Although I'm not an animator, I often have reason to make animations. Sometimes they're pretty full-on but mostly they're small and silly. I've now made enough to edit together this showreel, though I'm kinda reluctant to call it that (I'm not an animator after all).

While most of the work isn't exactly slick, I'm pretty happy looking over everything as a whole. I had a lot more stuff than I was expecting and I can definitely see a style starting to form. Most of the included animations were completed in an afternoon or two as I was usually working to a short illustration deadline rather than a longer animation one. This, combined with the fact that I'm not an animator, is my get-out-of-jail-free excuse for any and all wonkiness.

If you haven't seen them before, the three longest animations I've made are The Dancing Lion for Pringle 1815, You Only Went Out to Get Drunk Last Night for Kid Canaveral and the Snow Giant for Lost Map's 2016 online Advent calendar (which I'll write about properly soon). The Kid Canaveral video was my first try at stop-motion and, in retrospect, it could've done with more time spent on lighting / framing / white balance.

I hope to animate some more throughout 2017. To trot out the old cliché, it's really satisfying seeing drawings come to life. Playing through a sequence for the first time is fun - you kinda know how it's going to look but seeing things actually move is always surprising. I find myself laughing at my own work fairly regularly, which is good.

The music in my showreel is by the fantastic Jonnie Common. The track is a remix of 'Bed Bugs' by the also fantastic GRNR. I chopped it down into a short instrumental version but you should listen to the original. Also worth watching is their live version for BBC Radio Scotland.

BTW, if the video looks particularly grubby, make sure you're playing in HD. Oh, and subscribe to my YouTube channel if that's your bag.