Danger Mouse RIP

I was saddened last week, as I am sure were thousands of us who are Danger Mouse fans, at the news that Cosgrove Hall have closed their doors for the last time.

Cosgrove Hall were always one of the most exciting animation studios in the UK based in Manchester, and always turned out good animated entertainment. As a young teenager I had the silhouette of DM painted in my wardrobe door, and I suppose in some way, good old DM (and Penfold of course) helped me through my adolescence.

Their cartoons of the 1970's and 1980's seemed so irreverent and anarchic, with good stories and funny silly animation. Their work has always been unique and always resisted the temptation to look like everyone elses work.

A sad day for British animation :-(

The animation merry-go-round

The news the other day that Laika, producers of the fantastic stop motion feature Coraline (see image) have laid off 65 CG animators to concentrate on stop motion features made me think about the old '2d animation is dead' arguments. Together with the news that Pixar are developing a 2d project, it proves that animation techniques swing in and out of fashion. 3d was meant to be the technique that would kill off all other forms of animation, and some short sighted studios closed down their entire 2d production arms, often because of one flop, only to reopen them again a few years later when it occured to them that audiences want good stories, and generally don't care the about the process. So what if a movies character has three trillion strands of hair on its nose if the story is boring!

The good thing is, there is still a demand for good animation, and the boundaries between what is a 2d film and what is a 3d film are getting smaller all the time....and I for one am glad. I'm rather bored of the argument anyway. As a 2d animator I have been out of fashion several times before, but who knows, by next year I could be really trendy again.

Spielberg thinks animators are Ace!

I came across this clip on youtube- Animators always know exactly what they want.....don't they?

The OOglies are about to be unleashed..

About this time last year I was called by Nick Hopkin, a producer I had worked with before from the BBC on a cartoon series called PopSkool....and he said he had a great idea for a stop frame animation, in which all the characters were vegetables, fruit or small household objects, but wanted some advice on how he could make it.

Well, to cut a long story short, we got together a great team of artists and put them in a studio in Glasgow and 12 months later, OOglies is about to go on air...

You can read about OOglies in this weeks Broadcast

The picture above is of Bruce Husband working on a shot from OOglies and below is animator Sara Barbas. No she isn't in someones kitchen, that really is a set. She animated one of my favourite characters, 'Devious Blender'.....all will be revealed when the show get's aired next week!