We were shortlisted for the Children's Jury Award at the prestigious Encounters Film Festival. The film is Fuggy Fuggy 2, and it screened in Bristol on Friday 23rd, Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th November at the festival in the lovely city of Bristol.
CBBC's Pedro and Frankensheep are screening as part of the official programme at Annecy 2008. The episode selected is 'Fool Moon' which sees Pedro and Frank fiddling with the tides with disastrous consequences. The series was created by Phil Cooper at the BBC. We directed and co-wrote the episodes, with Greg designing the look, and me doing the voices of Frank and Hugo. We also wrote the music. Watch an episode on YouTube now or nine of the ten at CBBC.
Fuggy Fuggy 2 has been nominated on Cold Hard Flash's latest shortlist. The shortlist focusses on the best animated flash films. Watch the films on the shortlist here
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).
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!
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!
The Brothers McLeod feature on BBC Midlands Today. We were interviewed today by Giles Latcham for our local BBC news bulletin. Cool! Rather strangely Gary the camera man was the same guy that filmed us last year for BBC's Inside Out.
Our BAFTA nominated short animation "Codwsallop" has been given a "Special Jury Mention" or the rather better sounding "Mention Spéciale du Jury" at the 31st Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.
Hoozah! The Tate Kids website has won the Webby in the youth category. It's a great achievement and it's been a pleasure for us to be a part of it all. We created 5 x 5 minute films for the website featuring a two headed creature called Orthus. He disagrees with himself about the merits of five separate artworks by Francis Bacon, Sophie Calle, Umberto Boccioni, Anish Kapoor and Cornelia Parker.
Our series of three shorts called Sticks, made with coffee stirrers kindly supplied by Ripplecups, has been given an accolade by the prestigious Webby Awards. Sticks didn't make the final five nominees, but was selected as an Official Honoree to recognise its "standard of excellence". Read more about the Animation nominees at Lineboil where I occasionally blog.
In other Webby news the Tate Kids website for which we produced five short films has been nominated in the Youth category, so we could yet be part of a wider winning team! You can vote for your favourite nominee at their people's voice website.
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.
The Brothers McLeod were recently identified as some of the Midlands' leading entrepreneurs in Insider Magazine's annual awards 42 Under 42. Also included from the creative industry was Tom Lawes from the country's oldest working cinema The Electric.
Sometimes it's hard to keep track of where your films have been, so occasionally I google "codswallop festival brothers mcleod" to see if I've forgotten to mention any... and I have. Codswallop went to MIAF - in Melbourne in June - and what's more (and we didn't know) it picked up an award while there. It received the Audience Award for International Progam 3 where it was up against 13 other short films. Excellent news!
There's at least three up coming screenings at festivals in the UK, Ukraine and USA, but more when that news is officially released!
Greg recently won an award at Images 33 run by the Association of Illustrators. You can see the exhibition of the illustrations, including Greg's entry, as it goes on tour around the UK. Here are the dates for your calendar!
Piece Hall, Halifax: 4 October 2009 - 7 November 2009 Shire Hall, Staffordshire: 14 November 2009 - 3 January 2010 Birmingham University: 6 January 2010 - 8 February 2010 Suffolk University: 13 February 2010 - 28 March 2010 Nuneaton Museum: 3 April 2010 - 15 May 2010 Aberystwyth Arts Centre: 22 May 2010 - 04 July 2010
We're very pleased to announce that we've won the NHS Choices and Creative Review Health Cartoon Competition with our entry The Tokkels. The other four finalists all produced brilliant animations so there was some seriously stiff competition (you can watch them all on YouTube).
Our prize is a six month contract to work with NHS Choices to develop The Tokkels for them.
Hooray!
If you missed it before... here's the thread and the animation:
Well hasn't it been a funny old year! It started out with a BAFTA nomination for Codswallop in the short animation section opposite Aardman and Studio AKA (who very generously asked us to work with them later in the year), then we shared in a Webby with the rest of the Tate Kids team, as well as being Webby Official Honorees our Sticks series.
And today we found out that we've been nominated in two categories at the Children's BAFTAs for the work we did with the Tate (once again up against Aardman and Studio AKA). Phew! You could say that we're more than just a little bit chuffed.
The Moon Bird is not yet a month old, but already it's heading out into the world to fend for itself. It's already been selected along with our other short film Codswallop to be part of the British Animation Awards' Public Choice programme.
The shortlist of eleven films for Best Sound Design has been posted on the British Animation Awards website and we are included twice... once for The Moon Bird, and once for Codswallop. Hooray! You can hear some of the music for The Moon Bird on our music player.
The Moon Bird has won the Best Made in the Midlands award at the Stoke Your Fires film festival. We are very chuffed to have won, but sadly couldn't be there to collect it. So far we've managed to avoid any of the festivals where we actually win.
In other good and bad news from the British Animation Awards, Codswallop was shortlisted for Best Short Film, but failed to make the final three. The finalists were rather randomly revealed on the Forbidden Planet website a few days ago.
We are pleased to announce that the Edinburgh International Film Festival will be screening The Moon Bird in the McLaren Animation 1 section. This is our second film to be nominated for the McLaren Award, but there's plenty of stiff competition as always including from several other 4mations funded animations including Emma Lazenby's BAFTA winning Mother of Many!