Christmas Fam

   

We've came a long way from this...

Merry Christmas from me and Jenny :)

A monologue from Comic Sans

I never hated it in the first place. And what.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

PUPPY IN THE AGENCY!

Meet Boycie! He's taken over my job...

Ben wins Redbull Competition!

My brother Ben won the Redbull Canimation competition on Thursday! So proud. The award ceremony was held at Empire Cinema in Leicester Square with Alex Zane presenting it. This now means he gets an internship at Aardman. Exciting! He definitely deserves it. Just want to say thank you to everyone who voted for him and helped him get where he is. :)

Sneak peak from test shoot

No editing or grading on this. Sadly can't reveal any more details

my mo

look how thoughtful I am

Christmas festivities

Hello.
So it's the last month of 2011 and I'm into day 6 of my Thorntons advent calendar. It's great that some of you still actually read this especially with my lack of posts in the past week so for that I say thank you. :)

Ok so for some news. Firstly, BIG congratulations to my younger brother Ben for making it into the top 10 finalists of the Redbull Canimation competition! He's in the student stop motion category and if he wins it he'll be doing an internship at Aardman. Fingers crossed! Huge thanks go out to everyone who voted for him. (You can watch his entry if you go back onto my previous posts.)

Last week me and Jenny were doing a bit of reporting for the staff xmas party. It's top secret though so I can't tell you what we're doing but here's a sneak peek.

Yesterday I went Christmas tree shopping but sadly no luck. These robot wolves were all warm though!!!

This week I'll hopefully be going on a test shoot involving lots of UV paint! Fun fun!

Redbull Canimation Voting Closing!!!!

Voting ends today on the Redbull Canimation competition so if you haven't already can you PLEASE PLEASE watch/like/repost my brother Ben's entry for his chance to win an internship at Aarman studios (creators of Wallace & Gromit.)

Here is the link:


http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/gallery#32179301

Rog to Casey: Shall we make a film about one of your crazy dreams?
Casey to Rog: Nah. They're too high budget.

Grandmas bday

Made dis burfday card for granny Hennessy innit. Got everyone in the office to sign it too. She LOVED it. Bare grafik dezign skillz.

Taken the day we went to see Algernon Cadwallader and the day Amy Winehouse died. Via Dario's blog

Nice post

Received these rather cute postcards the other day at work. I don't get much post so this was a lovely surprise and there are some really sweet illustrations in the pack. So a thank you goes out to TheArtWorksInc.com. Just one word of advice...spell my name right next time :P

Redbull Canimation Competition

Redbull Canimation is a nationwide competition to create a short animated video to promote Redbull. The winners get the chance to have their video shown on Channel 4 as well as in cinemas across the country. They also receive internships at some of the top agencies in their category.

My brother Ben has entered the stop motion category and he needs your votes! I'm not just saying this because I'm his sister but his entry is wicked! The set design and actual concept involved is extremely well thought out, just see for yourself...

The voting process is a bit weird on this one though. Redbull want you decide the top 10 by watching and interacting. The more buzz the animation gets, the higher it'll rise. So if you really like it, share it with your friends, watch it every morning, drop in a comment to tell Redbull (and my bro) how much you like it. Basically, the more love you give an animation, the closer it will get to the top 10.

You can watch/like/leave comments on his vimeo or directly on the Redbull site. Please, please help spread the word! :)



http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/gallery#32179301

Hip Hop Dressage

Dope ass video shown to me by Rog. Has now given me an amazing idea for a music video but I need to collaborate with some hip hop artists first!

Eeeeeee!

Baby loves Biggie

Cheers Si Cox for showing me this.

I feel weird today

Don't know whether it's because I had a bad sleep but I feel a bit like a shell of a person today, picked up and put in the wrong place. At 2am my iphone scared the hell out of me by the voice control randomly coming on despite being laid flat and untouched on the side of the bed. I turned it off still half asleep and not taking it in but then it woke me up again when I heard it CALLING someone randomly in my contacts.  I then had a bit of a delirious sleep worrying about my my phone calling people and them being able to hear me snore. There doesn't seem to be much help for this problem on the apple forums.

And besides that....yeh. Not with it today. Don't feel here, there or even on this planet. :S Can I feel human again please?

Double rainbow

How have I not seen this before?

Why is everyone dying?

It's only frickin Wednesday and I've heard about 3 deaths already. First was a schoolgirl struck down by a truck in Kings Heath, just 5 minutes down the road from my house. Yesterday I discovered a client of ours happened to be in that horrific M5 crash. And today I just heard my old best friends little brother had died. It's all rather grim. :(

When copywriters go bad (well almost)

My copywriter Jenny sits opposite me. We share the same phone and whenever someone rings us they always get mixed up even though Jenny has a much posher telephone voice than me. In fact, some people would say her real voice might as well be her telephone voice.

Today her computer started making a sound like it's about to take off. It's so loud that the other creatives thought the constant whirring was the faint sound of DIY going on next door. IT tried their usual trick saying to turn it off and on again but after excitable Ben the IT guy came up to inspect, he confirmed it's, pretty much, fucked it. Which might probably mean that she'll be getting a sparkly new mac. A MAC. WITH INDESIGN. Which means, pretty much, that my job has,  fucked it.

Unless they give her a PC.

Britain In A Day

Everyone in the UK should take part in this. If you need more persuasion watch Life In A Day.

ruuuuude

The video got put back up again woop! Friday feeeeeling

Jian Sword Dancing

Said I wasn't gonna blog this especially as Rog takes all the credit for finding it. Jian Sword Dancing. Check it.

Pics from Halloween

my costume

bro and boo in KFC

 

One of my favourite times of year

Halloween is approaching! Got my outfit sorted for my brothers halloween party tomorrow up in Nottingham. Requires lots of facepaint so if it rains I'm screwed. I saw this wicked pumpkin yesterday...

Dogs With Caps

Just saw this via Dario's blog. I think they're BRILLIANT! All photos taken by Thomas Høedholt.

Weekend bits & bobs

Had a really nice weekend just gone which I never got to recap yesterday. Lots of night time bike riding through crunchy leaves and crisp air in my face. Mmmmm I LOVE Autumn! Went a house party and ending up with these items in my pocket. (The debadging wasn't done by me.) And Jenny showed me this lovely song. (Parix by When Saints Go Machine)
 Parix by When Saints Go Machine
She's also super jammy because she's going to Egypt for 3 days as part of work for a client! Lucky git!

Doggy bag :) (Not at the weekend but taken a few weeks ago)

Owned by Tom at knuckles :(

Lots of tech (IOS 5)

I was a proper geek and stayed up late the other night to get the new IOS 5. Very snazzy. At first glance it doesn't seem like a dramatic change but there's actually tonnes of improvements which makes it feel like a brand new phone for a while. :) The new notification centre is great! I had a text (or should I SAY iMESSAGE! *geek snort*) off a friend saying that IOS 5 wasn't even that different. An hour later I had another message off the same friend saying 'wow I just found the pull down menu.' I haven't tested out the location based reminders but I think they'll be very handy. The new facebook update is especially cool with a twitter style side bar.
In other news....life needs shaking up a bit, I'm unfulfilled.

This post is too text heavy for your short attention spans so I'll show you my desktop background.

New Beyonce vid

New Beyonce video is crazy good!

Watch it HERE.

October weekend recap

I spent the weekend in a remote part of Wales at a friend's parent's cottage. Eight of us convoyed down in two Volvos and with no phone signal or internet we entertained ourselves with games of Articulate and Ring of Fire, watching Home Alone and making trance and 80s synth tracks on an old microKorg and glockenspiel.

Hence why the the highlight of my Monday so far is eating a Halloween Creme Egg with green fondant.


Oh. An interesting point discussed whilst walking out in the woods. We are amongst a very small fraction of our generation who will remember the sound of dial up internet.

Here's to the crazy ones.

I am genuinely upset at the news of Steve Jobs' passing. Apple has been engrained into my life long before the new generations of iphones and ipads. Our first family computer was the Macintosh and I can even remember the old interface with the load up screen, blocky windows and plonky error sounds. Playing solitaire. And then came the iMac. Wow, that seemed revolutionary at the time. Hours were spent playing Bugdom. I bloody loved that game! And using Quark on the eMacs at college. And my dads first ipod where the menu buttons were separate from the click wheel. My pocket money couldn't keep up with the technology as I was still using my iMac with the swivel dome base at uni but now, typing this, every direction I look in the office I see Apple. And it is all thanks to one man. I wonder how the world of design would look without all Steve Jobs has done for us.

There are many people far more eloquent than me who can put this sadness into words so I will leave you with this.

Drive

Not really a fan of Ryan Gosling after getting my hopes up about the The Notebook. (I was told it was a tear jerker. I thought it was a pile of shit.) But his performance in Drive was easily more than watchable. Not a massive lots happens and it's quite brutal in places but its refreshing to watch a story that doesn't scream Hollywood budget with a shit, predictable plot. If anything, go watch it for its amazing soundtrack done by Cliff Martinez. Definitely makes the film.

 Nightcall (feat. Lovefoxxx) by Kavinsky

Retail Therapy

The weather is lovely this week but I couldn't resist buying this gorgeous coat form Zara today. Also bought another pair of high waisted jeans after my old pair had a broken zip and were a bit too short in the leg. (That's the bugger with being too tall for the petite section but a fraction too small for regular sized jeans!)

I have the navy version of this. It's waxed with a hood and removable inner waistcoat. And it's bound to keep me properly protected from the real English weather yet to come!

Is it the weekend yet?

Not a great day today. Rog showed me this the other night, I think it's made by an ex Falmouth student. It makes me smile inside.

MIKE THE BIKE!

At the weekend I bought myself a new bike! I haven't had a (working) bike since I was about 10 so I felt like a kid at Christmas when I got it home. (That reminds me of a memory that makes me chuckle...the year I had my first bike without stabilisers was also the year my brothers received bikes too. It was Christmas day and we ran into the kitchen where 3 shiny new bikes were waiting for our extremely delighted younger selves. Ben, my brother, straight away sat on his bike in excitement only to be told that the lovely purple bike he was sitting on was in fact MINE and his was the red and yellow one next to it. Hahahhahaha GUTTED BEN.)

Anyway...I'd been looking for a nice second hand bike for agessss so when I saw this one outside the bike shop I snapped it up. I've only been on it twice though because I've been a busy bee and haven't had chance to ride it but hopefully tonight it'll get a proper thrashing, ha!

It's soooo blooodyy cute, I love it! (I got flies in my mouth riding along the canal on Saturday because  I was so smiley!)

OMGIWANTTHISSOOOBAD

FOURSTAR-GONZ TOP

Stream videos at Ustream

The Suit - The new French Connection advert

This was the first advert in the X Factor break. I.bloody.love.it. Much better than that Yeo Valley ad.


French Connection UK - The Suit from paydirt on Vimeo.

Free Friday Music

LCMDF - 'Mountains'

Free to download

 LCMDF - Mountains (Skeet Skeet Remix) by The Ransom Note

Life In A Day

I got round to watching Life In A Day last night. I say got round to it, I had to turn it off half way through and save it for another night when I'm less sleepy because I was enjoying it that much. It's a brilliant concept for a film; people were asked to film their own life in a day on 24th July 2010 and upload it to youtube. The most interesting picks were then edited together to create a truly diverse and uplifting story told through the lives of thousands of people across the globe. I have no idea how it ends yet but if the first half is anything to go by it's one of the best feel good documentaries I've seen in ages.

Waterfall Woods

On Friday night Rog and I made a spur of the moment decision to find somewhere to go wild swimming. After looking on the internet we found directions for a place called Waterfall Woods, somewhere close to the Brecon Beacons in Wales. We set off the next morning with tent, swimming stuff, dry clothes and picnic intact. Rog also had his geeky clipboard complete with directions to the waterfalls at the ready!

After almost a few hours driving we reached our destination, rain pouring down but not dampening our adventurous spirits. Donning our coats and rucksacks and feeling like a true pair of ramblers, we set off into the gated entrance of the woods following the printed instructions we had. I got excited as soon as I heard the sound of rushing water just coming from the river. Even the first shallow parts looked clear and swimmable. You know in The Goonies where they find that waterfall and go down those amazing waterslides into the secret caves and see the lost pirate ship for the first time? (Rog wouldn't, as he's never seen The Goonies and he revels in this.) Well that's what it felt for me seeing the first waterfall in those woods. Absolutely magical. Metres of cascading water hidden amongst this luscious woodland and perfectly accesible to swim in. We decided to keep going though as the notes said there was an even better swimming spots.

After a bit of a goof trek we found the 'horseshoe falls' which the notes describe as a 'fantastic set of deep forest plunge pools beneath a horseshoe-shaped waterfall.' But we kept on going and found a calmer place which didn't seem to be described in the book, a wider and more sheltered waterfall flowing into a nice, deep pool. Despite the drizzle and being drenched, the walk had warmed us up enough to swim. We got changed and I tested my feet in the water. It was absolutely bloody freeeeeezing! I like to think I can handle cold water but that was just unbearable. Even knowing we had just drove 2 or more hours, walked another hour on foot and got absolutely soaked to find this, we knew it wasn't worth getting hypothermia so very reluctantly we admitted defeat and missioned all the way back to the car arriving tired, drenched, cold and starving. We didn't bother camping in the end. Did consider sleeping in my car but just drove back home. It was most definitely worth the journey though. I think next time I return it'll be with a drysuit or at least when it's sunny.