Archive for the ‘animation’ Category

Thursday 25th March 2010
6.00pm – 8.00pm
Vivid, Heath Mill Lane, Digbeth, Birmingham.

Everyone’s favourite animated screenings night, Shorts on Walls, returns this March as part of Flatpack Festival 2010 and animators are once more being invited to submit their short films

Shorts on Walls gives animators the chance to screen their latest works to a room full of peers in a relaxed bar atmosphere. The event is free to attend and runs from 6pm-8pm on Thursday 25th March 2010 in the main space at Vivid, Heath Mill Lane, Digbeth, Birmingham.

To submit your animated short, please post to our new address by the 18th March 2010:

• A DVD formatted copy of your film (for judging)
• An uncompressed high-res QuickTime file on a DVD data disc

New Year, new start, new projects, new prices!

What a great year 2010 could be. We’re quite excited here at EESB, knowing the projects that are on the roadmap for the short and long-term. We’ve got video pieces coming up, and we’ve go animation pieces coming up.

We’re also working on a brand new set of CD and DVD prices which are set to blow you away.

We’ll keep you posted as and when this becomes available. In the meantime, keep well!

Here’s one we don’t get very often!

David Braviner from our friends Matrix People Solutions, gave us a call earlier today with an uncommon (for us, anyway!) request.

Could we take a frame from the explanatory animation that we did for them a little while back, and give it a little Christmas sprucing (see what we did there?! Christmas, sprucing?) for them to use in their communications?

Of course we could!

One Santa hat, one pair of novelty antlers and one miniature Christmas tree later and, job done!

Some good thinking by Matrix People Solutions, and a very quick turnaround from Eight Eyed Sea Bass. We aims to please.

Here’s a job that’s a bit different to our usual…

The nice chaps over at Boilerhouse were working with their client, Hook Norton Brewery, creating new labels to be used on the beer pumps in pubs.

As part of the design they needed some 3D text within the layout. So, they gave us a call and discussed what their requirements were. A little later on, we sent back to them a new image for print, replacing what we’d received telling us where the 3D text should be placed.

The image was well received, by both the Boilerhouse guys and the Brewery boys. Glad to help.

Have a drink for us, lads!

What is socialbreakfast?

socialbreakfast provides a space for people to come together and express their views on the issues that matter to them in their communities.

The site encourages self expression and is not tied to any one particular political party, belief, opinion or faith.

Eight Eyed Sea Bass were asked by The Social Media Partnership to help them with an element of their presentation to members of the Government. As they had created a lovely looking website for the Social Breakfast, they knew there were going to be large plasma screens at their launch event at the House of Commons.

So, to fill these screens, they decided to have example pages from their website along with some nice scrolling action through a page or two, plus some animated mouse cursors to show some interaction on the site.

That’s where they asked us at EESB to come in, to create these animations and make them play from a DVD, looping forever, in the background of the event.

By all accounts, the launch was extremely succesful. We naturally wish our chums at The Social Media Partnership well with their future plans and endeavors.

The folks at The Production Company got in touch with Eight Eyed Sea Bass, to ask if we could take some footage from a corporate vid that they have done for one of their clients, and turn some of the segments into something like a cross between South Park and Bod.

Well, first of all, Paul had to explain to Dom who Bod was (yes, Paul is old enough to remember!) – though strangely, Dom needed no telling about South Park. Funny, that.

Their client is the Communities United Project [CUP], who specialise in bringing together people from all walks of life through various activities, with a focus on football.

Our brief is to use snippets of interviews with service users, and people involved in the project as tutors and mentors, and characaturise [is that really the right spelling, and is that even a real word? - Ed] these people (in a non-offensive way, obviously) for a certain amount of their interviews.

It’s a pretty interesting and involving project all in all, and we’re looking forward to completing it, so we can show you some 2D animation sometime in the New Year, most likely.

Keep well, all!

The FLIP Animation Festival at Wolverhampton’s Light House began yesterday, getting both professional and student animators together in one place.

There is absolutely loads of stuff that happens at the event, and some great people can be seen and met. For a fuller idea, check out the website here.

One particular mini-event was the Portfolio Reviews. We can only describe it as being a little bit like X-Factor, but for animation work rather than singing and performance! EESB’s Dom was invited to be a judge in this event, alongside Chris Randall of Second Home Productions and Carla Prada from Rare.

There were 6 people who individually came up on a stage, presented their showreels live to the judges (and an audience of many), to then have feedback given by the judges. Some showreels were very good, some needed a bit more work on the content, but all of those displaying their work were given constructive feedback. We hope at least they agree with that!

Recognition must be given to Peter McLuskie, who organises the event. He obviously puts a lot of energy into it, and so we can only wish him success in making the next festival even better than 2009’s!

The Screen West Midlands Digishorts are pretty well known around these parts, as they provide funding for a number of short films to be created by people in the West Midlands region.

This year was no exception, and you may have already heard about how we at EESB provided the 3D animation and visual effects work for the short film, Trolley.

Last night was the event at which the Digishorts were premiered at the historic Electric Cinema. This was an invite-only event for cast and crew members – so we were excited to be there!

There was a good range of films this year, with quite different plots and styles. However, our own anticipation was brewing not just because of wanting to see the finished version of Trolley, but because we would see it on the big screen!

It was well worth waiting for too! The audience were laughing and “oooh”ing at the visual effects, so it seems as though we did a good job.

Congrats of course must go to Anna Shelton for writing and directing the films, Rachel Carter for producing it, and of course, Phil Wood for his skills as director of photography.

We had a great time at the after party also, getting to have a good drink with and a chat to crew members. Paul put in 150% drinking effort to make up for Dom, who had to leave early to move his car to stop it from being locked in a car park overnight (he failed after an energetic sprint from one side of the city to the other!), and a good time was had by all.

Hope to see you all again soon.

We’ve been asked by our friends at the Animation Forum West Midlands to let you know about their event, so here it is. We hope to be attending ourselves!

Animation in the West Midlands: A Snapshot

7pm-8.45pm, Thursday 5th November 2009,
Technology, Engineering and the Environment (tic) Millennium Point, Birmingham, B4 7XG

Come celebrate the launch of Flip Festival ‘09 with a look at the current state of the West Midlands’ animation industry, drinks and screenings.

Animation in the West Midlands: A Snapshot, co-hosted by Flip, Creative Networks, Hello Digital and Animation Forum WM, will be looking at the current state of the region’s animation industry, what are its highlights and achievements? And, how can we help the sector develop and expand at a time of recession?

As well as screening work from leading animation studios and individual filmmakers, a panel including Chris Randall (Second Home Productions), Andy Guest (The CharacterShop), Sam Moore (a filmmaker specialising in animated documentary) and Dan Lawson (Head of Production, Development and Inward Investment, Screen WM) will debate how the animation community can continue to expand and develop.

Join us afterwards in the iBar too for drinks, socialising and live music from the Young Runaways. There will also be laptops on hand to show off your own work and showreels (Ã la Shorts on Screens).

The event is free to attend, but please RSVP to info@light-house.co.uk.

Currently we’re working on some visual effects and animation for a short film. The film is supported by Screen West Midlands, and is one of this year’s Digishorts.

We can’t really reveal anything about it yet as it’s not our place to do so, but we’re excited and pleased to be doing this, for sure.

I think we’re going to be pretty busy working on this for the coming weeks along with other work, so we may be a bit quiet for the time being….

Hope the World is seeming brighter for all of you.