Weekly Roundup #015
Oh hai there! Happy Friday to you all, hope you're good. Aardman work is keeping me busy as always but I'm very excited to say that I've got a bunch of silly things keeping me very entertained in my own time! Jumping around with a few passion projects at the minute...
I'm still noodling with the DMX lighting set-up for my OP-Z... and I've now turned it into a Lego brick housing for my other Teenage Engineering bits too. It genuinely makes me chuckle how absurd and colourful it all is, it's making me very happy to have here in my studio!
Speaking of buttons and colours and bleeps and bloops... I'm combining forces with my friend Jack Hayward aka the master of meticulous craft who loves buttons just as much as me! I won't spoil what we're up to yet, but we're having a lot of fun experimenting!
Of course, you can't have a passion project without giving it a name and graphic identity, so I've excitedly been doing that in me evenings. This is just a teaser of what's to come...
The other big thing that I'm plotting and planning is the idea behind making a book next year to celebrate 25 years of Jamfactory! The idea is well and truly planted and taking up roots now, so I'm gonna go for it! Crowdfunding currently feels the best way to do it, and it means I get to indulge my love of extra bits like badges, stickers, prints, toys etc and combine it all in one campaign!
I started by looking at some of my favourite other art books and inspecting their size and formats, to see what I liked best...
I feel like I've settled on a good size to begin - not too big, not too small but just right. It's lovely going on intuition and not agonising too much, if it feels right, then go for it - onto the next step! I knew right out of the gate I want the cover to be fluro pink with gold foil art, so doing a cheeky mock-up helps me keep up the momentum to move forwards with the idea...
I got to speak to my friend and king of the Kickstarter Mr Bingo, as he ran a really successful KS campaign back in 2015 with his 'Hate Mail' book and blew up the internet with his brilliant rap video to announce the crowdfunder!
Next steps are to write a script for my own announcement video as well as design some mock-up spreads for the book to show how it could all look! It's exciting to go on this journey - stay tuned for more!
Lastly, I spoke to my good friend Marc the other week, recapping the Beyond Tellerrand titles, so why not grab a cuppa and have a watch of that video below!
In the next few weeks I'll finally be able to reveal my contribution to Gromit Unleashed 3, which is hitting the streets of Bristol on June 30th! Until then - Cheers all, have a good un', don't forget to live, laugh, love.
- Gav.
WHAT AM I PLAYING?
Apart from pining for the new Mario Kart World on Switch 2, I've not been playing much apart from the off TCG Pocket game every now and then. The announcement of the new Marvel Tōkon Fighting Souls gave looks ACE though! I'm a big fan of Arc System Works for their incredible Guilty Gear series, they absolutely nail the 2D/3D aesthetic so to see Marvel x Playstation thrown into the mix here has got me hyped!
Seeing behind the scenes of how the partnership came together is fascinating too, really excited for this:
WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?
Pretty much still got the new LP album on looping repeat to be honest! I have gone back to Turnstile's previous album though in anticipation of the new release coming soon!
- Turnstile – Glow On
- Slipknot – Iowa
- Linkin Park – From Zero
- Aesop Rock – Black Hole Superette
Babymetal teamed up with Russian deathcore powerhouse Slaughter To Prevail this track, it's wonderfully bonkers!
WHAT AM I WATCHING?
I'm late to the party, but I'm working my way through Season 1 of Andor and loving it, now I'm on episode 8! I've been watching on the Apple Vision Pro too, so I can have it in all its full-scale glory in my own private virtual cinema, it's lush!
Me and Jane actually found time made time to rewatch Avengers Infinity War and Avengers End Game. Haven't seen them since originally catching them at the cinema, so it was great to watch them again - Thanos was such a bloody good baddies wasn't he! He's hard to top, is DOOM finally going to get his time to shine as prize dickhead!?
WHAT'S CAUGHT MY EYE?
Oh man, after resisting it for so long, the Teenage Engineering OP-XY is really calling to me... I can hear it now! It looks like the perfect combo of the OP-1 Field plus the original OP-Z... 😍
Now, does anyone fancy throwing £1,800 my way!? 😉
