• Perfect Stars are easy to draw when you know how. Let award winning illustrator, Shoo Rayner, show you how five sided stars are constructed geometrically with a compass and a ruler.

    I’m not sure they teach this stuff at school anymore. I’s really good to understand how things are constructed and house drawing instruments for fun to learn how the world is made up from simple shapes and mathematics.

    I use Rotring Tikky Graphic 0.3 pen a Rotring plastic ruler and rotring cpmasses, but you can use any brand you like – they all work the same way!

  • A year ago I was asked to narrate a short stop frame animation called Comet – you can see it here

    This year, the Dan and Derek Morrow, the Morrow Brothers, asked me to narrate their late work, Token Hearts, a heart-warming story of love and dedication. The hero is a nutcracker, bringing the old Hans Christian Anderson story up to date with an American twist with a bit of Frankenstein and Tim Burton thrown in for good measure!

    It’s weird and wonderful hearing yourself tell a story to the visuals you’ve not seen before, but at last the video is live.

    You can see just how much hard work they have put into the plasticine right here. Enjoy! and please give the video some love, thumbs up and comments too. It all helps to make it more visible on YouTube.

  • stazi-elfI’ve just found out about a book and doll gift set called Elf on the Shelf.

    The idea is that you hide the elf around the house each day and your children are challenged to find him/her.

    The elf is actually there spying for Santa. How long before you can get a model with built in a spy camera so you can download your children’s bad behaviour so you can time them by posting it on YouTube?

    This smells a bit like the Stazi to me. What kind of phobias are children building up for later life thanks to this, no doubt well-intentioned, idea?

    Would Santa really do this to children? Would it even enter Santa’s mind to spy on children? I think not – at least not the incredible, kind old guy I remember him to be from my childhood – the embodiment of forgiveness, who still brought me presents, even though I was convinced I’d been far too naughty the previous year!