Roundup

Roundup #018 - A visit to LA

Gavin Strange

18 Jul 2025 — 6 min read

Hello! This week I was lucky enough to take a trip to the states and give a couple of creative talks in glittery Los Angeles! Thanks to my friends at Media Arts Lab and Apple, I got to give a neon-soaked presentation covering craft and creativity, highlighted by the 'Wallace & Gromit Shot On iPhone' project we all made at Aardman together last year! Because I have played a lot of Grand Theft Auto V over the last 12 years, I felt I knew that place pretty well already!

Where I was staying was right on the beachfront road, where I've virtually sped up and down there causing mayhem many a time! I woke up really early the first day thanks to jet lag, so decided to go for an early morning run along the beach track and spied so many familiar locations (and, fun fact, ran past South Park's Matt Stone!).

I can't show you anything at all from my adventures at MAL and Apple of course, it was all super top secret, but I can tell you that I had an absolute blast! Everyone was so kind and it was a real honour to be there, talking about all things creative and waxing lyrical about stop-frame, human-made craft and the joy of animation.

It was especially poignant for me because the very first talk I ever gave was at an Apple store in Birmingham all the way back in 2008! I was so terrified in that talk, and took every single item I had ever made to 'prove' I was allowed to be there!

So to be in LA, 17 years later, to give a talk to the same company, but thanks to a collaborative project we all made together, made at the animation studio I most admire, with a set of characters I'd grown up with, was (and still is) absolutely mind-blowing to me. I am incredibly, incredibly grateful!

Talking of grateful, whilst staying in Santa Monica I remembered I knew someone at the mighty Sony Santa Monica, the iconic development studio behind my favourite game of all time God Of War and God Of War Ragnarok! Bruno Velazquez is a brilliant Animation Director (GOW / GOW Ragnarok) & Game Director (GOW Valhalla) and we met last year whilst both being judges in the Animation category of the 2024 Game BAFTA's!

He was kind enough to give me his time and show me around the studios, which was amazing! I got to go into the motion capture studio where they created the game (as well as another indie studio called 'Naughty Dog' who used it for their small games called 'The Last of Us' and 'Uncharted'). I was a very lucky duck!

I then went to meet an old friend, a lovely gentleman by the name of Lee Simpson. Lee is a fellow brit, a northern lad, who now calls LA his home! He's also an absolute maverick who takes self-driving cars about town, which blew my tiny mind.

I first met Lee in 2006, nineteen flipping years ago, at an arts show in Newcastle that he organised called 'Rebelo 06'. Me and Jonny made the trip up north and it's the first time we met James Klinge aka Klingatron in person! That feels like a lifetime ago, we were babies!

So it was a short but very sweet trip. I packed in loads in just a few days, it was ace. Thank you so much to MAL, Apple & Aardman for the opportunity! I'll leave you with a bunch of shots I took whilst I was there. A few off my iPhone (Shot ProRaw, graded in the Darkroom app):

And a few off the Fuji X100V (just JPEGs straight out the camera):

And there we have it, my whirlwind trip to the City of Angels! Thanks for reading, catch you all in the next one!

- Gav.

WHAT AM I PLAYING?

I've still got Death Stranding 2 downloaded and ready to go, but as I've been on my trip this week, I haven't played anything. After my very, very fortunate visit to Sony Santa Monica Studios I have a big urge to replay God Of War and God Of War Ragnarok again!! The kids are still jumping around playing all sorts of titles, Sylvie who's 4 is firmly locked into 2024's Astro Bot on the PS5, which rightly won 'Game Of The Year' everywhere.

WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?

Noisy stuff this week, new and old. The Apple Music interface is still getting some used to but I'm very happy to be rid of Spotify now.

Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes – Modern Ruin / Sticky
Disembodied Tyrant – The Poetic Edda
Korn – Issues
The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die / Experience
A Day To Remember – You're Welcome
Hail Mary Mallon – Bestiary

I'm looking forwards to the new Deftones record too. I kinda dropped off after 2010's Diamond Eyes but excited to hear what's new in the forthcoming album.

WHAT AM I WATCHING?

I watched a few things on the flight, I love a plane-popcorn movie, something I don't have to think much about...

Bad Boys Ride or Die was the perfect example of that! I was obsessed with the original 1995 Bad Boys as a 13-year-old (Guns! Car! Swears!) so I can't tell if this latest one is just as silly as the original and I was too young to tell, or if it's become a parody of itself. Either way, it was a good way to kill a couple of hours though, even if i did snort out loud at some of those most ridiculous lines!

Captain America Brave New World occupied a similar territory of time-killer. It was, erm, fine? Harrison Ford was phoning it in for the cash, clearly, but Anthony Mackie is always fun to watch. The emotional beats were so by-the-book and not earnt it was almost bizarre at times!

I did watch a masterpiece though - I took my Vision Pro with me and watched Back To The Future in between the in-flight meals and it's as good as ever. It really is a perfect film, isn't it. I was wondering if I could show it to the kids but then remembering the swearing, innuendoes and Libyan terrorists, it's not quite suitable for an 8 and 4 year old quite yet!

WHAT'S CAUGHT MY EYE?

Ignore the shots that contain Jared Leto and the rest of this looks and sounds amazing! Light cycles in the real world!? NIN creating an original soundtrack!? YES and YES please. It'd be great to see this in IMAX!