New Video: Caterham High School Tour for New Year 7s

Here's a very quick turnaround video I just made for Caterham High School. Due to the lockdown, not many prospective pupils have been able to visit the school to have a look around and meet their new teachers. So I was asked to come in for a day, film what I could, then create this short 'virtual tour' of the school. The aim of the video is to show new pupils around the school buildings and introduce the key staff members they are most likely to meet in their first year.

New Video: Simon's Cat Care 'Looking After Kittens'

This is the second episode in a series of 'Cat Care with Nicky' web videos that I'm directing for the Simon's Cat channel. Over the years I've been shooting and editing a lot of the 'extra' video content for the Simon's Cat YouTube channel.

New Video: Simon's Cat Logic ep04 'Boxes'

Here's the fourth episode in the series 'Simon's Cat Logic' I have been putting-together (directing/shooting/editing) for Simon's Cat Ltd.

Simon's Cat Logic: ep2 gets a million views

Here's the second episode in the web series Simon's Cat Logic I put together for Simon's Cat Ltd. Launched for Valentine's Day a couple of weeks ago, this episode asks 'Do cats fall in love?'. The series features Simon's Cat creator Simon Tofield together with cat behaviour expert Nicky Trevorrow and is a Simon's Cat/Cats Protection collaboration.

New Title Sequence for Thomas & Friends YouTube Content

On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the 70th anniversary of Reverend W. Awdry creating the first of his 'Railway Series' stories for children was featured.

Growing-up as a child of the '70s, and something of a train-nerd, I loved these books, especially the rich and detailed illustrations. Long after I'd 'grown-up', Thomas the Tank Engine (and his friends) came to television and then became something of a merchandizing phenomenon too.

And now Thomas comes to the interwebs. Commissioned by Hit Entertainment and Produced by Spider Eye Ltd. , a new series of 'comic book' episodes is now arriving at platform YouTube.

I'm pleased to say I was asked to make the title sequence for this series (The first 20 seconds!) back in December and am now engaged in some background artworking for a few of the later episodes too. The first of the new webisodes 'Thomas Goes to New York' is online now, so I'm sharing a link to it here.

My bit is the motion graphics title sequence up until 0:20. Happy Birthday Thomas (& Friends).

Simon's Cat 'Vet Visit' - Half a Million Hits!

Here's the latest video I made for Simon's Cat Ltd. It was uploaded to the Simon's Cat YouTube channel just before Christmas and has clocked-up over 500,000 views already. In this video we follow Simon Tofield on a reserch visit to the UK headquarters of the Cats Protection charity in Sussex.

Simon's Cat hits 3 Million YouTube Subscribers.

Congratulations to Simon Tofield and The Simon's Cat team for gathering an online following of over 3 million YouTube subscribers as of today. Embedded here is a short message video I put together for Simn's Cat Ltd. in which Simon draws a special thank you message to his many fans.

Simon's Real Cats

Here's another short video I've just put together for Simon's Cat Ltd. in which Simon Tofield (the creator of the Simon's Cat cartoons) tells us all about his own real cats.

We created a moving collage of Simon's drawings and photos to carry the story along. compositing/editing is done in Adobe After Effects.

Once again, music and sound mix is by Russell Pay (a.k.a.'Shrooty').

The Simon's Cat Story

Here's another short online film I've just put together for Simon's Cat Ltd. The awesomely- talented Simon Tofield talks us through his life story, his love of drawing and the growing success of his Simon's Cat cartoons.

Simon tells us his story through his narration and his own drawings, this video includes clips from his animated films and examples of his childhood artwork too.

The voice was recorded first, then edited down in Adobe Premiere. For the 'speed drawings' we screen-recorded Simon drawing into Adobe Flash. These recordings were then re-timed and edited in After effects. Camera moves and transitions were then used to build up the story.

The Simon's Cat music and the final sound mix are by Russell Pay (aka Shrooty.)

THE FUTURA GOLD: episode 02 preview

 Here's a little preview/trailer for episode 02 of THE FUTURA GOLD series...

THE FUTURA GOLD : 1000+ Hits!

Nice to see that my new animation short THE FUTURA GOLD : episode 01 has now clocked up over 1000 views since its YouTube debut on October 26th. Viewers are subscribing to the channel too, which bodes well. I'm also pleased to see that the FaceBook page I set up for the project is shaping-up nicely.

It's always great to get some online coverage for the launch of my project too. Thanks especially the fine typography website FontFeed.com

Cat Fans Do: 'Simon's Cat' #01

Here's the first episode in a new series of videos I've been putting together for Simon's Cat Ltd. This is a pretty simple concept; something of a nostalgic nod towards 'Take Hart' and other TV art programmes.

We invited Simon's Cat fans to send in their Simon's Cat artwork, and the selected images become a 'gallery' style film for the Simon's Cat Extra video channel. Simon Tofield narrates, and the music and final sound mix is by Russell Pay (a.k.a. Shrooty)

8mm Early 90s : Super8 film ... YouTube Reloaded

Here's a collection of my old 'college days' super 8 footage from the early 1990s. I've re-uploaded it to my YouTube Channel, because the quality of this now is so much better than it was with 2008 YouTube compression and low resolution settings I used previously... I mean, it was THREE whole years ago I first put this online.

I've also now upgraded my music licence for the soundtrack I chose back in 2008 to edit this to. The music is called 'Secrets From The Screen' by Chris Harvey; I discovered/licenced this through Magnatune.com

Fans of this blog. (erm... consider yourself to be one of a very small and select group in this respect) might notice I've just added FaceBook 'like' buttons to these posts. Go ahead, I invite you to try them out... You might also spot the comment button too... that has always been there (where it says 0 comments); but granted, it is easily over-looked.

California 08 : Super8 film ... YouTube Reloaded

Well, I didn't like the look of my California 08 film on YouTube with its 2008 era video quality, so I've re-uploaded this now (see above), and it is looking a lot better. The video quality still seems to be better over on vimeo.com though...

Magnatune for Production Music?

Around three years ago I posted this film on YouTube...

As I mentioned a few posts back, some fragmentary clips from this film can currently be seen in the music promo video for the new Lana Del Rey song Video Games.

A further development, now is that YouTube have written to me to ask if I wish the video to be considered for YouTube 'Partnership' status. The idea is that if approved, the film will have ads placed on it, and that eventually I might just see some trickle of revenue back via Google AdSense (we'll see how that goes). I was very surprised to be asked about this, because the number of hits the film has received so far, is very modest indeed (around 9000 in 3 years.)

One consequence of the YouTube approach, is that I've decided to secure the appropriate licence on the sound track of the film to enable the agreement to go ahead.

Fortunately back in 2008, I was (and still remain) fairly scrupulous about music usage rights on my films, and I had sought music from www.magnatune.com Under the terms and conditions they had then, I was able to buy the album and use it for internet distribution of a non profit-making film.

Now that the YT partnership has been offered, I got back in touch with Magnatune last night and got a very speedy and reasonable deal to 'upgrade' to a more suitable licence to reflect this change in circumstances.

I can say that not only is Magnatune a great source for new and varied music, but that they also very much have their act together in terms of enabling film-makers to effectively and affordably gain the licences they need to use the music in productions.

Now, I only wish there was a way of retrospectively improving the video quality of the old YouTube film. Three years ago, there was no HD option on YouTube only something called 'HQ mode' which seems to have been scrapped since then. I'm left with an online video only at 360P size which is very low-res indeed (and also horribly compressed). YouTube don't seem to offer any way of replacing an old clip like this apart from re-uploading and beginning again with no comments or hits etc.
The best quality online version of this film available, is the one over on Vimeo.com. Compare and contrast the quality of this same online film hosted on the different video sharing platforms... Come on YouTube, we need to be able to upgrade these grotty old uploads from the bad old days...