WOW. Yesterday was the premiere of the Itch of the Golden Nit and I was very pleased and honoured to join the hundreds of people invited to the SUPER SWANKY first ever big screen showing of the film you’ve all worked so hard on!

Things began to get glamorous when the OFFICIAL ACTUAL RED CARPET went down:

In the press pen, I was joined by some roving reporters from BBC News School Report, who were getting down to brass tacks with all of the special guests.

They had some great questions for Jane Burton, who lead the Tate part of the project, and  Sir Nick Serota, the director of Tate, who said that the Tate Movie was an important project because children are the future of Tate. (We agree.)

Andy Akinwolere was there, filming some of his last things for Blue Peter (he’s leaving, sob!).

And then things started to happen very quickly! FIRST: Dick and Dom arrived!

Rachel Rawlinson also arrived, looking very glamorous! She performed the voice of Beryl, our hero’s big sister, who loves texting and hates being embarrassed…

Loads more special guests arrived, including children from Charles Dickens Primary School and Millbank Primary School, and celebs galore… before I knew it, it was time to watch the film at last!

I loved the film. I thought it was indredibly funny, and that the animation and character design were amazing! Congratulations if your work made it into the film, it was all ACE. My favourite characters were a slightly bananas planet voiced by Alexei Sayle and Ten Heart Hero himself. Here are ten hearts for him: <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Afterwards there was an incredibly glamorous party where the children, actors, Taters, Aardmen and more all mingled together and celebrated a wonderful, amazing, one-of-a-kind film.

 

Remember you can see The Itch of the Golden Nit in loads of locations this summer and even preorder the DVD for your very own… tell us what you think when you’ve seen it!

Tags: Tate Movie project

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Well after loads of hard work and fun times on the road and back at Aardman HQ, the Tate Movie Project is almost ready to be released to the world! BUT HOW CAN I WATCH IT? I hear you cry. I’m going to take a deep breath because there are LOADS of ways to see The Itch of the Golden Nit…

IN THE CINEMA
Be one of the first to see it at the Vue in Leicester Square, London! There’s a KidsAM screening at 10:30am on Thursday 30 June. See it on the big screen and tickets are only £1.25. Brilliant.

ON YOUR TELLY
Catch the broadcast on BBC2 at 9am on Saturday 2 July (followed immediately by ‘How we Itched the Golden Nit’ a ‘Making of…’ special from Blue Peter). It’s going to be on CBBC at 5:15pm on Sunday 3 July as well.

IN TATE MODERN, LONDON
We’re going to have an exhibition in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern that’s all about the making of the film, and you can see it there for free from 6 July until the end of August.

IN OUR GALLERIES IN ST IVES AND LIVERPOOL
In Liverpool you can go down to Albert Docks and see it at 11.45am on Thursday 7 July, and in sunny St Ives we’re showing it Friday 29 July at 6:00pm, Friday 26 August at 6:00pm and Sunday 18 September at 11.00am.

IN OTHER GALLERIES TOO
It will be shown at galleries across the UK over the summer, so look out for it in your town!

IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE
As part of the free, fun BP Open Weekend on Saturday 23 July!

WHERE YOU LIVE
As part of the runup to the Olympics, there are going to be loads of London 2012 big screens in cities across the UK that will be showing Itch and lots of other cool things.

IN A FIELD
If you’re going to Camp Bestival (28-31 July) you can watch it there, with your wellies on.

WITH SOME OTHER BRILLIANT FILMS
At Vue cinemas nationwide over the August Bank Holiday as part of an Aardman double bill.

IN YOUR HOUSE, WHENEVER YOU LIKE
Last of all, if you can’t make it to any of those things, the DVD is available at £4.99, and the Book of the Movie is £6.99 from Tate Shops or Tate Online. Phew!

Tags: Tate Movie project

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That’s right. The time of waiting… is over. All of our hard work is complete.  You can now play the finished game:

AIRBRUSH!

Our top tip for playing: STAND UP! Jump around. AirBrush is great for making abstract artworks using your WHOLE BODY!

We’re looking forward to seeing all of your new AirBrushed artworks. Hopefully you’ll enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.

If you have any top tips for drawing with AirBrush, leave them in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

Someone very talented at Plug-In Media made this version of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night:

 

Tags: AirBrush, Games, Plug-in Media

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Hannah here again to tell you about the very last thing we had to do on our new game: the voiceover! Wakka wakka (*sounds* like our game’s almost done? Geddit?).

SJ and I took the train to Brighton (note to self: work with more people who are based in Brighton, it’s a brilliant place) to meet up with Dom from Plug-In Media and our actor friend, Jason.

Dom’s a very cool type of a fella with lots of very cool friends, so we all went to his bandmate Ellie’s house. Oh yeah, she’s got a recording studio in her back garden and she and Dom play in a ukulele band together. Completely awesome.

After a little while familiarising himself with the script, Jason was ready to get to work. He has done voices for very famous video games in the past, so he knows exactly what to do!

After getting the idea of the game in his head, the way it feels and looks, he was ready to enter the sound recording booth, which was hidden behind a lovely folding screen.

You can see some soundproofing material stuck to the wall in the top right of that picture. It looks like egg boxes. That’s what stops the sometimes loud noise coming from Ellie’s Musical Bungalow from disturbing her neighbourhood (she was making a song for an advert when we arrived, which was very catchy indeed and might have stuck in your head all day if you’d heard it – it did stick in mine!).

When you’re recording voiceover, it’s important to listen to everything and make sure it flows well. Sometimes you might be about to cough, or need a drink of water, and you can hear it in the recording – even the tiniest sounds become really amplified.

So Ellie’s saved all the sounds and we’re just adding them to the game now – which means we’re almost ready to go! Are you excited to play it?

Tags: AirBrush, Games, Plug-in Media

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As you know from this blog, we worked very hard to think up loads of different names for AirBrush before we decided on one. Sometimes just working on a lot of different ideas, even silly ones, means that the best one jumps out at you. It’s important to try different things, even if you think the first one you came up with is a winner. (I still don’t know why we didn’t call it WAVEY PAINTING TIME, which was my first idea. Humph!)

The same thing is true for designing logos. Sometimes you need to try lots of different versions before you get a feel for what’s the right one. What will the colours be? What kind of texture will it have? What font will we use? There are more questions involved in the process than you might think!

Here are a few of the logo designs that the good people at Plug-In Media came up with for AirBrush…

You’ll have to wait and see which one we go with when we launch the game. Which one is your favourite?

Tags: AirBrush, Games, Plug-in Media

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