The Mysterious Traveller

Not so long ago, in a studio far,  far away.... Yes, it's all bloomin' Star Wars at the moment. A parsec away from fatigue? Perhaps. But regardless of what you think of the new film (Rise of Skywalker) the toy industry shall never suffer. Every high street shop has a section dedicated to Star Wars. Whether for toys, costumes, stationary, books, collectables, magazines and stuff; everywhere from Woolworths to Toy"R"Us will have a Star Wars logo slapped onto something.     My appreciation, however, for some of the newer Hasbro Star Wars range has suffered. You may call them pet peeves, I call them sloppy engineering especially when it comes to things like limited poseable parts or shoddy face sculpts. Coming from an animated background does scupper my expectations, I admit, as all the characters I encounter are fully poseable puppets that would make splendid toys (but they are not, they are absolutely not toys).     The Black Series (6 inch) is a q...

Well then! Look who's come crawling back after nineteen months of web page silence (me, I'm crawling back). And with a jolly good reason folks; I simply miss being creative with my writing. I miss summarising my recent ventures with photographs and silly videos. I miss rambling, and getting away with using words like pandemonium and phooey [ exclamation  used to express disdain or disbelief.  "so   phooey to   sophistication"]. In reality, I am temporarily working from home, so time is on my side. And why not delve back into the thriving medium of blogging? Why not indeed. Full of top quality content, mixed with the grief and regret of a hangover; a winning combination. I must admit that I am perhaps a little rusty with my wording (at one point I considered Grammarly), however if you bare with me I'm sure we'll all come out of this with something.  So what the bally-hey-ho has happened over the last year?!! In the last twelve months I have been given a ...

A strange blog title I have to admit, and yet those who know me won't be surprised at all. I recently went to visit my father in Germany with my brother; a hefty road trip through five countries with a lot of red bull and many psychological challenges along the wrong side of road. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was walking along a street and saw this old German woman getting rid of some ragtag junk. I spotted a pink and green Barbie castle/house thing and the cogs in my head started to turn. You see, with the animation I do (and many will understand this) you will find yourself picking up so much random stuff wherever you may be; whether this is a car boot sale, a rubbish tip, the park or even on a night out (I swindled some nice beer mats that could make nice paintings for a model lounge). Basically it is a habit that us stop motion animators get in to. It took me a while to figure out how the damn thing opens up. So here it is in all its glory: the Barbie house in the ...