Harry and Toto: Dark and Light

Here’s a whole episode of Harry and Toto… featuring the inhabitants of Opposite Town. This episode (first broadcast on Cbeebies) is written by series creator Paul Shuttleworth from Handle and Spout.

More info on cast and crew at imdb

Barton Hill Animation Festival Films 2009

The Barton Hill Animation Festival has come and gone once more. Unfortunately we weren’t able to attend this year, but I’m pleased to see that the kids attending the festival have had the chance to create some more great short animations.

Trip to Planet Dangerous

Prince Harry the Brilliant and Mr Jealous Wealous

Pixilation Workshop

Synaesthesia

Midlands animation director Samantha Moore has made some beautiful films. Here is one that feels very experimental, but which shows the visual responses of some synaesthetics (people who experience one sense when another is stimulated e.g. colour when hearing sound). Not strictly a children’s animation… but it seems like something that all of us might find interesting on a purely sensory level!

Sam is currently making an animated documentary about synaesthesia called An Eyeful of Sound. There are more details on her website and film blog.

The Flumps

I used to love The Flumps. Ecky thump, they’re from Yorkshire just like me Grandma. Grandfather Flump still reminds me of me own Granpa too. This has that same folksy feel that all the best stuff from the seventies has. My favourite character was always white hatted Pootle though, just because he (or was it she?) was the naughtiest.

Art Sparks from the Tate

The first of five short films about different art works from the Tate collection.

Watch more here at the Tate Website

Pedro and Frankensheep

Despite running this blog for a few months I’ve never actually posted anything about Pedro and Frankensheep here, which is a series that me and my bro worked on all last year. You can watch one episode on YouTube, or watch all of them at the CBBC website.

Morph and Chaz

Morph was one of those constants of my childhood. I really liked him and Tony Hart of course. Morph is a great comic character – he feels like an underdog, but somehow he always wins through in the end. Morph was of course the invention of Peter Lord of Aardman Animations. I remember seeing Peter Lord driving around Bristol in his old stylee Volvo. How unpretentious! I wonder if he’d approve of the F reg Subura Justy that I still have?

There are quite a few Aardman snippets to watch at their YouTube channel including this one:

Shameless self promotion again with Dogg

Dogg is a dog. He likes sausages and Raymond Chandler and quite possibly John Buchan too.

Watch it now at the 4mations website

Find Me

A nightmarish sequence of animation for a play about autism from Julia Pott

Pushkin

Fantastic story about an old lady and a cat from Trevor Hardy, an animator from West Sussex, UK.