I’m running a Comics Workshop at the brilliant Gnash Comics in Ashburton on Monday 24 October. Come along and create your own spooky Halloween character to star in your own comic story! Click here to book your place!
Comics Workshop at Gnash Comics!
Animation at Beacon heath
Back to one of my favourite venues this month 🙂 Here’s what we got up to this time!
Thank you to Shawn Harris and Mac Barnett for the uncopyrighted background music! The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza is available from all good book shops now!!!
finally we have proof: Drawing and creativity aid literacy!
I mean, not that people who work in arts education needed to be told, but this really will help in the fight to develop arts teaching in schools. Details in a report by the CLPE here.
Beacon Heath Animation Workshops
Hi guys, here are your brilliant animations!! It was lovely to meet you all, and everyone did brilliantly. Hope to see you there again soon 🙂
The Girl Without A Face
Very pleased to share my second animated music video here!
I was commissioned by Moths of the Moon (a side project of Bimingham-based band Pram) to make a stop motion animation to accompany a track on their recently released EP “Another Place” (Ondes Positives Recordings). It’s a kind of dark, but not too dark, Pogles-esque little film… I hope you enjoy it! 🙂
Make your own zine with “Electric Zine Maker”
Hi! Has been a long time of quiet! Apologies for radio silence, I was hoping to get time to put up some more creative tutorials but in between making an animation and putting together my first kids’ picture book it just hasnt happened 😦
BUT here’s a great activity for kids and grownups alike! A free downloadable app that helps you create your own zine (short for magazine, have a look here if you want more info)
And here’s a blog post for teachers by Scholastic about making zines and improving literacy
I’m definitely going to have a go at this myself, and with an online group I run. Here are a few pics to inspire you!
Happy Halloween!
I hope everyone’s getting their making mojo on for Halloween??!!
I love this animation we made at Acorns Children’s Hospice in Selly Oak Birmingham. All conceived and made by life-limited and profoundly disabled kids and their carers. I think my favourite is the very bonkers-looking cat…
Have a look and then why not make your own 3D animation to spook your friends and family? See the free download at the end of this post!
A Polar Bear in the Snow
I’ve never “advertised” anything on my blog before, but this new picture book by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris is gorgeous, both thoughtful and beautiful. What must it be like to be a polar bear, and where is this polar bear going? In this book Mac and Shawn create a magical starting point, leaving us to go on and explore the polar bear’s life in our own minds and imaginations.
Mac Barnett’s text is sparse and crisp, with lots of space, just like the snowy arctic landscape, while Shawn Harris’s cutout and torn paper illustrations give a wonderful visual interpretation of the polar bear’s world. It really is a magical book 🙂
It’s published by Candlewick in the US on 13th October and available to order there from super-friendly Copperfield Books. Out in the UK on November 5th, you can preorder through your favourite local bookshop, which in my case is the brilliant Harbour Bookshop in Kingsbridge :).
If you love Polar Bears and want to learn more about them, see below to download my free Creative Learning pdf full of information about their lives – including a link to a Polar Bear tracker way up in the far north of Canada.
Have fun and learn stuff! 🙂
“The Girl Without a Face”
I’m starting work on a new stop motion music video – very exciting – for Max Simpson & Sam Owen, aka Two Dogs and members of Birmingham indie gods Pram.
So chuffed to be asked to work for them again!
Very much a noir-spooky vibe to this one, hoping to achieve lots of lush, dark textures and chalky whites..
Will keep you posted 🙂
Small World Animations & Creative Learning 