23rd of January 2012 – 9th February 2013 is the Year of the Dragon. If you are a Dragon this is going to be a great year for you, so get out there and raise some hell! For all the rest of us, expect some pretty spectacular barbecues.

May your Christmas stockings be full to overflowing – Lots of chocolate, at least one satsuma and absolutely no coal!

Speaking of revenge. I was nosing through my hard drive and came up with this. It is one of a series of Flash animations I did for a Toyota Yaris banner ad campaign. The campaign was about getting revenge on your friends and family for disrespecting your brand new car. I’m not entirely sure about who their target market was but I tend to give Yaris drivers a wide birth when I’m on the road.

Roll the mouse over to start the animation.

Ah. The English summer! Dandelions all over your lawn and Gray skies above. Strangely relaxing, especially if you have a couple of gallons of dandelion wine fermenting  in the cupboard under the stairs. Revenge is, after all, best served cold.

This is a new e-card designed by Mo Choy (My wife and business partner) and built by my good self. Head on over to www.SqueakyCards.com if you would like to send it.

A big thank you to Klankbeeld at the Freesound project for the meadow sound effects.

It’s Fathers Day coming up on Sunday the 19th.
This is my salute to all the cool neck ties you could have bought your Dad and that he would have had to wear if he really loved you.

If you haven’t written that card yet you can send this one from SqueakyCards.com. If your Dad hasn’t quite got a handle on the new fangled electric postal thing, there is nothing for it. Run to the shops now or it will be straight to your room after dinner without any Telly!

Thinking about it, I’m assuming I’m included for my work and the ‘Feature’ bit isn’t about my impressive chin. I’ll have to check  Zeb and Pauls profile pictures before I am too flattered.

Click the image to visit the show.

Well, that is the new bit out of the way so on to the old.

The video below is one of the first jobs I did when I left college way back in 1988! It was for a pop video production company called M ocean. I was handed a bunch of photo print outs and asked to make them look like the LP cover.

The whole thing was very lo-tech in those days. The backgrounds were rejected photos that I sandpapered and smeared with cel paint. Enya and the foreground objects were cut out and her edges coloured with marker so the white didn’t show and put on top. Over that was some cells smeared with cell paint to get that messy, just painted look. Finally all the layers were shot on a rudimentary video rostrum with blank sandpapered animation cells animated over the top near the lens so they were out of focus and looked like clouds.

Sadly I very much doubt whether you could get away with anything like that today.

Kids today, don’t know they are born!

]]> http://www.squeakypics.co.uk/blog/2011/01/something-new-something-old/feed/ 1 http://www.squeakypics.co.uk/blog/2010/10/the-haunted-pickle-jar/ http://www.squeakypics.co.uk/blog/2010/10/the-haunted-pickle-jar/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:57:01 +0000 Squeaky Dave http://www.squeakypics.co.uk/blog/?p=526

Halloween is almost upon us and I’m assuming that everyone has taken the usual garlic-based precautions to ward off the creatures of the netherworld?

I thought not.

While it has long been known that garlic has a special affinity with the supernatural, it is little known fact that that is true of other members of the allium family. Pickled onions, especially old ones, can be especially tricky during Halloween and can often end up working for the opposition. Be warned. Stay safe!

Note: Pickled Eggs are thought to have similar properties. This is not strictly true. They are evil at any time of the year.

This has happened to me more times than I care to remember. Not this year, Oh no. This year I’m going to use one really big candle.