Favourite Animated Christmas Special

Hey Arnold - Arnold's Christmas (1996)

This episode has only very recently made it on to my list of animated favourites. I'd watched this Christmas Special several times before, but it was only during a recent rewatch (2021) that I truly appreciated how great the episode actually is. "Arnold's Christmas" has leapfrogged all The Simpsons Christmas specials that at one point would have topped my list, purely for nostalgic reasons.

In the episode, the tenants of Arnold’s home, an inner-city boarding house (Sunset Arms) are running a secret santa in the lead up to Christmas and Arnold draws the quiet Mr Hyunh, who always seems sad around the holidays.

Arnold soon pays him a visit to find out a little more about him and it becomes clear that the man has a very touching back story. Mr Hyunh, originally from South Vietnarn, explains how he was separated from his baby daughter Mai during the Fall of Saigon in the Vietnam war, holding her above his head as a U.S. Army helicopter was evacuating the Vietnamese. She was taken by the soldiers back to America, guaranteeing her safety.

When he was finally able to leave Vietnam himself, Mr Hyunh had been unable to find Mai, knowing only that she had been taken to Hillwood. I won't go into more detail on the plot here as this episode is better to be watched for yourself and I recommend you do! I watch it several times over the Christening period and its fast becoming a tradition.

This episode actually premiered on December 11,1996 - 28 years ago yesterday. I'm a little gutted that I didn't realise this fact sooner as I'd have loved to coincide this post with the anniversary of its release.

Overall, it is a wonderful, heartfelt episode and I wasn't surprised to find it is often included on "TV's best holiday episodes" lists including Variety's, Screen Rant's, Indie Wire's and Den of Geek's and is the top rated Hey Arnold episode on IMDB. I watch this special several times over the Christmas period and I recommend you give it a watch on Paramount+.

The episode's opening is my favourite part, a catchy tune and a very atmospheric scene - several shots of a snowy Hillwood and a few of the shows best known characters, and a certain football headed snowman. It always gives me strong, nostalgic 90's vibes.

Go watch it now.

Second Update

This post won't be as detailed as I would usually like, the reason being that I already typed the post up and there was an issue with cut and paste which resulted in me losing everything. Lesson learnt, always copy on iphone, never cut. So as promised I have returned to update on what I've been up to in the last few months since September 2019.

One of the digital pieces I worked on was a drawing of Dennis the Menace and Gnasher. These characters were a huge influence on me as a child and were a big factor in my wanting to be an animator/illustrator. I initially drew out these characters in 2016 and only recently got around to bringing them to life in a digital form.

As mentioned previously, I worked on a logo for Elroy of Cut Different clothing, based in the USA. Elroy had a very specific idea of what he wanted the design to look like. I enjoyed working on this design as it does incorporate a character of sorts - character design being one of my passions. Elroy was very happy with this design and recently gave permission to share this design on my site and blog.

Next, I did some work for Kenny, one of Elroy's contacts. Kenny reached out to me to give his current logo new life. As you can see from the images, I upped the detail on the logo, but kept the core principle the same. Kenny was very happy with this updated look.

I helped Kenny again soon afterwards when he contacted me to create a logo for his brand "Moor Life." Kenny wasn't sure exactly what he wanted but was hopeful that we could include an elephant in the design. I created a design as below and Kenny was thrilled with the final delivery.

 There was another Hashtag Live held in Classic Grand in December 2019. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the boys were unable to record audio for another introductory animation so I instead I did various pieces of artwork for the show.

In mid November, I decided it was time to return to creating animation, as it had been 6 months since I had actually done anything in that medium. At first I planned to create an animation that I'd planned out earlier in the year. However, it occured to me that we were approaching the Christmas period, and so I felt this was a good opportunity to create an animation based around that. The result was "To Elf and Happiness" the story of Twinkie, a workshop elf and his secret love for Elsie, an Office Elf. Overall I was very happy with how this project turned out and feel that I am back to my animating best.

Going forward, I have a few ideas for what I would like to do next, including the aforementioned idea, which centres around a balloon character and perhaps another comic. I will also be doing my best to raise the status of Campbell Animation in 2020. I will update the blog as soon as I have further developments.

Hello again!

A common trend with my posts to the blog are that I tend to update it for a period, followed by a few months of silence. During that period though, it usually doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working. In fact, usually the opposite is true and I have found myself far too busy to put my thoughts down on the page.

This recent period of absence has unfortunately been down to some seriously bleak circumstances for my family. My grandmother sadly passed away after a battle with cancer. She fought amazingly and I am proud of how she defied the doctors every time. This has quite naturally been a particularly devastating time for me - my gran was always a massive part of my life growing up and I lived with her for ten years.

However, she was a strong lady and would not have wanted me to wallow in darkness after her passing. In the time since my last post I have created a few different pieces of work, including both artwork and animation.

Through my Facebook page, Campbell Animation, I connected with a new client from Buffalo in New York. He reached out to me to digitally re-create a sketch that he had made for one of his music business ventures. I created the piece and he was pleased with the final product, so much so that he contacted me recently to work on another design. This recent piece is for a clothing line he will be launching and the design is quite a unique one. Unfortunately, I won't be able to show any of these designs for the time being as the client has asked that these remain confidential. I will remain in communication with him and if he later allows me to present these I will do so.

In addition to this freelance work, I created a few one shot comic strip based on a joke I'd read online (below.) Once I'd completed the first strip, I got an idea for a second one and was able to create that fairly quickly after the first. These ideas were just for a bit of fun to post on Campbell Animation, so I may or may not create more based on these characters in future.

These projects re-developed my taste for creating comic strips. Drawing and reading comics had been my first passion and was what led me into the creative fields in the first place. I have always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to create an action-adventure comic book. The character pictured below is one that I have recently started to develop. I have sketched him many times now and really enjoy working on him.

I recently completed a test for a company called Education City, based in Oakham, England. I was in Leicester for a meeting with the team down there, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of touring their offices, though I felt that the type of work they done didn't quite fit my own style. I was a front runner for a position within Education City and was tasked with completing a learning module in the final stage.

After much consideration I decided to complete the task since I'd travelled all the way to meet them. Unfortunately, in the end, I was not the candidate chosen for the role but I am happy with their decsion, I would have felt awful declining the role and I was very much on the fence about it. In the end, I am glad I completed the module as through it I learnt more about Adobe Animate, which is not my native program.

I also created a unique character, that I named Arty, in their style to show that I was more than capable of creating assets in that style.

In addition to all this, I did more work for The Hashtag Show, bringing to life the Geordie Captain America, a character they had invented in their fortnightly podcast, and a frequent topic. Lately my work for The Hashtag Show has moved from animation towards more design work, which has allowed me to look towards other projects. The Hashtag boys are looking to arrange a date for another Hashtag Live event, which would be my 3rd show doing the intro animation. I will update the blog if there are any developments on that.

Going forward, I will be travelling to Florida on Monday for two weeks and getting a much needed break from everything that has been going on in my life. I will return with fully charged batteries and ready to look to the next project. As before the BBC project is going through a lot of development changes so my involvement has been delayed again. I have been speaking with The Hashtag Show about doing a possible comic strip so will probably get that completed once I'm back and move forward with once of the many animation ideas I have swirling around in my brain.

 

Updates

After a whirlwind January where I posted three different times, I have been a little off the radar. I had taken a break from creative work for a while, mainly because of some personal circumstances within my family. I am now getting back into the habit of creating content again and my two most recent pieces are graphic design work. The first piece is a gamer character based on myself which was created for the Campbell Gaming Youtube page . This channel was created by my good friend Jon Campbell for game streams and that I will be appearing on every now and again.

The second piece is a Raccoon warrior piece that I created for a client who had actually seen this as a sketch and commissioned me to colour it digitally for his own use.

Going forward, I have a few things planned out. I seem to be pushing myself more in the design direction at the moment which doesn’t overly faze me, despite being a specialist in animation. It is not due to a lack of ideas, as I am brimming with those, but more so time.

I organise my projects in a list of importance and I work through it that way. Sometimes projects get totally moved to the bottom of the list and some get pulled forward. This technique isn’t for everyone, however it is a technique I have found very useful and works well for me.

Going forward from here I have plans to do a one shot comic and see what the reaction to that is. However I have also designed a character recently that I would very much like to use as a comic and take a chance with that. My first interest in the creative business was actually in comic books and I really want to attempt it.

Animation wise I have a few ideas in the works, I have almost finished planning stages in the BBC project that I have been working on and it will be moving into full production very soon. 

I will be sure to post updates as soon as I am able to. I have also storyboarded an idea for a sequel to my Saul & Pepper cartoon and this may be the next animated piece I work on.

What's next?

I can't believe it, I'm actually posting again, this must be a record for a single month. So, as mentioned in the previous post, I have been working on my up-to-date show reel for 2019, encompassing the best of my work over the last 4 years. I have included this below and also created an alternative one for my Facebook page that used the “Campbell Animation” intro from the last post.

In terms of The Hashtag Show, I don’t have any further developments on the next animation and when we will be looking at that being released as I haven’t really been in communication with Mallorca recently.

We are, however, moving ever closer to the animation stage of the project I mentioned several times before in other posts and talks with the BBC are still under way. I have a Skype call with the rest of the team soon and we will be having a chat about the project as a whole.

The next post will probably be an update on what is happening with the project and possibly an update on the planning I was doing on a potential Hashtag animation.