Follow us!
on Youtube
on Facebook
on Blogspot
RSS feed (Atom)
- When are you going to update this website? - When I can. I'm probably working on something new right now. Send a blank email to howard
downwithfreedom.com with "mailing list" in the title and I'll add you to the Super Express Alert Group. Then you'll always be up-to-date with new content. Alternatively, if you have a Facebook account, you can join the Down With Freedom fan page to receive updates. - How do you make these cartoons? - Most of the work is done using a program called Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash). As you can possibly imagine, it's quite a complicated and lengthy process, and I'm not going to sit here and discuss it in detail. If you want to try it yourself, there are numerous books and online tutorials on the subject, which will do a much better job of explaining things. Here's my first attempt at making a Flash cartoon - isn't it great?
- How can I support Down With Freedom? - I like your attitude! You could always post a banner on your blog/page/whatever.
- Who are you? - Howard Gardner (not to be confused with this Howard Gardner). I was born in London and have spent most of my life there, except for the bits when I've been somewhere else. I've always had an interest in art and narrative, which caused me to spend most of my time at school drawing comic strips in lessons when the teachers weren't looking. I later studied art at the BRIT School in Croydon and the Colchester Institute in Essex. Like most people who've clung on until the end of an art course, I then found I was mostly unemployable and took a job in the insurance industry, while attempting to get an illustration job off the ground and writing a book in my spare time.
- Why is your website called "Down with freedom"? - It was originally inspired by a (slightly absurd) line from an old superhero cartoon:
I also sometimes use Adobe Photoshop for the pictures/backgrounds and Audacity to record and edit the sounds. The live-action films are edited with either Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere Pro, depending on how pro I happen to be feeling. After a bit, I began submitting bits of my work to Newgrounds and Youtube, which are forums for fourteen-year-olds to tell people how much their work sucks.
I'd be grateful if you did. Copy and paste this text:
<a href="http://www.downwithfreedom.com"><img height="80" alt="Down With Freedom" width="410" src="http://www.downwithfreedom.com/dwf_banner.gif"></a>
In 2006, inspired by sites such as rathergood.com and fat-pie.com, I decided to learn how to animate with Flash, and this site is the 'fruit' of this latest endeavour.
Mike Sims regularly writes/photoshops stuff for the Newsquelch 'column', as well as collaborating on a few other bits and pieces around the site.
...but I've since discovered the phrase also appeared in a surrealist movie by Luis Buñuel.