Julian Hyzler (graphic designer, illustrator, teacher, hero, man) has a new site showcasing his new painting course in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside.

artistinitaly.com/

Artist in Italy is offering painting holidays for people who love art, Italy, good food and wine. The week-long painting and drawing courses have been carefully designed for both beginners and intermediate artists who would like to improve their skills and techniques.

Hyzler is an inspirational teacher, and damn good laugh - Highly recommended!

I have finally watched Burton’s latest, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a dark comedy musical.

And what a great film. This is the second time Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter have collaborated (this is right, right?) after the fantastic Corpse Bride.

The music continues almost throughout ranging from incidental to “socks off” organ based bursts. Great singing by all involved, including a hilarious cameo by Sacha “Ali G” Baron Cohen.

Classic Burton stuff, dreary desaturated pale looking with odd dream like pastel colour scenes.

Go see it.
Oh there’s a bit of blood in there too…

I’ve just spent far too long on creating a cool footer for Renegade Arts Entertainment. Being a cool company that produces things from Manga to Doug “Pinhead” Bradley’s Spine Chillers (readings of Macabre tales by the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe), I thought this was the perfect to get a funky footer on the board.

There is a mixture of old and new technologies and the odd cat and skull (Black cat inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s titular short story of the same name - I love this one!).

Go to www.renegadeartsentertainment.com to see the result.

I’m not going to write a plot synopsis or tell you who’s in it (imdb.com for that). All I will say is that I admit it was a little hard to watch at first. I did so want it to be a great film after the fantastic Donnie Darko, but I found myself a bit confused and agitated in the first half of the film. However the film seemed to flow much more freely in the latter half with the inclusion of beautiful tracking sequences against a fantastic soundtrack. In fact as soon as the film finished I had a sort of clarity, not in understanding what had just happened in that last 2 hours 40 minutes, but in that I knew it was a great film, and that had it not been past 1am I would’ve watched it again instantly.

I hurried upstairs after the credits were finished (yes I watch the credits) and imdb-ed, wiki-ed and finally ‘appropriated’ the soundtrack (came down the wire in 4 minutes!). I went to sleep, mind racing, content whilst I had the soundtrack on repeat. I cannot wait to watch it again!

The 1970s Project is a three year study to establish whether the 1970s was a tasteless and undistinguished interregnum between the vibrant 1960s and the entrepreneurial 1980s, or whether it made substantial innovations in the area of film.

Launch: www.1970sproject.com

I am busy as a bee! I have a number of projects on the go at the mo, including two sites. The first is for ‘Renegade Arts Entertainment’ which is a cool production company for Doomshield comics and audio Spine Chillers read by Doug Bradley (AKA Pinhead from Hellraiser! “I will tear your soul apart!!!!”). Anyway it won’t be long before this is Live.

The second is for an environmental business solutions company called ‘Y2be’. I expect to employ some nifty AJAX into this site.

Both are exciting and very different projects. Things are being churned out faster and faster nowadays so I expect both will be live within the next 2 weeks!

Please leave comments I appreciate the feedback!

Before I get a Job is an online show that follows the adventures of Bruno Dragoon live out his wildest dreams before he has to knuckle down to a life of servitude in a 9-5.
I’ve encoded the episodes in flash and divX (divX is a great alternative option, but flash still heads the game, especially with the new easy fullscreen feature and addition of H.264 in flash9 - groovy).

XHTML, CSS, PHP, Wordpress

Launch: www.beforeigetajob.com

Threadwars is for independent clothing brands to access an international customer base. It offers customers a chance to browse, shop and buy quality clothing from a variety of brands all under one roof.

I designed a static site then had to implement the style to an ecommerce package. Unfortunately the developer on the project (unknown to me) kept overwriting my stylesheet! On future projects (and indeed I have done now) I will set up an SVN repository system using Aptana - Ah what a program! This is a version control system that enables each developer to commit any updates they’ve made so any other person working on it can automatically update their version to their local drive.

XHTML, CSS, Ecommerce

Launch: www.threadwars.com

A website showcasing a trailer and info on a short film produced by Medb Films. It’s called Ruby Blue and stars Bob Hoskins and Josiane Balasko.

XHTML, CSS

Launch: www.rubybluethefilm.com