Just a quick heads up to say the new Mike Afford Media promo reel is finally online. You can choose to watch it here on mikeafford.com which should be viewable (thanks to the miracle that is HTML5 with Flash fallback) on most browers and certain shiny smartphones. Or if you prefer you can always head over to the Mike Afford Media YouTube Channel and watch it there, or check the slightly higher quality version over on Vimeo
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BBC2 Wednesday May 25th 2011 at 4:30pm

Don’t forget to check out tomorrow’s episode of Little Howard’s Big Question on BBC Two at 4.30. Digital compositing by Mike Afford Media and Made In Colour.

Tomorrow’s episode is called “How Can I Be in Two Places at Once?” and among other things sees Little Howard try to attend an exciting Custard Expo and a boring wedding at the same time. And if that wasn’t awesome enough, he also runs into a robot version of himself who opens up a portal to a parallel universe. Come on – robots, parallel universes and custard… what is there not to like..?!!
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A quick reminder that the new series of Little Howard’s Big Question is starting tomorrow (Wednesday 18th May) at 4.30pm on BBC One. Digital compositing by Mike Afford Media and Made In Colour.

Tomorrow’s episode is called “Why Can’t I Be Bigger” and among other things sees Little Howard grow to monstrous proportions and go on the rampage. And if that wasn’t reason enough to tune in, he also shrinks down to the size of a pea. Actually, not a pea. A little bit bigger than that, but still very small indeed.

Here’s a few sneaky peek preview shots from the first show.
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Titles and content sequences for The All New Adventures of Flannel Alan – a brand new reboot of the original ‘Flannel Alan’ children’s TV show.

The characters from the original series have been completely redesigned and updated, and most of the show is now 3D animation instead of live action and puppetry.

The graphics were made using Cinema 4D for the 3D bits, and composited in After Effects.
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Our famous ‘traditional’ TV-style Weather Symbols are now available on a range of gifts and clothing over at The Weather Symbol Store

Why not pop along for a huge selection of Weather Symbol T-Shirts, Mugs, Clocks and literally hundreds of Weather Symbol branded products.

The downloadable web-sized versions proved so popular I figured it might be time to branch out – so I’ve plastered some symbols on pretty much every available product over at Cafepress. There’s some pretty nifty items including iPad and iPhone cases. Plenty of perfect gift ideas for anyone who knows anyone interested in The Weather. I used to know a few meself as it happens.

Or you could simply wear your very own weather forecast for the day! Here in Ireland, I reckon anything with rain on would be a pretty safe bet.

I might add some more products at some point. Or maybe see if these ones fly off the shelves first…

Hey there Wine lovers!

We’ve recently completed some motion graphics for this great new wine app from TV wine expert Olly Smith.

Available now from the iTunes store

For more details, see also Olly’s site at ollysmith.com/online/wine-app

“The app offers help choosing the perfect bottle to accompany food or the occasion and is packed with nearly an hour of exclusive video content, demystifying wine and providing essential ‘how to’ advice on everything from serving to decanting.
Olly says: “This app is about maximizing your enjoyment of wine and taking the risk out of trying something different.”
The app uses GPS technology to find your nearest wine stockists wherever you are in the UK, and features video profiles of some of Olly’s favourite sommeliers. There is even your very own interactive wine horn!”

And if you’re now wondering what an interactive wine horn looks like, well read on for a sneak peek…! …read more

The inexorable pull of weather graphics once again – this time for Little Howard’s Big Question. This weeks episode was called “Can I Wrestle Control of the Weather from Siân Lloyd’s Evil Grip?” as Little Howard becomes convinced that the famous weather presenter is actually an evil wizard determined to ruin the Swingballdon finals.

So, among other things, you’ll be able to see some hastily cobbled-together weather graphics alongside the usual top-notch compositing! Pay special attention to the Swingball sequence right at the beginning of the show to see if you can work out how a cartoon boy manages to play a real Swingball…
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A reminder that the eagerly awaited second series of Little Howard’s Big Question starts this Wednesday on BBC2 at 4.00pm.

Digital compositing for this series is by Mike Afford Media and Made In Colour.

Little Howard’s Big Question is a children’s series about an animated six-year-old boy, and stars Howard Read as his (human!) housemate as they attempt to answer questions about the world around them. This first episode is called ‘Why Can’t I Get Hold of Sawblaind the Municipal?’ as Little Howard ponders why he can’t get hold of the rarest trading card in Purley, leading eventually to a daring heist of the Crown Jewels.

If you fancy a giggle, be sure to set the Sky+ and remember the Series Link! It’s on BBC2 NI – Wednesdays at 4.00pm. The first episode has a great ‘Italian Job’ style heist and a dead catchy song that I haven’t stopped humming since I did the composite a few weeks ago. Hilarious!

More details to follow, but for now here is a sneak peak at a couple of shots from the first episode…

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Here’s the full version of the new title music for the Setanta Sports show iTalkSport. I must have been too busy in the previous post writing about the new virtual studio set that I forgot to mention that I also did the theme tune.

Listen here:

iTalkSport title music

Recently completed – a brand new virtual studio set for Setanta’s iTalkSport show that launched on Friday.

iTalkSport is a late-night sport discussion programme and the set prominently features views of the Dublin skyline.

This virtual set project consisted of two main challenges – designing and building the actual structure of the set, and putting ‘live’ shots behind the presenters and guests.

It was a close call whether we would be using four permanently mounted roof-top cameras to feed the backgrounds. In the end we went for a less expensive (but more complicated!) solution. The whole thing is running on the RT Software tOG VR system, isn’t dependent on the weather, and has the uncanny feature of rendering street-lamps invisible.

I’ll give a full behind-the-scenes glimpse later on, but for now, here are some grabs from Friday’s show.

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You can now download a new set of our popular Weather Symbols as animated GIFs.

40 original weather icons at 4 different sizes, ideal for websites and iPhone / iPad apps.

There are now 3 different formats available – PNG with solid backgrounds, PNG with transparent backgrounds, and this new set of animated GIFs. …read more

It’s taken a little while, but I’ve just finished giving a little facelift to the Angelfield website. Last night I did a quick Wordpress install, customised to serve as a simple comments page in case any visitors wanted to leave a message.

I’d already changed the look of the main site, making it more of a tribute to Brian, who died tragically last September. He was the singer in the band, a fine musician and lyricist, and my best friend.

We formed Angelfield some time in the late eighties, although we’d been playing music together for many years before that.

As well as music, anyone that knew Brian would know also of his love of horses and racing. With that in mind, his family and friends have sponsored a race in his memory.

The Brian Spencer Memorial Chase is taking place at Plumpton on the 9th of May as part of Family Raceday 2010.

According to the Plumpton Racecourse site the Family Raceday is “an action packed programme of family entertainments … with Free Entry for children under 16″.

So if you’d like to have a child-friendly fun day out, remembering Brian and the good times, in the company of old friends (and horses), then get down to Plumpton on the 9th May. I think there are coaches being organised too, I’ll update this post when I find out more about that.

Election Graphics, Virtual Reality and Swingometers

So, they’re off! The 2010 Election Campaign starts now, and while most people will be wondering who’ll be in No.10 next month, I’m wondering who’ll come out on top in the Election Graphics stakes.

The last BBC Election programme I worked on was back in 2006, and there’s a part of me that misses the excitement of a live election broadcast. Often weeks, months (sometimes years) of work all come together for one almighty extravaganza. A nail-biting marathon of TV graphics where the entire programme is only a power-cut away from disaster.

I notice the BBC has launched its Election 2010 website – and among other things they already have a nice interactive swingometer here with a neat explanation from Jeremy Vine for the uninitiated.

There’s a possible hint of the Election night graphics by way of a branded banner at the top of all of the Election 2010 web pages : party-coloured discs or buttons radiating from a central point.

It’s hard to say whether this is ‘Campaign’ branding, or ‘Election’ branding – I would guess by now that the various departments are all working to the same design guidelines by now.

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Find out if you are Mac or PC – take a fun test at SwitchToMac.com and find out which side you’re really on!

I just took the test and came out 100% Mac.

Actually it was my second attempt, the first go was very nearly, but not quite 100%. But let’s face it, “87% Mac” doesn’t look quite so impressive. So anyway, if you want to skew the results, think carefully whether you want to think ‘different’ or ‘differently’…. you’ll see what i mean. Oh, and obviously Mac users eat salad!

While you’re there, you can read my guest blog “10 things I love about my MacBook Pro” – a run-down of the ten things I like best about my laptop.

My MacBook Pro narrowly avoided disaster a little while back (see my earlier post The Luckiest Laptop in Leitrim.

I recently completed a web design project for RT Software who provide realtime graphics systems and services to the broadcast industry.

More of a face-lift than a complete site re-structuring, nonetheless they are very happy with their new look.

The site itself is built on a bespoke (i.e. not Wordpress) content management system, and the code was very clean with enough class and ID selectors to play with, so in the end I managed to give the entire site a complete make-over by changing CSS only, and then uploading a few new images that are referenced by the new style-sheet.

See : www.rtsw.co.uk