I borrowed a Pental brush pen from Golly (Broadcast Creative Director and creator of Rex the Runt & Shaun the Sheep) at work yesterday and fell in love with it. So I rushed to the craft shop today to get my own, I treated myself to a letraset marker and fresh sketchbook too. Y’know what it’s like with the first page of a new sketchbook, you have to really think about what you’re going to put on it. So I thought I’d break my new favourite pen in and draw an incredibly unflattering portrait of Golly himself!

Home Sheep Home 2 : A little Epic is the latest work in progress here at Aardman Digital. It’s the sequel to our original flash game which has racked up over 100 million plays and been nominated for a BAFTA! It really is a little epic, because there’s over 60 levels, 3 locations and a tonne of hidden treats to get your teeth stuck into!

The beautiful graphics have all been drawn by our hyper-talented illustrator & animator Robin Davey, with the puzzles and mechanics all created by our resident games genius Chris Underwood. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in the project too, designing the logo, in-game interface and this here website too.

The game is coming to iOS and Desktop real soon, keep up to date on Facebook & Twitter!

www.homesheephome2.com

Look at this beauty! Designed by Valerie Jar for StruckAxiom, every attendee to my design talk / screening of BOIKZMOIND in Salt Lake City, Utah in a couple of weeks time will walk away with one of these posters, letter pressed by The Mandate Press!

I’m getting really excited for the trip, any SLC residents here on Tumblr with suggestions of places to see, spots to eat at etc? Also any recommendations for nice boutique hotels would be muchly appreciated.

I’m going to be designing up a little something for every attendee too, with the help of the good people of Twitter in fact. You can grab your ticket for the night right here on the AIGA website, Thursday 27th October, I hope to see you there!

Watch out Utah, I’m-a-coming! Through the power of a simple emails & social networking, a screening enquiry for BÖIKZMÖIND has turned into something a bit more epic… I’m coming to Salt Lake City to give a design talk and screen BOIKZMOIND!!

In conjunction with the SLC chapter of AIGA (The American Institute for Graphic Arts!!) and design agency StruckAxiom, I’m being flown out in just under 3 weeks! I can’t tell you how excited I am, it’s an incredible opportunity for me and I’m so humbled that it’s actually happening!

So, good people of Salt Lake City, I hope you can come along and please do spread the word, it’s going to be the first time in your fair city and the first time I’ve done a talk in the US of A, I want it to be ace!

It’s happening Thursday 27th October at the Salt Lake Arts Center, beginning at 7pm and finishing at 9. You can find out more about the event here and here, and can grab tickets here.

There’s even going to be a special letter-pressed poster designed by StruckAxiom and printed by The Mandate Press for every attendee, plus I’m going to design up something a little special for everyone so come on down!

A big, BIG thanks to Kyle Snarr at StruckAxiom and Tim Lee at AIGA for making this all possible! If you have any recommendations on where to go / what to see whilst I’m in SLC then please do let me know!

Belfast, Belfast Belfast. I’ve only been here a couple of days but combined with a trip here just a few weeks previous, I’ve really enjoyed my time here in the city. I’m writing this blog post from my very fancy Malmaison hotel, which is worthy of a blog post in itself. Gorgeous setting, beautiful rooms, fantastic attention to detail and amazing room service! I’ll definitely be staying in another Mal hotel again. The next Travelodge is going to be, quite frankly, shit in comparison!

I came here because my old friend Andy McMillan, the curator behind Build conference & The Manual suggested me for a talk to the guys NI Design Alliance & CCSkills, so with Build conference and The Standardistas playing host to the event “An evening with… Gavin Strange” came to be. And what an evening it was, I had an absolute blast last night, I really enjoyed putting my slides together so was really excited to share them with everyone. I could not have asked for a better turnout, really honoured that people gave up their Thursday night and it meant I got to speak to a tonne of interesting people, who inspired me with the tales of what they’re getting up to here in Belfast, a very inspiring place.

It’s meant I’ve had the chance to hang out with Andy for a couple of days and pick his brains on the ideas, thoughts and plans behind Build, because combined with Jez Burrows stunning design work, it represents the web design community so well and has re-ignited my love for the world of interactive design. Speaking with Andy has genuinely inspired me to try harder, to make more physical offline things and to get more involved in my community back in Bristol, I’d like to spend more time with the Digital creatives of my city, so a big thanks to Andy, Jez & Build for doing that.

Being given so much awesome swag has in no way swayed my decision (well, ok, maybe a little bit) but its the fact that so much attention is paid to the details that I’m inspired. So I’m going home to Bristol with a head full of ideas, heart full of determination and a belly full of food.

Thank you to Andy, The Standardistas, Sarah and everyone who made it possible for me to be here for the past 2 days, I’ve genuinely loved my time here. Thanks for reading and thank you for coming along to hear me waffle last night.

You can see a brilliant bunch of photographs from last nights talk by Simon Mills right here. The image at the top of this blog is one of Simons photo’s, so a big thanks to him for those snaps!

Look out for a video of the talk appearing online in a few weeks time and also for a screening of my bike film BÖIKZMÖIND being organised by The Standardistas!

- Gav

BUILD. BREAK. DO. MAKE. This is my poster for tomorrow nights ‘An evening with…’ guest lecture that I’m giving in Belfast! The poster is being printed up to be given away to every attendee to the talk, a nice idea by Andy, the curator of the event and of BUILD, the conference that organises events like this!

I’m just putting the finishing touches to my talk now, really looking forward to delivering it. At lunchtime Andy said there was just 13 tickets left, so if you’ll be in Belfast tomorrow night, why not go here and grab a free ticket and i’ll see you there!

- Gav (Follow me on Twitter & Facebook here)

AWESOME! If you’ve ever seen any of the ‘Deadly 60’ TV shows then you’ll know that the host Steve Backshall says that a lot. With good reason too, as every show he travels the world, looking to find the deadliest animals , to put them on his ‘Deadly 60’.

We’re all fans of the show & Steve here at Aardman Digital, so we were stoked to be able to create another game for the series, with this new game ‘Deadly Planet’. It was a lot more epic than the previous games we’d created (Deadly Dash & Deadly Scramble), with a big team of very clever bods working hard to create a big game with lush environments & characters.

I was lucky enough to be involved in the project, Art Directing the interface and game screens, with our Sarah ‘Bernie’ Matthews in the design driving seat. We also got to partner up with our friend and design guru Chris Malbon who illustrated the stunning ‘Powers’ that are collected throughout the game amongst lots of other graphical lovelies.

So what are you waiting for, head over to the BBC’s site and play Deadly planet!
bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/deadly-planet-game

I’m very excited to say that next Thursday I’ll be returning to the beautiful city of Belfast for “An evening with… Gavin Strange”! I know that sounds mildly disconcerting, but I was lucky enough to be asked by Andy @ Build if I would like to host a guest lecture in the run-up to the actual Build conference itself!

Of course I said yes, it’s a fantastic opportunity! So next Thursday Ill be at The Black Box, waffling on about my work, my job and how the flip I got to be here in such a prestigious position, being able to talk about doing what I love.

The above graphic is a little hint at something I’ve designed too, a little something for the attendees of the talk. The evening is free and open to all, you just have to book your ticket on Eventbrite here: eventbrite.com/event/2146606558

- Gav (@JamFactory)

London! This Thursday 15th September I will be visiting your fair city, screening BÖIKZMÖIND and giving a talk on how the film came to life, showing some behind the scenes photography! It’s all happening at the flagship Apple Store on Regent Street, in the auditorium area at the back of the store!

It starts at 7pm and is free & open to all, so come on down and see the film and here me waffle about it!

Today is the day… it’s TEDx here in Bristol! Myself & Dan are lucky enough to be speaking, we’ve spent the last week preparing, writing and practicing, as we really want this to be fun! Don’t worry if you’re not one of 100 to get tickets for the event, you can watch the entire thing live online for free:

http://tedxbristol.com/webcast

Our talk, entitled ‘FUN-dercats. Ho!’ is part of the last section of the day, ‘Creativity’, so we’ll be on sometime after 4pm. Enjoy the talks and I hope you enjoy ours too, fingers crossed!

The good people of the Belfast Film Festival are flying me out there this weekend (woo, never been flown out anywhere before!) as BÖIKZMÖIND is screening as part of ‘On Your Bike’, the bike-centric off-shoot of the festival. The film is showing twice, once at 1pm and again at 5.30pm. So, if you’re in Belfast this weekend then check out onyourbikebelfast.com and come see the film at the Waterfront, along with lots of other cracking pieces of celluloid.