Blog
Often about animating dust bunnies but with sundry other detritus along the way.
I'm hoping to make an animated film about sentient and occasionally mouthy household dust bunnies and their existential duel with a 1500 watt vacuum cleaner. The story’s a very serious bit of whimsy in the spirit of The Clangers, The Borrowers and Beatrix Potter's tales.
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July and August 1944 saw 30 AU race towards Rennes and Brest alongside, and sometimes in front of, the rapidly moving US 9th Armoured Division.
All was not sweetness and light between the officers. There was friction between the Commandos and their officers as well.
This is probably where Royal Marine Collins saw the most fighting with 30 AU. The Unit was not shy of a fight and they were the first Allied units to take German prisoners.
The target for Operation Crossbow was the launch and preparation sites of the V bombs that were now being launched at London. June 18 sees 'A' troop uncovering a rocket site and Collins turns 20.
30 Assault Unit goes hunting for intelligence treasure across the Cherbourg peninsula
June 10, 1944. 30 Assault Unit sails from Southampton to be landed on Utah beach
After signing up in July '42, Ralph's been through basic training followed by Commando training at Achnacarry. He's then sent to Signalling School in Wales.
Following the footsteps of his older brother James, Ralph is sent for Commando training to the Royal Marine Training Group at Achnacarry in the rugged and very wet north of Scotland.
My dad, Ralph, volunteered to fight in the war when he turned 18 years old.
It’s just furniture to us but those fixtures and fittings are monumental architecture and towering cliff faces to a dust bunny on the floor. That crumpled laundry left lying around? That’s what forms the shifting contours of the land the dust bunnies inhabit. So what’s it like in dust bunny country?
For animating bunnies of dust, do we really need to see every thread and hair perfectly rendered down to its sub-surface light scattering and refraction or will a general notion of scruffiness do? Can a computer create a dust bunny you can love? That is the question.
Music sends cues that this bit is fun, this bit is sad and everybody knows what impending doom sounds like. And sometimes the music is a surprise.
While I was charmed and beguiled by the whimsy of Small Films, American cartoons made me laugh. American cartoons had different qualities. Effervescent energy, bigger gags, more slapstick. And they had a secret.
There were few programmes I watched with a keener anticipation than these. These were almost inevitably made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate’s production company, Smallfilms.
Who here will speak for the bunnies of dust?
Too much time in front of the telly as a kid – the fruits of my idleness.
