Pirates! trailer ahead

Aghast ye landlubbers (well you'd be disappointed if we didn't start with some pirate speak), here is the project that I'm currently working on.

I've moved up to Bristol to work at Aardman Animation on their latest project Pirates!

I'm sure you all know about Aardman's rich animation history, it's a real honour to be working here.  I'm not sure how much I can say about Aardman or the Pirates! movie but as you can imagine the quality of work here at Aardman is phenomenally good.


Pirates! trailer, watch ye at 1080p

I'm one of the Effects Technical Directors on this show, doing lots of awesome fluid and particle effects (water, fire and everything in between the two) hopefully have many good shots for the reel.

The Pirate Captain - voiced by no less than Hugh Grant (and you thought he was good in Questiontime)

• Moving away from baby

Being that this supposedly a blog about being a dad as much as it is about CGI and filmaking, the only downside is that I'm away from baby for most of the week.  I travel up from Paddington to Bristol on monday and go back on Friday.  I do speak to my boy everyday on the phone - I've taught him to count to ten over the phone, who says remote learning does not work? 

 In an odd kind of a way leaving at the crack of dawn on monday actually feels more 'dad' than anything else I do.  I quietly sneak out so as not to wake anyone (obviously try to wake the wife up - 'I'm going now!!!  I said I'm leaving, don't pretend to be asleep!!!').


I poke my head through the bedroom door and see baby sleeping away, blow a kiss and silently whisper that it's all for him.  I did once try to kiss him on the forehead like you'd see Will Smith do in Pursuit of Happyness, but stood on one of his squeaky toys.  He woke up, crying ensued and a train was missed (none of which is true but would add some comic relief to said Gabriele Muccino/Will Smith movie)

• It's the same but different

In reality anyone who works in VFX knows you do long long hours (why is that anyway?  One can easily envy all those people who leave work at 5) so you wouldn't really see your kid anyway.  And if you do see them in the mornings you're probably running late for work.