First up is our high quality silkscreen Big Picture prints from Steven Johnson’s inspirational animation informing us Where Good Ideas Come From.

These are printed on the sumptuously soft Somerset cotton paper, and one can be yours for the, frankly ludicrous, price of £30 (that’s over 60% off!!). Just click on this lovely link to take you directly to them.

The second of today’s treats comes in the form of these glorious greetings cards.

These cheeky chaps feature images that were first published in Damian Hughes’ Survival Guide to Change. The illustrations, by Andrew Park, present memorable, cultural characters and some of their most favoured phrases. Perfect for pen pals the world over! (That is, of course, just a serving suggestion. Obviously, feel free to distribute however pleases you best.)

They are now at the fabulously reduced price of £2.50 per pack! You can get your hands on them here.

This has been a Public Service Announcement from Cognitive Media Towers. Thanks for tuning in!

To find out more information on those mentioned in this post please click on the following links:
Steven Johnson           |           Damian Hughes           |           Our Shop

Here at Cognitive Media Towers we’re proud to be working with some of the top thinkers sailing the ocean today, none more so than Asha de Vos; Senior TED Fellow, Marine Biologist, and Whale Woman Extraordinaire. As a part of our ongoing collaboration with the Educational tentacle of TED we were handed the map to a treasure chest when given the chance to create a fun, puppet-based animation on a lesson spoken by Asha herself.

Our first port of call was to commission a puppeteer to make our vast range of puppets, the list of which was almost as long as the Kraken itself. We got in touch with local puppeteer, and all-round magical model-maker, Steve Allen, who we were working with on another project (which is currently still in the boatyard, but will be launched soon). Steve has worked for Jim Henson and EMI Studios, on features such as Fraggle Rock, Thunderbirds, Star Wars, and Wallace and Gromit, so we counted ourselves extremely lucky to work with him and his fantastic assistant, Emma.

Once we had the storyboard complete, and knew what characters we wanted, we were able to commission Steve to begin building our puppets! And my, what a list we asked for. Amongst other items, it included: a small car made to look like a heart, a five foot long blue whale (with a roll-up stomach screen), a pink elephant with concertina legs, a hamburger, a lilac dinosaur, and of course, our Asha de Vos puppets (two versions, one much larger and more moveable than the other).

During this time we prepared our studio. We had been working on setting up a stop-motion studio for some time before we began this project, and this watery work gave us the opportunity to fully test it out. Chromakey green screens and rigs were put up, camera equipment and lighting filter gels were brought, and an excellent local photographer, Matt Rowe, was enlisted to capture it all (and take these wonderful photos).

After months of building and preparation, we were ready to set sail. Below are just a few images from the shoot.

Once we had all that raw (sushi!) footage we set about piecing it together, adding sounds, special effects, and lots of bubbles to create the finished animation you can see HERE.

At the end of our maiden voyage we needed a space as vast as Davy Jones’ Locker to store all our fabulous puppets, but thankfully our stop-motion studio has a lovely spare room in which we’ve set up a puppet gallery of sorts. We’re so pleased we got to work on this piece; we had a whale of a time filming it! (And coming up with awful puns to pain you all with!)

To find out more about those mentioned in this post, please click on the following links:
Asha de Vos        |                Steve Allen          |                Matt Rowe

This event also saw the launch of the newest RSA Animate The Power of Outrospection explained by author and philosopher, Roman Krznaric. Cognitive Media, being the trendy, fashionable company that we are, had some bags made by a local printmaker to take to this event. Andrew drew a new image to complement the theme of this Animate:

We got in touch with Frizbee, and voila! Bags galore! Now - and this is where it gets exciting - we’re running a giveaway competition for two very lucky people. Andrew and Roman have both signed two of these lovely bags, and if you can answer the following question correctly you will be in with a chance of owning one yourself!

That question is:
What do Penelope Keith's character in The Good Life and Andrew’s dog have in common?

Hint: if you’ve seen the Animate and have read our website, the answer shouldn’t be too difficult.

Here's what the finished bags (autographed and everything!) look like. Snazzy, eh? Send your answers to us at contact@cognitivemedia.co.uk by 18th December and we will announce the two winners later on that week.

Good luck!

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The competition has now closed and our winners have been announced. I can confirm that the answer to our  question (What do Penelope Keith's character in The Good Life and Andrew’s dog have in common?) is that they share the same name!
Penelope Keith plays Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life, and Andrew's dog is called Margot.

Congratulations to everyone who got it right, and thank you for taking part in our competition. Stay tuned for more to come in the new year!

Our process begins once we receive the script, which is what the enables us to develop a storyboard. This script is then taped and acts as the audio for the animation. For this piece it was recorded at our studios and spoken by Professor Ray Laurence, a renowned specialist who lectures in Roman History, Society, and Archaeology at the University of Kent.

For this particular animation, alongside the creation of the storyboard our Lead Creative spent a lot of time researching the look and feel of Roman life. This meant he could steer our Creatives down the right path when it came to buildings, clothing, and even shrubbery! Here’s just a small snap-shot of the pin board use to display all the information collected.

Once the storyboard has been created and agreed on, we can start to approach and brief our designers.

The characters for this piece were produced by the very skilled Gillian Reid, an incredible Character Designer whom we often collaborate with. (If you’re a CM regular, you might recognise her characters in a couple of our other TED-Ed films.)

Once we had all the pieces, our amazing animators could begin their work!

For this video, the rest of us at Cognitive Media (even those of us who aren’t in the Creative Team!) were invited to record a few sound effects, which would be used to emphasise specific actions.

Finally, after many emails, images, noises, and weeks of animating, our TED-Ed video was complete! You can check it out HERE.

To find out more about those mentioned in this post, click on the following links:
Ray Laurence          |          Gillian Reid          |          Gareth Conway