emojinal Times

 Bit of a throwback to when I worked on emojitown in 2022. I came on board as a creative producer around episode 36 - helping to shape the interpretations and animation from the scripts, sadly not able to write on the show (although that was the plan if the second season was greenlit!)

I did get to do a couple of voices - but a lot of my creativity went into the thumbnails, especially for the compilations (as they tended to be thematic rather than episode specific) some of my favourites below.

The idea was to create imagery that worked as an engaging YouTube thumbnail, whilst also working as a standalone piece of art or titlecard.

(I didn't 'create' these - they were made by the wonderful animation studio, but I would brief them and sometimes give preliminary character designs and layout sketches of what I was imagining.)

A bit of a Souls-like themed bossfight thumbnail - with a touch of Monster Hunter.

Horror thumbnail, some Stranger Things references as well as the Mystery Inc. gang from Scooby Doo

Superheroes - I designed most of these personas from scratch (Jo's came from E33 Superheroes and Jess' was loosely based on her look from the same episode.)

More superheroes - again, only Unicorn Man and Poophead had existing designs (from a previous compilation thumbnail.)

A really fun Spider-Man reference in this one for the Fleas episode.

Thanksgiving compilation. I just thought what is the most disruptive thing Poophead could do for the holiday.

Julia compilation - had fun leaning into her artist roots for the different styles in the background.

Far from the only thumbnails I worked on - but it's fun looking back on the show after so long.

MCM London Comic Con

 Absolutely mad! Surreal! Crazy!

I'm a big ol' nerd, so I've been to many comic cons in my time, including the prestigious MCM London - the biggest in the UK.

But to my astonishment my work on Transformers: CYBERWORLD has led to me being on a flipping panel! About the show! Such an honour and wonderful experience.

I still can't believe the response we have received from the fandom - and it was really, really great getting to share the experience with a bunch of engaged fellow nerds from the glitz and glamour of the stage.

(Not that it was a massive thing, but still huge to me.)

I fully blacked out and don't remember what I said. But I would do it again for sure - hopefully the show continues long enough for us to visit a convention again in the future!

I was there alongside my fellow writer Ryan Denham, Voice Director Joe Lewis and four of the five amazing voice talent we work with on every episode: James Alexander, Jessica Carroll, Shogo Miyakita and Jack Ayres!

Our gracious moderator was also one of our Executive Producers Tayhan Mustafa.

We played the full theme song and also showed a small snippet of that weekend's episode. As well as having an audience Q&A.

I'm so humbled and thankful, and still can't believe it happened!

R-L: Shogo Miyakita, Jack Ayres, James Alexander, Jessica Carroll, Joe Lewis, Tayhan Mustafa, Ali Lightfoot

I was listed on the website!

(Big shout out to James for kicking off and organising the whole thing for us!)

Transform and Roll Out!

 I've been deep in the Transformers mines for some time and not surfaced for air - but the show it doing really great!

We're up to Episode 9 which is the end of the first mini-arc in the story, and there's a compiled version of all the episodes so far available on the channel right now!

That's just under 45mins of pure Cyberworld goodness, and ideal to catch up if you've not been watching until now.

Give it a watch over on the Transformers Official YouTube.

New episode (10) will drop on the 4th of October, so keep your eyes peeled!

All Aboard the Transformers Omnibus

 My show Transformers: CYBERWORLD premiered just over a month ago - we're still deep in production, but I'm so pleased with how it is going and the reception it has garnered from the fandom.

If you haven't yet seen it, there is an episode 1-4 compilation released today that will catch you up on the story so far:

Transformers: CYBERWORLD on the TransformersOfficial YouTube channel

Do please check it out - and let me know what you think. New episodes will be going live (nearly) every Saturday until June 2026.

All on the TransformersOfficial YouTube channel. Subscribe to keep on top of it.

Til All Are Won!

The first official teaser trailer for the project I've been working on has finally dropped!

May I introduce Transformers: CYBERWORLD a brand new YouTube web-series from Hasbro Studios UK.

I've been working on this for nearly 10 months at this point and I've not been able to talk about it at all. But my name is on the IMDb and the show is officially announced so I am copping up to it.

I developed the show for series from a concept (and toyline) provided by the team at Hasbro, and I am the Head Writer for the 36 episode run.

It's so very exciting and I'm so pumped to share the show with the fandom and world. The first episode premieres on 12th July this year - just over a month away. We're still in the thick of production (and will be well up until the finale) but it's coming to life!

I've already seen the first few episodes coming together and hopefully you all love it as much as we do. The team is fantastic, the cast is brilliant, I can't wait for people to see what we've all worked so hard to produce.

Big love and big thank.

Sad Firetruck Noise 🚒

 It would seem that the show reboot I was writing for has moved production internally. There are still 3 and a half episodes I wrote that have not yet been produced - if they make it to launch I will update here.

My services as an animatic artist and writer are still available to those interested. Example below:

Omcha Tea Guide

 I'm so happy to announce that the final version of the animated tea brewing guide is now available!

Watch now at OMCHA.CO.UK

This was a great project and I look forward to future collaborations with Omcha!

Kidibli

 In the wake of my departure from WildBrain, I was given the fantastic opportunity to work on a series refresh for the studio Animaj.

They were looking to revitalise their digital show Kidibli - bringing a similar energy to what was produced for Kiddyzuzaa.

I had the pleasure of working with a number of my former WildBrain/Kiddyzuzaa colleagues for the project, and I hope it continues to be a lot of fun!

My role, initially, on the project was to help produce an animatic for the pilot episode, that would be used as part of the internal pitching to greenlight the full series. Written by the incomparable Jeremy Krause.

Originally this was about glue and had a slightly different execution.

But then the team pivoted to an episode about misusing a toaster (and starting a fire.)

I'm very happy with how the animatic turned out. I used a combination of assets provided by our fantastic illustrator Courtney Summers, along with my own drawings and some real photos of an actual fire engine toy that I bought for the project.

The idea was that the show would have a mixed media look, swapping between live-action, stop-motion and hand-drawn animation for different moments.

Being a wholly illustrated 2D animatic, it was important to express this visual distinction as much as possible - hence the different styles throughout the piece.

I'm thrilled to say it was a success and the project is going into production. I am on board as a writer and storyboard artist for the show. I will share more as things progress!

Utter Balls

Been working on a classic "bouncing ball" animation for a sing-a-long video.

Client provided the video, I merely transcribed the lyrics and overlaid them with the custom animation.

WiP screenshot w/ Onion Skinning

Sample of the finished animation

NEW SHOWREEL

This is my 2016 showreel, which also handily gives a rundown of most of the projects I've been working on during late 2015-16.

Showreel - Ali Lightfoot (2016) from Ali Lightfoot on Vimeo.

It's not MY Life

I've got an in-house job at a company/campaign called Your Life. It's ostensibly video editing work, but I will post any animation-based updates on here as they come.

News

I recently took on a commission that's a little exciting. I've finished the first part of the overall workload (unfortunately it's the smallest part) but it should be complete in around a month.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the project, I can't reveal any of the details until it is made public. As soon as it is I will put all the material on here, but in the meantime, sit tight.

Hotting Up

I was pitched a brief, by a company, based on an pro-NHS campaign. They wanted me to come up with some ideas on how to animate the script they'd written.
I sent a written treatment and they requested some style boards for further consideration.
Below are my rough designs (they wanted a specific style):

 

Strolling

As part of an application for an animator position, a company asked me to complete a walk cycle, based on a character they'd already drawn up.
I didn't get the job, in the end but I thought I'd post the cycle I did anyway.

The art was copyrighted to them, so I've created rough alternative parts to replace their original pieces. This is purely for the purposes of showing off the animation I did.
Because I've replaced the parts, everything looks a great deal rougher.

I'm not sure if they choppiness is due to lag or the difference in framerate between the original and the .gif.

 It was interesting, because I'd not really done such tween-heavy animation before, but I was pleased with how it came out. Especially for only about a day's efforts.

Book It

I just finished the final touches to my "Gilliam Animation", which I've tentatively titled Book - for want of a better name - and uploaded to Vimeo.

(You can see it here.)

It's taken me far too long to complete, what with laziness, tedium, losing a load of work and being put off and having to find the right live-action elements to include. But it's done.

It's almost ironic that the part of the process I knew the least about and had never attempted before, took me the least amount of time. I started this morning and finished a short while ago. (That was compositing the animation with the live footage of the book.)

I think it worked out well too, considering I took the lazy approach and avoided using After Effects and masks - instead winging it with the limited effects in Premiere and a prayer that the clumsy edits won't be noticeable during viewing. (I don't think they are.)

I'm actually incredibly pleased with how it's come out. Especially how well I managed to make digitally animated scans, combined with footage of a blank page, look like closeup shots of an actual book.
It was challenging given the inconsistent colouring of a lot of the source images (that I probably should've corrected at the first stage rather than last) and I ended up using a lot more and far different effects than I imagined when I first conceptualised it.
In particular not being able to chroma key the image backgrounds and having to add digital shadows to mimic those of the page-turn to make them more seamless.

Below are some screenshots to pique your interest/allow me to show off.

I had to write a load of nonsense to make the scenes look more like real book pages. They're not even complete sentences; there's nothing before the left edge of the shot.

I'm not going to pretend that I don't think I'm a genius for adding a layer of mirrored text to emulate the look of the adjoining page showing through the paper.

I think the overall effect is convincing. I'd believe this is a photo of a book page, and I KNOW that I made it.

 

Machinations

In my last post, I mentioned my film The Machine.

It's a dark animated short based on Franz Kafka's story "In The Penal Colony".

There is a complete version of it, that I have submitted to festivals, but I personally think it's too short and unfinished (the time constraints of uni, necessitated severe edits to the script).

At the moment I wish to extend it to the level I think is the bear minimum for release, and then hopefully add a little more until it is "properly" finished - at which point I'll release it again as a "director's cut".

Just so you know what it's like and it exists (many people haven't seen it) here are some screenshots I've taken at various points of production.

 

 

 

 

An exasperating issue I noticed during early stages, that I posted on Twitter.

 

An early version of one scene. The linework was criticised and so I moved to the style shown in the other images. (This was part of style that was to incorporate additional heavier use of comicbook-style shading.)

B&W screenshots as part of the festival submission.

The submission also required a poster, so this is a rough design I threw together to fulfil that demand.

Stephen Lives!

Since its inception, I've wanted to revisit one of the films I created for my 2nd year of animation during my degree.
The film was called Stephen and it was never fully realised to the level that I desired. I recently poured through several of my old harddrives, pen drives and other storage in an attempt to recover the original .fla file with which to continue the film.

Unfortunately all I could find was the final, unfinished export of the film and an even further unfinished .fla file. Half the final version was missing, but yet I still had the exported version taunting me and reminding me that it once existed.
I had all but resigned myself to the notion of having to painstakingly recreated all the scenes that I had watched over and over as part of the final export.

The world may never know about this chap's weird muffin obsession.

However.

I got in contact with my father and convinced him to let me borrow his old external harddrive to search for it. It was a long shot, but low and behold, it paid off!

I'm now in possession of the rough early edition of Stephen! Ready to roll into production...

Just as soon as I finally get that damn Terry Gilliam-inspired short out, and also finish the director's cut of my final year film The Machine...

Got my work cut out!

Full scene list from the recovered version of "Stephen". The tick shows the half finished scene I had at the end of the only versions I could find before.

Terry-ble at updating

I've been working for some time, on-and-off, on this silly little competition project. But I've been very bad at keeping anyone updated on its progress. There came a few stalls when I had some crashes and lost a lot of work - and some of it can get quite tedious to animate, so it's very demotivating to lose it. Additionally, I also intend to splice in some live action footage of an old book. Finding the right book for the job also hindered progress, but I have something now.

Here are a few images to show what caught my eye in the British Library's collection and illustrate the work I did to make them "animateable".

This, I believe, is the original, unedited version of this image that I downloaded.

Here you can see the edits I made to the base image itself...

...and this shows the embellishments and extra elements I added to animate the image.

Another of the images that caught my eye.

Side-by-side comparison of the original (right) and the edited version, with cut out elements in the centre.

Still of one live-action book shots, onto which I intend to superimpose the animations.