Archive for November, 2009

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.

Is there much better in the world than motorcycles?
How about Ducati motorcycles? !w00t!

Our great chums at The Gyst came back to EESB once again, with some footage of Ducati’s new 2010 range of bikes [droooool!] to edit into a looping DVD for the International Bike Show at the NEC, and also to be played in some dealer outlets.

Included in the brief was the task of duplicating a number of USB pen-drives with promo material, press-packs and product info.

We hope that the discs and the edit have gone down a storm for all concerned. A big thumbsup to The Gyst for their Christmas card too; cheers guys!

…. I must get me one of them Multistrada 1100 machines, they look awesome…..

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!

It’s not often that we get to work on full blown feature-length films, so when turns up, we are happy to take part and do whatever we can.

The 13th Day, according to it’s producer, began life a few years ago as an ambitious short film about the miracle of Fatima, telling a Christian story. After working its way around a bit, it picked up some oomph from the Catholic Church itself – and the project ballooned in to a full blown feature length film. This was premiered simultaneously in Portugal and the USA through the wonders of the internet.

As the project was nearing its first major close, the production company were needing various flavours of DVD copies.

Eight Eyed Sea Bass was tasked with converting the TV broadcast Digibeta tapes to a run of DVDs at the highest possible quality. Alongside that, there had been a version of the film with Portuguese subtitles, which again needing duplication. Not only that, EESB had to create a DVD master for the American market (with their NTSC television sets), and do a small run of this type of disc also.

Not wanting to let the client have problems anywhere along the line, we also used our magic EESB powers to get an American NTSC master tape of the film transported from UK to USA overnight, compared to the 2-4 days most couriers were stating.

We hope that the film is a success for them – it does sound like they’ve pumped the last few years of their lives into this project, so we can only wish that they get their due rewards.

Good luck guys!

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 just put some samples [finally!] in the Creative Samples pages, for all categories, covering Animation, Live Action, DVD authoring, and Television.

They range from web delivery right through DVD and television, even to film. Enjoy.