Blogger Migration in Progress

Well, Blogger have announced May 1st as the FTP hosting switch-off date.
The tools and documentation for performing the move are all online now at www.blogger.com, so I'm emabarking on the migration now... I'll post again when it's done... Watch this space...

Pain in the Blogs

Well, this blog has been up since August 2005 and is still running! What you are reading now is hosted on my own web space and maintained/updated using Blogger. For almost 5 years now using this 'publishing by FTP' approach has suited me well: allowing me to have an easily maintained blog working within my www.chrisgavin.com website.

However... Blogger have now announced they will be terminating the ability to work this way. Publishing to Blogger via FTP is soon to be discontinued. This entire blog will have to be migrated over to Blogger's hosting space where either a blogspot or Domain link will be used to address it.

Having to figure this out will doubtless take time and it's generally a pain to have to even think about it... Blogger have been promising a migration tool to help the process, but this has been postponed again. Thankfully the March 26th deadline for the switchover has been postponed to May sometime.
Anyone similarly affected by this news might like to check out the Blogger FTP migration blog for further details...

TXT ISLAND BAA FINALIST!

It's now official,the word is out. TXT ISLAND has been nominated as a finalist at this year's British Animation Awards.
The story so far has been covered by the Animation Magazine website and Forbidden Planet's website.
TXT ISLAND is one of three finalists competing for the Best Short Film Award, the other two are, The Black Dog's Progress (director Stephen Irwin) and Tad's Nest (director Petra Freeman).

'Hard To Trump'

The British Animation Awards Public Choice programme continues its extensive UK tour until February 28th. TXT ISLAND gets a nice mention in this article by Nick Bradshaw on the BFI website.

Special thanks again to Jayne Pilling at the BAA for passing on this link.

'Impressive' & 'Spectacular'

A little mention of TXT ISLAND in London's TimeOut magazine. Thanks to Jayne Pilling for sending this cutting on.

Shoot 3D With One Camera!

If you're ever thinking about shooting stop-motion animation in stereoscopic 3D (and this is the kind of thing I'm often thinking about) you might hanker after one of these.

Journalism

For the last week or two I've been writing a couple of software reviews to appear in next month's issue of Digital Arts magazine. Well, I've 'filed my copy' hope the readers are interested, informed and entertained by my work...

First TXT ISLAND Product Ships!

I placed an order from my SpreadShirt T-shirt Shop to check out the quality of their service. As a test I ordered the same T-shirt printed using their two different methods (one printed as the cheaper 'digital direct' print, the other a '3 colour flex' print). My order came within a week and I can report now that the quality is pretty damn good.

The T-shirts used are thick enough to not feel cheap and of a quality I'll happily sell. The cheaper 'digital direct' printing is obviously inferior to the '3 colour flex' printing, so I'll only be offering the better ones in my shop. So far as the better shirts go, the colour is more vibrant, the feel of the print is smoother to the touch and definitely worth the extra few quid.
Other designs are now available too! Go straight to The Shop and buy some ...

www.txtisland.com Goes Live!

I've not posted anything much here for a while, but I've been busy(ish) at work, and been spending some of my evening time in a bit of a TXT ISLAND publicity push...
I decided now that TXT ISLAND has been out for a while, it was time to take stock of where the film has been and offer answers to some of the questions I get asked about the film sometimes.
To this end, I've put-together a new (and easy to find) online home for all things TXT ISLAND... I've created a site for the film at www.txtisland.com Add it to your favourites now people!

Shop Happens

Fans of TXT ISLAND can now live the dream and wear the T-shirt.
I've opened a shop!

Real-Time Mash-up Experience

Get the real-time french/jazz experience like this.
Open two tabs or two browsers simultaneously then hit up the following two links...

in one run this
http://players.tv-radio.com/radiofrance/playerfranceculture.php
in the other run this
http://www.last.fm/listen#pane=webRadioPlayer&station=%252Flisten%252Fglobaltags%252FBlue%2520Note%2520Jazz

MMM nicely random.

Gadding About

Lot's of going out to interesting things this week. After all these years living in London I finally seem to be making the most of it!

Last Sunday took the family to a screening of Henry Selick's 'Coraline' at the Mayfair Hotel (with thanks to Focus Features for that), then Monday started a couple of weeks stint in Soho doing compositing working for Not To Scale. My first proper work out of TANDEM in the last 8 or so years!

Wednesday turned out to be a rather spontaneous jazz and pizza night, then Friday to the Design Museum in Butler's Wharf for the 'Sparkle The Dark Up Event'. Lots of animators, art installations and old friends too. The Design Museum was also hosting an exhibition of Braun product design, lots of very cool German gadgetry, notably lots of hifi and cine gear from the 60s/70s. There were of course several Braun Nizo super 8 cameras on display, I've got a couple of these; great styling is pretty ageless even if the formats and technologies come and go.

Blogging Out & About

Blogging live and direct from the Bristol Encounters Festival... from a PC in a bar. This is the future my friends...

Going West

Off to the Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival tomorrow Friday 20th Nov. (very early!) to see TXT ISLAND play in the 'Best of British 2' screening.
Details here

I'm a Mish Mash Finalist!

The short film I made for the Getty Images 'MishMash' competition has been selected as a finalist! It's now up against four other UK entries for the prize... winner to be announced on November 18th.
See the announcement online here and watch and vote for my film here.

Simon's Cat the Documentary

Whilst working at TANDEM recently I was asked to organize the production of some video material to create an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) about TANDEM colleague Simon Tofield (creator of the Simon's Cat films and now books too).
We shot interview footage of Simon, then gathered some supporting footage of him at work creating the images and sounds for the films. I cut together this footage to make this short 3:30 documentary about Simon and his creative process. It's now been uploaded onto YouTube by Hachette Book Group, (US publisher of the Simon's Cat books.)

Mashmatic

For the last couple of weeks my night-time production sessions have been devoted to getting an entry in for the Getty Images 'Mish Mash' competition. The brief was to mash together a 1-3 minute music video using tracks, photos and footage from the Getty library. My effort entitled 'Mashmatik' can be seen on the Getty competition website here.
All entries can be viewed and of course rated by the highly discerning on-line audience ;)

Another Showbiz Festival Party!

Your showbiz party correspondent has just come back from his second glamorous film festival launch party in just as many weeks. A Couple of weeks ago it was the launch party for Onedotzero over in Shoreditch, tonight it was the Bristol Encounters Short Film Festival party at the Channel Four HQ over in Horseferry Road SW1.
(Both festivals have taken on TXT ISLAND thus the invites to the parties.)



I can report that tonight's event was rather more appealing... No loud music (I'm getting old!), the chance to actually meet a few people and talk to them, a screening of some great shorts, some nibbles (including miniaturized cheeseburgers) and even a goody bag with some DVDs in.

The Festival programme is now up, details of the 'Best of British #2'screening (including TXT ISLAND of course) can be found here.
I'm thinking maybe I should go to see the festival in November!

TXT To Go To Holland

The TXT ISLAND international tour continues... The film has been selected in Competition at the Holland Animation Festival (HAFF) 4th-8th November 2009.

Second Born

Well, after being one of the 3 finalists in this year's Rushes Soho Shorts film festival, TXT ISLAND has faired slightly better at the Danish 'BornShorts' festival by being announced as 'Runner-up' in the animation category.
So I made it into the last two this time!

Check out the BornShorts winners (and runners-up!) here.