Hurrah! Finally a new post - I think I've broken my record for time between blog entries! The truth is that I've not only been busy with Dinamo but also been waiting for Joomla to build up v1.5 enough to migrate the whole site over. I've bought new hosting and am on the verge of doing so however the new version doesn't have any way of generating thumbnails, a considerable shortcoming for sites like mine where I don't really have the time (or patience) to do my own. Hopefully that will get fixed soon but until then I'm stuck with the current version. I'm really looking forward to reorganising the site, updating the template with nice rounded edges on boxes, and converting all my movies to Flash.

Things are going a pace at Dinamo. The only one I can really talk about is called Grandpa in my Pocket, about a young boy and his mischievous grandfather who shrinks to 14cm tall when he puts on his magic cap. Havoc ensues. It's being shot here in Cardiff, we're doing a semi-digital workflow and providing all the VFX work. The virtual studio system will allow us to track the camera automatically, regardless of its position and orientation, a great leap forward from the postproduction camera tracking programs like PFTrack. These programs, while excellent, require a lot of work to get an accurate track while the virtual studio system does it automatically.

My various recommendations this month are:

The Wire: I'm currently watching Season 3 of HBO's peerless series about policing in Baltimore's roughest neighbourhoods. Like all of the good drama series (Deadwood, also a recommendation, The Sopranos, and other non-HBO faire like Mad Men), it almost seems effortless the way they weave the stories throughout the thirteen episodes. The early episodes seems almost sedate, with barely any action or event of note. Instead, you're given the chance to spend time with the characters, learning their virtues and flaws before the plot kicks in and you really care about their fate. You also learn their quirks so well that comedic moments happen through a simple phrase or gesture. The UK is so far behind the US with this stuff that it's beyond parody. Whatever happened to the highlights of Cracker and Prime Suspect? (crime drama, I know, but the only thing I can recall off the top of my head that stands out from the rubbish.) US drama series have a cinematic quality that's going to be very difficult to beat.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman and drawn by Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard: Really fun and involving zombie epic about a group of zombie apocalyse survivors trying to keep together when the world they know has ended. The first book suffers a little from comparisons to 28 Days Later, however as the story progresses the depth of character and society becomes greater. I have to admit I lost track sometimes of exactly which character was which, but the central thrust of the plot kept pulling me along. I'm looking forward to rereading it before the eighth book is released in the next few months.

I should have some more news about the Dinamo projects soon. I'll also be attending the Bristol Comics Convention in May to collect even more banners!

Added a new banner by Dylan Teague, artist for a number of 2000AD strips. 

Hopefully the first of a semi-regular series of book and film reviews. I read rather fast, have a joint Lovefilm account and have a Cineworld card, so my media exposure tends to be extensive.

Last night I went to see Stardust, and very enjoyable it was too. It compared very well to the book, changing its focus from being a traditional folk tale to a romantic comedy in a fantasy setting. It also pared down the books' rather numerous endings into a neater (although still studio-bound) finale. The only things that let it down for me were some truly poor visual effects and camerawork and direction that lacked the kind of epic quality that marked out Lord of the Rings as something special. Even with the tremendous Scottish and Icelandic landscapes, it still felt a little claustrophobic and could have done with a more visually-minded director or a stronger director of photography. However, the script was excellent, the cast on top form and great fun to watch.

Lastly, two comic book recommendations. The first is Criminal: Coward, which I bought from Sean Phillips at the Birmingham convention. I really liked Sean's artwork and when I saw that it had been written by one of the creators of Homicide and Oz, I knew that it had excellent pedigree. And I wasn't disappointed. In much the same style as those TV shows (one of which is HBO so you might spot a taste trend here!) the plot is character-driven, tense and very stylish. The noirish artwork suits it perfectly and I was gripped from beginning to end.

The second comic book recommendation is Malcolm Magic by Lo and Bob of Blink Twice, which again I picked up at the convention. Four volumes collect the twelve issue series and it's a great ride from beginning to end. Lorenzo's artwork is beautifully detailed and it's full of great comic moments and characters. I'm very much looking forward to their next collaboration, Moon!

Stay tuned for more!

It's half past midnight on a Saturday night and I've just finished updating all the banners from the Birmingham comics convention. Perhaps I made a rod for my own back by making it an information resource but what the hell! Illness and work got in the way of finishing it last weekend. Currently, the banners are not random and clicking on them just goes to the home page, but this will be fixed soon. Also, I'm going to go through them all and add the artists names to one corner. I think it's a good idea to credit the artists more clearly even though it might mess up the composition a little.

Each artist now has a small write-up about their career plus links to their respective home pages and blogs (if available.) Also, each sketch has a description to accompany it and you can view them all by listing the entries alphabetically by artist. Hopefully as more and more sketches get done over the years, the entries for each artist will grow accordingly. There's a few I didn't get at the convention: Dave Gibbons, Doug Braithwaite, Kevin Nowlan (although I got to chat briefly to him at the end), Hunt Emerson, Gary Erskine and John McCrea, but perhaps I'll catch up with them another time. Now that I've got this resource online, I want to start commissioning work by post from artists I'll probably never get a chance to meet unless I battle through ComicCon!

On the Dinamo front, I'm finishing work on the titles for 2 Dŷ a Ni (formerly Canpunt a Mochyn) this week and looking forward to seeing the titles for Pobol Y Cwm on S4C this Monday. If I miss them, I'm not too worried as they'll be on nightly for the next five years! On Friday, I'll be at Glamorgan University giving a talk about Dinamo and then an introduction to a module I'll be leading on CG/Live Action integration. We're very keen at Dinamo to get involved with the local animation courses, especially as we'll be hiring quite a few animators over the next twelve months, 2D, 3D and compositing! CG and live action integration is a major part of our work and it's rarely covered on animation courses. Hopefully this module will give the students an insight into the local VFX industry!

The move to Joomla 1.5 is going to take longer than I expected as the two plugins for the site won't be converted to the new codebase for some time. That said, if alternatives are available then I use them instead. Personally, I want to use 1.5 because it feels better to use, has cleaner template construction and will be future proofed for 1.6 and 2.0 (where some of the more interesting features will be added.)

Now that the insane workload of the last two months is now over, I must get back to going to the cinema. There's four films I need to see (Stardust, Ratatouille, Sicko and Eastern Promises) and quite a few more on the way. I've already missed so many that my DVD rental list is growing rapidly. What's the point of paying for a Cineworld card if you don't use it, I ask myself.