This is a blog about The Meadow Man, a feature length animation in the works By David Firth. This is mainly a solo project so it will take many years. Don't worry, this project is still alive!


Tuesday 27 January 2009

The first motions

Hello my name is David and I make cartoons. I have made over fifty cartoons over the last few years using a variety of techniques and styles. Some were instant viral classics while others didn't really do much at all. As time has trodden on, I've exhausted ideas, series, characters and jumped from one thing to another more that I should have been allowed to. I've got almost finished, half finished and quarter finished cartoons clogging my mammoth hard drive, countless scripts crammed into countless folders, online documents and five or six grotty notepads filled with ideas and bullet points that look more like odd words and phrases than anything remotely useable.

I used to think of an idea and make it quickly. That was fun but eventually I needed a new challenge. So I started trying to develop the scripts more, be more subtle, leave questions to be answered and put more effort into making my cartoons look more cinematic. The cartoons inevitably got longer and had more room to breathe. This satisfied me more but they weren't as punchy and instantly ridiculous/shocking/silly as before and many internet people lost interest. I started to feel my scripts and ideas were getting too drawn out and lengthy for internet shorts. I would start writing a cartoon and I'd actually have to force myself to stop just to keep it short - it was either that or I'd end up cutting stuff out that I probably wanted in there.

So one day I decided that I would just write a cartoon and not even think about how long it would be. I would actually cram all the stuff that I wanted in there and let it breathe and grow. Well that's been happening for a while now and so I must officially announce that I am working towards a feature length animation - one that I will try and get screened at various places and that I hope to release on DVD. I intend to do this almost entirely on my own. I will probably employ people to help me with various things but I want to keep the process very similar to how I would go about creating an internet short. The working title appears to be "The Meadow Man" but I can't imagine it'll stay as that - it's just the title of a short story I wrote a few years ago from which part of my feature will be based.

This doesn't mean I am done with internet shorts, it's just a new challenge that I need to attempt. This will not be Salad Fingers the movie or the entire story of Spoilsbury Toast Boy. It will be something new. The current status is that I have chunks of the script all over the place and a basic structure diagram. I haven't really done much to it over the last couple of months due to all the work I took on around Christmas but this post marks the point where I really get to work. I will hopefully update with every significant development and maybe even some videos too. If you have read all of this then thank you. I didn't realise I had this much to say until I started typing. If you have any questions I will gladly answer them. Summary: I am making an animated feature film.