This one took several days to put together, thank goodness for “save as draft” is all I have to say…

We spent a week in Hunstanton, here’s some pictures:

 

 

That’s my team down there on the beach. Jellyfish rich atm. This place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last picture is the Wash Monster, a converted amphibious vehicle, made for the Vietnam War and repurposed as a tourist holiday fun ride, like they do on the East Coast.

I tried to draw it here.

 

 

Mikey Please announced his new company Parabella Studios with Daniel Ojari , He also uploaded his marvellous short Marilyn Miller to Vimeo to celebrate. He’s the PTA of the animation world as far as I am concerned:

 

 

 

Here is a great Walt Disney film on the multi-plane. When I was at college (a very long time ago) the multi-plane was the secret magic trick to get flat things to work in three dimensional space, it meant you could have depth blurring, shadows, false perspective and differential lighting in a cut out animation format. Obviously this has now been superceded by the 2.5D enabled in After Effects comping. I am very glad I was able to use the old tool, though. I built a few of my own with wood, screws, baked bean tins and gaffer tape and filmed a lot of my graduation film in my bedroom with all my housemates bedside lights. Anyway the one here in the film is a bit more up market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose these posts are back ups for the links and thoughts that I spit out on the social medias. So if you follow me there, you probably don’t need to read this. However I don’t often cross post stuff to everything, so this is a handy way for me to review what I found and amalgamate into one huge blog dump. As Austin Kleon says it can be helpful to review what you’ve been sharing.

Speaking of Austin Kleon, he can ask him anything you can’t google on Tumblr, here’s one answer to a question on dayjobs:

Here is Haruki Murakami on writing and running:

When I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight is perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don’t want to gain weight I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. People who naturally keep the weight off don’t need to exercise or watch their diet. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. Those of us who have a tendency to gain weight should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. Of course, it’s not always easy to see things this way. I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.

Ray Bradbury on teaching storytelling:

Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can’t get free of them and that’s what kids like in school. They read about rocket ships and encounters in space, tales of dinosaurs. All my life I’ve been running through the fields and picking up bright objects. I turn one over and say, Yeah, there’s a story.

And here is an amazing speech by him where he lays down a very easy to follow DIY writing course:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Werner Herzog on making films:

The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate. If you can’t afford to make a million-dollar film, raise $10,000 and produce it yourself. That’s all you need to make a feature film these days. Beware of useless, bottom-rung secretarial jobs in film-production companies. Instead, so long as you are able-bodied, head out to where the real world is. Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books. A lot of what you see in my films isn’t invention; it’s very much life itself, my own life. If you have an image in your head, hold on to it because — as remote as it might seem — at some point you might be able to use it in a film. I have always sought to transform my own experiences and fantasies into cinema.

You go walking in Leigh Woods and you can find enchanted trees.

Look at that picture whilst listening to She Keeps Bees.

Or alternatively listen to 12 hours of Deckard’s Apartment sound (via 3liza).

Look at these old forms of media. I have boxes of these old tape things. This one is made by a company that doesn’t even exist anymore, and it and they were EVERYWHERE.

Sergei Eisenstein looking at actual film (via various}.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s an old photo taken on film with accompanying commentary on Instagram:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clearing out the garage and the study ready for them to be demolished is proving a slow and emotional process. You find the strangest artifacts. This is me doing a “selfie ” in the nineties. Alone on a boat in the River Mekong (long story). The idea of travelling solo for months at a time is very far away from where I am now. That is not a bad thing. Look, I’m doing my best Hunter S Thompson like an actual ****. Unfortunately one can’t really pull it off when one has the face of a baby.

…and yes I did paint that t-shirt myself.

Sometime later I took another selfie, with a phone obviously. and I submitted it to Molly Broxton‘s GDSP project, a collaborative photography project which you can get involved with here. It’s been going for a while now the idea is that one person suggests a prompt which others follow, and if you submit you will then have a turn at suggesting a prompt yourself. I might write a longer post about what happened when I submitted a prompt and the extraordinary stories that came out of that. Here is a montage of the batch from the first ever prompt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim Woodring (on Facebook), pointed out this tumblr where someone was posting examples of one of a very strange old comic called the Wiggle Much.

Some pottery animation from Jim Le Fevre and the gang:

 

 

Andy Thomas has done some nice work visualising bird song:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thom Yorke from Radiohead appears to be posting up drawings. Not sure if they are his or not.

 

 

 

 

..and here’s some Giacometti from the Paris Review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Night!