantically to a soap star in May, or that a meeting in a butchers will unearth a 'hidden family mystery'. I'd love to be around to see that! I know it's complletely made up, but I love it, and it gives you a bit of time to dream of that lottery win, or the soap star linked romance. I think that, whether it's Horoscopes or not, or how pragmatic we are, we've all got a bit of wish in us, and we'll focus that on almost anything, from Meg, to lucky coins, to a specific set of lottery numbers. So this little oracle I'm making is a tiny, personal digital version of that.

I like the idea of having your own personal teller on your phone, like a magic 8 ball that you can call upon when you like. I'm going to make a series of them, using similar programming methods that you seen on Horoscope sites, like star sign compatibility etc. While they are clearly a trick, they are seductive and powerful in a way, and tap into our need to glimpse the future and to wish for better things.

Besides, if I make a load of them, and expel the magic, maybe I'll begin to live like a Human Adult Male, rather than walking around with my head in the clouds like some kind of dreamy goon. Or maybe not. I still think the Internet is magic, even after four hours staring at PHP code in Notepad.

In the real world;

We closed the shop today, handed the keys back and everything. It was a bit sad, but I've really enjoyed it, so I'm really glad we did it. Hopefully it'll be a success in Cardiff, when Nicola and Stuart get back from travelling. Here's Stuart, travelling;



Went home for my Mum's 60th birthday last weekend, which was nearly cancelled after a nasty virus tore through the family. Luckily, my Mum recovered in time and we had a great time, made even better by an ageing DJ who looked like Jack Duckworth with a skinhead. We're taking my Mum away in March to a nice cottage in Wales for a week, the first time we've been away as a family since me and Paul were teens. It'll be weird, but I'm already looking forward to doing Poster Art kits and playing Frustration as it tips down outside.



At work, I'm busy organising this conference, a memorial to my old boss, John Grace, who is sadly missed since his death in 2004. I'm eternally grateful to have been able to spend at least some time with the creator of Portland Bill, Reboot and Pablo. At his funeral, his friend played the theme from Portland Bill on guitar, it was amazing, in a very sad way. Anyway, you can find out more about it at http://www.animationacademy.co.uk

When you wish upon a cake

I won this lucky coin in a new year cake, so I thought I'd spread the lucky vibe about in a kind of Uri Geller way.

If you concentrate on the coin for a minute and clear your mind of everything, the coin will grant your deepest wishes. Or something.

Either way, have a great new year!