Tue, May 27th 2008, 15:38
This is an early drawing from Fuggy Fuggy, all done in my irreplaceable moleskine books. Where it all starts. This is one of the first drawings I did for the Fuggy#1.
This is the storyboard for the fitness section. Not the neatest, but it all makes sense to me. Greg
Fri, Apr 25th 2008, 10:51
Our short film The M Man, written and directed by Greg, and based on a character designed by Myles when he was about six, has been nominated for The Second Annual Channel Frederator Awards in the Best Flash Film category. The film was previously shortlisted in the 2007 Nicktoons Network Animation Festival.
Fri, Jun 13th 2008, 10:02
We're off to the Showcomotion Conference in July and have been invited by Tim Dann to sit on the panel for the Get Shorty session.
Sun, Jul 6th 2008, 12:11
Our latest animation 'Sticks' has been featured on the UK YouTube homepage (that's our 5th YouTube feature) as well as on Drawn!
Sat, Jul 12th 2008, 11:21
Just finished a short film 'Codswallop' based on the postcards I've been doing. Hopefully it will be showing at a festival near you soon.
‘Codswallop’ is a subconscious drift through despair, frustration, joy and redemption.
Based on a series of stream of consciousness postcards sent by the filmmaker to their son, ‘Codswallop’ features a collection of surreal characters at crucial moments in their briefly glimpsed stories.
Beware of hats!
Thu, Jul 17th 2008, 10:30
At the recent Showcomotion Conference we were asked to present in a programme called "Get Shorty" with a few other folks, one of whom was Jason Krogh of zinc Roe Design in Canada.
Jason has presided over a number of great projects, including the Zimmer Twins, an online 'make your own film' site for kids. (And for adults like me too.)
Here's a little short I made at their site called Outer Space Mischief
Tue, Jul 29th 2008, 10:44
Our latest short film Codswallop is finished and heading out on the Film Festival run. We can't release the full version online until it's done it's rounds of the film festivals so for a sneak peak, take a trip over to Aaron Simpson's top industry blog Cold Hard Flash.
Mon, Sep 8th 2008, 22:31
We're off for a weekend in Amsterdam. No, not that sort of weekend. We're off to the Klik! Animation Festival (12-14 September 08) because the lovely people running the festival have selected our film Codswallop for their Open Competition. It's not our first film to get into an international film festival (our films are better travelled than we are), but it is the first international one we're attending so we're really looking forward to it.
Sat, Sep 20th 2008, 13:24
Amsterdam... where we went on the weekend of the 13-14th September to visit the lovely people at the Klik! Animation Festival. Our short film Codswallop was runner up in the Open Competition which was great. We also met Oscar winning animator Suzie Templeton and her lovely chap Rosto who were very complimentary about our film too. Klik! have this great thing where they hand out clickers, so at the end of a screening instead of just clapping, there's also lots of clicking (or Klik-ing).
Thu, Oct 2nd 2008, 11:56
We've recently made three shorts called Dogg commissioned by the new 4mations website. Dogg is quite simply about a little dog who goes to extremes to sort out life's little problems. Here's the first two in the series...
Mon, Oct 6th 2008, 11:10
Dogg Episode Three is now live on 4mations YouTube Channel
Tue, Oct 7th 2008, 09:04
Our latest short film Codswallop has so far notched up the following international film festival appearances...
As well as appearing at 7 Inch Cinema.
If you want to catch it in the UK you'll be able to see it
Here's the trailer for Codswallop from our YouTube channel.
Fri, Oct 17th 2008, 08:50
Our short film Codwallop has been selected for another film festival... this time the Anchorage International Film Festival in Alaska, who were good enough to show our film The M Man a few years back. That makes eight festivals so far. Fingers crossed for more.
Thu, Oct 23rd 2008, 13:54
The finished animations from the Digitoons Masterclass that we have been involved in courtesy of Hi8us Midlands are now live on YouTube. They will have their first performance at today's Hello Digital festival in Birmingham.
Congratulations to our six animators Nusha Amini, Lauron Farr, Qianqian Liu, Charis McNerlin, Amy Morgan, and Charlie Pinder of mookstudios. Thanks to Kate, Dave and Kulwant at Hi8us for organising everything!
Tue, Nov 18th 2008, 11:15
Tate recently commissioned The Brothers McLeod to make five short films for their fantastic Tate Kids website. Each episode is part animation, part live action, featuring the two headed Orthus who disagrees with himself about the merits of each artwork he sees. Watch the first film here at the Tate Kids site, or watch the taster from our YouTube channel below.
Wed, Nov 26th 2008, 13:46
The Brothers McLeod's short film "Codswallop" has won an award! It was voted Best Short Short (short film under 5 minutes) at the 17th St. Louis International Film Festival. Hooray!
Tue, Jan 6th 2009, 09:27
Our short film Codswallop is now heading off to the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and the prestigious Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival in France. Wahoo!
Mon, Jan 19th 2009, 14:13
Two more of our Art Sparks films for the Tate Kids website are now ready to watch. If you missed the first one it's available at the Tate Kids site, or on YouTube.
Thu, Jan 15th 2009, 08:44
There are some moments that you have to stop and pinch yourself. It's because you've imagined or hoped that they might one day happen. And then one day they do happen. Today we were nominated for a BAFTA for Short Animation. Codswallop has been doing really well for us on the Film Festival circuit. We've had quite a few festivals contacting us asking us to submit it, presumably after seeing it at other ones. This latest bit of news is the icing on the cake - actually it's the jam filling and probably the sponge as well. We are shortlisted with only two other short animations - both by BAFTA winners. One is Marc Craste and Sue Goffe's Varmints, which I haven't seen but looks beautiful. The other is Wallace and Gromit's latest outing which was the most popular bit of TV in about a hundred years. Now that's what I call tough competition!
Thu, Feb 5th 2009, 09:18
See BAFTA nominated Codswallop at the following events:
Animated Exeter
http://pub2.exeter.gov.uk/
Shorts on the Walls
http://www.animationforumw
Flatpack Festival
http://www.flatpackfestiva
Tue, Feb 17th 2009, 16:10
We've just been awarded some funding for a new film by Screen West Midland and 4mations as part of the Digishorts scheme.
We've never done this before but we thought we'd take you through the process, the ups and downs, the long nights and early mornings. We've got to deliver the film by August so it's going to be a busy few months.
The film is titled 'The Moon Bird'. The story came about after Greg challenged Myles to write a Brothers Grimm tale. We're going through script tweaks at the moment and Greg is working on style sheets, character and layout design.
Check back regularly for new posts and keep track of the film’s progress.
Mon, Mar 30th 2009, 13:40
Louis has been directing his dad Greg in his first short film, "Yellow No Monkey". Watch it at our YouTube channel...
Thu, May 7th 2009, 12:03
Our BAFTA nominated short animation Codswallop continues to appear at more film festivals. We're very pleased to announce that it is in competition for the McLaren Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
It's also off to the capital of film itself to appear at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
In addition, it recently featured in Leeds Young People's Film Festival, and is now heading to International Filmets Festival of Badalona near Barcelona.
Fri, May 15th 2009, 07:54
When I'm not blogging here I occasionally blog for Lineboil run by Cold Hard Flash's Aaron Simpson. Since it's difficult to find a news story that Aaron doesn't already know about, I thought I might have a go at an interview. My first interviewee is fellow Midlands animator Samantha Moore who is currently working on a new film, An Eyeful of Sound. Read the whole interview at Lineboil.
Tue, Jun 30th 2009, 10:07
The last two Art Sparks films are now live on the Tate Kids website. They feature the egg-like structure Ishi's Light by Anish Kapoor and Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon.
Thu, Jul 2nd 2009, 18:37
Great work in progress animation by Michael J Dowswell I just wrote up on Lineboil. Click here to view.
Mon, Jul 27th 2009, 10:11
Here's a short animated documentary for the Law Centres Federation. Written, Designed and Directed by us, animated by Hamish Baird, and produced by studio aka.
This is one of four films produced to highlight the excellent work of the Law Centres. We made two of the films (the other one will feature on the blog and on our YouTube page eventually). The other two films were made by top illustrator Chris Haughton. You can see his film Maureen's Story at the Law Centres YouTube channel.
Wed, Oct 7th 2009, 10:22
Once again Peter McLuskie of the Light House has asked us to inveigle our way into his fantastic animation festival. The Flip Animation Festival is now in its sixth year and we've been fortunate enough in previous years to have sat on industry panels for debates, chair a session on Doctor Who animations, show an exhibition of prints, design the look for the festival, and opened the festival with a retrospective of our work.
This year we're back like a chronic rash... and are running a scriptwriting course, interviewing Sarah Cox and showing a programme of short films (not our own this time - instead it's a bunch of films that we love and want to share).
Find out more at the Flip Festival website and book your tickets asap!
Fri, Oct 9th 2009, 13:24
I don’t want to go on about the BAFTA thing (yeah! BAFTA BAFTA BAFTA), but while at the 2009 film BAFTAs, when we were nominated for a BAFTA at the BAFTAs, we met fellow BAFTA nominees (and former BAFTA winners) Marc Craste and Sue Goffe from the amazing BAFTA winning studio aka.
This year wasn’t our year because the legendary Nick Park was out and about and claimed the gong for Wallace and Gromit. But it did mean we’d got to commiserate with Marc and Sue and a little while later they asked to work with them on a project.
The Law Centres Federation runs centres around the UK which are not-for-profit legal practices providing free legal advice and representation to disadvantaged people. They wanted four short animations to explain what they did in a short and engaging way. So we worked on two of them and the very talented illustrator Chris Haughton worked on the others (you can see one on his YouTube channel).
We made one of the films in a style similar to our short film Codswallop. But for the other, we thought we’d have a go at something new. We’d had an idea about animating some fabric models and so, once we'd picked our story - about a family man overcoming a drug addition and volunteering at a law centre to get his life back on track - Greg starting sketching.
We then brought in friend and designer Asia Werbel of Colourspace to turn the sketches and illustrations into fabric models. She also created a fabric background complete with patchwork houses and button trees.
The finished models and background look fantastic and personally I think it creates a magical looking animated film. You can buy some of Asia’s handmade plushes and other designs on Etsy or at Uneeka.
The rest of the crew included the very talented animator Tom Evans, Paul Johnston from Rhythm Studios and the voiceovers for all the films came from Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty.
Here’s the finished animation.
