[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":11},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-post-varmints-on-the-loose":3},{"_type":4,"body":5,"bodyHtml":6,"excerpt":5,"featuredImage":5,"publishedAt":7,"slug":8,"tags":9,"title":10},"blogPost",null,"\u003Cimg src=\"https://images.jabberworks.co.uk/lj/1818427570_d8ae8627ae_o-1c0485693f.jpg\">\\r\nI had a great time last night at the Soho Hotel, where the brilliant \u003Ca href=\"http://www.studioaka.co.uk\">Studio AKA\u003C/a> and \u003Ca href=\"http://www.templarpublishing.co.uk\">Templar\u003C/a> hosted a launch for Marc Craste's first picture book, \u003Cb>Varmints\u003C/b>, written by Helen Ward. Marc showed us some of the finished clips from the 22-minute animated film coming out next year, based on the book. The book is beautiful and the animation bits were amazing! Designers are going to go nuts. If you haven't seen his Bafta-winning film, \u003Cb>Jo Jo in the Stars\u003C/b>, you can see a trailer on the StudioAKA website. Here's the picture I took of Marc and Helen in the fabulous cowhide chairs in the screening room, and the \u003Ca href=\"http://www.writeaway.org.uk/content/view/328/2\">review\u003C/a> I wrote of the event. (The two people in the photo's background are the editors of \u003Ca href=\"http://www.illustration-mag.co.uk\">Illustration\u003C/a> magazine.)\\r\n\u003Ci>edit: Here's my \u003Ca href=\"http://www.writeaway.org.uk/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2331/Itemid,99999999/\">Varmints book review\u003C/a>\u003C/i>\\r\n\\r\nAnd just to top off a good evening, I was stumbling out of the hotel and met \u003Ca href=\"http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/almodovar/index.htm\">Pedro Almodóvar\u003C/a>, who was very sweet. He signed my notebook, which at first I thought read 'lots of killer', but which, on closer scrutiny, says 'lots of kisses', hooray!\\r\n\u003Cimg src=\"https://images.jabberworks.co.uk/lj/1818427120_5e3b477c94_o-ff0de121e3.jpg\">\\r\nI wrote a review of Chris Van Allsburg's latest work, \u003Cb>Probuditi!\u003C/b>, a book which really puzzled me, coming from the author of The Polar Express and Jumanji. I so wish I could have heard the decisions being made at Anderson Press to take it up. Did anyone who's seen that book figure out what's going on there? I have a feeling it's not going to be made into a major motion picture. Here are my \u003Ca href=\"http://www.writeaway.org.uk/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2315/Itemid,99999999\">comments\u003C/a> on it.","2007-11-02T07:10:00.000Z","varmints-on-the-loose",[],"varmints on the loose",1776628723394]