I for one welcome our new iPod Overlords...

Smirkworthy still image from the lastest stateside Simpsons episode. Future Guy: "If only we'd known that iPods would unite and overthrow the very humans they entertained..." Looking around me on the 07:15 from Maynooth it certainly feels that way sometimes.
::: Link from plasticbag.org

Benny Award Winner

Ian’s short film: ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ won the top award in the New Irish Short Animation category at the Galway Film Fleadh yesterday. This is wonderful news on many different levels. Not least of which being that I can now legitimately use the phrase “my brother, the award-winning director” in conversation.

Congratulations to Ian and his team. It is great to see all of their hard work being recognised and heartening to see that such a boot-strapped short film can stand its own against better funded productions.

Obviously, winning this award makes Ian somewhat of a hot property. We could see a career upswing if Boulder put some appropriate PR resources behind this win, or equally if the animation headhunters come a-calling. Now is the time to get started on a treatment for Pixar, Benny!

Delicious Tags: Ian Kenny | Big Rock Candy Mountain | Galway Film Fleadh
Technorati Tags: Ian Kenny | Big Rock Candy Mountain | Galway Film Fleadh

Coraline concept art

Some concept art for the film version of Neil Gaiman's book Coraline has surfaced on the internet. Its one of my favourite children's books – one for the more creepy, off-kilter, gothic regions of your library. It is concise enough to adapt into a film without having to excise too much of the story; and it resolves itself such that there won't be the temptation to produce a sequel or an on-going series franchise, which seems almost an industry prerequisite these days. The film is helmed by stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas – another long-time favourite of mine. It will be interesting to see how his particular aesthetic style meshes with the narrative. One to put on your watch-list I think.

Technorati Tags: Coraline | Neil Gaiman | Flickr Cluster: Neil Gaiman

Busy Benny Blogs, Builds Better Site

Does this man ever sleep at all? In a multi-pronged internet land-grab, my brother Ian is launching a shiny new blog featuring drawings of work-in-progress with notes and commentary. (Check out the sketches that he ‘knocked out while watching the TV’. Presumably he included those to keep the rest of us doodlers in our rightful place.)
He has simultaneously launched a fully-revised edition of his personal site: KKF v2.0. (“Here is a short film that I made.” and “I hope to have this book published soon”, etc.) Although, I do think his site has lost a certain something now that it does not include Elvis shooting into a pile of televisions.
If you still have any browsing time left after crawling that site, then there is always his pseudonymous side-project: ‘Metal Ruins Lives’. And no, before you ask, those are not found album covers. Surprise, surprise, they have all been custom-created for the site. Rock on Benny.
Any rumours that Benny is changing his name to ‘MediaEngineOne Kenny’ are only mildly exaggerated.