Tapocketa at the Creative Enterprise Gala

Eleanor with fellow Female Founder cohorts Kath Shackleton, Natasha Hawthornthwaite and Alixe Lobato

Eleanor and I had the chance to venture outside our studio and travel to Birmingham (a first for me) to attend the Creative Enterprise Gala.

Creative Enterprise funds our research and development project The Locksmith, a story-led augmented reality experience utilising our distinct animation style. They allocate funds from the British Film Institute and the National Lottery for screen based innovative storytelling.

Creative Enterprise have been funding innovation in screen-based storytelling for five years and decided to celebrate their huge achievements over that time at the Grand Hotel ballroom in Birmingham.

Eleanor and I got the chance to catch up with other supported businesses and share our experiences, which is a big part of the support that CE gives.

Starting up as a creative micro-indie company can feel a bit of a lonely endeavour sometimes especially when you are making inroads into an unfamiliar industry, so the chance to consult with those who are either going through, or have gone through, a similar experience is invaluable.

I’ll leave you with this shot of me obscured by a candelabra…

We all thought it best that I be obscured by the table decorations

Tapocketa Launches Mini-Tonic

It is with huge excitement that we would like to announce the launch of our new venture, Mini-Tonic…

Sitting alongside Tapocketa, Mini-Tonic is the place for all work involving other people’s imagery. It is, in fact…

Your Images Re-Imagined

A still from the book trailer for million-selling author, Mark Dawson’s ‘The House in the Woods’

We love to use our ingenuity to bring static artwork to life, and transform still imagery into animated shorts in a variety of ways and styles.

We consider each brand or proposition with care and endeavour to give each a narrative to stand out from the crowd. We can also create further artwork to amplify your message.

Animating the characters from the book cover of ‘The Case of the Smuggler’s Curse’

We believe that our imagination, inventiveness and storytelling is what can help set your work apart. So far we have worked with a selection of wonderful art directors, producers, publishers, musicians and artists, and would love to work with more creatives to collaborate, pioneer and develop many more Mini-Tonic shorts.

Mini-Tonic definition: A concise remedy or ‘pick-me-up’.

Inspiration Spot

We are introducing an “Inspiration Spot’ to our newsletter mail-out, in which we highlight an interesting thing that has caught our eye….

This great little historic film clip shows how the creative spirit can turn the humble typewriter from a machine of words into an expression of visual creativity!

‘Able to tick? Tick Along’ Film from 1937 Polygoon-Profilti (producer) / Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (curator) Licensed under Public Domain Mark

Eleanor joins the fantastic Female Founders Scale Up programme

I am really excited to be one of fourteen entrepreneurs to be selected for the Female Founders Scale Up program run by Creative Enterprise (with the BFI and National Lottery).

2022 Female Founders cohort

We are embarking on a 6-month programme designed for female business owners from the narrative screen-based industry, which includes tv, animation, createch, and scripted and branded content companies. In its third year, the programme provides in-depth support, advice, and professional coaching tackling areas including business planning, funding, strategy, making the right hires, and monetising IP.

Having already met up in-person, I am really looking forward to working alongside these women, in developing opportunities both personally and for Tapocketa.

You can find out more about the programme here.

And find out about Erica Wolfe-Murray of Lola Media, our fantastic coach, who is leading the course here.

Get Animated: How to find your animated replacement

We would like to enter NED - Love Machine into festivals and competitions.  There's only one problem, well two actually...us.

While NED is currently a delicious mix of animation and live action (not to mention Oscar-worthy performances from yours truly) it makes it less 'animation-y' to have real people in it.

This also becomes a bit of an issue when the live action is at the beginning. This was deliberate, the whole element of surprise is the transition into the animated world. Unfortunately this also means that when a panel of experts sits down to watch our beautiful animation, the first thing they see is…er… not animated. We would like to think they wouldn’t switch the film off in disgust at that point. We would like to think that they would have confidence that we, as professional animators, would not be so silly as to enter a live action movie into an animation competition or festival. I have to say, we’re not confident that would actually happen.

Therefore, we reluctantly take one for the team and stand aside to make way for less attractive animated versions of ourselves. I know, it’s not going to be easy.

If you would like to keep up to date with our progress, we are regularly (currently every other Sunday) broadcasting live at 5pm (BST) for around 10-15mins.

The next one will be on Sunday 26th July at 5pm British Standard Time (9am PDT, 12pm EDT) where we will be showing our progress and talking sound fx.

Click the image below to go to the YouTube page where you can book your place by clicking ‘notify me’. See you there! :-)

Tapocketa’s Live at Five Sound FX

We love broadcasting live, it gives us a chance to show you our progress and get live feedback (if you want - you can just watch - if you’re a bit shy, don’t worry, we don’t see who’s watching - it’s not like a Zoom call - more like a live TV programme).

If you would like to keep up with new Live at Fives, follow us on social media or subscribe to our YouTube channel...

Tapocketa's Live at Five begins!

What goes on behind the scenes of a slightly unusual animation duo?

How do you start creating an interactive animated story?

Where do you look for creative inspiration to give your stories richness and depth?

Join us Live at Five every other Sunday at 5pm BST!

We take you through the process of creating interactive stories as we create them.

And because it is a live broadcast, you get to ask questions while we are broadcasting.

Our next session is on 12th July. Follow us on social media to get more details about each session closer to the broadcast date.

Here are the first two sessions. It takes us a little while to get into our stride!…

Live at Five session 01

Live at Five session 02