I attended Alan Gilbey's animation writing workout at the East End Film Festival. Alan is a personable and knowledgable screenwriter, who quickly created a merry atmosphere by encouraging the workshop participants to be physically goofy together. I encountered some resistance within myself but certainly felt warmed up to the task of doing some unselfconscious writing, so it was an effective technique. There were also alot of animations to watch and so four hours zipped by, however near the end I felt snappy and my friend Shelly had a funny smile that didn't reach the eyes. Some rich teas at half time would have helped.
What we learnt: Show don't tell. Have a few ideas going at once, put one in a drawer for a few weeks. Everything needs a good edit.

my first post

I went to 20 years of Pixar at the Science Museum. Hooray, an exhibition about animation here in London. I paid my £9 and I was immediately absorbed with the splendid colourscripts and collages for films such as Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc and The Incredibles, plus a very lively storyboard by Ralph Eggleston for The Birds and an X-ray of Mr Potato Head. All the Pixar productions started with named individuals and their pastels, charcoal and paint and the works had been saved and brought to Kensington. But then it was spoiled, since you couldn't leave until you had endured an unaccountable burst of machismo that was 'artscape', in which the aforementioned drawings were arbitrarily 'animated' in a high res 3D environment in a summary that was very Thorpe Park indeed.