Friday, March 30, 2007

Joe Paradise



Back before he was eviscerating fuzzie cartoon critters, Happy Tree Friends vet Roque Bellastaros had this groovy spy caper goin' with the fellas at WildBrain. No big fan of WildBrain...their 'big pimpin' antics back at the millenial Ottawa fest left a bad taste in my mouth. But Roque's moved on, so will I. And they can't be all bad, they've thrown three episodes of Roque's classic "Joe Paradise" series up on Youtube. So, I'll forgive and forget for the whole "Boat on the Rideau" incident. Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Minushi



Gotta love them fellas at Cold Hard Flash, the original Flashimation boosters. Here's a jawdropper...a full 95-minute feature written and produced by one guy. Count 'em, one. That guy is Montreal's Tyler Gibb. Started this project back in 2003. An episodic sci-fi epic about a young woman's quest to locate her brother in a war zone, the whole shebang was animated by Gibb in Flash. He also did sound design and voiced some of the characters, alongside pals Vidya Lutchman, Marc Schultz, and Andrew Rotheram.

Full list, episodes and other goodies at his site, http://www.minushi.com

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Superman: Electric Earthquake



Well, I'm still waiting for confirmation from the rest of the TAIS board concerning that big announcement I was tellin' y'all about. Don't worry, It'll be soon, I'm thinking beginning of next week now. Just be patient, it will rock yer collective socks off.

In the meanwhile, here's a chunk of classic goodness. Madi will know this film well. It's one of the Superman shorts from animation masters the Fleischer bros. Me n' Rob (Splashworks art director) were talkin' about cartoons he'd like to show his kids (Hobbes, 4 and Darwin, 2) and got to talkin' about Supes in his many toon incarnations...this is by far my fave Supes film. Pay particularly close attention to the bad guy. Where another studio would've gone with a gross cultural stereotype, Max and Dave came up with a multilayered villain...a Native American who wants to reclaim Manhattan, and uses his science smarts and business cash to create a lil' electric mayhem...Yeah, Lois is still the damsel in distress, but hey, it's still damn progressive for 1942. Enjoy!

Monday, March 26, 2007

I love Josiane



A recent article on Wired about havin' stop motion fun with tha kids pointed to Boinx's IStopMotion software as yer one-stop shop for all things stopmotion animated. Glancing around on Youtube for some examples of average joe's havin' silly fun with stop motion, I came across this great bit of photocollage tomfoolery. Enjoy!

I'll post more IStopMotion goodies later...may pick up a copy fer meself to fool around with. Oh, and in TAIS special project news, the flash 'poster' for the event is in front of the board members. If they likes it, I may be able to post some news say, oh, tomorrow night. Cheers!

Friday, March 23, 2007

Announcment comin' soon...promise!




Fer all you TAIS members out there, that big announcement I've been spouting off about for the last few weeks will (finally) be happenin' on Monday or Tuesday. It will be groovy, trust me. In the meanwhile, here's another sketch from Craig Marshall. See ya after the weekend.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Kiwi!



This one was featured in a previous installment of Channel Frederator, and made a real impression on me. It's damn cute, damn clever, and damn sad. You'll see. Is anybody else out there staggered by the quality of student work these days? Created by Dony Permedi at New Yorks' School of Visual Arts in 2006. Go here and check out Dony's reel, whydontcha?

http://www.donysanimation.com

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Drawn wins a Bloggie!



Congrats to John Martz, he of DRAWN! fame. His blog of all things illustrated has snagged him the 2007 Weblog award for best Canadian blog. Nice! What you see above are some of his designs for "a pretty fun blogging/social-networking badge thingie." These from his personal blog, www.robotjohnny.com. Cheers, dood!

Channel Frederator Ep. 72



Fer those of you what live in caves in the Himalayas, Channel Frederator is a weekly vidcast of animation goodness that is permitted to occur by Fred Siebert, whose name graces the studio what he runs. Check out the latest offerings from Nina Paley and them whackjobs at Hatchling Studios.

p.s.: Freakin' HUGE announcement comin' tomorrow about that Eyes-only TAIS project I've been blabbing about for the last few weeks. Tune in and catch the drama as it occurs.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Flash blog embeds!



Hookay! Wrestling with the all-mighty power of embedded HTML tags...there be a reason I'm not a coder. Managed to figger out enuff to embed some ol' flash from the Neillyworks.com website. Now, if I can only get the scale right...

Either way, if there be any TAIS (or otherwise) flash-a-mators out there who have Flash stuff on their site that they wanna show off here, lemme know, and I'll slap it on up. Cheers!

p.s.: More progress made this weekend on my film and last week on the 'secret TAIS project'...updates as I get 'em...

Friday, March 16, 2007

More Sherman PuhLease!



That rocked so much ass I just had to embed anudder one. Oh, and it's Todd Kaufmann, by the by. Credits. What will they think of next? Enjoy another slice of kitty goodness, and I'll track down some more Torontomation for y'all to look at. Oh, and just a brief mention...that top-secret TAIS collabo project I mentioned earlier is cookin' along nicely, thanks to the members out there. We've been playin' teh e-mail tag over the last few days, and I might be able to announce sumpin' next week! Whoop, whoop.

Ninth Life of Sherman Phelps



Profiling Neptoon Studios work here with a piece created by Todd & Mark. (Mark Thornton I know of, but who is this mysterious 'Todd', and why does he yet walk among mortal men?) 'The Ninth Life of Sherman Phelps' ran on YTV a while back...so I've been told. ('member, no cable? Cuz I'm, like, workin' on my bunny film and teh TeeVee zombifies my ass?) Either way, it's a great concept...an accident prone puss has offed hisself 8 times, but his eight ghost's can't get into kitty heaven until the ninth bites the bullet, so they try to, uhmm, speed up the process. YouTube dood HappyJimmy has posted three of these...a Neptoon staffer, mehaps? Anyhoo, enjoy da goodness.

A staggering piece of animation genius...



...this piece ain't. I work in teh game industry, and anybody who knows me knows that I can go rantin' on a freakin' dime. When Nintendo came out with the name of their new system during last year's E3 game conference, I almost popped a hemorrhoid. Revolution was now called Wii. As in 'play together'. As in 'goofy lil' iconic name that'll sell millions'. As in 'goofy lil' iconic name that'll make any gamer who owns it sound like a total putz every damn time he/she mentions it."

I whipped this up that very night in about six hours or so, as some kind of therapy, I guess. If you can find one of these lil' wonder boxes, get it, they freakin' rock. Just refer to it as 'the console formerly known as Revolution.' Thanks to the doods at ThreeBrain for the use of their smash interweb hit 'Gonads and Strife'.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Small blog update...I'm tryin', dere me.



Just a quick note to show that I'm makin' headway in this here bloggin' thang. Managed to haxxor in a few TAIS graphics, though what I'd really like is to have a header graphic with no text elements overlayed. Hey, it's a work in progress, neh?

Speakin' of which, the TAIS board meeting on Monday rocked several shades of heiney. Lots of great ideas were tossed about, and Craig Marshall showed us some crazy art concepts for the new TAIS general-purpose posters and mailer cards. That's a screencap from one of his shorts, go see 'em at http://www.logosforhobos.com.

Plus, Madi had a great idea for a collaberative project that I can't mention just yet...'twill be groovy, though, trust me. I should be able to give you the lowdown closer to the middle of next month. 'Til then, I'll be profiling more of the TAIS members and bringing you more animated nuttiness in general. Cheers!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Andy Murdoch: LOR



My focus here at the TAIS blog is going to be on Canuck-a-mation, especially people and projects here in T'rawna, but if'n I stumble across sumpin' really groovy, I don't care where the people responsible hang their hats. The hat in question here belongs to one Andy Murdoch, and he currently hangs it in San Fransisco. From his site:

Andy Murdock graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1987 with a BFA in painting and film. He then worked as a recording engineer/producer and sound designer for Hyde Street Studios and Earwax Productions doing albums, film soundtracks and commercials. Then he worked as a 3d artist for Mondo Media, Xaos and PDI on films, television and video games.


His current project is ambitious: A full-length CGI feature called LOR. He's developing it as a serial of sorts, producing and releasing the story in small chunks. Ah, but what chunks they are! Really beautiful environmental modeling and FX here. Go check it out, at
http://www.lotsofrobots.com

Thanks to 3ds Max specialist site Max Underground
http://www.maxunderground.com
for the heads-up!

Thursday, March 8, 2007

TAIS Board Meeting update!



Tried to get a pic of TAIS head-honcho Madi Piller off teh interweb, no dice. Instead, here's a still from one of her more, ummm, thought-provoking films. Nice.

Quick update for TAIS board members. Meeting that was cancelled this week has been moved to Monday, March 12th at 6:30 p.m. at TAIS hq on Atlantic. Bring some ideas ye gots for the upcoming programming year, and we'll be reviewing poster, card and brochure concepts. And there will be 'za, so e-mail madip@rogers.com if you've got any toppings you like! See y'all there.

Neptoon needs puppet animators badly!


Posted on March 5, it seems the fine folks over at Toronto studio Neptoon, the cats responsible for kung-fu bunny epic Ying Yang Yo, are in desperate need of some puppet animators and fabricators. If you fall into this category, give 'em a shout out at:
irishballadeer@gmail.com

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Dudes what knock me out: Michel Gagne



O.k., today I start a short series about animators and illustrators what knock my socks the heck off. We'll start with the Montreal FX jedi Michel Gagne. You can see his phenomenal work in the Iron Giant and the Clone Wars series of animated shorts. As well, he has his own publishing company, teaming up with his wife Nancy and publishing several books. Go get yerself "The Towers of Numar", a personal fave. His signature style combines cute, whimsical and sinister, with flowing organic shapes and a keen eye for motion in the still image. Above is one of his characters, Rex, who figures large in Gagne's stories printed in renowned comic omnibus FLIGHT.

My fave stuff of his, however, is a series of ultra-groovy, ultra-creepy interstitials done for the Cartoon Network, a series of promos for their halloween shows one year. Called 'Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets', it's a series of animated shadow shapes on starkly simple colored backgrounds...it's brilliant stuff! Check out the site: http://www.gagneint.com

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

NFB Goodness: Special Delivery (1978)



Interesting the stuff what you can find zipping about on YouTube. Some enterprising fellow what goes by the name of '23 Lizards' posted this classic, uhh, I guess you could call it a Canadian whodunit...'cept nobody did. Watch it, you'll see what I mean. What I'd like to know is how the fine folks at the NFB feel about stuff like this finding it's way onto YouTube...it's a great way to show a new generation of animators their roots, but they ARE NFB shorts. Anybody out there in the know, shoot me a line!

Richard Condie classic



Sorry for the lack o' posts lately...damn cold. Apparently Madi is down with the sickness as well, cuz tonight's board meeting was canceled on account of our prez being under the weather. The -20 degrees in the sunlight weather. Yay. Get better, Madi! Here's something to shake off the cold...a Ralph Condie short I bet you've never seen! Originally supposed to be shown on international flights landing in Canada, according to the YouTuber what posted it, it was just too weird for your average (I'm guessing) late seventies Canuck, and it was never used. Anybody who knows more about this slice of classic Condie wackiness, drop me a line! Oh, and you may wanna let this one pre-load...it's a lil' on the pokey side, speed-wise. Enjoy!

Friday, March 2, 2007

RantDog Rap



Just a quick post to show off some new stuff from those Alberta whack-jobs behind RantDog. A lil' more info reveals that the primary individual responsible is one Norm Fassbender, the series is produced in Edmonton, Alberta, and can be seen on the Youtube, Atom, Newgrounds and Bite TV. More later!