tealin | Ethel & Ernest

Last year I had the joy and privilege to work on Ethel & Ernest, an animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs' graphic novel about his parents. It is exactly the sort of animated film that would never get made Stateside, and exactly the sort of film I always wished I could work on, so you can imagine how chuffed I was to be a part of it.

It was animated, for the most part, by freelancers across Europe (mainly in the UK, but some elsewhere), and so the scenes were divided up in a way I've never experienced on another animated film: we each got a sequence, in whole or in part. My first sequence was the Christmas decoration scene, which takes place in the middle of the war, when young Raymond has been evacuated to the countryside.

Something else I've never experienced before was, whenever there was a question about how something should be interpreted, the director would reach over and say "Let's check the book..." No surer way to a girl's heart.

Here's the book:

And here's my sequence:

If you're in the UK, or have a way around geolocking, you can watch Ethel & Ernest on the iPlayer until January 26th or so; the rest of the world can get a Region 2 DVD from such online retailers as they wish (e.g. Amazon) – if you have VLC Player it'll play multi-region DVDs.

Of course you know what this means ... I am a content provider for the BBC! \o/