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We’ve been massive fans of the game/tool Line Rider that appeared on the internet last September and it appears that someone has spent a great deal of their time recreating the first level of Super Mario Brothers on it.

Ottawa 07 International Animation Festival Poster
Designed by Oscar Grillo

I’ve just received a mail from David Deacon of the Ottawa International Animation Festival letting me know that two of UK animation’s national treasures, Joanna Quinn and Ruth Lingford will be highlighted at the event which runs from September 19 - 23

The latest podcast is the last in our series of FMx/07 talks

Last night's mailout, which most of you will have received this morning featured the last of our FMX/07 lectures. We did take another featuring Friedrich Kirschner and Paul Marino on Machinima but thanks to it being a tiny room without mics and a helpful film student eating sweets right in front of me (yep, just like the cliche) the video is a bit rubbish; FMX though was a great conference for Imagine, the standard of speakers from these two lads who are at the cutting edge of their genre to John Boorman talking about film-making to the excellent Q+A with Roland Emmerich was well worth the entry price. Plus I made a lot of contacts and we'll definitely be reporting from there again next year.

For the Love of God is the UK's only showing at Cannes and screens today

Yesterday I had a great telephone interview with Joe Tucker whose NFTS film, For the Love of God, that we podcast a couple of month's back is the only British film at Cannes. It turns out it's also the only animation in the CinƒÂ©fondation which showcases just 15 short films from around the world.

Here's a taster where I'd asked Joe how on earth he'd managed to get Sir Ian Mckellen and Steve Coogan for his graduation film:

Saraswathi 'Vani' Balgam at FMX/07

We're currently working on the next issue of Imagine magazine and, specifically, an interview with Saraswathi 'Vani' Balgam the Director of Rhthym & Hues India. Vani and I met at FMX in Stuttgart and then had a follow up phone conversation last week which is the basis for the interview and it is packed with quotes like these:

[Talking of Rhythm & Hues] "We just celebrated our 20th anniversary. You know, we didn't want to make money to begin with ... We care about the quality of the people that we bring in and the quality of work that we do and not just the quantity of people that we have. It's all about social justice and all of the money goes into the employees and our own proprietary software and things like that."