gareth doodles

Faceless Ghosts

2008-03-22T09:47:00.002Z

I got the idea for 'eggs' from a short story I read years ago, from a book called Oriental Tales of Terror, one of those super-cheap anthologies that I think I picked up from a car-boot sale or a junk shop. I haven't read it in years, although I think the book is kicking around somewhere in my still unpacked moving boxes. All I really remember is the faceless thing, and how much it freaked me out.

I did some googling the other day, and rediscovered some of the folkloric stories of the Faceless Ghost. The original story of the faceless ghost (Noppera-Bo) is spookily similar to the one I've just written, and I don't mind that, as I think that as it's a retelling of an old story, it fixes it in a tradition of storytelling and film-making (reading it back, it's very J-Horror), and because of that it informs the way I'll approach making, telling and designing the film. I just got The Ghost of Mae Nak on DVD, a retelling of a classic Thai ghost tale. I like these kind of Horrors, I think there's something that sticks in your mind about them, as they feel ancient, heartbreaking and invite lots of psychological ideas about memory. They are often kind of romantic in a way, too, and I think that adds to the appeal. I prefer that kind of horror in many ways to slashers or maniac chainsaw killers, they stay with me longer, and they also scare me more.

I'm thinking that I may go for live action for eggs, rather than animation. The more I visualise it, I'm thinking of places I know - the beach, caravan and cafe in the film are all, in my head, based on very specific locations, and I think that maybe it makes more sense to use those locations, although as there is quite a bit of destruction in the story, I'm not sure how I'd pull it off on my 0p budget. Maybe I should just do it and worry about the arson conviction later.

Egg Fear

2008-03-16T18:09:00.003Z

I've spent most of today writing an outline for a new horror cartoon called 'eggs'. A while ago, me, Steve, Chris and John started to talk about making a portmanteau horror, basically an excuse for us to make some shorts together, and find a way to package them as a whole.

I've had an idea for some time about a little horror film called 'eggs', so when I came downstairs this morning to discover that all but one of the eggs I had had burst in the carton, I knew that if I didn't write the outline today, I would surely die, or at least become possessed by some unspeakable horror. I just wished that it had been a nicer omen, because I really wanted eggs for breakfast, but that's how horror works, it's no respecter of dietary regimes. Unless it's brains.

I'm a bit worried about the idea of a horror cartoon. In live action, despite the effects involved, we can sympathise with the characters that are being 'horrored', because they're like us, and they live in a real world, so the anomaly that visits them is out of the ordinary, and therefore scary (even in a made up place, like a spaceship, we understand the physicality of the world. In a made up environment in a cartoon, everything is an 'effect', so perhaps we don't feel as creeped out as we would if we watched a real person being scared... I don't know, and as I'm writing this, I'm going 'ah but what about thingy'. A few weeks ago, I saw the Pearce Sisters by Luis Cook, which has just won an award at the British Animation Awards and a BAFTA. I think it works as horror, it's grim and beautifully made, have a look...

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

I just ordered my new computer this week, so I can work on these new films at home. I'm well excited, and can't wait to get started on them. As i was writing the eggs outline, I kept thinking 'How the hell am I going to make that work?'. I've got a feeling that that thought will be bouncing around my head for a good few months...

The best thing I have seen since the last best thing I saw...

2008-02-27T12:20:00.002Z

Whilst feeling vaguely apocalyptic following last nights earthquake, I embraced my insomnia and decided to check out a link on the SL education mailing list. It linked to this incredible video, a virtual reality head tracker made with a Wii Remote. I love the world of Wii, and there's lots of discussions about how it might be used/hacked to create or augment with virtual spaces/games environments.

Buh-rilliant!

Second lives, dingy flats and the little baby Jesus

2008-02-24T17:57:00.007Z

Just before Xmas, I made a nativity film for Broadway Media Centre in Nottingham. I've been making little Xmas projects for them for a few years now, it's like a self imposed commissioning project, and sometimes I fear that I'll turn into some kind of weird Xmas guy who celebrates Xmas every day for no reward apart from some kind of 'and finally' segment on the local news.

I really wanted to make a straightforward nativity, like an infant school one, but with cute Playmobil style characters. I really wanted to make it as un-dark as possible - I think it's easy to get on the case of Xmas, and be cynical about how it's all just commercial, and start going on about how we all forget the true meaning of Xmas (I'm not even sure there is a true meaning), but I do feel it's a magical time, regardless of whether I celebrate it in a secular way or not. I think the nativity and the Christian message is just a part of it. While I was making it, I got in contact with Gaia and Luna, two kids from Italy who make music with their dad. We'd used a track of theirs for our student showreel at work, and I wanted to put it on the net, so I wrote to them to ask if we could, and having watched the showreel, they asked if we'd be interested in working on something for their upcoming Xmas single. I suggesed the nativity and sent them some screenshots, and they agreed, which was brilliant, as it gave me something to cut to, and the film a life beyond the single venue it was made for. I think it also helped me to fix the tone of the film, in that it was a hope filled child's pop song which perfectly suited the feel of the film. You can have a look if you like;

A few years ago I got a Playmobil nativity set, and used it in a stop motion workshop at Uni, and since then, the idea of creating the piece has picked away at the back of my mind. I've also been learning Maya, and thought this film would be a good way to try to bring some of those things together. The title 'Vertep' is a Russian/Ukranian word which means a puppet theatre which depicts the nativity.

At the time, I had started making another film with Andy at work, but had to shelve it while I made this one. We've started again on it, and I'm kind of glad it got put back because I learned a hell of a lot on the Vertep project, and I think this new film will be all the better for it. We've spent a lot of time discussing the look of the sets and interiors in the film, and becoming fixated on nasty bus-stops, mini busses and the hallways of dingy multi-occupancy flats, bringing back grim memories of student flats and the piss-stinking bus shelters and soul sucking urban design of 80s/90's Coventry and Preston. Happy days!

Here's some pics of work in progress;

Last term, I taught on a Virtual Performance module with MA English and Drama, and as well as focussing on softwares like Maya, Motion Capture and Motion Builder, I spent quite a lot of time with them in Second Life. I hadn't been into SL for some time, but was keen to work with them in there, as I think it speaks inherently to performance in terms of liveness and presence, and I was keen to look at ideas around actors/performers as avatar, the first/third person performer, and to play around with the idea of site specific online performance, and the idea (to mis-quote Sue Thomas) that 'fiction is rendered impotent in a space which is essentially made up anyway'. It was a successful term I think, leading to a potential new collaboration between School of Art and Design, English and Drama and Engineering which will enable us to buy an island and develop longer projects in there.

In looking around, I've been excited to see the growth in education-based projects in-world, and I'm excited by the increasing links between SL and Web 2.0 technologies. I'm keen that once we buy the island, the students who use the space will document their adventures in world, and perhaps begin to develop new creative projects which link together the web, Second Life and 'real life'...

Back for good

2007-10-10T15:22:00.000Z

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)

2007-08-29T19:20:00.000Z

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

2007-06-28T20:04:00.000Z

Courtesy of the Simpsons Movie Website.

The Boys of Horror

2007-06-25T12:41:00.000Z

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

2007-06-13T16:15:00.000Z

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

2007-06-06T20:56:00.000Z

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

2007-06-02T19:47:00.000Z

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...

2007-05-26T20:27:00.000Z

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...

2007-05-25T21:17:00.000Z

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...

2007-05-23T21:45:00.001Z

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

2007-04-22T10:51:00.000Z

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

2007-04-13T09:03:00.000Z

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

2007-04-12T21:55:00.000Z

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

2007-04-09T20:58:00.000Z

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

2007-03-30T14:06:00.000Z

A shocking discovery on the streets of Loughborough.

Cardigans On!

2007-03-11T16:26:00.000Z

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

2007-02-16T01:23:00.000Z

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

2007-02-14T18:27:00.000Z

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'

2007-02-08T16:36:00.000Z

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

2007-02-03T15:18:00.000Z

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

2007-01-27T21:07:00.000Z

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

2007-01-22T23:06:00.000Z

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

2007-01-15T12:36:00.000Z

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

2007-01-12T18:55:00.000Z

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

2007-01-03T15:31:00.000Z

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!

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-20T10:07:00.000Z

Here's a picture of the Nativity in from the front room of my house. Hope you have a lovely Xmas, whatever you get up to! x

ARGhhh!

2006-12-16T12:02:00.000Z

When I was writing Digital Me, I had to stop myself including new things and ideas that seemed to pop up on the internet all the time thanks to some excellent blogs I'm subscribed to...

Throughout the last year, I've been stumbling on increasing mentions of ARGs or Alternate Reality Games, mainly through posts on Clickable Culture. ARGs are essentially participatory stories, which we access through layers of media simultaneously, eg, TV, newspaper ads, email etc. In a sense, I guess, they are guided versions of fan cultures, which have always extended, played with, and re-sited favourite shows. The internet has enabled fan cultures to thrive, through forums, fan/slash fiction, and often, in the case of ARGs it's hard to see where the fan culture and corporate product are seperated. I never took part in the Lost Experience, which placed elements of Lost in the real world, led by an online conspiracy theory that suggests that the Dharma initiative and the Hanso foundation are real. Over a period of 6 months, online and TV clues were seeded throughout the media, leading to answers to the meaning if the numbers. Dan Hill wrote an excellent article about it, Why Lost is Genuinely New Media, which describes the layers of participation in the programme and surrounding media.

I think we've always got involved in the wider stories in TV and film, for example, Doctor Who and Star Wars have long since had books and media set in the wider 'universe' of the story, and I remember ages ago some geeky friends of mine who would write, produce and film their own Doctor Who stories. The internet has enabled these communities to develop the stories further, and to create their own world in which the stories exist. It's like an over-developed version of water-cooler gossip, where we can all share our experiences of the shows we love. I think, as we prepare to lose the sense of communal experience that TV can offer as we move into an IPTV future, we potentially will need to create these spaces more. I remember when I first got e4, I didn't watch the Sopranos until it was repeated on terrestrial telly, because I wanted to talk about it with my non digital telly mates! It's a fairly obvious point, but it's not about the programme per se, but about a sense of community, something to talk about, something to oil the wheels of our social interactions. That's why spaces like Second Life and World of Warcraft are so popular, it's not just about the 'game' experience, but about the culture and community that grows around it.

IGDA have just released a white paper about ARGs which explain how they work, and why people play them. Although it focusses on a computer game centred view of ARGs, it's got lots of useful ideas and tips in it. It's easy to see the roots of ARGs all over the place, from Fantasty Football leagues and Celebdaq to the Lost Experience.

A few weeks ago, too there was an SL Future Salon podcast about alternate reality games which was really interesting, especially as the discussion opened up to wider ideas about what ARGs might be, and where they originated, at one point citing the cover art and freebies included with the release of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band as an example of ARG.

As I've been thinking about it more, I've been thinking about ARG as a perfect way of articulating 'convergent media'. Convergence has been a big buzzword that's been floating around for years and always seemed to be relating to the idea that I can watch a movie on my mobile as well as the telly, but I think it's become much more than that, it's become about the possiblity for participation and shared experience, through performance, telly, radio, blogs, games, whatever it takes to tell your story. And sometimes, it's not even obvious you're in an ARG, as the definition is so wooly (not a bad thing, either!). I'm working with John Newling at the moment on a project based around mystery stories in Preston Market. It's weird but exciting, as Preston is my home town, and it's been odd watching documentation of a huge piece of work on a market place that I spent too much of my youth hanging around on! Check out the website at www.lossofmystery.com...

I think this project has all the hallmarks of an ARG, but it's also coming from performance and visual art traditions. I'm thinking that ARG storytelling becomes a perfect stage for a 'theatre' built from all forms of media. I've been increasingly stumbling on links and ideas that seem to fit into the ARG framework, and I'm going to add them here as I go, and perhaps begin a new article for Digital Me, which tries to make sense of them. In the meantime, here's some links to good sites/articles about convergence and ARGs;

Clickable Culture - Tony Walsh's Blog.

Confessions of an Aca/Fan - Henry Jenkins' Blog.

In Real Life:
It's the last week of the shop in Nottingham next week, hence the picture above. It's a shame, because I've really enjoyed it, and it's so full of lovely things which I'm going to miss. I love sitting here listen to my Be Good Tanyas records and nattering with the customers, like an arty Arkwright. Oh well, movin' on... I hope Nicola is able to reopen the shop in Wales, cos it would be such a shame to just let it go. Oh, and I passed my MA with a distinction, which I think makes me clever now (scratches chin, adjusts mortar board). Steven is finally shooting his new film, 'Deliver Me', which promises to be a great lo-budget British horror, and is blogging his progress on his site - see Steve's blog on the sidebar. Read the whole lot if you can, it's a great story of how film-making works, and a great perspective on horror as a genre.

Back to the drawing board...

2006-11-25T15:34:00.000Z

Christ, that was a bad pun, sorry about that.

Well. It's over. We had the opening of the MA exposition last night, which seemed to go well, then our group went and got nicely drunk! It was really nice to see everyone, especially as it doesn't happen that often, and nice to see everyone relaxed and having a laugh...

So now, it's on to new things... I'm hoping to carry Digital Me on, and write some more articles and do more interviews. It's really made me enthusiastic about the web again, and about understanding how it works, not technically, but as a network and all the things that might include...

Anyway, the next thing is a new comic! I haven't made a comic in years, not since 1994 when I made Eek! Comic, spending my dole money on photocopying and graphics pens. The idea for a new comic started when i did some illustrations for Plug Magazine, and they spoke about giving me a page a month to develop a strip. I spoke about it with Steve and Chris, and asked them if they wanted to do some writing, so we're meeting next week to start to put some ideas down. I really like the idea of using the tracing drawings I made from Second Life, so I'm going to use Second Life as a photographers studio, and set up shots in there. Good ol' Second Life!

I'm really glad to be getting back to comics, I love 'em! Every time I move house, I rediscover my collection of favourite comics and they always get a re-read. Recently, I re-read three books from Love and Rockets, Jaime stories mainly, set in a fictional hispanic area of LA. They are amazing, and the drawing is so beautiful. Jaime's characters are so beautifully realised, but so comic-y and graphic at the same time. When I first read them, they were a real relief from the emerging 'serious' comics scene. At the time, Superheroes were getting the - ooh, but aren't they a bit dark treatment, which has become the standard for nearly all comic characters since. That's not to say that stuff like Watchmen and Dark Knight aren't brilliant, it's just that they provided a template for a lot of much worse comics to follow! Love and Rockets though, had an amazing mix of comedy, wrestling, old-style superheroes, punk rockers all brilliantly realised in a believable if occasionally surreal world. They were also comics with really strong female characters, something all but non-existent in the other comics I was reading, especially Gilbert's Love and Rockets strips, which are beautiful. Of course I know that that's a huge generalisation, there have always been strong female characters in comics, but I suspect not so many you wished were your mates. They had a massive influence on me when I was younger, and having re-read them, I realise they still have an intense power. I can just look at the pages for hours. This one pic doesn't begin to do it justice, but you can see how great the drawing is;

I can't wait to get started on this new comic, I think I'm going to head home and get doodling right now!

Back to the Daft

2006-11-21T21:03:00.000Z

When Nicola and Stu left, they had a party. The theme was Black and White. Here's my costume, fashioned from some flipchart paper, marker pen and Oatibix box.

Looking at it now, I think it was a wee bit sinister.

It's the opening of the MA exposition on Friday...

100+ MA Exposition 06

Nottingham Trent University is pleased to announce the opening of 100+, the 2006 Exposition of Masters work in the School of Art and Design.

We have a comprehensive range of one-year, modular MA courses, offering a unique structure for postgraduate art and design study in the UK.

Exposition opening times:

Saturday 25 November: 1pm-5pm
Monday 27 November to Friday 1 December: 11am-4pm
The venues for this inspirational collection of work are the newly refurbished Bonington building and the Victoria studios, both of which are located in close proximity on the Nottingham Trent University City campus.

Update :
Just heard on the news that Robert Altman has died. I know he had a good innings and that, but it's very sad. Short Cuts has to be one of my favourite films, but I also love Popeye, which is darker and more subversive than you imagine. He made a really amazing tv series, Tanner 88, about a republican candidate on the campaign trail. Brilliant. I think Bob Roberts may be based on it...

So Much I Want To Say

2006-11-18T11:44:00.000Z

Hello! Long time no blog.

I've been really busy the past few weeks, finishing up my MA, and I'm glad to say that finally it's all over.

It's been the usual mad rush to get everything finished the way I want, and inevitably ended up with many late nights, typing in the darkness, and the usual computer problems that only appear when you've got a deadline to hit.

Digital Me is finished, and I'll be launching it officially next week as the MA exposition. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and the interviews have gone really well, I'm so grateful to all the people who took part. It's been quite a ride making the project, looking back on ten years of work on the Internet, and realising how important it's been in all my work.

It's also made me think long and hard about 'me on the web', which is why I've not blogged for a bit, because thinking about why we blog and who for has raised a lot of questions - is this blog a sketchbook, is it a portfolio, or is it a diary? I think I've used it for all those things. I've certainly used it as a portfolio, I've begun giving the URL to people who are interested in my work. I've used it as a sketchbook too, and a little bit as a diary. I've avoided mostly talking about my personal life, as I'm not sure how appropriate or interesting it is to talk about your life on the Internet. At the same time, I think the Internet invites honesty, so maybe it's important to reveal at least some aspects of yourself. Hmmm, I'm really not sure.

Nicola and Stuart

One of the main reasons I haven't blogged for a little while is a personal one. Nicola and Stuart, who are two of my closest friends, have moved away. It's hit me quite hard, harder than I though it would and I miss them terribly. I feel a bit lost wihout them to be honest, and a bit lonely too. Every time I tried to write a blog post about doodles or Second Life, what I really wanted to write about was that, but I felt uncomfortable about putting that out there. My draft folder on Blogger is full of draft posts of what I wanted to write!

So there. I've said it. I'm sad about Nicola and Stuart moving away. Next week, back to doodles and adventures in Second Life.

A couple of weeks ago, I started a new job as research associate at Animation Academy at Loughborough University. It's great! We've been doing loads of motion capture, but so far I haven't been brave enough to don the Lycra suit with the ping pong balls on, need to do some sit ups first! I'm going to start blogging the work there as I go, because it's really interesting and we're doing so much stuff. We've also got some great students coming through, and I'll post links to their films if they let me.

I think that's all I have to say for now, I'm off to begin Christmas shopping, as my Mum keeps reminding me how close it is.

By the way, the title of this post is from the title of a video broadcast performance by Mona Hatoum. Isn't that very arty of me?

Digital Me!

2006-10-20T16:22:00.000Z

For the final part of my MA, I'm making a project called Digital Me. I'm going to be interviewing people in Second Life, so I thought I'd need a suitable avatar. Following in the footsteps of Jeremy Paxman, who presented newsnight from Second Life a while ago, I created this little feller!

Yeh, ok, it's a little less bashed about than real life me, but I don't care, that's what avatars are for!

Plug Magazine

2006-10-18T16:23:00.000Z

A Good Day!

Just made these for Plug Magazine Student Special...

Plus, I got my new job today at Loughborough University!

Plus... Machinima Island Trailer is nominated for Best Visual Design at the Machinima Film Festival!

Plus, Angels is going to be screened at the Avalon Film Festival in Second Life! I'm going to make a new avatar like Spook, one of the character in the film!

If only Karen MacDonald was back in Corro, it would be a perfect day!

The Rise of the Creative Classes

2006-10-06T14:54:00.000Z

Matt just sent me this.

It's no wonder we're all so poor!

Bullet Train

2006-09-28T16:08:00.000Z

I've decided to escape to the North for a few days to get the bones of my web-essay written.

I've had a load of responses from people to get involved, and I'm going to do one of the interviews in Second Life and video it!

Ricard made a trailer for Machinima-Island the other day, and it'll be available to view just as soon as the guy who's making his site publishes it - watch out for the new link down the side next week!

I nipped into Second Life today, to see if Cory Edo (who I'll be interviewing) was about. She wasn't, so I decided to take a trip on the mini bullet train in Nakama, a Japanese themed sim.

Also, we (me n Ricard) discovered a slow motion animation setting in Second Life the other day, which give more frames per movement, so you get better walk-cycles etc., which will be great for the tracing project!

Do Avatars dream of Crocheted Sheep?

2006-09-19T12:07:00.000Z

I just made this image for the MA booklet. I've decided that instead of a paper dissertation, I'm going to make a website about the internet and creative process and practice on the web. It seems to make more sense to use the web to write about the web.

I'm going to include skype chats, podcasts and second life in world meetings with other web users, to find out how the web has developed and perhaps changed the way they approach their work and even the work they make. - It will be at www.digital-me.co.uk, which I'm about to register today, and I'll post the link down the side when it's available to view (or try this one).

If you're interested in being interviewed, or contributing comments to the new site, let me know, and I'll set you an account up.

The other elements of the MA are a study of my shop, and animation processes using Second Life as a live space. Yesterday, me and Andy captured some Second Life footage of my latest avatar (above) moving around, which I'm going to trace over like I have been doing with these pics.

More tracing paper pictures, played with a bit in Flash;

Tracing Paper

2006-09-15T10:54:00.000Z

Hmmmm... I'm glad now that I didn't go for that September deadline for Pictoplasma - Mainly because I stumbled on this!

It hit me yesterday, while we were playing on MAYA toon settings (a set of lines and fills that give a cell-rendered effect in 3-d modelling), that what I actually wanted was a scruffy pen line, so that the characters look like doodles.

The idea is to capture footage from Second Life, then redraw over the frames on animation paper and scan them back in. It sounds long winded, but I really like the drawn look - I like it when pens don't always give an even flow of ink, so you end up with scratchy lines, then sudden bursts of ink.

So, last night, I printed out a few of the Machinima images I've posted previously, and traced over them. I really like the effect. In a nostalgia note -when I was little, my mum used to dry out the bits of greaseproof paper you get between frozen slices of meat, and give them to me and my brother to use as tracing paper. "I'm not saying we were poor" (Les Dawson voice goes here). It wasn't as bad as it sounds.

Then again, I am a vegetarian now, so maybe it was!

Next week, I'll post a short animated sequence to test it out. Let me know what you think!

Spooky Second Life Ghost Picture

2006-09-04T15:04:00.000Z

More messing about with image editing from second life screen grabs...

Ok, I realise it's all just lame filter nonsense, but it's quite nice all the same I reckon, and done in a rush.

4 real?

2006-08-24T12:41:00.000Z

For a while now, I've been mulling over the idea of using afictional blog as a space for developing stories and characters for my animations. It seems to offer a number of advantages as a development space - I can post short experimental video clips up there, pictures - start and stop story threads as i wish, and also generate direct feedback through comments etc.

I originally thought I might build my own system, so that i could easily post things like video panoramas, as I can do all that geeky stuff - but as I spend time writing my own blog, using mainstream web 2.0 technoligies like blogger, youtube and so on, it seems to me that what a fictional blog might need is 'realism' - in that if it is to be convincing, it should use available technology and services.

For example, although Inanimate Alice is a crafted piece of rich media which is immersive, it is made believable as a web fiction by 'Alice' posting a real life blog, and as she is a game designer, it's not too hard to believe that she would be able to come up with a nice piece of interactive Flash. - However, if i were to follow this route entirely, all my characters would have to be computer programmers!

I guess the reason I'm posting this is because I'd like to hear your feedback about whether it's necessary or desirable in web fiction for it to be embedded in the reality of the web. I've noticed increasingly in print fiction that a first person author will offer a context for why you are hearing their story. In Hey! Nostradamus -the main character describes the Invoice paper he is writing the story on - and in the 'Curious incident of the dog in the night-time', the story is told as a school report - so we are increasingly conscious of the author's world and where these words are being placed, rather than reading the voice as an inner monologue. Both examples would be great if you could actually buy them on invoice paper or bound in a plastic sleeve from 'stationery box' - but obviously too costly!

On the web though, we have that relationship and context straight away - if I write to a generic 'you' in a post - each reader assumes they are being spoken too, and the blog wraps a realism around it - it doesn't matter if it is fiction or not, the blog reader knows howto read it, how it was written and who it is for. I wonder how far this will go - are there any computer games where i'm not the character, but the character speaks to me and explains why they are speaking to me through a game?

Anyway, bit of a ramble there, but hopefully something that some of you may be able to feed back on. - Which is better for web fiction, bespoke application or existing tools?

Second Life on Channel 4

2006-08-21T11:55:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago, Channel 4 showed a series on short films about Second Life and the people who live there(?). Check them out here... If you haven't been into Second Life before, it's quite a good introduction to the whole thing - with links to good places to visit. If you join Second Life, let me know, and I'll give you a tour of the set of Ricard's film.

I've read a lot of articles about Second Life lately, and I'm still unsure as to how good it is. Actually, it obviously is good, maybe I've just got a problem with the amount of time people seem to spend in there, aimlessly swapping dance animations and virtual hair. I know that's not representative of the whole space or community, but there is a load of that. It's summer - get out and play! (Yikes, I have finally become my parents)

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/S/second_lives

Today in Second Life...

2006-08-18T14:11:00.000Z

Hooray! We are finally working with the characters to create Episode 1! Ricard has bought Comic Life, which adds speech bubbles to video and images.

I'm not sure how it'll work, as I think comic art is a personal thing - ie, You can tell an artist or writer by the style of the bubbles, lettering etc., it's as much a part of the creation and aesthetic as everything else.

So to have clip-art style bubbles and lettering seems to de-personalise it. But maybe not, we're playing with it now and we'll see how it goes.

We've achieved really nice capture from second life, which produced a really strong image with good colours - we hoped for High-definition capture originally, but couldn't get it, but I think it'll be ok as DV.

I took these screen grabs today, trying to look at how we might grade the final footage - i think the sepia with a bit of blur might work - makes it look less like a computer game, and more like something Smallfilms might have made with some ping-pong balls and a bit of felt!

Oops

2006-08-16T14:25:00.000Z

Hi. Sorry for not posting for a while - It's been a really busy time. I've decided not to aim to complete 'The Trouble with Flying' before September 1st, as I don't think it's anywhere near formed enough. I'm a bit embarrassed that I said that's what I'd do, as time was clearly against me, and what with holidays, wedding season and the Eye Candy event, it just proved impossible - the major factor is that the computer I have in the shop (the one I'm writing on) is rubbish, and the thought of trying to run Second Life (let alone edit) on it is enough to make it weep.

Anyhow, my holiday in Abersoch was great - I've been going there since I was a kid, and I still love it as a grown-up. One day I'd love to go and live there, but since it's turned into holiday homeland for the Cheshire set, I'd need at least a quarter of a million pounds just to get a bedsit over the corner shop! Not a joke, I'm sad to say. We have a caravan which has been on the same site for nearly 40 years now, and that's about as close as I can get. Matt gave me his old mobile the other week which has a camera with a panorama feature on it, and I took loads of pics, which I'll post soon. I went there with Alan (my friend from since I was about 16), and his wife Emma - they're about to have a baby. Alan was excited about showing me a scan of the baby. Normally, at this point, you have to grit your teeth and feign interest as they show you a smudge which you can't make sense of, but this scan was spectacular - it was like a baby made in MAYA, really detailed and everything. One day, you will be able to design your child in MAYA and get it printed out in Rapid Prototyping. Mine would look like Pocoyo. Probably.

Anyway, back to cartoons. Ricard is back from his trip, and we are about to make episode 1 of the story - to be honest, I've been waiting ages to get onto it, but Ricard has been really busy - the plan is to get it into the Machinima Film Festival in New York in November. Of course, I expect Ricard to be furnishing me with a first class ticket to attend.

Back soon with a proper post, including Love and Rockets, Peanuts, and Why I'm sorely tempted to go and work with Monkeys - in the meantime, why not read this

More snow!

2006-07-31T14:43:00.000Z

Here's some video capture from Second Life showing the snow and the head design for the main character. (You'll need Flash 8 to view it)

Snow!

2006-07-28T12:33:00.000Z

I found this great snow in Second Life for the opening of the The Trouble with Flying!

The Trouble with Flying

2006-07-27T10:36:00.000Z

I went home from the shop last night excited by the prospect of this quick Machinima project (see previous post). I've decided to call it 'The Trouble with Flying' - I think that's a nice title, and similar in tone to 'The Truth about Cats and Dogs' and 'Because of Winn Dixie' - both of which I haven't seen but I think the titles are sweet.

Nothing is formed yet, but here's a list of ideas that popped into my head, some of which will naturally be dumped as time goes by. These are in random order, just as thought about and jotted down.

Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster.
Is it too much like Ricard's project?
Picaresque - I love that word! It should be episodic - the episodes ultimately more important than the framing story.
How do I make snow in Second Life?
How much to put in trailer? - Needs to tell a story in itself.
Some ideas; Girl meets Oracle at bus stop - is given power to fly - Monster is called Pinky, and tells the girl the future, between munching on buildings - Maybe Spook from Angels is in it, as a ghost.
Maybe at the end of the trailer, it flicks to game controls on the screen (life meter etc.), like you've just watched the opening video on a computer game. Maybe that is just wrong.

I'm also excited (I never thought I'd say this) by an essay I am writing about the web and its effect on practice and process - it's for my MA. Initially it was basically an overview of tools and how to use them, but after talking to Frank (my MA tutor, not the scary rabbit from Donnie Darko or the drugs advisory service), I think there's a bigger essay in there. Why do these things always have to happen when all I want to do is go paddling and eat choc-ice?

By the way, me and Nicola are organising this; Come along if you can! (You may recognise the character from earlier posts!

Lovely Day Out!

Pictoplasma is coming, look busy!

2006-07-26T11:53:00.000Z

Hi there. I have a long post hiding in my draft folder about exactly why cartoons for grown ups should be allowed to be cute (see Pocoyo post), plus some great quotes from Charles Schulz. It's proving to be a bit of a difficult one, but I'll post it as soon as it's done. In the meantime - I got an email from Pictoplasma today, calling for film submissions for their upcoming conference. 'Angels' was in the Characters in Motion screenings last year, and also in the book and DVD that accompanied it.

So, I need to make an animation before 1st Sept! I'm desperate to do it, even if it's just to justify a holiday in Berlin in October! I've decided to work in Machinima, using a character design which didn't make it to the final cast for Ricard's project.

She sort of looks like this;

To make character development simple, I'm going to exploit Second Life to the full, and take advantage of it's in-built tools. I'm also going to pretty much use this doodle as the beginnings of the character/story. This gives me a set of rules.
Here they are;

1. She is a bit sad to begin with.
2. It is cold where she lives.
3. She can fly.
4. She can teleport to new places.
5. She can change into anything.

I'm going to develop the piece as a 3 minute trailer. The rules suggest a longer story with episodic sub-stories. The teleport immediately allows for 'Quantum Leap' (that's not me being clever or fancy in any way, I mean the 80's sci-fi series with Scott Bakula) story development - she can be anything/anywhere each time, framed within a larger journey.

And that's all I have, although I'd like to include a monster. Maybe one that eats towns. But it's pink - and really cute. She is friends with it. I think I'd like ghosts in it. I'd also like a baby faced oracle who lives in the sky - maybe the narrator?. It should also have some romance in it, because that would be lovely. Maybe the episodes are true stories. So it's a documentary, set in Second Life. Narrated/presented by a girl who can fly. Er...Oh. I don't know, I might be getting carried away.
That monster I was telling you about.
Baby faced oracle who lives in the sky...

Ok, here goes - it starts like a fairy tale, a girl in a cold, gloomy Northern town wants to get away. One day she discovers/is given the power to fly - and change into things. She flies off. The trouble with flying is she doesn't know how long she can fly for, so occasionally she drops from the sky and lands in places she knows nothing about. And then all sorts of crazy adventures ensue.

I just thought - this might be a way to start off the fictional blog stuff too. I'm sure this is just cos I'm off on holiday next week - I'm already getting into the beach ideas flow.

Any ideas? - Seriously, if you have any - please let me know! I'll credit you on the film - you can even come and do a voice if you like! Anything - plots - tales, character ideas, new places to visit...whatever!

All apologies...

2006-07-13T13:17:00.000Z

All apologies to Pocoyo, Where the Wild Things Are, BatImp etc. - Thought I'd post this doodle as I'm trying out some new character design ideas - I think it's quite sweet though! I've made some wallpapers of it - if you want one, contact me and tell me what size and I'll mail you one.

One of the artists, Alula (Sherry Pollitt and Andrea Scott), who sells work through our shop introduced me to the Japanese word Zakka, which they described as 'products that make you feel happy and light as air'.

I looked it upon Wikipedia, and got this;

"Zakka has also been described as "the art of seeing the savvy in the ordinary and mundane". On one level the zakka boom is just another in a series of consumer fads, but on another it's plugged into something spiritual. Cute, corny and kitsch is not enough. To qualify as a zakka, a product must be attractive, sensitive, laden with subtexts."

Finally, I have found a doctrine to live by!

Pocoyo!

2006-07-10T16:17:00.000Z

I just discovered Pocoyo! Andy at work told me about it. It's the cutest thing I've seen in years, beautifully made and animated. Why aren't people making stuff like this for grown ups?!

A little flash doodle

2006-06-29T16:06:00.000Z

Ooh, get me! I do writing now

2006-06-26T09:44:00.000Z

I went to the NLAB Open Seminar on Friday in Leicester, where there were various workshops dedicated to online and digital writing. I've really enjoyed the NLAB sessions over the past few months, and they've helped me to filter some ideas about writing for my films and reconnected me to the web as an art space.

Now, I have to admit I'm a bit of a goon. The first session was called 'Writing games for grown-ups'. I got really excited - I'd love to write games for grown-ups. Wrong! This was games to help grown-ups write. What an idiot. I kept my disappointment and embarrasment to myself, but then we got started, and it turned out to be a great session. We had to do two main exercises, and here are the results - unedited, and perhaps not as good as I thought they were on Friday!

OK, so the first exercise started by describing an object in the seminar room - then describing it's journey to the venue. Remember, we had only five minutes for this, so it's understandably a bit rough!

"The TV snoozes peacefully, the standby light the only clue that it is still alive. It makes a loud yawn and click, and crackles as light becomes brighter behind its single glass eye. It consumes breakfast hungrily, on BBC, ITV and sometimes on the cable channels. It flicks to the travel channel, and sets off on a bus journey through the far off reaches of the world, a young, enthusiastic presenter as it's guide. Surfing through, it eventually arrives at the college. PR+ guides it up through the channels until it reaches a new place, "308: Seminar Room". Finally settled on the channel, the TV pretends to sleep, listening in on writers struggling to describe inanimate objects. It looks across and spies a black shirted man busily scribbling. It begins to feel uncomfortable; "He's writing about me", thinks the TV. He stares ahead. "I'll just pretend I'm not here"".

The second exercise involved us describing a place, either fictional or real (I chose a beer garden in St. Davids). Halfway through, the workshop leader gave us a prop, which we had to incorporate into the story. Here goes...

"This place is the place where the friendliest dog in the world tried to lick everyone once, in turn. It's the place where Stuart knocked over his beer and ruined at least one pack of cigarettes. It's a place where you can completely forget there's a world beyond, a place where low level drug dealers, happy campers and barbequed families jostle for bench space, next to the parrafin heaters (once the sun drops, it'll be cold), and munch away on crinkle-cut crisps and Nobby's Nuts. We've been here for hours, and to be honest, if time stopped now, forever, I'd be perfectly happy. Jason is using his glasses to chase an ant around the table, focussing the dying sun through the lens to make a death ray. It's like a B-Movie ending, 'Antor' finally chased down by the laser-eyed hero. We all shout, laughing, for him to stop. He does, and puts his glasses back on. Stuart drops yet another glass of beer on the floor - it shatters loudly and the whole place erupts in cheers. Stuart takes a bow - even he thinks it's funny"

Ahem. Anyway, the other sessions were less practical, but equally useful. Kate Pullinger introduced her new project, Inanimate Alice - www.inanimatealice.com. You should check it out. The day ended with a screening of a web film called EPIC 2014 - http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ - a scary but funny vision of the future of the web. I am trying to wean myself off Google and Amazon as we speak.

Space....Man

2006-06-22T10:48:00.000Z

I doodled this yesterday. I'm going to colour it up in Flash, and I'll post the finished version next week. I just thought you might like to see it. I might even turn the spaceman into a Machinima character.

Ricard has posted some stuff about the machinima project on his site - http://www.la-interactiva.co.uk

I felt the fear...

2006-06-19T10:40:00.000Z

Yesterday, Me, Steve Sheil, Chris Cooke and John Ross went to Bradford for the last day of the 5th Fantastic Films Weekend. It was a great day, and we saw some great stuff, and heard some great people speak, all topped off by a great curry before driving home!

Steve's new film, 'Through a Vulture Eye', was on as part of the shorts screening, and there were archive screenings of 'The Final Programme', 'Theatre of Blood', and 'The Wicker Man', with introductions. - A sideshow highlight was an exhibition of original drawings, models and clips by Ray Harryhausen.

There are so many highlights to write about, but the key things that stood out for me were;

The Harryhausen Exhibit - It goes without saying that one of the formative movie experiences of any child are Harryhausen's films. So it was great to see models of the skeletons, and clips of favourite moments. There qwere some beautiful models of heads from an old hansel and gretel stop motion project and clips of a king midas film I'd not seen before, which were great, with a much more children's look and feel. What was really good was watching a group of kids watching the shorts and loving the dinosaurs, which was something of a relief in our cgi soaked age. It's great to be reminded of how beautiful and effective stop motion is.
Theatre of Blood - If you've never seen this film, you should treat yourself, because it's a pure delight! Vincent Price is an old ham called Edward Lionheart who exacts bloody revenge on his critics in the form of Shakespearean murders. It's so great to see a film where everybody is clearly loving their work, and acting up like it's the last reel of film left on earth. It's so good, and everyone is great in it, but Eric Sykes quietly steals the show for me, sneaking in comedy business all over the place. If you ever see it in the telly guide, ring in sick, and email me so I can ring in sick too.
The Final Programme - I've never seen this film before, but the write up sounded great:

The Final Programme is an unsettling slice of apocalyptic future shock that combines the talents of novelist Michael Moorcock and director Robert Fuest. Jon Finch is Jerry Cornelius, a sexually ambiguous anti-hero and playboy scientist seeking a vital piece of microfilm that can assist a giant computer in achieving the final programme: a self-fertilising, self-regenerating, immortal hermaphrodite, retaining all of mankind’s knowledge. With its messianic sub-plot and stunning production design this is a movie that is both of its time and ahead of its time – a psychedelic bad trip with a quasi Avengers feel. Bizarre ain’t the word.

It was one of those great films that could never be made now; completely mad, but filled with it's own bizarre logic, and brilliant characters - my favourite being the three bumbling scientists. If it was made now, it would have to be a spoof, probably with Mike Myers in it. A while a go, Steve wrote a blog post called 'Fear of The Daft', about the fear that film-makers seem to feel now about going out on a limb and trying out mad ideas - funding has led the industry down a road of smoothing out the edgier ideas, and film-makers are seemingly forced to reference previously innovative ideas. None of that here! Robert Feust, the director of the film spoke at the beginning about the film and making it. He regaled us with great stories of how he got the film financed and how they worked around the constraints of a low budget, by coming up with ideas, not by calming his vision down. It was an inspiration to hear those tales, and made even better by the fact that he was a proper old school luvvie, and a bit like the old drunk from the Fast Show!

So, today, I'm inspired - I'm drawing away for 'In Spite of All the Damage..', working on the Bash Street kids - style project, and despite all the hurdles that the university where i work chucks in the way, feeling the fear and doing it anyway! On Friday, I'm off to a creative narrative workshop day in Leicester, as part of a group called NLAB I joined. - I'm really looking forward to it - the previous days I've been to have been great, and coffee is in constant supply, which is worth the admission price (actually, it's free) alone. I'll post about it later, should be good.

Don't put your avatar on the stage, Mrs. Worthington

2006-06-09T13:43:00.000Z

I was in Second Life yesterday, tidying up the final bits on the avatars so Ricard can start filming, and started thinking about the whole game/animation/art/performance sphere that I've touched on briefly before.

Ok, so what's happening in second life is this - I've created costumes that the avatars (actors) wear. Then the puppeteers (players) control the actors who play the characters. That's quite a few layers - like playing a superhero; Christopher Reeve plays Kal El plays Clark Kent plays Superman.

It feels like a stage/game space. I am in a game, building objects. - However, I'm not building objects like i would in, say, Maya - I'm standing there (- or at least my avatar is) physically building objects, and adding textures and moving them around. Once I've made these objects, they exist and mimic the real world, but they are toys - props. That is, if I build a car in Second Life, it is only pretend - I don't need the car to get around, I can fly and teleport, so it's just a nice made up thing.

When I was at 'May You Live in Interesting Times' in Cardiff last October, the group I was with were talking about the difference between gaming/performance and art. Blast Theory were at the festival presenting Can You See Me Now, a performance game that exists both in the real world and virtually. It's a kind of 'tig' game, with players on the streets and online occupying the city and a 3-d representation of the city respectively. If you compare it to, for example, a Zelda game, there is a subtle difference. In Can You See Me Now, you play as yourself, and your tactical and even moral choices within the game are yours. If you play Zelda, you are a player 'playing' Link, in Link's world, with Link's concerns and character traits.

Second Life strikes a strange space in-between. In the world, I can have a Virtual Cardiff if I want, and an almost completely open ended experience. I can't however play as myself. That is, I can't go in as Gareth Howell, there are a set of predefined names I must use. To my constant regret and embarrasment, I am now Gareth Shatner in Second Life. Then there is the generic avatar, which looks nothing like me, which is probably a good thing! - And if I change my hair, jacket, bum and belly size or whatever in SL, it's unlikely I'm going to choose my standard issue George @ ASDA jeans, so I become a character. Like if I'm in a game. Or a play.

So then, if I'm in the game, as a character, then make that character dress up and act as another character, we're back to the Superman analogy. In Machinima, we're making characters who serve a narrative, and have motivations, gestures and 'voice' which are not me (as the player).
However, I guess Gareth Shatner is me. Or is he? I'd never dream of saying 'LOL' to anyone, or breakdancing at a meeting, and try as I might, I can't fly. Gareth Shatner can. And he can build things, and he can lose 10lbs just by dragging a slider. And he's an actor. In Machinima films. I hate him!

So where do I sit in this? I'm not the director, 'cos I can only control Shatner, not the rest of the cast. I've decided that in Second Life, I'm like Jiminy Crickett, or the Numskulls. And the monitor in my office is actually inside Shatner's head, just behind the eyes. That makes me feel good, because I was getting all confused!

Remember the Golem I was on about? Here's the doodle of him and the magician that sprang my insomnia last week.

Here's him a bit nicer...

And here's him cynically reworked to cash in on another card frenzy invented by Clinton's.

The other night when I was walking home (and not even drunk!), I found myself trying to walk like him, practising for the day I don the ultra-lycra Motion Capture suit. I really do wish I could lose 10lbs by dragging a slider!

Getting to know you...

2006-06-06T09:48:00.000Z

Sometimes, it's a bit difficult to talk about the work I'm making, cos I don't want to spill every bean, sometimes I'm sworn to secrecy, and sometimes I don't know how to fully articulate where I'm going or how I'm arriving at the results I'm arriving at.

However, I'm currently working on some new characters for a range of projects, and have been thinking about that quite a lot.

I read an interview with Jon Burgerman the other week (who did a great talk at our latest 'Loving your Work' event at Eye Candy), and he talked about how a doodle can sometimes take a long time just to get right. It's easy to think that a doodle is a doodle, and the time it takes to come out of the pen is the entire time of the process attached to it. But in a way, it's like casting/acting and wardrobe all at the same time - it takes a while to find the character you want. It's a bit like that thing where hammy old actors talk about how they 'always start with the shoes, darling' - I kind of always start with the heads. I guess it's then that you can see the person you are trying to bring to life. My heads are always really simple - kind of playmobil style spheres in a way with contour lines on them. I like the simplicity of it, and the kind of deadpan expression. - It's oddly naturalistic, in that animation characters are so often exaggerated to express a stereotype, but these simple heads are more like real life because most people spend most of their time with their faces fairly straight. The deadpan face somehow allows you to look deeper to understand the character.

I read so many animation and cartooning books that say things like - a posh lady walks like this, a fat man is this kind of character etc., and it drives me mad. Animation so rarely gets beyond first impressions. - So, if you strip the face of all the cliches, potentially you can give more depth. I hope so!

For the Second Life project, I was working to a brief, and had to 'characterise' to personality types. It was a fight to get across the need not to give the whole character away from first impressions, but Ricard had seen the characters from 'Angels', so we were able to reach a point where the characters were enough 'mine' and enough 'his' to work well.

I'm currently working with another film-maker, Mark Devenport, to develop a new cartoon, set in a primary school, a kind of Peanuts meets Bash Street Kids, by way of Last of the Summer Wine, and last night I started some character design for a new short called 'In Spite of all the Damage I've Done', which is a really simple story, a kind of sequel (I think) to Angels, based around a Be Good Tanyas track.

The most exciting new project though, may be a new fictional blog I'm working on. I was trying to find a way to loosen up the whole animation process, which is in a way linked to my thoughts about live art and spontaneous animation. The idea is to be able to develop characters and stories 'live', through creating a blog by a fictional character, who just happens to be a cartoon.

The blog allows for slower development of character, from 'Hi, Welcome to my Blog' to 'Yesterday, my heart got broke', and allows me to sneak in narrative ideas that can be developed, or abandoned as I work out what works. I don't know what the blog will lead to, whether I'll pull strands out to turn into scripts, or whether I'll just let it go where it wants to go for it's own sake. The idea is to give me a space to work through animation and illustration ideas, and post them within a context. -I've written a few pieces to start the story, and I'll post the URL when it's set up.

Oh, yes - last night I accidentally came up with a new idea for a short, I can't tell you much about it for now, but it involves a Golem. - I was doodling and one of my standard monster characters came out (I generally ignore the standard monster character, it's like my phone doodle), but this time I thought it looked really nice, especially when I drew a Victorian magician next to it, which looked a bit like the Pringles man. From then, it was a simple case of a bit of common insomnia, and the seed of a new film was sown.

In real life...
I moved house last week; cheated by watching sneak preview Lost while babysitting (therefore destroying tonight's TV); and as you know, went to see Douglas Coupland, which was good, but ruined by a rubbish interviewer, who didn't even touch on the big themes of Coup Land. Oh, and Be Good Tanyas announced their new album! - It's been a long wait, nearly as long as the wait for the Breeders 3rd album.

3 hours to Coupland

2006-06-02T14:03:00.000Z

Douglas Coupland is speaking tonight at Broadway! I'm really excited, because I think Coupland is possibly my favourite author. I was thinking about it last night talking to Matt;

I think part of the reason is because I feel like I've grown up with his books - they seem to fit quite nicely along the timeline of my life from the mid-nineties onwards.

The first book of his which really had an impact on me was Microserfs - I liked the other books, but this felt like the one where his characters became really 3-d, and also, coming at the time that we were starting Active Ingredient, it felt like someone was putting our lives down in a book! - It has some amazing passages in it - my favourite moment is the revealing of the tiny white lego house, and "Hello Jed" - If you haven't read it, I won't explain those bits further, I don't want to spoil it.

What strikes me about all the books is the warmth, and I think love for the characters - It doesn't read like Bret Easton Ellis, whose books I have always found difficult - a bit nasty (except Glamorama, which is really good). I'm a bit soft, so I don't mind admitting to a few near-sobs at the end of his books! - I was really angry at the end of Microserfs because I didn't want the characters to end!

Some favourite Douglas Coupland moments (remembered moments, so may not be accurate if they even exist at all);

"My name's Jared, I'm a ghost" - Girlfriend in a Coma. The opening line.

The Dead Speak from Life after God - beautiful - made into short films for MTV, you can see them on www.coupland.com

Letter to Kurt Cobain from Polaroids from the Dead

A story from an anthology about the turn of the millenium - can't remember what it's called, but it's about a special effects guy.

and many, many more... His latest books, Eleanor Rigby and Hey Nostradamus! may be his best yet, I loved them both - tonight we'll get a reading from JPod, which Jeanie has sneakily started reading already and has probably finished by now.

How Coupland, blogging about Coupland. I think I'll spend the rest of the afternoon drawing flames in Biro on pictures in the Ikea catalogue.

Second Life report
We're nearly there with the first episode of Ricard's machinima series - all the characters are finished and tidied, with their facial animations on, and I'll be able to post some screenshots from the pilot episode and a URL to the site next week.

The best things in life...

2006-05-23T10:25:00.000Z

Ok, not a post about machinima, but these are the things that get me out of bed in the morning.

Steven and Jeanie have both posted about favourite films on their sites, so I thought I'd add my own (and couldn't resist adding some more). I know this must appear as a fairly self-indulgent exercise, but Steve has a theory that the films you make subconciously project or at least give a glimpse of a world view. I guess it's the same for what you watch in many ways - not necessarily the content, but the way a film is structured/shot/edited - How many times have you said, 'oh (insert name here) would love that' - it's not entirely based on the subject matter - otherwise a good few people I know would be serial killers. I think we watch, or at least make favourites of, the films/books/songs/pictures that mirror our selves, or at least allow us to access that part of ourself.

AfterLife: this is genuinely the most affecting film I have ever seen. It's truly beautiful, and I could watch it for ever. It's about a halfway house between this world and the next. It uses documentary stories and non-actors, and is filmed in the most amazing way. It has stayed with me ever since I saw it, and if you watch it, I hope it does the same to you. I had to get it on import, from amazon.com.

Be Good Tanyas: Be Good Tanyas make me so happy! Check out www.begoodtanyas.com - it will make you happy too...

Peanuts: Peanuts is brilliant, but you know that already!

Picture Day!

2006-05-19T10:18:00.000Z

I've got quite a few new pics to show of Second Life avatars. All the characters are nearly finished and ready to go.

Sara and Makiao have been scripting a system which allows our machinima 'actors' to change expressions instantly. I supplied them with a range of faces - simple expression things, which are mapped onto an invisible obje ct which sits over the centre of the face - here's the pics, with notes...

This first one is us meeting in world to look at the face mapping system. Sara is dressed in her punker/skater-girl outfit, I am dressed in my usually big-girls blouse dolly attire - I really need to get something more macho, I'm beginning to feel like a virtual Grayson Perry - and Ricard is, for some reason, dressed as a large coke with bendy straw.

More pics...

Meet the family...

Here's the characters, all ready for their face mapping. This image doesn't really do them justice, cos it's from a fairly rubbish computer, so Nana's glasses for example render as hexagons instead of circles. But still you can see how it's progresses - It's a pity the Sabina character is hidden behind nana and grandad, next time I'll make individual portraits. What's really made my day with this project is how easily my 2-d character designs became 3-d - the translation is great, which i didn't think it would be. It's actually made my drawing better too, because working on building objects from really simple shapes makes you revisit drawing 101 about structure and proportion.

And in Real Life News....
In my profile bit right at the beginning, I mentioned I shared a shop with a friend. It's called Eye Candy and it sells all sorts of sweet arty stuff. We launched an online shop at the start of May, which coincided with SideShow, a kind of fringey add on to the British Art Show. Active Ingredient, the company I used to work with (one day, when drunk, I will type in a long post about what exactly I mean by 'used to work with'...-that's not a promise, more a fear...), set up an online streaming project called MAKE TV. Me and Nicola (who I share the shop with) decided to do a weekly QVC-style shopping channel, desperately selling our wares. Last night was the final one, and we decided to stage a row on air. There'd been an article in the Guardian on Saturday about TV channels that no-one watches, so we wanted to spoof that... I'm archiving the webcasts at the moment, and will link to them soon. It was a really good laugh, and we hopefully got more people watching than the folks in the paper. On Saturday, I went over to Steven and Jeanie's to play banjo and watch TV, and we watched some of the worst telly on earth. - You become hypnotised by the desperation of some poor media graduate sat for four hours trying to get drunks to ring in to answer some riddle so cryptic, I'm sure Dan Brown is penning some shit best-seller about it now, or at least getting his wife to. It's like working in a call centre, except no-one's calling in. I worked in a call centre, which is another long post to come, and it was desperate - trying to sell bad software to people who either had better stuff, or didn't want it/know what it was, or own a computer...

Anyway, I'll post a link to the archives soon, in the meantime, here's Jeanie and Steve's daughter Betsy watching us online...

Messing with my Head

2006-05-08T09:33:00.000Z

Here's those pictures I promised of me and Sara and Makiao working in Second Life... We're trying to work out how to apply seperate textures for different parts of the face. I've made vector file images of all the faces in 6 different expressions and we'll use a script to call the correct one when we need to. Even in Second Life, I feel like a bit of a goon dressed in my big dolly outfit while the others flounce about in their cool club gear!

In the bottom picture, you can see a purple disc - this is a posing stand, so you can build directly onto your avatar. It makes life a lot easier. If you don't use it, your character reacts to mouse moves as if it would in game, so dressing it is a bit like trying to put socks on a dog!

Machinimation

2006-05-05T14:03:00.000Z

Had another meeting in Second Life with Sara/Cory the other day and a guy called Makiao (his second life name), who is a wiz with all the scripting and more advanced stuff. I've got some great pictures which I'll post soon - they're on another computer.

As I said in a previous post, I'm thinking of doing some machinima of my own once Ricard's project is finished - I can't wait to be able to tell you more about it, but it's all under wraps currently until it's launched. We had a discussion the other day about second life/machinima as a film set, and it's quite interesting from an animation point of view. Because it's real time, you are able to shoot/reshoot/set up/try different things on stage. - With animation, you painstakingly work out exactly each shot and make it just like that, there's really not much room for the happy accident. I realise I'm generalising here, but I'm thinking of my own experiences as an animator.

I've been thinking a lot about how to use actors in animation, to pull out the nuances of how an actor not only speaks, but moves and emotes - I'd like to look at devising with actors to make cartoons. I find scriptwriting quite difficult in isolation - well, not difficult as such, but it's not so lively. In live action, there is a long tradition of improvisation being used to block scenes and pull out new ideas - Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke recently spent two weeks workshopping with actors to tighten up a script for Chris' road movie. As well as getting some top celeb gossip (I'm not sure if I can write about it - I'll ask Chris how much trouble it will cause!), they got some good stuff.

When I was at University, doing lots of live art/performance work, I found devising with a group to be a really good way of building a project, and exciting because it doesn't always work, and requires really hard thinking and listening/responding. In thinking about ways to devise for animation, the live art approach started to reappear - I think because Live Art and animation share some common points - and some extremely differing ones -

Why Cartoons and Live Art are similar:
Character/Performer as Statement.
Play with narrative/timeline.
Play with continuity.
Non-naturalistic staging.

Why they're not:
Anything can happen in either. - Except in animation, you've already thought of that ages ago.

I really like the idea of the spontaneous gesture in animation, or something that gets to the honesty of the actor/character - possibly subconciously, most likely accidentally.

I realise that's a really short and probably not informative description of the idea, but I'm writing about it for my MA and will post a full version soon.

Anyway, maybe machinima is a way to do it - It's live, it's got real time cameras, shots can be set up again and again, and I get to say 'Can we try that again, this time with feeling' - I'm going to build an avatar that looks like one of those old style movie directors with plus 4's, a beret and a monocle! i've got a few ideas for films floating around at the moment, and after i've finished ricard's film, i think i'm gonna have a go. I've built a whole wardrobe of nice outfits, and hopefully with some linden scripting skills i'll be able to make some good stuff. i can see that although second life is fairly limited at the moment, as in we are still a long way off from pixar or peter jackson style cgi, it will only get better - and films will get much more sophisticated. How long till we see the first game engine made cinema release or telly programme? - I'm sure it won't be too long, or even with us already, and I've just not seen it.

Some trivia: currently listening to Old Crow Medicine Show, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, and Be Good Tanyas (always listening to the Be Good Tanyas)

Settling in to second life

2006-05-02T12:01:00.000Z

Hi - Not much time to write, but here's a couple of sketches from the character developments for Ricard's Machinima project.

Have been thinkng myself about making some Machinima experiments using my characters.

I've been thinking about using it as a way to make mock-ups for more traditionally animated films, a quick and dirty way to block moves and shots.

I realise that's not a purist attitude to machinima, but I'm not sure how an audience would engage with a longer, more heavily narrative piece than most of the things I've seen from Machinima.

Ricard's project will be a good testing ground. - The website for it will be up soon and you will be able to see the work online.

Been working in Second Life

2006-04-21T12:08:00.000Z

Wow. Been working in Second Life a lot for the past couple of weeks. It's really strange, because everything happens in world. What's stranger is that you get used to it quite quickly!

When I first started to use it, i thought it was too strange, cumbersome and unfriendly to really be useful, but once you start to create in there, it all changes.. It's odd because when we go in there, most of its users are asleep in real life, so it's like wandering around Westworld when the park is shut - lots of empty buildings and vehicles left around. There are vast empty malls with nothing and no-one in - it's like Day of the Dead. The only places where people seem to be are strip bars and casinos. - When i first got shown second life, i though it was rubbish - a strange lonely place with nothing to do, no real objective, seemingly populated by man-geeks dressed as virtual women. - And you know, to a large extent it is rubbish, but the real life version would be too - imagine if you got a load of people, put them on an island and said, there you are, do what you like, chances are not a lot would happen, but it would be only a short matter of time before the stripping and the bingo started!

That's the 'first life good, second life bad' bit over, here's what's converting me;

I've started making costumes for characters (see yesterday's pics). I didn't find it easy at first, modelling in world is a funny old thing - you can only use a few shapes (prims, thsy're called) and it seemed stupidly restrictive to me, i thought it's be easier to make them in MAYA or something then upload them. There's 2 main reasons for this, one is the complexity of shapes - over worked models would be way too slow on the server, and secondly, there's a strong argument that SL (ooh, get me, talking in geek-speak!) should be easy for all users and not a showcase for show-offs - you can't really disagree with that - SL is potentially a democratising of game design and development. Once i got my head around the modelling space, it became easy to translate my character design.

Once you get over the weirdness of the world, it becomes quite a nice place to be. Instead of downloading a PDF manual of how to model prims, you actually travel, as an avatar, to a place called 'Ivory Tower Library of Primitives', a big building where you learn in world how to model. I thought it was really clunky at first, but i got into it.

But the really good thing about second life is the community. Over the past two weeks, we have been having in world meetings with some people from a company called electricsheepcompany.com - it's so odd, we actually meet in the world, as avatars, and chat.

Chat is generally stupid - just loads of creepy predators asking 'How old RU?' and talking nonsense, or jumbled conversations as everyone tries to talk at once. Second Life has a funny trick though, when someone speaks, you can see their avatar 'type' in game - it sort of looks like they're doing Reiki, so you know to wait. What also helps is that we have work to do, so we're not just goofing off, and it really begins to make sense. I'm getting lots of ideas about secondlife as an art space and film set, but more of that as it happens.

I've started to see the creative potential for Second Life, and i think that's the key - if you've nothing to do, you'll just start chucking away your linden dollars (fake in world money) on bingo and swords, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Wow, that was a long post; does that make me a blogger now?

Some pictures from Second Life

2006-04-20T15:18:00.000Z

Some pictures from Second Life of avatars I'm making as part of a project. It's really interesting and a bit weird trying to translate my drawings into game avatars, but I think they work well.

The first one is the character I am experimenting with at the moment, and the second is second life developer Cory Edo showing us how to turn into flowers, for that Peter Gabriel circa 1975 look!

2006-04-11T13:46:00.000Z

Hi, welcome to my blog!

I thought i'd add some doodles to show the kind of work I'm making. You can also see my film 'How it was that we got to be Angels' if you follow the link on the left.

All images copyright Gareth Howell. PLease don't use them without asking me first!