Thick's a Hit

I went to see Rick Bland's play 'Thick' last night at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington. I can honestly say it rocked and I'd heartily recommended it. There's another show at the same venue next Sunday, then the play has a run at the Brighton Fringe Festival thereafter.

The CG Fun Continues...

Back in Maya, the 'plastic' letters looking a bit better now with some fancy HDRI lighting applied...

Letters from America

Just bought a lovely new font 'Now Playing' from New York type designers Terminal Design.
I've got the urge to make some 3D 'plastic' letters in Maya... Just for a few tests at the moment; maybe a new project further down the road...

Journalistic Exploits

I wrote a couple of magazine articles for Digital Arts magazine recently. The editor Neil Bennett has sent me the back issues, this is how they turned out.

Appman

TXT ISLAND In Shops Soon!

TXT ISLAND has been selected to appear on the 'Best of Bristish Animation Awards #8' compilation DVD to be released soon. Check out the BAA website for further details...

Blogger WTF

Apologies that none of my pre-2008 posts are showing on this blog any more. I suspect this problem is down to Blogger's new 'Auto Pagination' policy to arbitrarily truncate everybody's main Blogger page. Unfortunately my simplified blog template has no archiving or 'older posts' interface, so for the moment the older posts will remain un-viewable. Rest assured that the posts are not lost: merely inaccessible.

I've only just come through the forced migration of this blog away from FTP hosting and now this!
Suffice to say many Blogger users are realizing the impact of the new policy and making their displeasure known to Google/Blogger.

TXT ISLAND 100,000+

TXT ISLAND just made it past 100,000 views on YouTube.
(And they're not ALL mine!) :)

TXT ISLAND to Stuttgart and Annecy

TXT ISLAND has been selected for Annecy Animation Festival! OK, it's going to be in the 'shorts out of competition screening' but Annecy it is. It's the 50th anniversary year of this fantastic event, I'd really like to go to this, but not sure yet if it's possible.

But... I am making plans to be at Stuttgart Animation Festival to support TXT ISLAND for the last couple of days (08th and 9th May). I'm hoping to go there by train...

This blog has moved

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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!