Good news! All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) has been nominated as Best Animation at the Limelight Awards.

This means we’ll be suiting up and heading to the awards ceremony at Troxy next month with a chance of picking up a rather fetching statuette. If we win our category we’ll also be up for Film of the Night which carries a prize of a £10,000 production budget, which is nice. Here’s hoping.

Here’s some more about the Limelight Awards:

Limelight Film Awards is the annual short film competition, followed by a red carpet awards ceremony, attended by over 500 film makers, celebrities and TV/ Film personalities. In its fifth year, with 12 film categories and a £10,000 production award, Limelight is paving the way in identifying emerging British film makers while helping to strengthen the industry.

Go to our production page to find out more about All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat).

Among all the hubbub we forgot to mention that Man In A Cat now has two new distributors. MagnetFilm is representing us Worldwide. Amongst their catalogue is the much acclaimed Something Left Something Taken. A week later Future Shorts got interested and now represent us in the UK. So that was nice.

For UK TV distribution enquiries contact: info@futureshorts.com

For worldwide TV distribution enquiries contact: georg.gruber@magnetfilm.de

You can contact us for all other distribution at: info@diceproductions.co.uk

This means we’ll be going along to the glitzy awards ceremony at the BFI on March 15th. (See artist’s impression of the awards).

We’re also up for the BAA Public Choice award so if you see the film at a BAA screening be sure to vote for us! We’re hosting a Birmingham screening of the Public Choice films at The Custard Factory on 9, 10, 11 Febraury. You can book tickets for the screenings (which include a free drink courtesy of Light House) on our Eventbrite page at: baawardsbham.eventbrite.com

It was a lovely surprise to have won and it really justifies the hard work of everyone involved in getting the film made, especially Louis who put more into Man in a Cat than anyone. Obvious thanks go to the festival for selecting the film, and LoCo Film Festival for selecting us as winner in our category. We couldn’t have done it without the backing of UK Film Council, Screen WM, and producer Jon Petrie who helped to secure our awesome voice cast of Kevin Eldon, Josie Long, and Isabel Fay.

It’s great that LSFF even had a comedy award in the programme. Most festivals don’t so it’s brilliant to be recognised for making a funny film when that is what we set out to do. Now we need to decide what to do next, so that’ll be fun. You can see all the shortlisted films and winners on the LSFF website.

It’s been a busy old news week, hasn’t it? So busy that we forgot to mention that All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) had been picked out by Sight & Sound magazine in it’s top-nine films at the London Short Film Festival, which is more than nice of them.

Here’s what Sight & Sound‘s Dylan Cave had to say about the film:

The festival opens with this weird hand-drawn animation about a tiny man who lives inside a stray cat. The cat is given shelter by a lonely young woman and the little man inside immediately falls in love with her, making plans to leave his feline home. An original, cheeky, and surprisingly coherent piece.

That’s right, “surprisingly coherent”. Louis says he wants that on his gravestone and I may hold him to it. And just so you know they’re not any old jokers:

Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today.

So there.

We’re going to be at the London Short Film Festival awards ceremony on Sunday 15th Jan so if you’re going to be there too say hello!

The winning film will screen as LoCo’s Discovery Short, highlighting the best new talent at the London Comedy Film Festival, at the BFI Southbank in January 2012. The winning filmmaker will also receive a free place on their LoCollege course ‘Kickstart Your Comedy Career’, worth £100. Thanks to LoCo.

Here’s hoping, eh? We’ll be at the awards do on Sunday 15th Jan at the ICA so if you’re going along say hello! We’re @Ravonski and @Louishudson on the Twitters.

All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) has been shortlisted in the Best Short Film category at the British Animation Awards. Woo!

The British Animation Awards is a totally unique event: the only one that brings together all the key players, and emerging and established talent, from the many and varied sectors of the UK animation scene, for an evening that is very different – and we think rather more fun! – than most Awards events.

The BAA shortlisted entries will be seen by the main jury in mid-January, who will decide on three finalists and a winner and it’s very exciting to be in the mix.

The film is also in programme three of the BAA Public Choice awards

The Public Choice Programme offers you – the audience – the chance to select your favourite films from a fantastic range of animation films made over the past two years.Three programmes containing a mix of animated shorts, music videos and commercials are screening at 21 venues across the UK.

So if you see the film out and about give us a vote! You can see the venues and screening dates for the Public Choice awards here.

Wish us luck!

The event is part of Cinefamily’s Animation Breakdown 2011 Festival which is being co-hosted by Animation Block Party and Cartoon Brew. Man In A Cat is there as part of ABP’s ’Best Of…’ selection.

The screening looks like loads of fun, being a showcase of exciting LA-based animators and including a panel discussion with animators from Adventure Time and The Life And Times Of Tim. I really like that Man In A Cat has a chance to stand out on its own before such a great show, rather than being hidden in the main Best of ABP screening. Normal festival screenings are great, but every one we’re at gets overshadowed by festival sweepers Eagleman Stag and/or A Morning Stroll.

The whole of Animation Breakdown looks great. There’s an overall Polish theme, a personal appearance from Don Hertzfeldt to complete his “Bill” Trilogy, and a host of lost Walt Disney silent Laugh-O-Grams compiled by Jerry Beck.

Hoorah! Man In A Cat won ‘Best Story’ at Multivision. It’s encouraging to see a festival recognising the importance of story and listing it directly below the Grand Prix winner, particularly in light of this article by James Moran pointing out how writers are sidelined in awards such as the BAFTAs.

It was especially pleasing as I found out about the prize on my way back from the Alcine Film Festival where I had presented the film. It was only until after winning the award that I realised I had talked as much about the story as much as I had about the technique.

Here’s our prize:

*Update*… and here’s the certificate.

Here’s the music video for Baddest Ruffest by Backyard Dog, directed by Dawn Shadforth:

The Numskulls were one of my favourite Beano strips behind Calamity James. I like the complex bungled logic of explaining the mechanics of everyday things.

We went to pains to avoid any Borrowers comparisons, which means it influenced us as much as the opposite. Ian Holmes was even one of the voices I imagined for Yorkie. That wouldn’t have drawn comparisons AT ALL. Actually that would have been an interesting pitch. “Remember your character? Well he never crawled out a bum hole did he?”