The summer has rushed by and I don't think I've seen daylight! Grandpa in my Pocket has now finished filming and we're about a month away from completing the visual effects post production. Reign of Death has also finished post production and the only remaining task is to do the sound dub and present it to the world. It's been a really tough two months doing days on Grandpa and nights on Reign but the results have been worth it. The resulting short film looks great, especially the CG work done by Linus Hofmann and the CG animation students at Swansea Metropolitan, and it seems strange to think it was a half finished, colour and sun-lit edit not a month and a half ago. I'll post more about the film when it's done in a special making-of article.

I've now made a big change of direction in my career by resigning from my post at Dinamo Productions and going back to being a freelance VFX artist. I'll also be setting up my own company to handle some (hopefully) larger jobs, but for now it'll just be myself doing some general VFX work. It's been a long time coming and I decided that now was the time to move on and put my knowledge to use in ways that would benefit me more directly. I've learned a lot in the past five years and I'm keen to take advantage of the opportunities developing currently in Cardiff. I finish at the end of November and I plan to take most of December off! It'll be my first proper holiday in three years!

Due to my ridiculous work schedules, I've barely been to the cinema recently. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was fun and looked great in 3D (something I couldn't say about Coraline). We've been watching True Blood at home and it certainly lives up to the pedigree of other HBO drama series. Very bloody, very sexy, very funny and completely engrossing. Have also seen Generation Kill (also HBO), which was good but meandering, and Star Trek twice on Imax, which completely blew me away. I've now seen Star Trek four times at the cinema and it still holds up - it has the most incredible energy and enthusiasm to it that means it just keeps getting better on each viewing.

Last weekend I was at the Birmingham International Comic Convention so I got a large number of new sketches from artists of every genre. I'll be scanning and posting them over the weekend. It was a good convention, although I think its venue and limitations to the comics industry means that it's going to struggle to grow. They need to find a city-centre location that can grab passing trade and appeal to a wider audience. The number of artists were noticeably fewer on the ground this time and most of the vendors didn't do as well as they expected. In its current state, I can't see it surviving. The next convention will be the Bristol one in May.