Sunday, November 27, 2005

Exciting creative times!

Meeting Bob Byrne and Emmet O'Neill.

I just got back from Dublin, a flying visit, went up yesterday. When I arrived up I went for all day breakfast at the first cafe I found that looked like it might serve edible food: Eliza Blues. The breakfast was fine, the service super friendly. What's funny about that is that I will probably go back there based on the service, rather than the food. And it means I'm posting this in my blog.

Service in Ireland tends to be crap. Awful. Like you've broken in to somebodies house and are now demanding they bring you food and coffee! So when you get good, friendly service, it tends to be a shock!

Anyway, I'm ranting.

Thing is I sat down and texted Bob Byrne. I told him where I was and he said he'd come in and grab a coffee with me. So I sent him a text telling him I had on a red t-shirt. Not because I thought we should try to co-ordinate our wardrobe or anything, but because despite the fact that I worked with Bob to get his Clamnuts website up and running, we had never met!

It was great to meet the mad genius in person and chat about comics and web stuff - isn't the internet great the way it can throw people together like that!

Bob originally found our site through Google, and he is publishing some of our cartoons in his free comic, The Shiznit, then he read a post on my other blog about findable websites - and seeing as he had found BifSniff by chance through Google, he knew I wasn't just full of hot air. And so he contacted me about giving his website a new lease of life.

Since then we've had loads of great chats about blogging and so on by email, but until now we had never met. We discussed some exciting ideas like working on a proposal for Irish Flash together

Also, Bob has a great kids book in the works and we had a really interesting chat about that. I hope Bob gets it completed and published soon, because I think it will be really special. I was grilling him on it a bit because it's something myself and Bif have been meaning to do for a long time.

I think 2006 might actually be the year myself and Bif produce our kids book.

Another little plug for Eliza Blues, Bob ordered a coffee, and because two large parties had come in it took a while to be served - the waiter apologised and said it was on the house!

Anyway, after meeting Bob, I headed out to Bray to meet up with Emmet O'Neill and his family. Emmet, Bif and myself have known each other forever, and have worked together on various bits and pieces. We worked together on Sex, Booze and a Sheep Named John: CrimeScene which was an Irish Flash animation.

Emmet is currently working on another John the Sheep project, written by Bif, which is a far more ambitious project. Emmet has come up with some lovely techniques which have resulted in some really gorgeous looking animation. Anyway, as well as meeting up with Emmet and his lovely family (wife Rhoda and two boys Sam and Isaac) we were discussing the animation - it's a complex piece, on one hand a simple story and yet with some very involved concepts behind it.

Which was proven by the differences in my reading of the piece and Emmets. Both of us had placed the emphasis on different concepts within the piece. It all began to get very intellectual indeed, which is pretty funny for a piece with a talking Sheep in it.

I'm really delighted to be involved in the process, and I'm looking forward to the animated sequences I'll be working on.

So it really is exciting creative times at BifSniff.com. I've also been working on another project with Bif and Scribble, an Irish band. Myself and Bif came up with a great idea for a short animation inspired by a song of Scribble's. It's a very simple piece, which utilises my patented La-Z-Mation techniques, but I'm very fond of it. Unfortunately I've been promising to finish it for several years at this stage and just never seemed to find the time!

However it is now 96% finished and we hope to launch it in the new year. So keep your eyes peeled for more on that!

Phew! Long post, but I think you're up to date now!