After securing funding from the Youth Opportunity Fund a group of young people based in The Meadows, Nottingham, started a music project called ‘My Shout’.

During the first six months of 2009 the young people of ‘My Shout’ have recorded a multitude of songs and made their first music video, and the project, co-ordinated by MC Spyda, has supported the young people, helping them to express their creative talents.

The aim of the project has encouraged the young people to write positive lyrics, engage with others and create songs that will appeal to a wider audience. In addition, the project offered confidence building, recognised accreditations, hands-on studio experience and ownership of a project as a whole.

‘Somewhere to Go, Something to Do’ is the result of the young peoples dedication and perseverance, and Splurj is proud to have been involved in such a positive movement in urban music and congratulates the young people of ‘My Shout’.

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“The Love of My Life” appears tenth on the track listing of ‘hip hop jazzers’ Us3’s seventh album “Stop.Think.Run” and this is our latest video featuring Ayesha Varnnard from London and Brook Yung who was shot in Los Angeles.

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SEE WHAT US3 HAVE TO SAY ABOUT US

Manchester rap artist Lyrican interviews D12 during their European tour in March 2009. We met up with Kuniva and Swifty at the Manchester Academy as part of an Urban Bass TV production, also in connection with RKP.

Our job was to film the interview and the event, create the 3 introductory idents and the end title sequence design, add visual effects to the composited video, and post the video around as many online and social networking sites as possible to try and generate traffic. The video has currently generated 2,804 hits on our Vimeo channel as of 19th June 2009.

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Inspired by the illustrative work of Si Scott we wanted to try out some flourish effects in the style of Indian henna which is symbolic of traditional Muslim marriage, and so, we dressed our subject in a traditional Indian sari, tied her hands up with rope and made her squirm a little bit as we recorded the live action on green-screen. Once we’d added animated vector graphics, subtle colour grading and background texture, it set the scene for an informative documentary production by Holyk Films in connection with HOPE Training and The Princes Trust.

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This was the first part in a series of journeys into Fluid Creativity’s new workspace. It was important that we captured the working environment and used elements from the new building (based at Hyde Point, Hyde) whilst also getting across the creative aspect of the business.

We used Graham (Fluid’s chief developer) in a bedroom scene, being woken by a contemporary Salvador Dali-style melting clock, which oozed ‘fluid’ from it’s face and activated the alarm - waking Graham from his dreams of code and sabotaged grammar, which was all shot, edited, designed and produced in-house.

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A high impact title sequence designed for Scorzayzee’s hip hop music videos for use on the official Scorzayzee website and YouTube Channel. Created using a stylised 3D logo, explosion footage,

For the release of the new Showtyme Entertainment website designed by Jason Mayo this attractive video ident was produced to compliment the look and feel of the new site when they upload their video media.

Shape, form, space, corporate styling and colouring, as well as depth-of-field, played a major role in this development, and the use of subliminal graphic devices, type and glow effects added interest to this eye catching video ident.

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A short introductory title sequence that focuses on new musical talent, bands and indie music in the East Midlands for use on the BBC Nottingham website.

A collaboration with Holyk Films brought to life with a virtual camera creating an Earth zoom effect and the musical talent of Where’s Strutter?.

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In this second part of Fluid’s viral videos after ‘Slime’ we put the in-house greenscreen facilities and working environment to good use again. We continued the journey into Fluid’s workplace with Wayne (Fluid’s head creative) visiting the bathroom who unexpectedly found himself at the center of a game of human-pinball - demonstrating Fluid’s creative imagination and development of ‘high impact visual’ services.

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This project was designed to be a graphic and metaphorical representation in the effects of advertising and how marketing strategies ‘entice’ the consumer in the same way as a bug is attracted to light. Close attention was payed to the typographic approach and animation of the type, the composition and movement of the 3D praying mantis, the overall film grading and atmospheric scenery, but I feel the overall message was lost within a barrage of graphic splendor!

But at least it got into Computer Arts Magazine!

The aim of the game is; the player is a cyborg police dog that has been sent to rescue the presidents daughter who has been captured by some hostile droids and save the day by blasting your way through a series of levels. The trailer featured footage that was shot in Luxor, Egypt and the 3D scenery was modeled around that. The game itself was never put into production, this was just a simple modeling and animation exercise that got me some exposure in Computer Arts Magazine.

The brief for this character animation was set by the D&AD to portray a characters personality through animation within a time limit of between 10 and 60 seconds.

Lil’ Don Rapski is one of those kids who admires celebrity figures, particularly rappers with big personalities - he want’s to be just like them, and after watching his favourite TV show ‘Wanna Be a G’ he starts freestyle rapping about his day to day activities which include nothing more than toilet humor and misinterpreting hip hop slang. He obviously has a lot of growing up to do before his next music video!

The name Don Rapski came about from a dream that I had as a teenager when Method Man turned and said to his homie “Don’t you know who that is? That’s Don Rapski,” and the name just stuck in my head for years until I decided to bring the name and the character to life in this animation. You can also see how the Lil’ Don Rapski character was created by downloading these Illustrated storyboards which include FREE desktop wallpapers!

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For two months in summer 2008 a small student flat in Cardiff was transformed into a 24 hour creative studio where ideas, ink and the occasional DTox branded thong were thrown around. Lyrics constantly looped over and over embedding themselves deep into my brain along with the constant hum of MacBook fans working overtime as Pro Plus boxes and Lucozade bottles reached closer and closer to the ceiling. I wouldn’t have traded that moment for the world!

One of the main challenges was that the opening verse featured B.Yonest who lived in Columbus Ohio, USA and whether or not we would get the footage we needed began to worry us ever so slightly. But we love a challenge, and we love taking risks, and it just goes to show that in this technological age geography is no longer an issue when it comes to us getting the job done.

Mark Coleran (screen, interface, motion and graphic design for film and television) who has worked on visuals for films such as Bourne Ultimatum, Domino, The Island, Mr & Mrs Smith, AVP, Blade II, Tomb Raider and Deja Vu, said: “If I had to make any comment I would say that there are perhaps too many variations in styling and graphic looks throughout the promo. Selection of a few that worked well together might have made for a tighter look and feel. Overall though they were all executed superbly.”

From the start of the project we had decided that that was exactly what we wanted to do and although we had worked out a storyboard for the idea, developed the look and feel for each character, hand-created every single prop, from the detailed DTox hoodie, right down the the false teeth and even the Jigga’s cigar, it would be completely experimental throughout in terms of styling, effects and graphics. A range of varying styles and media would keep the audience guessing what’s coming next and keeps them interested throughout.

Mark James of the Ffresh Awards committee also made a comment that the DTox ‘Make You Cry’ video is: “Very strong visually from the start, captivating. Cutting edge design, direction and overall style. As a pop promo it’s at a very high standard. Excellent work.”