Saturday, 17 April 2010

Contributors: Kim Emson - Animator

After over 6 years of animating for some amazing sutdios, Kim has been seeking out an interesting new project to get her teeth and creativity into in all parts of the process. Also to be able to utilise her lovely studio space in the North West. It has been 6 years since her last short film which was also her student film- so its high time the passion was expressed again. Recently she was seeking out a producer who could be a partner in crime and this was harder than expected, until, thanks to shooting people, she met Carl!




Kim is excited about animating and directing an animated short that marries her two favourite genres- animation and zombies!!!! The slog will be long and hard and sweaty (the studio is hot in the summertime even without those hot studio lights on!) - but will be worth every bead of sweat and tear (hopeful not- but it will be tears of passion).



Kim's website is currently having a make over with the help of Viv-id Manchester, so watch this space!

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Contributors: Leighroy Marsh - Writer





   
                                Leighroy Marsh - Writer


Turning his hand to writing after not doing too well at everything else, Leighroy Marsh has enjoyed a small amount of success with his popular children's stories.


His first publication "The Hairy Plug Monster " is highly regarded and  is often compared to The Gruffalo and The Cat in the Hat.

Zombelina is just one of a collection of spooky stories to be published by HPM Media Ltd in November 2010 in tandem with the intended premier of the film.

Not one for writing " fluffy pink stories" that children would rather not read, Leighroy's ambition is write tales that scare the "b'jeezus" out of his young audience and make them giggle at the same time.

Motto  "Raaargh"


You can see Leighroy's perform his stories at Zombie Aid 3 on the 1st August

http://zombie-aid.blogspot.com/

http://hairyplugmonster.blogspot.com/

http://www.hairyplugmonster.com/

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Contributors : James Lawrence








James Lawence -  Artwork


At 25, James Lawrence's grand plan to turn his imagination into a living, and to never have to wear a tie to work again, continues apace.


Entirely self-trained, James will do pretty much anything that involves putting a pencil to paper, such as comics, tattoo designs, personal commissions, caricature, illustration and custom design work, to name but a few.



Pop culture is his fuel, caffeine is his vice, and his motto is "If it's weird, it wins".




See more of James's work :

http://cardboardrobotstudios.blogspot.com/

http://www.dzineclothing.com/

http://www.kingfridayjoe.deviantart.com/

Sunday, 4 April 2010

The story behind the film

The Zombelina Project.

From a throwaway comment on a chat page between Carl and Leighroy in early February the idea of Zombelina was born.

Leighroy: We were passing ideas around for Zombie related T-Shirts for Carl's clothing project such as AberZombie and Fitch etc when I mentioned to Carl that he should do a film about a possessed toy that eats people and call it "Zombelina", just for a laugh.

Surprisingly Carl said it would be a great idea and I should write it, and if I did - then he would film it.

Fair enough, I mean how many great ideas are born in Internet chat rooms, but for one reason and another nothing ever gets done about them.

However, at the time I was writing a collection of short spooky stories for publication on Halloween, and thought that I could at least write the poem at some stage, because it would work well in the collection.

To be honest I thought nothing more of it, as I was busy promoting another book I had written -The Hairy Plug Monster.. and left it at that.

About 2 week later Carl asked me again if I had given anymore thought to it because he had bumped into a freelance animator, Kim Emson http://www.kimemsonanimates.com/ with whom he had worked with before and thought that Zombelina would work better in animation rather than using live actors. He also said that he had mentioned the project to Kim and she was really interested in the idea.

Carl sent me a link to her website http://www.kimemsonanimates.com/ for me to look at and see if I was keen.....as soon as I clicked on the link I knew that there was a strong chance that this could actually work, and agreed with Carl that we should all meet up and have one of those "getting to know you" kind of chats.


Apart from the storyline of "possessed toy that eats people" there wasn't much else, because until this point I hadn't written anything and there was a good chance that I was going to get exposed. A few days of dedicated writing later I had enough verses to take to the meeting which gave a good impression of the style and format that the intended animation may take. We all seemed pretty up beat about the project and went our separate ways.

Two days later the story was finished and with it - several pieces of minimalist music I had composed for a possible soundtrack including a spectacular waltz.

Carl for his part had been in touch with artist and illustrator James Lawrence http://cardboardrobotstudios.blogspot.com/ who submitted some brilliant first designs of the main characters; Zombelina, The Toymaster, The Witch and an additional image of a possessed Zombelina.

Several more images followed together with a preliminary sound file of Zombelina being read by actor Steve Garry, http://www.stevegarry.info/ http://www.youtube.com/user/stevegarry1 .

So in truth what seemed like a joke at the time has now started to evolve into a serious project which will premier at Grim Fest 2010 in Manchester and go much further.