Bye bye Gromit

So its all over! Gromit Unleashed went out with a bang when it had its grand finale of a live auction of all 92 Gromits! It all took place in Bristol on the 3rd October, with Bargain Hunt's presenter, Tim Wonnacott acting as celebrity auctioneer. Unfortunately we couldn't make it due to other commitments but we watched the live auction online to see how much each Gromit would go for.

When Hullaballoon was finally up we were biting our nails down to nothing! We were convinced it wouldn't sell and let everyone down. Luckily we were very, very wrong, Hullaballoon went for a stonking £26,000! It was won in the room, so whoever you are thank you for being so generous! We've put the clip up on Youtube for all to see here.

All in all the auction was a terrific success with all 92 Lots raising an incredible £2.3 million! We couldn't be more proud to be part of such a huge project and as we tell a lot of people, we'll never be part of a bigger art exhibition than this - its just got possible! So thank you to everyone for the support and going to see Hullaballoon, it means the world to us.

Bristol Post - Monster Riot style

Carrying on from our Gromit Unleashed hi-jinx, we were asked by Bristol Post to redesign their masthead in the style of our Gromit. It appeared in print and on their website for one day. It was a fun thing to re-style and an honour to be part of Bristol's biggest paper. Click the image to see it in its full glory!

  

Postcards in Paperchase

Just a quick post to let you all know that our Lagom designs can now be found in postcard form in the mighty Paperchase! We're super chuffed at this and hope we'll see more of our designs in there soon!

Hullaballoon

Here's our final painted Gromit for Gromit Unleashed. He'll be on display at the Arnos Vale Heritage site in Bristol, so catch him if you can!

A Grand Day Out

We got to attend the launch of the Gromit Unleashed trail on June 28th in Bristol. It all started off at the M Shed with Nick Park making a 'Grand' entrance on a vintage steam train chock full of Gromit sculptures, including Nick's one which was kept top secret up until that point (its the one below with Wallace covering a poor Gromit in newspaper cuttings). Apart from being amazed by the talented artists that had taken part, we also got to meet animation legends Nick Park and Peter Lord, who were really lovely and thanked us for our work on the project. We were also treated to some short 'making of' films which featured the guys at Pixar creating 'Gromit Lightyear' and political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe with his stunning paint covered Gromit; 'Watch Out Gromit'.

It was a truly magnificent day and such a privilege to be part of. It's our first ever exhibition and it can't get any bigger or amazing than this, we really are lucky to have been a part of it. We hope the trail is a huge success and all the Gromit's make a ton of cash when they are auctioned off for charity after September. The trail starts Monday and you can find us at number 59 on the map (grab one from Bristol when you visit!) or get the app from the App Store. Don't forget to hashtag all your gromit photos #gromitunleashed if you do the trail!

But it doesn't end there! We'll be visiting our Gromit later next month at the Arnos Vale Heritage site where we'll be taking part in some events they will be hosting. We'll post more pics of ours in its new home along with others we've taken along the way of this fantastic charity exhibition.

Our Gromit for Gromit Unleashed

As we mentioned back in March, we were selected as one of the lucky 80 artists to take part in the Gromit Unleashed trail taking part this Summer. Last week we travelled to Bristol and painted our 5ft Gromit. It was a labour of love as we'd never done anything of this kind (or scale) before so it was an amazing experience and real learning curve for us. We painted the 5ft sculpture of the popular claymation series over a period of three days. It's now finished and will be laquered up to join the other 79 Gromits that will be lined the streets at popular locations in Bristol this summer (lets hope its a sunny one!).

Below are a few of the sneaky peeks of our work in progress as we're not allowed to reveal the whole finished piece until they're unveiled on the trail in July. We'll post more photos in July when its out in the wild! To find out more about the project and to visit the trail this summer check out the Gromit Unleashed website here.

Rabbit King

A 5ft Gromit!

We're proud to announce that we'll be one of the 70 artists getting to paint a 5ft Gromit statue for the Gromit Unleashed Charity Exhibition in Bristol. We're really excited as its for a great cause (the statues will be sold after the exhibition with all proceeds going to Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children’s Hospital Charity) and we're huge Wallace & Gromit fans (hopefully we'll get to meet Mister Park!). For now we have to keep our design very, very top secret as to keep a bit of mystery for the big unveil in July. But we'll be sure to keep you in the loop on the progress of our painting of the statue, so stay tuned over the next couple of months for updates and sneak peeks!

The Queens Coronation (in M&S)

We're finally allowed to unzip our tightly zipped mouths to reveal one of our secret projects. Last year (about 6 months ago) we were contacted by Marks & Spencer to update a past illustration of ours. We had to keep the whole affair very hush hush and were counting the days until we could finally reveal all. We're really excited about this one as we're huge fans of Marks & Spencer and seeing our very own biscuit tin on the shelves has been a dream come true! It's now available in all their stores (in the UK at least) and we managed to pick one up ourselves and take a bunch of piccies of it to show you all. We hope the Queen and her Corgis approve of it!

 

'Up Close' interview on Lagom website

Just a quick note to say Jason has an interview up on the Lagom site, take a look at it here. We're busy working away on new stuff at the moment and will post something new really soon!

Greetings card collection

Our first greetings card collection with Lagom Design is now up to purchase on their website. For the whole collection visit Lagom here. We're really proud how they've turned out and we hope to do more pretty soon. They'll be available to buy in the shops in the next couple of months and we can't wait to see them out in the wild, so do take pics and send them to us if you spot them! That's all for now...

New Year and new stuff from us!

Happy belated New Year everyone! Hope you're all wrapped up and keeping cosy during this January cold snap. We've got some very exciting news to share. We have our first greetings cards collection out with the brilliant folk at Lagom Design.

The cards are currently being displayed at the Top Drawer trade show on at Earls Court exhibition centre (image via Wrap Magazine). This is the first of many things we've been keeping quiet about over the last few months so we're ecstatic to be revealing these to the world now. Here's to an eventful 2013!