Triple distilled copy.

Adam invited me to work on a brief for a whiskey called 'Titanic' that launched in the middle of last year to celebrate the famous ship's 100th anniversary. The work featured on www.lovelypackage.com.  

The copy reads: 

“On the shores of Belfast Lough, we still recall the ship – builders and distillery workers who built legends of steel and bottled the heavens. And though the sound of rivets binding steel on steel is now a memory, the faint scent of aging whiskey barrels still fills the air. This perfectly matured whiskey honours those past generations, those men of steel, and serves as the perfect link between their shared endeavour and unique spirit of friendship that bound them. To truly know Belfast is to share a measure of Titanic.”

Irish Times work

I created these ads with Adam Crane for a pitch to the Irish Times. The brief was to create a positioning that reflected how their journalists got to the heart of the matter, whatever the subject. Our answer was to explore the nature of opinions in press ads straight from their primary sources. In this way the strap line '…as we know it', lent itself to categorisation within the paper (Sport as we know it, Culture as we know it, etc.) and reinforced the Times' primacy as Ireland's paper of record.

CHANNEL 4 - COMEDY BLAPS SUBMISSION

Mr. H. Coate, the head honcho of Studio Cheese posted me a tasty animation brief on Sunday.

My response may lead to an enjoyable collaboration with Le Singe, Brighton or it may get shot down in flames and result in an unfeasible amount of lip-curling and sneering derision by Nathan barley/Shoreditch types.

Nothing new there, then. Looking forward to getting feedback.

ICAD NOMINATION

Got news on Friday that the io Total Twitness campaign got an ICAD nomination in the Social Media category.

Nice campaign to have come up with and nicer still to see it supported... and nicer again to see it get some recognition.

Good luck to Tim and the guys - hope it gets a bell for them.

For more award-winning ideas...or even ideas that are just worth an award-nomination give me a bell on 086 3010734.

TOTAL TWITNESS AT IO

Here's a really nice project I worked on with io recently. It's Ireland's first ever, Twitter-led, office-based fitness programme.

Instead of a Christmas gift, we created this light-hearted regime to help clients lose a pound or two in January.

A new exercise was posted every day and clients were notified by email or by following on Twitter.

The campaign was so successful that even the arch-slacker Spencer Pratt was following the campaign - proof enough that that guy really has nothing better to do...

Here's a 48-sheet I worked on with Adam Crane at The Hive. Aisake Ó hAilpin looks like The Rock! In fact, the other guys even look a bit scared of him. Photo by Adrian Stewart.

So here are a few ink scamps I've been fiddling about with - quite a few need colouring in. More to follow. Initially, I planned to draw enough to take a gallery space - there's certainly enough political material out there - but I'm not quite sure I'm cynical enough...

COWEN... WORDS FAIL HIM.

Whoah! I haven't been here for quite a while.

It's been really very busy with work completed for Boys & Girls, PCC, The Hive and Y&R.

Recording Ernest Cribben with Pat Laffan tomorrow at Mutiny.

More surreal scamps will be posted this week... mostly featuring Dear Leader.

Still in the shake-down for BBC project

Another week, more work to do. Everyone's still massively 'up' for this project. It started almost a year ago with a tentative submission, then we found out we'd beaten tons of guys to the top of the heap and since November the scripts, storylines and visuals have been on steroids/ EPO. We now have just three weeks to think more, write more and push the project as far, as dark and as action-packed as we can.

SMALL FOCUS GROUPS

We recently did a series of Monster Park focus groups with discerning six year olds in Devon and Brighton.

The feedback was incredibly positive and also very helpful - kids want to see vampires, werewolves and even bogies turning into boogie-men.

We thought we might've overstepped the mark with zombie babies, but they proved a hit too.

I think I underestimated how much kids like intelligent gore and action.

GOOD START TO NEW YEAR

So far, so good.

This week kicked off with Henry and I doing some intense work on the series' narrative.

It's been an interesting process. No doubt, when I finish writing it up we'll find some inconsistencies to iron out - after all, there's always going to be some thematic entanglement we haven't forseen.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (i)

Christ! There are eight zeros in the thought bubble...

Plan on reading Cheever's memoirs (or should that be his miscellany of misanthropy?) over Christmas. It's bound to lift the spirits!

Looking forward to whatever dramas 2010 presents after all it can't be any worse than this year... could it?

BBC PROGRESS

We've a lot of work to get through over the next month. By February, I've got to have an entire series outline and scripts written for our 'make or break' meeting with CBBC.

Down to the last four from about four thousand submissions, so very close to a result.

While I've been writing, Henry's been working on character development. Really happy with the darker direction our show is taking.

A lot of work has gone into the project - with major involvement from artists, animators, composers etc. from all over the UK.

Hope to repay them all for their help. But seeing as we're all broke, the only way we can is by getting commissioned.

PEOPLE WALKING IN CIRCLES.

I was cycling around town today looking for see-through shower caps (you'd be surprised what a task this is) and saw loads of people out on strike.

Fair enough, it's a National Day of Protest - but what struck me was that in most cases people marched heads down, shuffling around and around in circles. How passive and mind-numbing is that? 

COWEN RENTS COUNTRY OUT TO PRODUCERS OF 'I'M A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE!'

NOTE TO SELF - donate this idea to Dept. of Finance for 2010...

Another (uncoloured) sketch of Fred...

Here's another quick drawing. Not sure about the wallpaper. Who wallpapers their house these days anyway? But then, his mum probably decorated the room. It's a night scene so it'll be interesting to see how I get on with the fall of moonlight. Anyway I better get back to sketching and cleaning up another rhyme. Sending the 'Cribben' manuscript off to a few agents today. Expecting quite a few knock-backs before I get a result. In the meantime might get a read recorded just to work over whatever blemishes there might be hidden. I'm thinking David Kelly will be my first port of call.

More scamps to follow...

I've been having quite a bit of trouble looking for someone to illustrate my book.

Perhaps it's a wayward combination of vanity and indolence or my innate pedantry that has me now working the characters in pen and ink.

The chap above is Fred.

He's a sickly fellow who's come undone on top of a tree with some cats - actually, he was supposed to be saving them but a series of unfortunate events have seen matters take a turn for the worse.

Clearly I need to revisit Fred's head but apart from that it's okay for a first attempt.

A STILTED CONVERSATION...

I'm rubbish on the phone.

Utterly rubbish.

A recent monosyllabic conversation with a Creative Director gave me cause for reflection. Later that night, as my mind was replaying the day in a style reminiscent of Gil Scot-Heron, I got to thinking about men on stilts and the conversations they may or may not also have.

So in the drawing, that's me on the right...in the yellow pants.

RED SOCKS GO MISSING

So this is a really, really rough sketch for a rhyme I've been working on. In short, it's about two socks.

Two evasive socks.

Looking at the washing machine now, I can't explain why it's the colour of a Wibbly-Wobbly Wonder.

Perhaps it's a special washing machine that only washes coloured clothes. How's that for a contrived explanation?

Well it doesn't convince me so it's back to the drawing-board for me, the socks and the washing machine.

The rhyme, however, is a rattling good read and features an angry Great White Shark. Don't know whether I should get it animated or filmed?

If you can recommend any good shark voiceovers contact me.

BBC PROJECT

Here's a fraction of a smidgin of a scintilla of a hint of a story for a piece of animation I've been working on with Henry at studiocheese.co.uk. I think the character movement is great. I hope the BBC chaps back the idea soon.