Cuthbert gets a short

I haven't been blogging for many a moon, partly because I've been so busy running around from project to project, and partly because I never think my work is of enough significance to talk about. This will now change and you'll see me blogging a great deal more, as my good friend Uli Meyer has asked me to help him make an animated short. I've worked with Uli for many years on commercials and features, and if there's one thing I've learned from the experience it's that the end result is always something significant and worth talking about. We live in a time where the vast majority of quality animated content you see is computer generated, and yet there seems to be a real thirst for traditional hand drawn pencil animation. Uli and I are incredibly passionate about this kind of work and we'll try our best to create a hand drawn film that will please both modern audiences with attention span disorders and fans of the old classics! Impossible? Perhaps, but I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun trying. Wish us luck, and watch this space for news and updates!
Cheers
Boris

Hotel Transylvania Trailer 2

Last week I finished work on Hotel Transylvania, out in cinemas at the end of September. Rarely have I had this much fun on a feature production. The film is all about the animation, which is loose, squashy, stretchy bouncy, and has a real graphic 2d feel to it. It was great to be involved with this, and I can't wait to see what the world will think!

Børge Ring's House

Some sad and devastating news: my old mentor Børge Ring's house burnt down to the ground yesterday. A fire which apparently started in the chimney rapidly spread through the old farmhouse with thatched roofs in which they lived.
I can't even begin to imagine how horrible this must be for Børge and his wife Joanika. Thankfully they are both unharmed, which is something to be grateful for, but all their possessions have been consumed by the fire.
I have very fond memories of visiting them both at their farm; from '94 til '98 I must have called round there every other week or so to soak up the animation wisdom Børge had to offer, and browse through the many books he had on all kinds of subjects concerning animation, film and fine art, as well as countless short-TV-and feature films from all over the world. Their house was such a warm and loving place, where one would immediately feel relaxed and at ease. To get an idea of what the place was like take a look here: maasdijk 4
Still, at the end of the day, no matter how lovely, a house is just a roof over your head, and can be replaced. I'm thinking of what was inside that has been lost that can't. Far from being materialistic people, they are artists, and as such most of their belongings represent something important and meaningful in their lives. Their musical instruments, their letters of correspondence, their documents, their art. Børge's film work, cells, drawings and awards, Joanika's paintings and sculptures. There is nothing left. It's unbelievable how this could happen.
I was there only a month ago to film Børge for his Winsor McCay Award acceptance speech. To think the place no longer exists feels strange and surreal to say the least, and to think this happened to people in the autumn of their lives leaves me with a sickening knot in my stomach.

Please visit borgering.com and help.borgering.com if you want to help them.

Their daughter Anne-Mieke and I will be at the Annie Award ceremony this Saturday to pick up Børge's Winsor McCay award, and if you're there and know Børge come find us, we're happy to pass on any letters or messages you may have.

...And all the best for 2012

Next year I'll learn how to draw. Promise.

Børge's New Toy

I'm extremely proud and happy to say my friend and 90 year old mentor Børge Ring will be awarded the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award at the Annies on Feb 4th next year.
If you don't know this wonderful man and his delightful work, click here!

Tongue Tied

A couple of weeks ago my good buddy Mark Norman asked me to do some animation for a teaser clip he put together to promote a new smartphone game he's developing.
I miss handdrawn animation so I happily obliged. The result can be seen here:


I animated the dog in the beginning and the two dogs fighting over the bone.
A break down that goes into the animation proces from rough to clean up then coloring and shading can be see here.


The game is called "Tongue Tied" and will be on smart phones from Dec 15.

pencil test

For those of you interested in seeing pencil tests here's one from the St Trinians short we made last year. Although it's already very much a Searle character here, when you compare it to the final film you can see how much the drawings are elevated when traced onto frosted cell with pen and ink. It's very short so it's looped 5 times, hope you like it... After having animated mainly with computers for 3 years it was a joy for me to draw again.

St Trinians Animation Test

A couple of months ago I finished work on a lovely 2d animation experiment at Uli Meyer Studios. The goal was to see if we could successfully translate Ronald Searle's
incredible pen an ink scribbles to the screen. We had a lot of fun putting this together, and it made me realise how much I miss animating with pencil and paper. There's nothing quite like it...
We got some attention with the test, notably from cartoonbrew, and you can read more about it here and here.

new job

Haven't been posting much as usual. I've moved to Bristol a month and a half ago and the good people at Aardman Animation have been keeping me incredibly busy, animating on upcoming CG feature Arthur Christmas...

It's a great project to be involved in and I love every minute of it.
Apart from the above image I can't show you anything yet unfortunately, but rest assured it'll be a LOT of fun.