police 101 film is now at large

The 101 Non-emergency number public information film we made for The UK Home Office (agency M&C Saatchi) is now showing up all over the web as the UK regional police forces all seem to have their own YouTube channels these days.

TANDEM director Chris Gavin shot the film almost entirely as still photos which were then 'stitched together' using some smart compositing techniques to add depth and movement to the piece.

Simon Draws: The Dog

In this short film from the webisodic Simon Draws series, Simon Tofield shows us how he draws The Dog.

dave daniels live in madrid

TANDEM director David Daniels was recently invited to Madrid for the Punto y Raya (Dots and Lines) Festival; a special event celebrating the best in abstract film-making. Dave gave an illustrated lecture about his commercial and personal animation/design work. His talk was recorded and an excerpt of this has just appeared on Vimeo. (see above.)

Simon Draws : The Hedgehog

Here's the third video in the new Simon Draws series. This time, Simon Tofield shows us how he draws his Hedgehog characters.

Simon Draws : The Kitten

Here's another Simon Draws video we've put together. This time Simon Tofield shows how he draws the new (and very adorable) character from his Simon's Cat films and books... The Kitten.

Simon Draws : Simon's Cat

Here's a lovely short film showing how Simon Tofield draws Simon's Cat.

Heinz Pasta Pouches

TANDEM has created a new television commercial for Heinz Pasta Pouches, through advertising agency AMV BBDO London. The 30” spot was directed by Daniel Greaves. You can see the film here.

chris's home movies in smash hit music promo

Greetings pop-pickers... riding high in the UK top 40 hit parade at the moment is this song Video Games from US artist Lana Del Rey. (Embedded here from the artist's official YouTube upload is the promo video.)



Fans of TANDEM will probably have spotted already that some of the fragmentary 'old movie' footage used in this music promo has been sourced from TANDEM director Chris Gavin's super8 cine films. You can see Chris's 2008 home movie California08 here. See if you can spot the clips that have been used.

simon's cat on the big screen

Two weeks ago, Simon Tofield celebrated the launch of his third Simon's Cat book Kitten Chaos with a special event held at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square. The event was also the world premiere of Simon's new film Double Trouble.

It was great to see the Simon's Cat films on the big screen at last and we put together this short film for Canongate Books (above) to mark the occasion.

david daniels retrospective, madrid, november 2011

David Daniels will be showing examples of his abstract music based films at the 'punto y raya' festival in Madrid on the 5th of November. For more information go to:

http://www.puntoyrayafestival.com/retrospectiva_daniels_eng.php

tulip 5

Number 5 in a series of 8 abstract films created by David Daniels responding to the music of Dustin O'Halloran. Work created with printed wooden blocks of varying geometric shapes.

Police 101

At TANDEM we were recently invited by agency M&C Saatchi to make an on-line public information film for the UK Home Office.

The public are being asked to call the new number 101 to contact the police for non-emergency issues that don't warrant a full 999 response.

TANDEM director Chris Gavin decided on a visual styling composed almost entirely from a visual collage of stills photography followed by some considerable effects compostiting to add movement and bring the whole thing together.

The film has been placed on YouTube already on the Devon and Cornwall Police, so we've embedded the link here for you to see...

TANDEM sign three new directors

After a busy summer, TANDEM is happy to announce the signing of three new directors - End of the Pier Films, The Neighbourhood and Caroline Attia.

End of the Pier is a director duo consisting of Andy Kaiser and Cadi Catlow. They both started off specializing in stop-motion animation and have gradually begun to combine various animation techniques in their work. Clients include Dulux, Celebrity Death Match and CBBC.

The Neighbourhood is an award winning, design-led animation company that employ various techniques including high-end CGI to make incredible work for many clients including Heston Blumenthal and Sony.

Caroline Attia is a talented designer, illustrator and director with a beautiful, illustrative style. Most recently, she designed and directed the music video Elevator Operator by American singer/songwriter, Jim Bianco.

Animatti animation workshops 2011

TANDEM's Chris Gavin will be running animation workshops at this year's Animatti event in Alghero Sardinia and giving an talk one evening too. Highlights from last year's event can be seen here...

Canongate 'The Canons'

Publishing firm Canongate has launched 'The Canons'; a newly-minted edition of twelve of the finest and most-loved titles from the Canongate list. The chosen books represent a dazzling variety of authors and stories, each and every title an acknowledged classic.

Canongate asked TANDEM to make a short on-line movie to showcase some of the titles and announce the new range to the book-loving public.

Here is the short animated film we made to launch 'The Canons'...

NEWS June 2011

Fans of Simon's Cat (and there are more and more by the day!) will like to see the splendid new website over at www.simonscat.com
The all-new site is a portal for all things Simon's Cat; a platform for Simon Tofield's sketches and musings, yet also a thriving community space for cat-lovers too.

crash bang wallow (reloaded)

Here's another chance to see Jon Dunleavy's short film 'Crash Bang Wallow'. Since May last year, this short has pulled-in around 320,000 YouTube hits. The film won top prize at the 6th NFB (National Film Board of Canada) / Cannes on-line film competition.

best of animation 5

The new 'Best of Animation 5' DVD has now hit the shelves. The compilation is put together by the good people of the Stuttgart Animation Festival and includes their pick of ten films from the 2010 edition. There are many fine world-class short films to be seen here including our very own TXT ISLAND!

'A Family Portrait' dir. Joseph Pierce
'Horn Dog' dir. Bill Plympton
'La dama y la muerte' dir. Javier Recio Gracia
'Logorama' dir. Francois Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houplain
'Love & Theft' dir. Andreas Hykade
'Prayers for Peace' dir. Dustin Grella
'Runaway' dir.Cordell Barker
'Sam’s Hot Dogs' dir. David López Retamero
'TXT Island' dir. Chris Gavin
'YELLOW CAKE' dir. Nick Cross

world's most awesomest police chase action video

If you stay up late watching really bad TV, it wont be long before you encounter these Police Chase Action Video clip shows. Here's Tandem director Chris Gavin's Flash animation tribute/pastiche of the genre...

See Chris's own film-making blog and more films etc. at chrisgavin.com

Bold Type

A bold and eye-catching typographic TV commercial from TANDEM director Dave Daniels.
'Sportsbook' is the third in a series of William Hill Adverts and is now on air. Dave worked closely with agency creatives Ben Walker and Matt Gooden at BMB on the spots to continue a collaboration that started with the award-winning Honda Campaign.

See William Hill 'Sportsbook' Here.

a site for more eyes

Some visitors who find this blog may not yet have discovered the main TANDEM website over at www.tandemfilms.com Well, I can highly recommend a visit; especially now that we have the entire site re-engineered over the last few weeks.

Visitors will now find a lot of new content (we've posted lots of new work) and better tools for searching and watching the movies. Behind the scenes, the site is all database driven now, so easy for us to update and easier for search engines to sift through.

The site is no longer using Flash technology, so even users of the various Apple IOS gadgets will find it all works for them too now, what's not to like?

is he really STILL plugging TXT ISLAND?

Since being included in the 2010 'Craftwork' Programme of the ONEDOTZERO festival, Chris Gavin's typographic epic TXT ISLAND has received many additional screenings at festivals and events around the world. News has just come in that on May 9th 2011, the film will be shown at London's Saatchi Gallery as part of the COLLECT Contemporary Art Fair.

NEWS TANDEM releases third Canongate Books promo

Chris Gavin has just finished his second promotional film for the publishing house Canongate Books.

Chris has created a compelling and original short film 'Our Tragic Universe' inspired by the latest novel by author Scarlett Thomas. The one minute film combines stop motion animation with snippets of live-action footage to evoke locations and themes from the book.

See Our Tragic Universe on the Canongate YouTube channel

our tragic universe

TANDEM director Chris Gavin (that's me writing in the third person again) has completed a new short film for Canongate Books to help promote 'Our Tragic Universe'; the new novel by Scarlett Thomas.

NEWS April 2011

At TANDEM we've had a busy start to the year.

David Daniels directed a series of spots for the new William Hill campaign, collaborating with Ben Walker and Matt Gooden at BMB and a new campaign for Nokia on which he worked with creatives Richard Dorey and Mark McCall from Wieden+Kennedy.

TANDEM directors have created two short films based on novels for publishing house Canongate Books. The brief was to give an essence of their chosen books through a short animated film, giving the directors a blank canvas on which to create their perception of the story. Chris Gavin made a stop-motion film for Dan Rhodes' latest book, Little Hands Clapping. His minute long film has been featured in Shots and Creative Review. Daniel Greaves made a film to promote the book The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan. Russell Pay of Shrooty created the sound on both films.

Chris Gavin also directed a series of five idents for I-Robot. The idents use a combination of 2D and 3D to great effect.

William Hill 'Goals'
Nokia 'Range'
Little Hands Clapping
The Last Werewolf
I-Robot 'Pet Hair'

little hands clapping

Here's the short film we've just made for Canongate books to mark the paperback release of 'Little Hands Clapping' - the latest novel by Dan Rhodes. This one minute stop frame short was directed/animated by Chris Gavin.

another sun spot

Another TANDEM broadcast TV commercial that seems to he been released recently without any blog here coverage at all... until now ...
Dan Greaves directed another commercial for SUN dishwasher products (Our third one now). The spot again features our high-end stop-motion animation techniques; yes that's right, it's all real crockery and cutlery inside a real dishwasher. Once again this was filmed in TANDEM's very own basement studio space and clean-up and set extension post production work was performed in-house too.
Sharp-eyed viewers will spot that this is in fact quite a fancy shoot, with a motion control system being used for some of the animation shots and RED One camera used for the live-action product shots.
The commercial was made for broadcast in France for agency Lowe Strateus in co-production with 85bis.

pete's wagon

We somehow forget to mention the Volkswagen idents that we made recently. Director Peter Baynton and his team put together some delightful hand-drawn 2D spots with a refreshingly retro illustration style. A live-action hand sketches the illustrations for the four idents representing classic cartoon strip scenarios. The idents are currently showing on the Discovery Channel and promote VW's range of Caddy commercial vehicles. You can view one of the idents, 'Explorer' here.

simon's cat in 'sticky tape'

A new Simon's Cat film! Over a million views in the first week and counting... Watch as the Internet's favourite feline has an adhesive adventure...

NEWS February 2011

Peter Baynton directed four idents for VW Caddy and the Discovery Channel. The playful idents co-produced with Iris use traditional 2D animation that interacts with Daniel Greaves' hand.

Despite the months of preparation for the all consuming role of the hand in the VW Idents, Daniel Greaves managed to find some spare time to direct the third in a series of adverts for Sun Dishwashing Detergent, co-produced with Lowe Strateus and 85Bis in Paris. The spot is currently airing throughout France.

Simon Tofield, Creative Director on the VW Caddy idents, released a second Simon's Cat book entitled 'Beyond the Fence'. Already the fifth most subscribed UK channel on YouTube, the views of his YouTube channel over Christmas smashed through the 100 million mark and have now surpassed 110 million.

Sun 'Race'
VW Caddy 'Explorer'
Simon's Cat 'Beyond the Fence'

have we got mews for you

Simon Tofield and his inspirational cats have been featured in the Daily Mirror (one of the UK's most popular newspapers). The Mirror has chosen to run Simon's Cat cartoon strips daily, starting today! The Mirror article introducing Simon to the readers can be read here.

Simon Tofield, the Mirror's Poly Hudson and a cat.

Non-UK readers can also enjoy seeing the strips online at the paper's website here.

stuttgart 10

A Happy NEW YEAR to you.
Here's wishing you all good things for 2011.

But first a little glance back to May 2010. While I was at the Stuttgart animation festival I recorded my experiences of the trip using the little Lumix camera I had with me at the time. It wasn't until I had some 'spare' time over the Christmas break that I put together this little montage of the event...

Stuttgart 10 : shortfilm by chrisgavin from Chris Gavin on Vimeo.