Festival of Fire

Whats this? An update? Never. But wait, my word, it is!

At last I have something to update my blog with. I have pictures too if I can remember where I put them.

On the 27th of October I went to Welshampton for a Festival of Fire. Apparently its an annual event that has been put on for the past 5 years or so. It has a theme and everything! I found out about it from one of the people helping to organise it who is a student on the Illustrator course at the university I go to.

This year's theme was Greek mythology, more specifically the tale of Medusa and Perseus. It started out with a short performance on a little stage telling of how Pegasus was born from the severed head of Medusa. I don't know how technically accurate that is but it was good fun to watch. This was followed by a small lantern parade to the bonfire which was a huge wooden model of Pegasus. I would say that it was at least 20 feet tall!

Before it was lit the story continued and a fight waged between Pegasus and the Chimera. It was wonderful to watch. The Chimera was mounted on a cherrypicker so that it was all articulated and could move around Pegasus. I couldn't take any pictures though because the camera didn't pick it up well. I did get some video though. Shall I try and add it here? I can see a video button. I'll see if it works....

There we go. Looks like it worked. I hope you enjoy watching it. If you look closely you can see Perseus stood on Pegasus' back. It helps show how big Pegasus was. About ten seconds after I stopped filming, the Chimera was defeated and retreated "off stage".

Finally Pegasus was set alight to allow him to take his place with the Gods because of his bravery when fighting. Perseus, however, was cast down because he only had selfish interests at heart. It was a wonderful end to a fantastic evening!

Thats all for now. I hope you enjoyed reading and watching this post. Toodles.

Eledees (or Elebits if you're outside Europe)

Not much of an update really but I thought I should try and keep this blog alive somehow.
I've had the game Eledees for the Wii since about two days after it was released earlier this year. Today I finally finished it! According to the game record it took me a total of 15 hours and 52 minutes and I gained the title of "King of Curiosity". I'm really not bothered about trying to complete challenge mode cos I've tried a few times and find it really hard.
So, what this means is that when MySims is released for the Wii I will be able to use Eledees as a part exchange against it and get it cheeper! Yay for discounts and trade-ins.
MySims looks absolutely brilliant, not to mention cute, and will be released some time in September, I forget when exactly,
For more info and a countdown to its release you can go and visit http://www.mysims.ea.com/index.php

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

At last I have finally read the final Harry Potter book! After three and a half days reading I finally made it to the end.
And what an ending! I tried to guess ahead and figure out what was going to happen but I couldn't. It was great!
Anyway, yeah. I've finished the book. That's all I wanted to say really.

Kate Nash - Foundations

Anybody heard it? I have and is it just me or does she sound exactly like Catherine Tate? I bet if Catherine really did sing it nobody would be able to tell the difference!
Any thoughts you want to add?

Cosgrove Hall

Hi peeps!
You all know the work of Cosgrove Hall don't ya? Yeah sure you do. They make Postman Pat, Rupert Bear, Engie Benjy and Roary the Racecar. They are also the people behind Count Duckula and Dangermouse not to mention countless other cartoon classics. Well, I went and visited their head quarters on Tuesday 17th!
I went to Manchester by train and a day return only cost me £8.25 from Wrexham which I thought was great because the taxi from Piccadily station to the studio cost me £8! I got there at half past 12 and Chris Bowden met up with me. He took me upstairs to a meeting room where I showed him my second year animation and models that I used. (Its a stop-motion piece) He said that I was doing well with how I was constructing my models and I seemed to be able to give good weighting to the characters.
Next he took me to the studio where Roary the Racecar was being filmed. This studio was off-site across the road. They have 7 sets ready for animating and loads of copies of all the models so they can shoot lots of different scenes all at the same time. There were two animators filming when I went in. Apparently the average amount of filming they get done in one day is 11 seconds per animator!
Then we went and had dinner. I had a chicken curry and met up with Nick Roberson who was the man who put me in contact with Chris in the first place. He works for Mackinnon and Saunders who make all of the stop-motion puppets for the animations. They are world famous model makers. They did all the stuff for Corpse Bride. We had a little chat and then I went to the puppet department.
I was shown how the puppets are made and also how they are repaired when they break. Rupert was brought in while I was there who needed a new right arm because two of his fingers had snapped! I was told fingers only last about a week on a model because they get used that much. I took some photos, only about 3, and then was taken on a tour of the rest of the building by a nice lady called Lisa.
She took me to the costume department where some hand puppets were being made for the Rupert Bear characters. They were only about 4cm tall. Then I went to the sound recording studios. They have two recording rooms and two editing rooms. They also have one room just for the computer towers so that they don't interfere with the recordings. I wish our university recording room was as sound proof. It's next to the girls toilet so if anyone dries their hands when you're recording then you get the hand drier on their too! Then I was taken to Flix which is the company responsible for editing the Rupert Bear episodes together with the computer generated background which they make.
I was then handed over to someone else, who's name I've forgotten, to go and look at the Rupert Bear sets and models being filmed. This was a bit rushed though because Chris had ordered a taxi for me so that I wouldn't miss my return train and it was due to arrive within about 5 minutes. The Rupert Bear crew didn't seem as organised as the lot working on Roary. Maybe they were nearing a deadline, I don't know.
Anyway, I caught my return train in plenty of time (I was half an hour early!) and got back to Wrexham at 6 o'clock. I had a very enjoyable day but if someone was to ask me if it lived up to my expectations then I wouldn't know what to say as I didn't really have any expectations before I went.
I forgot to ask a lot of questions while I was there unfortunately so I emailed Chris with them after I got back. He's not replied yet. I hope he does soon.
Congratulations! You have now reached the end of this extremely long entry. Go have a cookie or something.

YouTubing across the interwebs

*dusts cobwebs off blog pages*
Wow, haven't been here in a while. Sorry about that. I've been um, busy. Yes that's it! Busy.
Anyway, to the point at hand. I've got a YouTube account! Well, I have had for a while now but I've actually started to upload stuff to it. So far it only contains three animations from the first year of my uni course. "Ooooh animations" I bet you're all thinking. Well I'm sorry to let you down but they only last a few seconds and are just basic pencil test type things.
I have other animations I could upload but they are group works so I'd have to get everybody else to agree to me putting them up first. I'm nice like that.
I also have the animation I have produced for my second year but I'm very protective over it and don't fancy having no control over what happens to it once its uploaded. I might upload it but not until Cosgrove Hall Animation have seen it. I'm showing it to them on July 17th! I hope I impress them. I think I'd like to work there.

That's all for now. Bye.

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

My mate Neil from university has been lucky enough to have one of his animations put up on the BBC talent website. There are lots of others too and you get to watch and rate them all. This is just so that everyone who reads this (I'm looking at you Derek fans) can go and rate his animation too. There was a problem when the site was first launched which meant his ratings were shared with the animation below. Thankfully that's been fixed now. (Yay!)
So hop on over and have a look. It's called Hoover vs Brush by Neil Rowlands. (Scroll down a bit, it's on the left.)
Toodles

You Tube Vid

Hmm, seems I need to update this blog of mine with something new and more up to date.
Well, lets see. It snowed today! It snowed yesterday too! I built a snowman each time. You can NEVER be too old for snowmen. My mates came to visit me last weekend and we went to Chester which was great fun too!
Uuum, here, watch this!



Dear dear, so many exclamation marks.

Welcome 2007

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2007! I'm a bit late with the festivities I know but I mean it all the same. I hope everyone's 2007 has had a good start so far and if it has then may it continue to be just as good, but if it hasn't then things can only get better! It's a win-win situation. Have a good, no a great 2007 everyone!