Tales From a Really Mossy Privet

Work in progress. A series of illustrated short stories featuring obscure, un-nerving and sometimes downright odd characters from the bizaar recesses of my brain - A welder come taxidermist, a former prima-ballerina turned kleptomaniac, a failed inventor who enjoys DIY trepanning (drilling the human skull), mischievous siamese twins, a bipolic nurse. Imagine Dr Zeuss (The Cat in the Hat) meets Heinrich Hoffmann (the 19th century German writer who created the disturbing Struwwelpeter) and you're somewhere near it. All cautionary tales, told through the traveling experiences of one Reverend Agar Base. Some have been inspired by local Somerset people and some by local Somerset legends, but all are a move back to classic story telling.

I will be adding to this post as the characters and story lines develop over the next six months or so.

Watch this space.

You're all sinners the lotta ya

Back in 1999, I had the good fortune to be Creative Director of the infamous 5 Core Media Group in Newbury; a collective of radical thinkers and producers across print and digital media, headed up by Mark Smith. During the summer of that year we had been talking about doing something really different that we could send out to our clients, something that would really showcase the varied creative talents of the entire group. "How about doing a short Christmas film?" "Brilliant" we thought.

The result is the mentally obscure, 4 minute wonder called O'bleak - planned, story-boarded, written, directed, produced, propped, costumed, acted, filmed and edited entirely by the people you see in it. We built virtual 3D environments with layered effects. We created surprisingly effective green screening sequences. Filmed on location. We even wrote and recorded our own film score to go with the film, which was master-minded by Chris Hook (PR Director and former member of the band Voyager), Jim Holmes and Nigel Watts-Plumpkin (www.scorpiosongs.com).