daninski

This week has been a sunny week, it wasn’t meant to be but it has. We’ve actually been having a few pitches come in recently but they’ve been slow ones. Animation isn’t just about patience in craft but also patience in career. Do I mean patience at all? I guess patience has a goal at the end, a trajectory of varying somewhere. The way things seem to be is that you are blindly moving along until goals are dropped into view. Illuminating a path like a dot-to-dot illustration. Illustrating a path that has no straight ahead or line of sight, no single vector. I think that because there is no rhythm to these points of focus it can make thing difficult, but not to discount the variety and unpredictability being a good thing.

Of course that is only comment on the commercial side of what we do. I really do love that side of things and especially the people we work with on that side of things. But of course that isn’t the only thing we do.

The short is still slowly forming. Really slowly at the moment, but it is still definitely there. It weighs down the flesh slightly just about the eyebrows.

Lovely.

Also, my relationship was five years old yesterday

There’re some olde drawings up in the drawings bit of the site now. Next stop? Updated showreel… Hopefully.
This photo is my current veiw. It’s my co director at holbrooks concerntrating hard. We’re currently doing a style frame for the sheep short.

More things on the site updated! Haven’t I been busy. There’s a few more videos up and lots of drawings. I need to update my showreel, which will be done soon. More drawings will take a bit longer.
The sheep? We are having a call with the nice people at adelphoi tomorrow about the sound.
Tra la la.
14 sleeps.

Well, it looks like I have a website now – www.daninski.com
I’ll be adding more content to it as the weeks go by, hopefully the bulk of it will be done before then. If it disapears, which it shouldn’t really do, it’s because it’s being hosted on a broken laptop under a desk. Hi-Fi.

F5. A 30 second short about rebirth. With sheep in it. This is our current project to be finished end of January. We’re at the stage just after the animatic has been done but just before the style frame. We’re not doing it to anyone elses agenda so we’re having fun in the freedom we have. The synopsis is “The unsuspected role of sheep in the rebirth of woodland”. Yes, sheep. As a welsh boy I would normally avoid any and all sheep references in an animation but in this instance it’s an intergral part of the narrative.
I’ll explain the story and it’s origins another day, but it’s basically about growing watercress on cotton wool on a larger scale. I think everyone must have grown watercress at junior school?

So little blue car is mine, I no longer need to spend so much brain on it. I’m still not drinking, having replaced it with exercise. Temparerily (sp). It’s meant that I’m just a hair away from losing a stone in weight. A two and a half pound hair.
Anyway, the short film. I’ve been trying to picture the full length of the film in my head. Mulling over how little details in the subtext of the story will been seen. Composition wise in the shots I see it as switching between ones that are framing the empty dinning room/front room and holding that composition when our protagonist enters the room. The other framing will be using angles typical of the positioning on a dentist; so over shoulder looking down, plain looking down over head and maybe portrait but at the offset angle. All the shots will never show a faces detail above the nose. This is to hint at dentistry from the start of the narrative and also to try and represent recollection that is interested in what’s happening. Interest in the details of the actions and not the faces, social relationships that faces might imply I guess. To leave that chunk of text loose.
I’d also like the female characters presence and state of presence to be indicated by a vase on the table where everything happens.
I realise this won’t make complete sense now – but it will.
I think that’s it for now.

p.s. My bike is all better now. God bless little blue bike. Yes, it’s blue like little blue car.

Oh how patient need I be! I have a deposit on a little blue car. It’s been a deposit now for a week less one day. I’m not particularly functional when I’m being patient for exciting. I am a nightmare on Christmas eve for example, far too excited to sleep. I just lay still, muffling the thoughts of treats with staticity. Which is kind of what I’m doing now, only in a waking form. As an upright.
Today I won at the dentist. It cost £37 but the feeling of victory was value enough.
Today I realised my bike needs help. It makes a crunch with every straightened leg, the peddles rocking as if at sea. That’ll be more money spent when I really want to be saving up.
End of ramble, here’s little blue car…

So we got given a little job for UK tv. It’s a pretty simple thing but it’s been good fun because they were after something using very dramatic/clichéd shot devices. So it’s kind of fun to legitimately play with these pop things.
The funding for the short looks like it’s going to be spread out amongst plenty of people at the moment. Hopefully clarity on that soon.
…and I still haven’t bought a car. I’m trying hard tho’. Honest.

So, I’m trying to buy myself a car. It’s harder than it should be. The funding looks like it could be interesting for the short, hopefully benificial for all. And the pitching? The last lot hasn’t been so good. I’ll know how sad/happy to be on Wednesday… I’ll put a picture up if it’s all bad.

Well, a change of plan indeed. Just before I left for Scotland we got some pitch work to do. So that was front of the brain queue instead of the short. Dag nam it! But it’s ok because if we get it it’ll be a four monthish job, and we’ll be able to still work on other stuff in tandem. The pitch deadline is the 15th, so again if we don’t get it it won’t take all our time.
In other news, I watched Jerry Sadowitz (I’m guessing the spelling) and I can’t actually remember the magic. My brain was completely in shock at the level of bile being spewed.
There we go, it was strange paying £16 to watch an actual crime.
It was in a giant upside-down cow too, which has been a bit of a feature of the Edinburgh festival over the years.
Also, whilst I’m rambling, does anyone know why do many of the fine pubs in Edinburgh have those little slim tables bolted to the floor? The romantic in me would say it’s to stop people battling with them in the more jolly moments of drink related festivity.
The Blue Blazer on Bread Street is a good place to see them, as is The Bow on West Bow/Victoria Street. I’ll have to mention The Half Way on the interestingly named Fleshmarket Close, just off Cockburn. Smallest pub in one of the most dangerous places you could build a pub. Half way up a steep set of stone steps. In Scotland.