I’ve neglected this blog this year, as time went on I gathered more and more photos which would mean more time needed to actually post something here, so I’ve picked 12 photos from each month of 2009 to post here and write a little something about, a summery if you will.

Well then, let’s start shall we?

01 – JANUARY

The start of the year for us lucky pups at Aardman meant we moved into our brand new purpose-built home. It was really nice to be in a central place, we’ve gotten to know so many other people from all the magical departments that make Aardman tick, so that’s been a real treat. It’s incredible how much the swell of creativity rubs off on your own work, a big mixture of pride, excitement & creativity! Oh and the in-house 40-seat cinema doesn’t hurt either ;)

02 – FEBRUARY

This year has really been all about bicycles for me. I’ve really gotten into it in all aspects, loving every part of it. It was in February that I started bringing my camera out with me, filming the antics of a small group of us riding around. Little did I know how much it’s grow and what it’d turn into! The shot above was a night that Mr Tim Ward came out, armed to the teeth with his camera gear to capture some two-wheeled fun.

03 – MARCH

2009 was a good year for Bristol art. The Royal West of England Academy of Art decided to hand the entire building of the a legion of Bristols finest artists and let them run riot. The result was a mind-blowing concoction of over 40 artists leaving their mark on the RWA (Literally, it wasn’t just canvases, it was directly on the walls). The above photo is my man Richt’s piece in collab with Sums and 45’s on the left.

04 – APRIL

April was when myself and a group of the Xynthetic family went north of the border and put on our first exhibition in Scotland. Glasgow is home to fellow Xyn member Klingatron who kindly put us up and was the host with the most, giving us a full authentic Glaswegian experience! Jonny made an edit of our weekend, you can peep that here! It was alot of fun, we met a great bunch of people and all of us together in one house made for alot of laughter.

05 – MAY

This year i was lucky enough to be given another opportunity to speak at a bunch of Apple stores, after doing one in the Birmingham Bullring store back in November 2008. I took that same talk to Bristol, the flagship Regent Street store in London and then finishing it off by bringing it to my hometown of Leicester! It’s an absolute honour to be given an opportunity to speak about what I love doing, and it really meant alot to me that people would give me their time to waffle on about graphics and stuff. I’m hoping to do some more waffling on in 2010 if people aren’t sick of me already!

06 – JUNE

The summer month saw my good lady Sarah’s sister Becky get married to her long time fella Richard at a beautiful location in Leicester. I took my D40 and snapped away all day, with the above photo being one of my favourites!

07 – JULY

The bike scene in Bristol, especially the fixed gear bike scene, had really blown up by Summer and was really helped along by the mass of events that were put on by enthusiastic folk wanting to get everyone together. This shot is one of the ‘lift’ shots I make everyone do at every race, it’s especially fun to make them hold as long as possible! The variety of races and challenges have really made a good group of friends but still very open to new riders, which I like. It was the summer when filming for my BÖIKZMÖIND film was really in full swing, filming at least a couple of times a week! The trailer for the film has had over 20,000 views so far, which is very cool, looking forward to making the full film in 2010!

08 – AUGUST

It had already been open for a few months, but August was when i finally got a chance to see the infamous Banksy show at the museum here in Bristol. I very nearly didn’t get to see it at all, as I didn’t fancy queing for 4 hours to get in but as luck would have it, the kind folk at Bristol Media managed to get an after-hours private view for all members of the Bristol Media group. Luckily i was a member and got to see the show, it was definitely worth the wait!

09 – SEPTEMBER

I couldn’t quite believe it, but in September Pete Docter & Jonas Rivera from Pixar visited Aardman! They did a Q&A session with Nick Park and then showed us their new film ‘UP’ in the cinema (as Pete was the director and Jonas was the producer of the film). It was a fantastic day at work, seeing those 3 masterminds of animation talking and finding out about how the genius’s of Pixar do things and then getting to see UP before it was released! A very inspiring day to say the least.

10 – OCTOBER

More visitors to Bristol from over the pond… this time one of my favourite rappers P.O.S. and producer Paper Tiger from the infamous DOOMTREE crew! They came over as part of their tour, supporting The King Blues, playing at The Fiddler. In the end, because my very good friend Abjekt handles their PR/Press when they’re in the UK, they ended up staying at mine after the gig, then taking them for a proper english breakfast before they headed on to their next gig! Nothing more hip-hop than 2 sausage, egg, bacon, beans & a cuppa.

11 – NOVEMBER

As the year started coming to the tail end, we celebrated 20 years since Wallace & Gromit first appeared on our screens! We had a birthday party at work and I got the honour of re-designing the W&G website to conincide with the anniversary, which you can see here. Oh and the big orange rocket above? That’s the original rocket used in A Grand Day Out! It’s made from card, paper mache and lentils – that’s a fact!

12 – DECEMBER

My final image was taken at the top of the Arc De Triomphe in Paris, looking down on the 12 rue’s that lead off from the Arc. Me & Sarah went to Paris to celebrate our 5 year anniversary and had a fantastic time, seeing lots of beautiful things and getting very excited about Christmas (as the Christmas markets opened that weekend). It was a beautiful end to the year.

So my friends, that’s it from me! It’s been a wonderful year and a wonderful decade too. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this and for taking the time to look / read / be involved in the endeavors I’ve pursued this year, I really really appreciate it. I hope you have a great New years, whatever it is that you’re doing. I’ll see you on the other side…

Good night and good luck.

- Gav

And that’s all from me! One love for your mothers pride.

So here, we go, 4 months worth of pictograms for you to digest… grab a cuppa and put your feet up…
Foggy fog fog made the top of Brizzle dissapear

The fog over the water was bootiful, glad I had my camera with me

Me and Mel header over to Bath for Al’s AnyForty launch party!

I got to meet print-extroidinaire Mr Rik Penny of Ripe Digital fame (if you need ANYTHING printing, then Riks your man!)

Not much to do when theres dark nights apart from take time lapses

Oh yeah, and play Guitar Hero World Tour

All I heard one night was this almighty CRASH. Turns out Bobbie got a bit too excited running up the stairs and tripped, hit the stairs and covered the wall with his drink. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.

We were well excited at work to check on the progress of the new Aardman building, so we went on a wee tour when it was close to completion

Our unfinished office

Podcast podcast! We had a pod and casted it as hard as we could.

I had a little accident, I thought the box would be stronger than before and could fully support the weight of a person.

I forgot that cardboard isnt the strongest material in the world.

Bikey bikey bikes. This is Louis’s, its special.

This one is Alex’s, also very special.

Lunchtime W&G viewings in the old Tobacco Factory office

This is Clark, our pet lemon.

I did a talk / presentation at the Apple store in Bristol!!!! This board was up in the week leading upto it, well stoked!

Go-bama day!

We had the Aardman Online crew round to my flat for a night of ROCK for young Mel’s leaving party

When we were moving out of the Tobacco Factory, the marketing & licensing team had a clear out of products they didnt need anymore, which basically meant a free-for-all!!

And so it came, the moving day!

Dan was organized and ready as always

I drew a picture of a Squirrel riding a fixie for the No Gears night at The Cube

It went off, it was packed! Stay tuned for the next one!!

We’re in! The move was smooth as butter

The new walk / ride home has got bootiful views!

My Apple talk went really well, thank you to everyone who came to check it out! Afterwards, we went to GBK to get our grub on

Kris, Jamie & Matt drove all the way from Lincoln to make the talk… LEGENDS!!!

It snowed. Alot. Everyone went mental and all of England broke down after some white frosty water covered the ground.

Jems not dead. She just wanted to take a low photo.

Tim makes alot of pretty thing. He can even make real-world pretty things like these bad boy plushes!

We made a cookie monster with boobs on the roof

Giant characters started invading work

We bought pork and it had nipples on. It was very strange

P.O.S.’s new album is ridonculous

I was lucky enough to be able to bring my Mac talk to the Regent Street flagship store in Londinium! Sarah and my brother came down

We checked out the dope shops in Carnaby Street

I went to Playlounge, the very first toy store i ever came across which started my vinyl obsession!

Afterwards we all went for Dinner

The very nice man Stu from Innocent Drinks supplied us with a whole tonne of goodies to keep us going!

Me and Sarah checked out the Natural History Museum on the Friday

We went to see Bolt in 3D, it was awesome!

Filming / photographing bikes!

Tim Ward shot some awesome snaps

Brick-o-chinese. Nice!

Jonny loves them.

Now the nights are lighter, bike rides are onnnnnnn!

Fixie Thursday has become fixie tuesday, wednesday & thursday! busy collecting footage and photos for the bike film!

A ride up Clifton Vale always results in rewarding ourselves with a visit to the Clifton chippy

More giant things finding their way into the building!

There was a friends & family day at work for employees to bring their loved ones around and show them the new building!

They had a timelapse film of the entire 2-year build condensed into 2 minutes, labelled ‘Aardmans Grand Design‘. So we piled into the cinema to check it out. I love my work!

Stretched our legs on the rooftop terrace!

Klingatron came down for a visit!

Rich and his beloved Carlton

Went along to the Crimes of Passion opener and was blown away!

As expected, the 45rpm / Richt / Sums wall was killer

China Mike’s skills are ridonculous too

Duncan & Dicey

Will Barras

The queue to get in stretched so far and took people an hour to get in! (We had the heads-up from Rich and got there early!)

Aardman Online was kindly invited to the VIP opening of the World of Cracking Ideas exhibition at the Science Museum in London! We did the website and game to coincide with the exhib (which I had the pleasure in designing) so we were well stoked to go!

Oh yeah, my phone popped out of my jacket whilst riding and smashed the hand-carved laser-engraved wooden case I ordered from Norway. WELL stoked that happened.

Anyways, thats all from me!

Winter is upon us. So that means dark mornings and dark, cold nights. Still, nice sunrises though.

One of the essential Christmas films, Die Hard 2 : Die Harder (Best sequel title ever?)

Danny managed to get his mug in an episode of Casulty!

Ahh, how I love the Bristol squirrels. I have an affinity with them since a young age (a true fact, there’s a whole story behind it, but thats for another time)

Squirrel High-fives!

We took the kids to the park. Needed the hats though as it’s cold.

I fell off my bike, again! This time it was on black ice, and yeap I smashed up my brand new Macbook Pro. Luckily it all works fine, it’s just got battle scars.

Halogen heaters come into their own in Winter.

I got some fancy festive metallic red packaging for the Christmas Droplet orders.

Saw WALL-E for the first time. It’s flippin’ amazing, one of the best things I’ve seen in years.

Got new business cards done, to match the new website and stuff. Can’t beat gloss laminate finish, mm mm mmm!

Duncan gave me this beautiful silk painting, how rad is that!? I can’t wait to hang it!

I made friends with the good people of Innocent Drinks and they kindly sent me a whole box of smoothies!

This one is the best, fact! I’m going to be in a lil’ book Innocent are putting together, I can’t wait and am honoured to be a part of it! 2009 will be rad!

We had an Aardman Online christmas do, it was a whole lot of fun, ending with the funniest / most bizarre kareoke I’ve ever witnessed (we weren’t singing, it was a right oddball selection of another companys work outing.)

Some very drunk woman tried to ’sing’ a Linkin Park song, giving up pretty much straight away screaming “I can’t rap… I’m not black enough” (!!?)

Managed to catch-up with Rich and Laurs and Taff, Bobbie Yeast kept us entertained as always.

For a Christmas present, I decided to take my first fixie, AeroTurbo, that was originally my Dads bike years and years ago, and strip it down and refurbish it as a single-speed racer, giving it back to me pops!

I’d bought all new bits (new seat, new tyres, new chain, new brakes, new grips, new drop bars) and a night was set, and as Danny is the bike-build-master, he did all the hard work!

Old Aero…

Went with a nice classic matte black re-spray for the frame!

New front & back brakes

Nearly there…

Just needs the finishing touches…

Once all the painting was done, the next bit was all the finishes. I’d ordered some real fancy italian leather for the grips, which needed to be sewn on by hand!

I’m a bit of an pleb when it comes to anything that isn’t on a computer, so Sarah used her deadly skills to do the bootiful grips…

On first glance it looks like Sarah’s throwing up Wings & Teeth, but I don’t think she is, I think she got sore hands from sewing the thread!

Look at the finished bad boy though…

A proper gentlemens racer! It’s on a freewheel at the mo but with a fixed cog on the other side, so my pops can try it fixed any time he likes… :D

Fifty got in the Christmas spirit, with well fancy wreathes with gold supra kicks in the middle!

Another classic, Bugsy Malone.

On the last day of workin’, the 23rd Dec, we all brough in lots of party food in the office and gourged on many a sugar-based treat!

Then, before you knew it, it was time to pack up all my stuff and go home to Leicester for Christmas!

Xmas CD. Essential drive-home listening.

Always great to see the family again. Got to see the big dogs once again.

Dads new favourite thing is this huge wood-burning stove we’ve now got in the dining room. It produces roughly as much heat as a small solar flare and keeps the house warm for weeks on end.

CHRISTMAS DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who needs tripods? Dan obviously doesn’t, as 3 tins and a butter dish do a better job.

Pigs not yet in their blankets. Aside from the turkey, the best thing about Christmas dinner.

I managed to get my dads bike back from Bristol, dissassenbled and hidden under a duvet sheet, and then built again to bring down on Xmas morning.

Turkey turkey turkey!!!

I get 2 Christmas Days, as we do it all at my house, then in the evening I go to Sarahs and do it all again, I love it!!

I got Sarahs mum this rad Shaun the Sheep (she loves Shaun) that plays music from your ipod out of the speakers on his headphones (which also light up in time to the moooosic)

I couldn’t belive it, Sarah got me Guitar Hero World Tour, the pack with all the instruments!!! I’ve been going on and on about this ever since it came out, I didnt think i’d actually get it! WELL stoked!

Pretty much instantly, I dissapeared upstairs to unpack it and play it on Richs Xbox!

And so it began, since then I’ve not done much else but play Xbox! I brought it home the next day for all to play!

It’s quite hard but good fun! Mind you if you can play an instrument I bet it’s a piece of cake!

You can create your own band and customize pretty much every aspect. My bands called ‘Itchy Knuckles’ and features ‘Deathpickle‘ on Guitar (all black outfit with a bright yellow gasmask and bright yellow guitar), a bassist called ‘Serg’ and a drummer called ‘Fuckbiscuits’ (complete with the word FUCK tattoed on his neck)

Aswell as Xbox fun, I got lots of other nice presents aswell. Cocommander is just one of them.

I brought WALL-E back home for all to watch too, as they hadn’t seen it before either.

So this has pretty much been the scene for me, since Christmas. Controller in-hand, playing games. I’ve loved it.

I completed Fable II, which is good because I never normally finish games.

After letting my brain go to mush, I forced myself to stock up on some culture, thanks to Dans guidance in the matter.

A Leicester nighttime. I often spend it sitting on the roof…

It’s suddenly got freezing here too, proper cold and everything.

Cold enough to freeze over a lake too.

We got out the house and had a little mooch around the ’shire.

And that’s it from me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

Fifty Fifty has moved from Park Row onto an awesome new location at the bottom of Park Street, I snapped shots at pretty much every stage of the build (all done by hand, by Danny, Syd, Pete etc etc), so here it is…

A little test presentation…

… testing the projection with a lil video…

mansdem!

All the stock came over from the old store, there’s one or two shoes

The old store is looking bare, this is the last night before it shut for good! 10 years strong at that place!

Sorting out all that stock in the new place

I got my stamp on…

(i’m not to be trusted with a hammer or a drill)

Loui & Makepeace get their lacin’ on

Smashing cap…

DW’s got style for miles

As does Makepeace…

The shoe wall, all complete. Shiney shiney!

Duncan did his thing on the wall outside

And so, the big day arrived – the opening evening

Laurs is in the plaid gang

Fixed Gear London brought down their Vans fixie

Matthew & Sarah

Louis & Makepeace

I did a looping animation of the new fifty logo, which was projected onto the building opposite, all night long, sweet!

Ere, is that a banksky?

King DW

the boys, the boys!

Bash’s exact words were “fuck fixies”. His bike is literally bomb-proof.

I’ve been building up me toy collection of the months aswell…

The super lovely Mike & katie aka TADO sent me a signed Cannibal Funfair toy, WELL STOKED!

“Jam is Fab”, how nice is that!!?

I treated myself to the bad boy of all toys… the 20″ tall Pete Fowler ‘Van Orlax‘ figure! He lives at work and guards my desk. He also doubles as a hat stand.

Cabot Circus is finally open here in Brizzle and it’s dope, filled with plenty of rad shops.

Me, Dan & Rich from work went to Brighton for a 3-day Adobe Flash conference called ‘Flash on the Beach’

I never been to Brighton before, so I was well excited about the beach

I finally got to meet some of the Realmac Family whilst I was down there!

Nik & Danny

I caught up with Alan, art director of Computer Arts Projects magazine, as he was shooting photos for the cover of an issue of the mag

I made a lil’ cameo in the shoot! I’m on the back cover, cheers Alan!

I got myself a new ride… A Charge plug Racer, she’s a beaut!

Danny & Alex helped me sort her out! (Well I say ‘helped’, they did all the hard work!)

Got my hacksaw on and shortened down them bars…

That’s better, nice n short!

There she is, the finished thing… I christen her ‘King Speedorah‘ (a tribute to MF Doom, ’cause of the chrome frame)

We’ve started going on lil’ thursday rides, as regular as we can (’fixie thursday’)

Louis’s got the skilllllls

urrr, do sum skiddurs

One-handed wheelies…. whattttt!?

I can’t belive it, I was lucky enough to get given an interview in Computer Arts Projects, which was a Character Design special!

They gave me 8-flippin-pages… so so SO STOKED!

Duncan & Rich did some painting at Tobacco Factory, as part of Upfest…

Good ol’ 45RPM

Aardman had a halloween party, so we our fancy dress on…

I needed my hair cutting…

Katie & Jem

Dan

Just a casual drink in the pub, you know

The quality of the costumes was awesome!

This dude scared the hell out of me and pretty much everyone else. His Michael mask was perfect!

I went as V. Sipping coke was not a problem.

Zombee’s… geddit!?

Dans dancing is the best thing in the world. fact.

That dude came as the woman from The Ring. That’s an actual Sony TV Set on his back, and his whole body was a TV cabinet complete with old VHS Horror films stacked up. Genius

After much chasing, I finally managed to get my hands on a brand new MacBook Pro, to replace my busted one (I fell off my bike in the wet in bristol and cracked & broke the display)

So shiney… so pretty

And last but by no means least, yesterday I went to the Apple Store in the Bullring, Birmingham, as i’d been asked by my good friend Jon to come do a talk entitled ‘Made on a Mac’, so off I set!

I wanted to take lots of real ’stuff’ to show the finished product from stuff that started life on the Mac, so I packed up skateboards, Droplets and lots of other colourful stuff…

I finished the presentation itself at the 11th hour (3.30pm in Starbucks, started setting up in-store at 4pm!)

Luckily, it was all good and I was ready to go!

Lots of lovely people turned up, which I’m very very grateful for!

I got a Britney-style mic and everything!!

I was over the moon with how the talk went, and i can’t thank everyone enough for taking the time to come and see it, aswell as Jon and everyone at Apple for being awesome and so flippin’ nice & welcoming!!

I’m stoked to say that I’ll be bringing the talk to the Bristol Apple store in January 2009 so look out for that!

And that’s all from me folks, thanks for reading!

I had to go back to the mothership in Leicester, as I was going with my brother and met up with him.

I bought Dans beautiful Medium Format Yashica off him, innit nice!?

I got the chance to pop off and see Miseur Rudkin, Missus Rudkin and his brandNewBabyHuman™ Dexter!

Toddled down to the Boardroom too, stretched me legs on a whizzplank, it’s been a while since I’ve done that

Shot some skate shots of Kingy

Darryl was there too, we went on a filming mission and got all of zero footage. well done us.

And so it began, train from Leicester to Londinium

A night in the Travelodge and then it was up at 5am to get the 6.55am Eurostar to Paris! Myself, Dan and his friend Abi were ready for the off, France ahoy!

We couldn’t get into the hotel when we arrived, so we went upto Montmarte and it’s where Amélie is set! (That Carousel is in the bit where she spies Nino from the top and runs down to meet him)

After much hill climbing, having a coffee at the top and then lugging our bags back down again, we got into the hotel.

Dropped out stuff and had some lunch, reet opposite the Notre Dame!

Even the Nuns are hi-tech in France

Inside the Cathedral is beautiful

There were so many people infront of this cross, taking photos, so I thought i’d be dead clever and nip around the back

We were knackered by the time night fell, so tired that I’d fallen asleep 4 times before proper sleeptime (twice on the eurostar, a power afternoon nap & an early evening nap)

Anyways, after the 5th sleep in 24 hours, it was time to crack on. We went to this big building, I cant remember what it was, but it was big.

The public parks are really nice. Full of people just milling about, it’s grand!

Lots of fountains too, oh so many fountains.

Bit o’ quick shutter speed for this one

We went into the Catacombes, which are 1.7km long tunnels underneath Paris, they’re incredible.

It’s pretty gnarly too, because in the 18th century there wasn’t enough space for dead bodies, so started bringing them down into the catacombes, and now the tunnes are lined with millions of bones and skulls, it’s so surreal to see

They used to hold mass there too

…and a patio chair too. Nice place for a BBQ

After that, we sat on some cannons.

Amelie’s own road!

A trip to Paris wouldn’t be complete a visit to the Eiffel Tower!

We chose the walking-up-the-steps instead of the lift, because we’re dead ‘ard. I got to about halfway up until I realised I really really don’t like heights!

First floor is pretty high up itself!

2nd level is even higher, surprise surprise

The telescope looked like something out of ‘Robots’

Daniel famously told us that it’d only take us “12 minutes” to get back from the eiffel tower to the restaurant strip we wanted… it didn’t, it took us over an hour. Didn’t matter, I got to snap lots of ‘paris-by-night’ shots…

We passed by this wierd tiny little opening for the Musée d’Orsay, which was essentially just a locked security gate but on the wall there was this awesome light-strip…

A hype williams-style photo shoot ensued, I took some portraits of Dan…

Was really stoked with them!

Danielson took one of me too.

Paris by night is a nice sight

We found a nice place to eat. The waiter told us about when he went to Carnaby Street 40 years ago

Next day, it was off to the Louvre.

It really is massive. I thought the glass triangle was the musuem, but that’s just the entrance. That whole palace behind it is filled with paintings & sculptures

Dan sketched alot of the pieces too. I was clever, I took a photo, it’s much quicker.

The museum is an exhibition in itself.

People went crazy for the Venus de Milo but it’s no better than any other sculpture, I’d even say it’s not that go. Wierd how much ‘hype’ certain pieces can get

The size of some of the paintings is just incredible…

Check out that ceiling!

People go crazy for the Mona Lisa too, which is, dare I say, a bit rubbish. There’s SO much other great stuff on those walls!

Everyone was shooting it. I thought I’d go second hand and snap someone else’s snap.

Had lunch on the terrace, shezzam!

The whole place is just mind blowing, even vacant corridoors look nice!

Who the hell frames those paintings?

Napoleon VIII’s apartments are straight-up MTV Cribs-style

I set off the alarm in this bit, as I stretched over too far to take a photo and it started going off. I made a swift exit into another bit, woops!

Some of the windows looked like Darth Vaders TIE fighter window bit

As we left, it was perfect light to get snap-happy

There was much lens-swapping happening, about every 6 minutes infact…

We strolled to the park just over from the Louvre and set down and watched the sun set

This duckling was awesome. It didn’t seem to grasp swimming quite right, and would go forwards to the edge of the water, then go into reverse and swim backwards in a circle until it faced the right way again. It did this all the way around the fountain.

Subtle. Real subtle. We didn’t eat there, my eyes were too busy bleeding neon.

The next morning it was time to go home, so we had one last breakfast – a visit to the Boulangerie, some croissants, some paun au chococlats and breakky by the Seine!

One last musuem visit before we had to go, this time it was a photographic musuem and there was a huge exhibit of Annie Leibovitz’s work, which was rad

Before I knew it, it was time for me to leave Dan & Abi and make my way back (as I was travelling back on my own, earlier as I didnt want to get back into Bristol late)…

Eurostar was rad, well comfy!

Free drinks & free 3-course meal + iPod = nice journey.

Last train, this time from London back to Bristol.

Home! Hello Brizzle!

I was over the moon with the reception for Droplet, I sold all my initial stock within a week, thanks to the lovely folk out there giving Droplets a new home! Don’t worry though, I’ve got another 50 coming soon to me online store!

Me & Sarah took a trip to Bath for a spot of shopping

It’s a beautiful city. It’s like Clifton, but bigger.

Happened to wonder by London Camera Exchange and saw a fisheye lens in the window for my D40! I popped in and gave it a whirl…

I couldn’t resist and with my wallet a hell of alot lighter, I became the proud father of a rad fisheye.

We got back to Brizzletown and caught up with Daniel & the Nibblers™

Nibbler#1 & Nibbler#2

Sarah was well stoked as she picked up 4 pairs of shoes from LK Bennet, the cavern of beautiful pumps.

I’ve just gone a bit mad and started re-photographing everything I’ve already shot, but again because the fish makes it look sweeeeet

Shoezies and Droplets

Money Cat!

Time for a bit of Geetar Hero, surprise surprise!

Fireworks from the Bristol Balloon Festival

Urban Treeson is sweet as a nut.

Told you I was just re-photographing everything, sos.

My toy collection is growing nicely, I’ve got lots more dotted around the flat, I need me a fancy glass cabinet.

Sarah was a diamond and packaged up all the Droplets, as my packing skills are atrocious!

I took the bad boy fishy into work!

Ben doing his thing.

Riding home from work

Robert got in on the fish action…

ProjectorLightFun™

Alan. The wonderful, wonderful Alan.

It wouldn’t be my blog unless there was some sort of long-exposure type-thing.

I tried to be clever and fix my bike but made a right balls-up of it.

It’s alright, Danny knows what he’s doing and he sorted it out for me. New fancy drop bars, front brake and fixed gear – she’s a beast!

More night-shot-long-exposure stuff…

Bike lights made awesome little glow-stick-style things for this jiggerypokery!

These 2 are my favourite…

Oh yeah, a bit more mucking around with lights…

My lovely Sarah is now in Brazil!!! The lucky monkey is there for 3 weeks with 3 friends, so here she is with Emilytron, ready to made the train journey to the airport (not to Brazil, that’d take ages)

I got my blank House of Liu figure from James, to paint up for a exhibition in the big apple at the end of the month…

I filmed the whole process too, so expect an edit something soon!

Here’s the finished thing, my custom, ‘Tweet’!

Check him and all the customs out @ APW Gallery in NYC, from August 22nd!

Thats all from me my lovelies, seeyoubye!

Sorry it’s been a while since the last blog, just mad hectic with everything, so posts are few and far between, but this is an extra-long 92-image blog for you, so strap yourselves in…

Treated myself to a new geeeetar as my other one is knackered – buttons are well intermittant, star power didnt work the whammy bar was busted.

Nice new one works a treat though, shezzam!

Jonny, Michaela, Gaz & Adam came down to Brizzletown for Jonny’s buffday

The birthday boy

DanDan Efergan came out to play too

As did Benjeemin

He’s proberly dictating something, he’s got the look of Hitler about him… (not really, sorry Jonny)

Danielson played out aswell

Watershed-fun

It isn’t a Bristol trip without going to Zero Degrees

Off to The Woods innit

The next morning was Jonny’s buffday

We give Super Smash Bros a go, it’s a bit mental

I don’t really understand it, but it’s good

My lovely Sarah graduated! 2-1 and everything!!!

The graduation was at the well fancy Wills building, it was rad

Colour gel flashes are rad. As is V for Vendetta.

Sarah took both these pictures. I keep getting told off for stealing her photos.

WELL stoked. I managed to get through Slayer on Hard on GH3! It’s taken me bloody months!

I managed to finally nail Metallica’s ‘One’ today too, even more stoked with that!!

Go Go Plastic sent me some exciting pretties…

I’ve wanted one of these bad boys for so long, the 123 Klan Rolito bunny thing!

I started doing some doodles for some drawings for a show in Belfast I / Xynthetic were part of

Me & Sarah went out on a photo mission…

Found this cool ants nest in a wall…

Sarah got her Polaroid on!

The light was beautiful!

We watched Batman Begins to get us hyped for The Dark Knight

These are 2 of the drawings I did for Belfast, I forgot to photo the 3rd one, woops!

Me toy collection is growing, they’re all over the flat now, Ive not got much space on my desk, need a fancy cabinet me thinks

The most exciting thing came in the post…

My very own shipment of finished & ready Droplets!!!!

But I didn’t have time to do anything with them as the next morning, very early, myself and young WheatFree mosied off to Bristol Airport to fly to Belfast…

Our excitement was short-lived as SleazyJet delayed our flight by 7 BASTARD HOURS, meaning we were stuck inside the departure loung, on a boiling hot day for 9 hours in total (as it still didnt leave at 3.40)

Needless to say, we were not happy at all. With nothing at all to do, apart from swear about EasyJet.

Finally, after gone 4pm, we were airbourne and made the 50 minute flight to Belfast that we’d waited 7 hours for.

Aswell as the exhibition, I was giving a presentation in the eveing as part of a SweetTalk event, my name was on the screen and everything!

Aidan is the man with the plan, the dude behind the SweetTalks.

When we got there, we had most of the work, so it was time to get it up. ‘Tron & Pone had been there most of the day and got up everything they could, so it was just our bits to get up

Rrrrrrrrobbie!

The ‘tron.

Pone and Hammer (sounds like a toothpaste)

The Boys the Boys

We did a little bit of Live Art aswell

Robbie got his posca on

It’s true…

I forgot to bloody photograph the other side with all the other work on it, flippin’ hell.

And so, it was time for the SweetTalk’s. Aidan was first up, awesome stuff.

Next up was design duo M&E, who are quite simply, awesome.

Meanwhile, we were all hank marvin, so Andy kindly hooked us up with an Indian Takeaway. I just spilt mine all over the table.

Time for Alan Clarke, who has got the skills to most definately pay the bills (and then some)

Then, it was time for me, with my presentation “How the flip did that dude get there? – An Incoherent Waffle by Gavin Strange”

It was a blog-style timeline through my start at design college to where I ams now, hence the embaressing young photos!

I proberly didn’t really do myself any favours, seeing as everyone else showed their beautiful work, I just had a tonne of dodgy photos interlaced with bits of my work. Professional.

XynLove™

Before we knew it, time to go to ‘Hotel and do some sleeps.

This looks really wierd and a bit wrong. It wasn’t, he had his shorts on and was pointing out the fact we were watching The Wonder Years. Make of it what you will.

On the Way back to the Airport, we had the best Taxi driver, ‘Alan’, who gave us a tour of Belfast, it was rad.

He took us around all the murals from the conflicts, it was good to see them in person and have a proper Northern Irelander explain them to us

After that, our new best mate Alan took us to see the 2 largest cranes in the world, they’re called ‘Samson’ and ‘Goliath’ and they built the Titanic!

This is known as ‘Napoleons Nose’. Fact (look at it side-on)

(This one’s for Danny) Northern Irelands bank notes have got a fixie on them!!! How cool is that!?

George Best has got his own legal tender too!

This is Alan & Robbie

And Alan & Me!

Me & Robbie

We killed time and had a dirthy filthy sell-your-soul Starfucks (i only bought it so i didnt feel guilty about sitting in their comfy seats)

Hometime! Luckily there wasn’t any delays, thank christ.

There was a baby scruffy pigeon waiting on the steps upon our return. He didn’t know the party wasn’t until next week, silly sausage.

I got time to take some proper photos of Droplet and his packaging! This is the bulk 16-box packaging that’ll be in the shops!

This is home

And here’s the kids in all their glory!

They’re available now on me little online store, so drop on over there if you fancy giving one a home!

Thats all from me my loves, seeyabye!

I got me a shedload of stickers printed up. I love stickers.

Mucked about with colour gels on me camera.

Danny’s fixie is bad boy.

Even better with a Xyn spoke card. Blam!

A friend at Twentieth Century Fox sent me some free goodies, cheers boss!!

I treated myself to some more vinyl, this time in the form of fellow Bristolites Peskimo and their awesome new bamboo zoo kid robot toys!

I got me some new sneaks and they came with a Cardiel flick-book, how good is that!?

I got my customize on as I was kindly invited to customize one of Shawnimals Plushform for the launch show in Chicago!

“My bleeding droplet heart!”

Dan came to stay, en-route to Glastonbury. His fancy circle tent was blatently designed by Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael & Michealangelo

Heroes in a halfshell…

We had tickets to go and see Atmosphere at the Thekla, we were all well psyched. Even Dan got to come as Sam came up from LDN for the gig (he’s Atmospheres press officer) and got Dan on the guest list!

Jonny & Micheala came down too!

and Sarah and Robbie and Rich, even though he’s hiding.

They KILLED it, it was so so good.

We were real close and it was such a small venue, amazing show!

Thanks to Sam, I got to meet Slug too,well stoked!

Before you knew it, it was time for Dan to be off on his travels.

Pone hooked all the Xyn up with his rad ‘XYN WILL ROCK YOU’ tee’s

Klingatron was part of an art show in Leicester, so I popped down to show some love

Insane work as always!

The man himself.

Me & Pone got a wee bit of hi-def footage for the Xyn video.

I packaged up the custom Droplets as they’re appearing at the Taipei Toy Festival this week!

I was lucky enough to get a wee mention in The Independent last week!

Well stoked!!

The Aardman Online crew had to have some group photo’s as Dan, the creative director, has an interview in 0117 magazine coming out, so I took me camera and tripod in…

Testing testing, 1 2 3

The standard boring group shot…

The exaggerated-fake-laugh shot

The oh-look-over-there-at-that-interesting-thing shot

The Catalogue-pose shot

The quick-strike-your-own-pose shot. definately my favourite and the one we sent to the mag. rad.

Sarah’s moved house so a card was in order.

I’m working on something super exciting and droplet-related, so can’t wait to unveil that sometime in the future…

haha, I’ve been wanting to see this for ages, so i picked up a copy… I hope i look like Dr Strange when i get older

You complete Mario Kart and it just puts you in a jump suit and makes you a tubbster

Me & Sarah took the kids (the Droplets) for a day out splashing around…

Oh those crazy kids!

I picked me up a copy of Super Smash Bros Brawl, but I dont really understand what I’m doing.

That’s it from me. Peasky weasky!

Hooked myself up with the City Car Club, so I didn’t have to get the bloody train. Also meant AeroTurbo could come along for the ride

Here he is, man of the hour. TheCleverOne™.

Luckily Dan leant me his friends uni card so we could go through all the fancy uni’s, this one is Kings College, the richest of the rich.

See, boats and everything.

Issac Newton designed this bridge, true fact.

Thats a dining room. Looks pretty much like ours at home. Just our seats aren’t red.

We went to a nice musuem with lots of picasso’s and stuff.

This is the view from Dans room. It’s basically Hogwarts for real people.

It was Dans 20th, so opening cards and pressies it was

He got a well fancy watch from ma & pa

Time to get our peddle on and have a mosey about

Come on ‘turbo, time for you to stretch your legs…

Dan got his lean on, for aerodynamic purposes

There she is!

Ready to roll!

This ginormous building is a library. It’s one of 3 libraries that has to have every book ever published, by law!

Kings College looks a bit DOOM-like in the grey skies

Cambridge doesnt really know what hip hop is. So they just make all the best CD’s cheap.

I don’t really know why I’ve full-named my family. It’s not like I don’t know who they are.

Best album title ever? I think so.

BUNNIES!

I took a mosey around the ‘grounds’

Dan was the producer / one-half of the stage crew for his friend Nialls production of ‘The Odd Couple‘ and they needed to do a run-through of the play, so i got to have my very own sneak peak and take some snaps…

The director…

It was well funny, i liked it alot.

The cast & crew…

JAZZ HANDS!!!

We went out at midnight for some classic long exposure shots, as I managed to get this one out of Dans window…

We grabbed a tripod, set my cam up on 30sec exposure and went spot hunting

I think this one is my favourite, this is a 55.9 second exposure:

Dans got a Droplet. fact.

What a way to finish the weekend – tea & toastie – ToasTea™ (see what I did there?)

Came home to find some lovelies from mr Postman. A blank Mei Mei House of Liu figure from Veggiesomething / Crazy Label to customize for a show, woooop!

It came with some bwad bwoy stickers too!

Me CMYK t-shirts arrived too, shezzam!

Thats all from me my loves, catch you on the flipside. Peasky weasky!