Created in Birmingham

Three nights of animation are coming to The Custard Factory this week for The British Animation Awards Public Choice screenings.

Animation Forum WM have teamed up with Dice Productions and Flip Festival to bring three separate programmes of screenings of the best UK animated films of 2010 and 2011 to Birmingham. The shorts will be screened on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th, and Saturday 11th February from 7pm each night at The Custard Factory Theatre and you can vote to help determine the Public Choice winners.

Buy tickets and get more information on the Animation Forum WM website.

Good work by Louis Hudson of Dice Productions fame. In his words:

Last week BBC Comedy asked me to animate to a rap by the very clever Dan Bull to commemorate John Lennon’s 70th Birthday and a blue plaque unveiling. After working out how to avoid some massive copyright litigation parties, I smashed it out in about 3 days..

It’s very good and it seems Yoko’s a fan too:

All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) is one of the short films commissioned for Digishorts. Louis Hudson, who makes up Dice Productions‘ animation team, is now hard at work turning a preview/trailer into a fully fledged film.

What’s interesting is how he’s using a YouTube channel to upload little work-in-progress snippets so you can see how he works and how the piece is coming along. Hoping he can keep this up.

In other Digishorts news, three of the filmmakers are looking for producers for their commissioned films.

• Things we learned by hosting Popcorn Comedy – Dice Productions
  I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. Lessons here from putting on a stand-up comedy/short film night in a pub
• Six Birmingham nominations for the RPS Music Awards
  Big ups to BCMG, Oliver Knussen, Andris Nelsons, CBSO’s Igor Fest, Colin Matthews and Birmingham Opera Company for nominations in the RPS Music Awards
• Forthcoming residency at The Lombard Method | fizzPOP
  This is a Good Thing, in my mostly humble opinion
• Birmingham Hippodrome Brochure April 2010
  The forthcoming summer/autumn/winter programme from Big Theatre. A whole heap of dance (esp IDFB and BRB) and musicals with a dash of opera
• Creative Survival in Hard Times « D’log
  “Creative Survival in Hard Times is a new report from New Deal of the Mind, commissioned by the Arts Council. It explores policy options for supporting young creatives in the UK, and the key useful suggestions are…” Click the link to read on
• Desperately seeking Desk Space… – ragearts’s posterous
  Rage Arts are looking for some desk space for their graduate intern. If anyone can help then get in touch with them
• Birmingham Pride – 29/30 May
  Dates just announced for the UK’s biggest LGBT party

Please excuse this little bit of self promotion…

After its Brum debut at the Birmingham Comedy Festival last year, cult London comedy night Popcorn Comedy is back, this time at The Victoria on Thursday 25th March 2010.

Popcorn Comedy showcases the funniest comedy videos from around the internet, combined with live stand ups and character comedians, who mix in their own comedy videos for good measure.

This time, Popcorn has live performances from Rob Rouse (8 out of 10 Cats, Grown Ups) and Brian Gittins (described by Ricky Gervais as “One of the best comedy characters of the decade”). I’ll be hosting the night along with my Dice Productions cronies, so I’ll see you there.

It’s a fiver in (and less for students), so follow this link and book your tickets for Popcorn Comedy.

There was a good showing for Birmingham on last week’s Culture Show. It’s available until Friday 11 Dec, so there’s still time to catch it.

Birmingham Opera Company were featured (at 11mins). Othello is currently racking up rave reviews in a manner approaching unseemly – 5 stars in the Guardian and Times and the Birmingham Post described it (somewhat inaccurately, seeing as how it’s sold out) as ‘unmissable’.

Dice Productions also made it onto the show in a feature on online comedy (at 51mins):

Message in a Bottle was included in a little montage during Josie Long‘s segment on the rise and rise of online comedy, which focused squarely on Funny or Die UK and Popcorn Comedy, in which we’ve had a little more active role through October’s Electric Cinema screening. Ian’s giggling face was also spotted on the show enjoying Popcorn Comedy at the Roxy Bar and Screen in October

So hurrah and more of this kind of thing.

• We Create*
  “We Create* opened its first shop, on August 1st, based in The Oasis on Corporation Street in Birmingham. The shop incubates 10 local young fashion designer’s and the labels they have developed. The unit also retails designs developed by participants on We Create*’s Fashion Design and its Commercial Development pilot courses”
• Dominic Crane on MySpace
  Congrats to Dominic Crane who won the UK Open Mic Regional Final on Sunday – he’s off to the grand final in Manchester on 6 Dec. His ‘About’ section is pretty impressive
• YouTube – Clifton Mallice and his Chat Up Lines (1940s dating video)
  New short from the Dice Productions folks, as premiered at Popcorn Comedy earlier in the week. It’s a “1940s misogynistic instructional video on how to woo women in a social situation”
• DJ QBert at Rainbow Warehouse
  Nicely put together vid of a visiting master at work
• Lolitics – Our Cast ov Playerz
  Lolitics is Birmingham’s very own Spitting Image, only instead of rubber masks they’ve got captioned pictures of local politicians. Essential reading in the run-up to the next election – here’s an overview of the cast

Someone in YouTube-land is a Dice Productions fan. A couple of weeks ago their ‘Don’t Touch‘ short featured on the YouTube UK homepage, sending views of that animation rocketing up.

Now the trailer for their new piece ‘All Consuming Love (Man In a Cat)’ has been featured on the global YouTube homepage. That’s pretty impressive stuff – the online video equivalent of being hit by lightning twice, so congrats to them.

Here’s the featured trailer:

From the people that brought us The Outsider, we now have Max Fitness:

After a failed career as Britain’s second-favourite celebrity fitness coach, Max Fitness turns to German morning television for a final shot at cellulite-busting stardom.

Available on VHS, audio cassette and minidisc!

Dice Productions have made a new film which

stars Mr Thomas Reid as Giles Quinton, a man who has left his worldly possessions to live outside with nature. Our reporter (Ian Ravenscroft) went to meet him to see his new life outdoors

If you like it then don’t forget to tell them so on the Dice Productions site.

The vid is also currently being featured on Dailymotion, which is pretty good going.

I went along to the Animation Forum West Midlands event, Shorts On Walls, on Monday which was most enjoyable. The organisers were certainly pleased with how things went and have said so on their pleasingly blog-ish news page.

Also on that page is the evening’s screening schedule with links to the animators’ profiles. I understand they were trying their best to accept last minute submissions meaning giving out a running order on the night wasn’t possible, so it’s good to see it here.

It also helps me to pick out the films that I particularly enjoyed and give them an extra plug here.

First up, ‘Don’t Touch’ by Louis Hudson from Dice Productions.

The Nickolodeon-style anarchy of Pedro & Frankensheep from the Brothers McLeod was great and has apparently been picked up by CBBC.

A name that cropped up again and again was Natalie Ann Hinchley. She has a credit on Pedro & Frankensheep, her Second Home Productions outfit produced the jaw-dropping ‘The Animal Book’ (only the trailer here but it’s still a treat)

and, although I can’t find a video to embed, go and check out the Light House commissioned ‘Onions’ on Natalie’s website – animated bunnies are always a winner.

I’m at risk of just listing everyone here so I’ll finish with a few quick mentions:

• Although less polished, the video for Nyoto Ndogo’s track Dunia (remix) has a good energy about it and I like the song (presented by Andrew Burchell).
• ‘What If’ by Mat Parker’s Short Animations 4 Education was uncomfortable viewing for the right reasons (trailer only on the site).
• Steven Spencer describes ‘My Brown Friend‘ as a “dark exploration of addiction” which it is.
• Finally, the YouTube embedding has been disabled but I’ll forgive that (just about) to mention ex-BCU MA student Guillaume Weiss’s ‘4:51‘ which I thought was just incredible.