One year on... Brett Snelgrove

Brett Snelgrove is an Autralian writer/producer living in the UK, who is best known for the animated web series New Eden. 

We completed an interview with Brett back in August 2012, and dropped by recently to see how he has been getting along. 

____________________________________________________

• You’ve been based in the UK for a few years now. Have you managed to travel around Europe or elsewhere in the meantime?

Being in the UK has been great in the sense that it’s the gateway to Europe. Ssince being here five odd years, we’ve traveled more than we did in the five years previous in Australia. Even the US is closer. When the rest of the world isn’t a 25-hour-flight away, it suddenly becomes much more accessible.

Brett on the Brooklyn Bridge, with TJ, Lawrie and Amanda.
Pier 17 and the Fulton Fish Market shine in the background.

• Your series New Eden has been well received. You’ve been nominated for awards and even made an appearance recently at MCM London Comic Con / Vidfest. Tell us about that experience.

This year has been a fantastic experience for Freek, my New Eden co-creator, and I. It’s been a heck of a lot of work. Animation is not easy or quick, but damn rewarding. The experience of rolling out an entire series has been a great learning curve and a great opportunity for us to showcase our work. The London Comic Con was a bucketload of fun, and since then I’ve got to meet other great creators at Raindance Web Fest and via the international web series community at large.
 

• We’re coming up on Xmas. How does that differ in the UK? Is there anything Australian you especially miss around this time of year?

It’s strangely familiar, but also not, to have a cold and, if you’re lucky, a white Christmas. Summer happens at the middle of the year here, so July/August is when everyone goes away on holidays. You don’t get the same experience as having summer holidays and Christmas all rolled into one. But you do get great Christmas specials on the telly!

Christmas in London is all about figuring out where you are going to spend it because there is no public transport - none on Christmas day, so everyone is literally home for Christmas. And if you’re spending Christmas with family or mates then you have to plan to be there one or two nights. Here, a roast dinner at Christmas really makes sense, but I have to say I miss the Aussie tradition of a seafood Christmas, and the sunshine and outdoors, but I still get a buzz when I see the first snow fall in London.

• What does next year hold for Brett Snelgrove?

Right now, I’m focusing on developing more content, and helping others to do so as well. I’m developing some new projects and thanks to New Eden have some people to pitch to, so we’ll see how that goes. This year I also started working as partner manager at the BuzzMyVideos YouTube Network, which has been a fantastic experience and I can honestly say I’m learning something new everyday. 

New Eden is not over yet though, we’ve just released three brand new bigger, longer episodes and have a few more to go, so now is a great time to jump on board. 
_______________________________________________________________________

Here are a couple of opinion pieces by Brett on life in Europe:

1. Queues in Britain.



2. Water spouts in Switzerland.

Blog    Facebook    IMDb    Twitter    Vimio    Website    YouTube    

What's all the hoo-ha about?

I suppose it was Monty Python's Flying Circus that started it all. Animated silliness, frequently set to music. Heads being chopped off, blown up, or replaced by unlikely substitutes. Big feet coming down from above and crushing very distinguished looking people. Yes, that's you I'm talking about, Terry Gilliam.



That show was first produced in 1969, and continued to be manufactured, sometimes by lumberjacks, until 1974.


On the demise of the show, people around the world tried to manufacture substitutes. Some pleasing efforts resulted, but it was never quite enough. A quick look at Lifetime Gross box-office takings in the USA suggest that people still like animated silliness, in all its various forms.

Computer animation brought things closer to home. Cheap, or free, computer animation programs have unleashed the hitherto shackled creativity latent in numerous persons. Just to give you an idea, here is a list of free, yes free (though maybe with built-in limitations), animation software available on the internet.

So what, you ask. Well, all that was a lead-in to me saying, there's a new channel on YouTube. It's called HuHa and is self-described as follows:

Brightly-Coloured Animated Flipflappery for Adults.

The tastiest comedy toons on YouTube - featuring animal assassins, crime-fighting butchers, appalling advice and shocking greetings cards to send your frenemies.

Head chef Mr Weebl (the guy who brought you singing narwhals and that badger song. You know the one. It goes "badgers, badgers, badgers, badgers". It's about badgers) will be serving up a technicolour soup of delicious adult animation for your delectation.

Yes, appalling, isn't it. It gets worse. Here's their promotional video.


Sorry about the annoying whine at the end. That's what passes for humour these days, and, under the present government, there's nothing I can do about it.

Over the last few years, we have featured interviews with selected representatives of the Australian home computer animation cadre. These would include Levi George (Livin' With Steve), Brett Snelgrove (New Eden) and Chris George (Fried Rice).

Now we have news in from England that New Eden, by Brett Snelgrove and Freek van Haagen, has been elevated up the batting order. They were invited to contribute to HuHa and will be venturing there forthwith. Here's the evidence.


And to think it was all caused by Terry Gilliam in an unguarded moment...