Saturday 31 December 2011

Good Riddance 2011

I can assuredly say without a shadow of a doubt, good riddance to 2011. You were a crap year for a number of personal reasons, plus generally a bad year globally overall. Here's hoping for a better 2012.

P.S. Now I was just thinking to myself about Walt Disney Animation ( I do that a lot). It highlights the power that a name can have. For example Pixar, when people see that name above a film, they know it's a name they can trust to deliver a film to be enjoyed by everyone. Disney used to have that but they lost it. Keeping audience's trust is difficult enough when you have, its even more difficult to get it back.

It's not like Disney has had to reinvent themselves before, but the difference is they were the only fish in the sea. Now they are trying to find their identity in a middle of an ocean full of animation studios. They're the old boy surrounded by young upstarts. That's probably why they haven't announced any projects after 2013.

In one respect it's a bit like Nintendo. They are also the grand daddy of video-game console developers. When they couldn't compete with the Playstation 2 or Xbox they completely change course and went after a whole new audience with the Wii. And it work. Some could argue however that they went too far away and alienated their original audience. That's the problem now, Walt Disney Animation has to find what a new Disney film is, whilst it still being recognisable as a Disney film (us fans sometimes don't help complaining it's either too similar to previous films or complaining when it's too different).

I honestly don't know what the future holds for the studio that started it all. Maybe they should choose one medium though, its better for brand identity that way. Whatever they do, I'll be looking at it with great interest.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Merry Christmas!


My Christmas card for this year. Happy Holidays everyone!

Wallace and Gromit Comic Strip

I recently had the opportunity to draw some test comic strips for the Wallace and Gromit comic strip that runs in the Sun newspaper (Thanks Tony). Loads of fun working with these characters. I would be great to get the chance to do this professionally.