Hello! And welcome to my Blog. A Blog by Tommy. A Tommy Blog. A Tlog.
This is a fairly new site. My work needed a home, somewhere I could send people when telling them to watch my films, something other than "search for so-and-so on YouTube!"
I've been writing and drawing ever since I can remember. In school, my Simpsons drawings gave me some street cred, which I really did not have a lot of, so I clung to it, like a child to a teddy bear.
In 2002, I was introduced to Powerpoint. A fairly boring programme, where you could make fairly boring slideshows. But then I saw one word.... "Animation". You could make the title on your slide show "fly in", or "swirl", or - my personal favourite - "fade in". Ooh, my slideshows were dramatic!
But then I got to thinking, very dangerously, "what if I used Powerpoint to make actual animations? Like the Simpsons? Or Family Guy? With stories and jokes and characters?" Little did I know, at that very moment, I was signing away hours, days, weeks, months and even years of my life. I invented a method of animation, making each slide a "frame", altering my drawings ever so slightly with each new slide, giving the illusion of movement.
This was 2003. Before Youtube. Before the VCR became a museum piece.
I needed voices to give my animated characters to life. My school friends came round to my house during half term, and acted out my scripts on a tape recorder. Then, using a camcorder my parents got as a free gift with their new car, I filmed my computer screen. It was a perfectly timed science. Absolute silence was needed in the room, and the curtains needed to be closed so that the sun didn't reflect on the computer screen.
My first animated film was a short pilot for "That's Life". It was a film about a newly married couple, who each had a child of their own. It was a modern day Brady Bunch. Without the catchy theme.
This is a fairly new site. My work needed a home, somewhere I could send people when telling them to watch my films, something other than "search for so-and-so on YouTube!"
I've been writing and drawing ever since I can remember. In school, my Simpsons drawings gave me some street cred, which I really did not have a lot of, so I clung to it, like a child to a teddy bear.
In 2002, I was introduced to Powerpoint. A fairly boring programme, where you could make fairly boring slideshows. But then I saw one word.... "Animation". You could make the title on your slide show "fly in", or "swirl", or - my personal favourite - "fade in". Ooh, my slideshows were dramatic!
But then I got to thinking, very dangerously, "what if I used Powerpoint to make actual animations? Like the Simpsons? Or Family Guy? With stories and jokes and characters?" Little did I know, at that very moment, I was signing away hours, days, weeks, months and even years of my life. I invented a method of animation, making each slide a "frame", altering my drawings ever so slightly with each new slide, giving the illusion of movement.
This was 2003. Before Youtube. Before the VCR became a museum piece.
I needed voices to give my animated characters to life. My school friends came round to my house during half term, and acted out my scripts on a tape recorder. Then, using a camcorder my parents got as a free gift with their new car, I filmed my computer screen. It was a perfectly timed science. Absolute silence was needed in the room, and the curtains needed to be closed so that the sun didn't reflect on the computer screen.
My first animated film was a short pilot for "That's Life". It was a film about a newly married couple, who each had a child of their own. It was a modern day Brady Bunch. Without the catchy theme.
I then managed to find a way of animating without the silence, curtains and camcorder. The first pilot I created in this style was "NAF - Normal Average Family", the twist being, they weren't a Normal Average Family (did you guess?) The Father, Gary, was a mad inventor. His children were robots, who didn't know they were robots, so if they were misbehaving, Gary could shut them down with a remote control.
Next up was Day in the Life. A mockumentary, following the lives of three characters.
The next project was an animated series of Doctor Who.
The next project, "Bernard and Pat" was an animated comedy about a middle aged married couple, with a grown up daughter who's left home. They're suffering from empty nest syndrome and have to make do with each other.
Then I was introduced to alcohol and kissing, and stopped animating for a while. But then in 2012, I began again. My former lecturer at The University of Central Lancashire teamed together to make "Placebo", and then I made two of my own films, "Gay Boys: The Practice Kiss", and "Malcolm the Man". These three films, my comeback to animation, have been shown all around the world; Including London, LA, Chicago and Texas.
I began in my dining room with my friends, using clunky technology to create short films. Less than ten years later, I would never have believed I'd be working with the likes of Hollywood superstar Bill Nighy, in a professional London recording studio, on one of my little cartoons.
Now, enough nostalgia! I have new films to make...
I began in my dining room with my friends, using clunky technology to create short films. Less than ten years later, I would never have believed I'd be working with the likes of Hollywood superstar Bill Nighy, in a professional London recording studio, on one of my little cartoons.
Now, enough nostalgia! I have new films to make...