Animated butterfly with drop shadow

Dave has experimented over the years with different sorts of animated butterflies and we have many on our website.
A few years back he tried to give a shadow effect in the hope of making the animation more realistic.
I found this animation, one that has never been published and think that Dave nearly got it right. Maybe he should experiment a little further.
The big problem, I think, is that the shadow will only look right on the correct colour background. In Flash you can actually make the shadow transparent.
Dave has worked quite a bit with Flash but decided a few years back that for the majority of people it is much easier to insert an animated gif into a website.

Animated Cod

Is it Cod and chips? No it is an animated cod, Dave’s latest creation. Not something you might keep in an aquarium but someone may have a use for it.
We have made another Chad animation, "what no Yorkshire" was requested but we are not quite sure what it was being used for.
We have been told that we have Irish animations but we have no Welsh ones...Could be Welsh and Scottish ones in the pipeline. Dave has been busy looking at the national symbols for these countries but is complaining that a leek is not any easy thing to draw.

Animated Awareness ribbons

On our website we have some Animated awareness ribbons

Occasionally we get requests for special ones.

This is the latest one made by Dave and will be added to the site at a later date.

Its handy that I now have this blog as I can update you with news faster than Dave can on our website

Attacking spider animation

Dave was not too sure about this one, just how does a spider attack?

This animation was requested and this is Dave's take on it.

We have spiders on our main website so we were able to use the existing 3D model for this animation. A few years back a research centre investigating people's fear of spiders asked if they could use our animated spiders in tests.

We love the spiders you get in the UK as they eat those horrible blue bottles (We even have animations of those) but whooaaa, not sure about some we have met up with abroad.

Free Easter Animations

This week we have updated the Easter animations and given readers of this blog an Easter egg you will not find on our website
Dave has not made anything new but has rearranged and made better animations in some cases.
Some of our animations were made in the days of the 56k modem and the file size was kept to the minimum. Now most people are on broadband the quality and file size of our animations has improved . We rarely exceed the 100 kb file size for any animation these days where we used to try and keep them to 30kb.
Dave has several things on the go including an attacking spider, now that’s a strange one… how does a spider attack?

Election animations, UK political animated gifs

ElectionWe do not have a lot of time for politicians and this political page about the upcoming general election just about says it all. You have a section of “vote for” your favourite political party spinning badges like the badge we have here. Be warned, if you visit this page Dave has used some strong language on one of his animations.
Very unusual for him but I actually encouraged it as we feel strongly about the present situation with British politicians.

Sometimes, but not very often we add content mid week, in this case the badges were easy to make and the “trough” animation had been made some time before.

Long live the Dot and Dave animation party.

Free animations for blogs and websites

This is the beginning of a new era, I have decided to start up my own blog rather than rely on Dave to set up my "Digest" each week. It also means I have access to this blog wherever I am.

The old comments can of course be found here

We both love cockles whelks and jellied eels so Dave has made a webpage with some animations about them.

Sometimes we travel down to Folkestone and one of our first stops is at a seafood stall to but some.

On the North Norfolk coast we have watched them collecting cockles and the dressed crabs that you can buy in some of the small seafood shops on the coastline are fantastic.

Next week Dave will be updating the Easter animations, that special time is nearly upon us again.

Who is Acorn

Acorn is a nickname used by both Dot and Dave.
I have been married for over thirty years and Dave is the artist and animator and I am the person who hopefully supplies him with some inspiration as well as collecting some good ideas from the visitors we get to Sevenoaks Art.
We have two children and a very stubborn grand daughter.
I live in the Sevenoaks area in the garden of England called Kent.
The website started up 10 years ago with just a few graphics but we became aware that people liked the funny little animations that we now make