Grabbil™

Because I’m still oh so impressed with myself (honest), I wanted to spotlight my own handiwork once more by pointing out another thing that finally made it into my portfolio this past week.
Cory once again entered his gang-o’-mates (aka Team Red Apple*) into Ant Timpson’s 48 Hour Furious Filmmaking Competition earlier this year, where they pumped out a revenge flick called An Axe To Grind. The random rules included a bent piece of wire as a compulsory prop and the line of dialogue “What have you got?”. We decided to make this bent piece of wire an invention that caused the initial rift between the twin brothers (that twins part wasn’t my fucking idea…grumble grumble…) and use the line of dialogue as lyrics to a jingle advertising this marvelous toy;

I animated this faux commercial in under 48 hours for them and Brent Dunn (genius) over in London made me a score to order (which we then destroyed with our ‘singing’). According to one review, the animated segment “seemed a little too long and out of place with the rest of the film”. Oh, wait…
You’ll also see the little production logo I animated for this team, as they may be here to stay, this being their third entry (I also contributed bits of animation to the previous efforts, Reservoir Cats and The Rotten Apples).

*Red Apple is the brand of cigarettes smoked by any character in a Tarantino film and because Cory (the man behind this little 48 Hours team) is obsessed with the aforementioned Quentin, both the name and logo were homage to that. NOT stealing.

Invader Cain: Teaser casting begins!

So I’m well into production on Invader Cain’s new Back Of Your Mind music video and they’ve decided to start building some buzz around its eventual release (or perhaps they just want me to commit to it in public to ensure that I actually finish the fucking thing, heh). The band’s guitarist had a genius idea for a teaser and wrote a script for it, which I then ripped to shreds like the prima donna that I am.
Anyway, this script revolves around cartoon characters that are asked to act as the band in the upcoming animated music video. If that makes sense. This has led to me designing little dudes that look LIKE the caricatures I’ve already completed, which is something that I’ve never had to do before.

On the left, we have the fellow that has been ‘cast’ to play a cartoon version of Invader Greg. Let’s call him Trigger. He resides in a cartoon world which is why he is dressed a little bit Dr. Suess-y.
In the middle, we have the real-life Invader Greg in his Reebok Pumps. That’s his gangsta-lean.
And on the right, we have Trigger again, this time decked out in his Invader Greg costume!

Casting for the rest of the gang is well underway, voices have been laid on tape and there is even some frames animated already. Stay tuned and watch this bitch unfold.

BSA: Back From The Dead? Or…?

Ha! I haven’t touched my movie blog (Big Screen Auckland) in more than five weeks and I choose to make a comeback with Justin Timberlake’s In Time (US ’11)??
I didn’t even give it the thrashing that my co-host Cory believed it deserved (fuck him, he can post his own thoughts). In fact, not only did I fail to lambaste the film, but I claimed that I’d watch a sequel. The balls on this guy…

I was really into posting my ‘reviews’ for a little while there, but when I got too busy and had to stop, I realised that I kinda didn’t miss it too much? I s’pose I was watching A LOT of stuff (today was my 279th cinema outing for the year) and it became a chore keeping up with it, but I also realised that reading other reviewers can often get me grumpy. I dunno that I wanna be that guy ruining people’s day. At least on this blog, I’m talking positively(ish) about shit I’m doing rather than dumping on other’s accomplishments.
My fear of trolls has also reached an all-time high and not just because I got my first thumbs down on one of my YouTube videos. Reading venomous comments anywhere can piss on an otherwise enjoyable picnic and I found that I’m visiting Twitchfilm, IMP Awards and Flicks a lot less these days because the more vocal of their fanbase seem to be hate-filled dickheads.
I dunno what I’ll do; I like getting my thoughts down in black & white even just for myself, plus I enjoy the art of presentation. I’m attempting to focus more on the positive when talking about something that’s not mine, trying to make it clear that my thoughts are strictly opinion and giving examples of how things can be done better instead of just saying something is shit, which may all help. But I doubt it, that internet can be a rough place…
Feel free to stick around, see how it all evolves. I know I’m curious.

NB. This post was created with all five of my Justin Timberlake MP3s on loop. I do really like that guy.

Three Houses Down – Oh It’s Good

Another one from the archives, like I’m famous an’ shit, cobbling together a Best-Of…
This is 12 months old and I’ve barely shown anybody, pro’ly due to the amount of reuse and dodgy sliding walls I snuck into it, shame…
Noggin Films got me to whip this up after their other animators…um, moved on from the project (Oh, us wacky cartoon types). It’s a shame, too; the simplistic shapes that the other team’d used were shit-loads stronger than what I went with, their backgrounds had cool carpet an’ shit and basically I’m just a fan of theirs. Oh well.

I was asked to have cartoon versions of this 10-piece South Auckland reggae band enter a swingin’ club like the famous Steadicam shot from Goodfellas (US ’90) and then have them play a show. The video was also s’posed to show how skin colour shouldn’t affect the way we all get on and whatnot, much like the lyrics in the song. So somebody much cleverer than I decided that using different coloured monsters’d highlight that very nicely. Et voilà!

PS…At one stage it was gunna be filled with product placement, which woulda been kinda fun; here’re some mock-ups from that version:

Shit I Love: Flipbook

Goodness me, who knew Auckland had an animation community at all, let alone an effing cool one. I have often missed those wonderful days when I had loads of animator mates; we’d all be teaming up on silly little projects whilst comparing notes about the latest episodes of Liquid Television (US ’91), The Tick (US ’94) or Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man (US ’94). Nowadays…sigh…

(Click on any of the thumbnails below to view the full video, other than; the snowman one is a download ’cause that’s all I could find, the Easter Bunny one is a trailer only and I couldn’t locate the Road Runner thing, but there’re clips of it in the showreel I’ve linked to. You are welcome).

The turn-out was fantastic, I would never’ve guessed there’d be that many folks (like, 60 or some shit) wantin’ for a night like this! The Sale Street bar was great, their very own Churchill Stout went down brilliantly and with the huge screen, prizes from Nerf, Disney and whatnot, the entire thing was shitting marvelous. Well done, Muks.

So, I had decided to have something ready to play at this thing, but screwed all the timing up and had the deadline wrong. Imbecile. But heavens above, I’m glad that I didn’t cram something in last minute, because the talent was overwhelming.
I struggled for a moment and was on the verge of chucking my ‘career’ in once I saw what was on offer, but I eventually matured (ie. three pints in) and emerged inspired instead. The comic timing, the enormous range of techniques, the production values…

Yukfoo & Harry Enfield, Jabba sounding more like Ray Winstone, Rhys Darby and a rapist, student films more impressive than I’ve ever made…let’s face it, I was out of my league.
Favourite moments: dejected crow’s mopey walk, Bib Fortuna’s grin, the puzzler’s pissed off scowl, PHD’s tongue kiss, the anticipation before Ilah’s gorilla prods…But seeing Oneedo’s music video that he did for Danger Beach’s Apache was…simply stunning. Well deserved win.

So they reckon there’ll be another get-together such as this come March-ish; here’s hoping I get my shit sorted better this time ’round!

Dance Pardner vs The Massive.

I noticed that the ol’ portfolio is gettin’ pretty out-of-date, so I’m gunna start plugging some semi-recent stuff into it. The world has barely seen this, a 19-month old short film I completed for ADA Sport, back when the ‘D’ still stood for dancing. They wanted a dancing cowboy cartoon to compete in their competition, but the guy I was making it for got knocked out of the running before my clip got its moment. It’s been buried for all this time, so I’m finally releasing it into the world. It’s a bit corny/dopey/goofy, plus it seems even odder out of context, but whatevs.

PS…When I first replied to The Powers That Be with my idea, the light-beams that Our Hero was dancing around belonged to alien UFOs. I was told – in a piece of genuinely-appreciated constructive criticism – that although a cowboy battling to save humans from being snatched from above was a fine idea, aliens and UFOs were kinda ‘done to death’. Shame Jon Favreau. So, I skulked sheepishly back to the drawing board and tried to think of a different entity that could be grabbing at humans from above; a giant Spartan, a giant cardinal, a giant crocodile or even a giant Spartan-cardinal-crocodile! Perhaps that thing from Tremors (US ’90), a rogue ATM machine, an evil clown (gotta love those) or – my personal fave – Tura Satana from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (US ’65). Would’ve come out a whole lot different if I went with her, methinks…
But those rejected scribbles shall live on, right here in this post…

Seven Day Short: Game Over

Well, my weekend began almost 24hrs earlier than expected and the deadline came sooner than I thought it would. Epic fail is correct. Word has it that they’ve got another Flipbook event early 2012, so you can see the rest of this foxy lass later!

Seven Day Short: Day Five, Thursday

So I’ve just been through a metric shit-tonne of animated short films and picked out some awesome characters that are actually really basic upon closer inspection. I began my work-day by sketching them all (which took no time at all due to their simplicity) and they inspired me to whip up one of my own I’m semi-happy with;

I had a couple of guidelines; I wanted to have a girl as the main character, as there aren’t enough stories about drunken females (outside of Girls Gone Wild). Only problem with drawing ‘em? Skirts and/or dresses are effing tricky to get looking right. So I needed a girl wearing trousers, I wanted bulgy eyes that could blink independently of one another (I got some great real-life practice at that yesterday) and she had to be as devoid of detail as possible. I have a habit of cluttering my characters, then getting overwhelmed trying to draw it all over and over. I should probably lose the pigtails as well, but I have a ‘thing’ for the beanie-pigtail combo, so they’ll probably remain.
Ok, let’s try get her moving…

UPDATE: Gettin’ tired, but I did test part of a scene. This is how drunk folks walk, don’t ya know…

Seven Day Short: Day Four, Wednesday

After yesterday’s performance contributed absolutely nothing to the short film itself, I need to utilise every possible minute else I’m never gunna make it.
But as a master of shooting myself in the foot, I took things to a whole new level of idiocy.

My uncle was flying in from Melbourne and had a six hour wait for his next plane. Instead of leaving him stranded, I decided to steal my sister’s car, go bring him back to my place and help him with his duty-free. What followed was drunk-driving, a scuffle with the airport cops that lost him half a tooth and hours of wandering looking for a Kiwibank that’d give a shirtless guy enough cash to get his sister’s car out of “Compound 3″. Drinking, sleeping it off and sorting it all out afterwards lost me another day. Lucky it was fun, otherwise…
It’s Game Over already, but I’ll keep trying! To the drawing board!

Seven Day Short: Day Three, Tuesday

Spent the day getting this blog up and running. I’ll do some more work on it later, but I need somewhere to vent and show off first.

Unfortunately once that was done, I inexplicably decided to use my time going to see Cave Of Forgotten Dreams (3D)(Can/US/Fra/Ger/UK ’10) followed by a screening of Midnight In Paris (Spa/US ’11). And while a day at the movies doesn’t seem like the smartest move in the world when you’re racing against the clock, when you think about it…nah, I got nothing. It was the dopiest move possible. That is until the following day. Yikes.