Huckleberry Films

"Huckleberry Films is a creative film company based in Accrington, Lancashire. Offering a range of styles and services - from documentaries and educational films, to promotional and animated films - they are commited to delivering a professional high quality service to each client. "

Some of their national and international clients include Friends of the Earth, Lancashire County Council, Mid Pennine Arts, Age Concern, St. Mary's College, and Life Association.

You don't really get much more information about the company on their website, they don't mentions who works there and only shows a few examples of there work but the reason it attracted me is it uses the hand drawn look filled with textures and patterns similar to my current project and something i am very in to! One other thing i noticed was that they like to participate in local projects and supporting their community. One of their animations that i really enjoyed is called 'Animating Accy' and its about the day in the life from a variety of people who live in Accrington using animated characters to portray them, its almost like they are having a discussion with you or an interviewer i really enjoyed it!

EEK Films

EEK is a company based in Liverpool of a team of professionals who collaborate with young people to develop their ideas into animation (straight away i loved this as it is so hard to showcase your talent to its full potential so with a group of experts think of the things you could do! ... its what i need!).

Some of the 'Main Players'

"'Eek Films’ director Tony Ealey, has an extensive list of traditional animation credits with studios including Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, BBCTV’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He has directed many top rated series for international television.

Recent work includes animation for the cult Channel 4 TV series Modern Toss and animation for the hit Cbeebies TV series Tommy Zoom."

AND

Tony Ealey is a lecturer in animation at University Centre Blackburn College and is also involved as a Youth Mentor with Media Trust teaching screenwriting for animation at schools in the North West.

I think this is also nice to have 2 people from different backgrounds one an animator himself and the other a lecturer in animation this gives the company a variety of skills rather than that just creative.

They only have two examples of their animations on their 'video' page and they have both won awards (it didn't say what awards or when which is irritating as i want to know!) so they are clearly showcasing their proudness and succession.

Film below is one of the 'award winning pieces' on you tube it does mention that it was nominated for Activision First Light Movies Award, best film by U13's.

Mainframe

Mainframe Motion shop is a company specialising in motion graphics, animation and VFX - 'home to some of europe's top directors, producers, animators and vfx artists'

'Mainframe has offices in London and Manchester as well as being represented to direct commercials by Independent in London, Duck Studios in the US and Ablaze in Asia.'

Client list includes:

-Toyota

-Coca Cola

-Sony/Syco

-MTV

-Harrods

-Nickelodeon

-Nike

This advert and ident for Nickelodeon are what attracted me to mainframe, i have looked at mainframe briefly before in the first year but i always come back to it because their style of work is so varied and interesting which possibly suggests the use of different freelancers through out different briefs?

One thing i found out that the company are hugely excited about and proud of is the fact that their founder Adam Jenns has been asked to judge the 2011 TV and Cinema communications category for D&AD and has been a judge for multiple competitions in the past which connotes his importance to the moving image industry (He judged at the Graduate Showcase awards 2 years in a row 2009/2010).

Daylight

I came across a company called Daylight, they are an award winning, independent, creative moving image and design company based on Turner Street in the Northern Quarter Manchester. They create Tv Graphics and TV Commercials for music, fashion, education, public sector, construction and charity and their client list includes:

-Levis

-Oasis

-All Sports

-Wrangler

-Inland Revenue

-University of Bolton and Sheffield

-Cancer Research

and many, many more.

Daylight prides themselves on being a 's

mall company of experienced creatives' and they believe that 'being a small team we maximise the efficiency and communication needed for the project' so i think this implies that they always have a small team of permanent staff and maybe get freelancers involved when needed.

Whats also nice about the company is that they have little hobbies between the team like taking pictures of objects with faces and taking photos of light such as sunsets, sunrise, light between buildings ect...i think this suggests a closeness within the team, they work well together and shows a pleasant work environment.

Show reel - http://day-light.co.uk/showreel/

Cut out Waves

Rick suggested to me to look at the end credits of Lemony Snickets A Series of Unfortunate Events for inspiration for the aesthetics of my animation.

“…What was the purest example of visual elegance on the big screen in 2004? If you pushed for the final minutes of the Jim Carrey comedy, you’d get no argument from me. A miniature masterwork of mood, the end credits used paper cutouts, spectral graphics, and Thomas Newman’s dancing-skeleton score to conjure up an entire giddy universe of disasters…” The Boston Globe (www.jamiecaliri.com)

Land Ahoy was created in after effects from cut out paper which was scanned into photoshop looking at this i think i want to try cutting my shapes before scanning rather than drawing and filling in on photoshop it will give it a better 'cut out' feel!

- I have tried this technique but because of the patterns and textures i am using i lost the shape of the waves and it all became a blurry mess of colour.

I was recently watching the E4 channel and this sting came on and i thought the movement of the sea and colour pallet is lovely - it is one of the finalists for the Estings competition this year. I am going to use this as reference when looking over the colour scheme in my piece to make sure that i am portraying the correct mise-en-scene.

Little Boat by Nelson Boles

After my tutorial with Rick i was having a chat with Tom, Jack and John and Tom suggested i watched 'Little Boat' By Nelson Boles on a website called 'Cartoon Brew'. It is a basic boat shape and it travels through different weather conditions and scenarios where it gets destroyed and then rebuilt again, its a really great narrative as it gives an inanimate object a character/a life you really feel for the boat and feel what it is going through which is exactly what i want my audience to experience!
On the website www.cartoonbrew.com this animation is compared to a short film by Albert Lamorisse called The Red Balloon (1956). It is a story about a young boy who finds a red balloon on the way to school one morning and from then on the balloon seems to have a mind of its own following the boy throughout the film. It is similar to Little boat and my animation in the way that life has been given to an inanimate object which leads the audience to create emotions and attachments to the object.

Sunrise and sunset

During a group discussion Kirsty mentioned using a sunset to portray the element fire. Using colour to show mood i think is a much more subtle way of creating the mise-en-scene of my animation. So my animation will be all about the visuals, the colour, pattern and style of drawing with limited animation to portray what i feel. I have drawn a few examples into my sketch book but as i was looking at photos of sunsets i have realised that things in the foreground are almost silhouettes so i think i am going to make the boat into a silhouette in this scene and the background will be the dominant feature.

Then i thought of a sunrise and the colours are different in that of sunset - they are cool colours to represent new beginnings so i could use this to show inspiration the start of a new idea this could represent the element air.