Dave likes my shit!

Check out more of Dave's toons on umop.com


Anybody what's seen my Gonads Wiimix short knows I'm a fan of one David C. Lovelace. The music-composin' flash-animatin' n'er-do-well behind one of me fave online toons, Retarded Animal Babies, is a staple of hooligan culture site Newgrounds. His latest coup is animating a video for Weird Al's 'Straight Outta Lynwood' album. Currently, Dave's into web comix. His latest appears above.

Besides toons and tunes, Dave's also whipped up a few fonts in his day. One of 'em, Pentomino, is the interface font I used in 'First Time Out'. I wanted a font that looked sci-fi: angular and stylized, but not legible...the font should be cool enough to give the setting some credibility, but not legible enough to distract the viewer into reading every monitor and screen that goes by.


As you can see, Dave's font fit the bill perfectly. Good on ya, Dave! Somebody remind me to finally get off my ass and buy me a copy of his RAB DVD.

Dave emailed me to let me know he's linked the Youtube vid off Umop's home page. I mentioned that it was nice to see Puppy still workin', and Dave's enigmatic reply:

"Oh yeah, Puppy's working. He's working very... very...HARD in the next episode... "

This can't bode well for everyone's favorite oversexed hound. I'll keep you posted with all the latest developments.

First Time Out

O.k., here it is, film fests be damned. A few production notes: started in 2002 as kind of reaction to the proliferation of cutesy toons from Japan (Hamtaro and Tokyo Pig, shtuff like that) and too many episodes of Gundam Wing. The main jist of the project was: Why not give a giant fighting robot to something that could actually use it? Like 1 1/2 foot tall day-glo bunnies?

I originally envisioned the project as being a machinima piece, fully realtime online in Shockwave 3d with code controlled cameras and all kind of fancy realtime bells n' whistles. When I couldn't get A) a coder or B) the time to learn Lingo, Shockwave's coding language, I re-examined the piece and decided that having a bunch of fancy-shmansy realtime interactivity wasn't going to add to the story or characters at all. So, I decided to just render the whole thing out. Modeling and animation was done in Plasma, a web-only version of Max discontinued before Autodesk bought out Discreet. Animated maps were created in Flash and exported as Mpegs, then mapped on in Plasma.

Bit ass backwards on this one...I designed and modeled almost all the characters and props before doing an animatic in Flash...I knew what elements and characters I wanted for the short, but the story needed to evolve visually. I created a full animatic in Flash over the course of 8 months, refining the story and dumping a whole lot of dialog in favor of action in the process.

Initial designs and model sheets were done in '02, with the modeling taking place in 03/04. Took a break, then started the animatic in July of '04, finishing in September of '05. In April of '06 I started the first scene, and finished animation in May of '07. Enter Drew Frohmann, that most excellent half of the most excellent comedy duo of Rub (Rob Collinet, Splashworks art director) and Tug (Drew), who together comprise the team known as Hot Dog Boy. Drew had a gig at a sound studio, Pirate Radio and TV, and Rob suggested he might be able to help out with sound.

We recorded the dialog at Pirate (3 1/2 hours and 63 takes for around 1 1/2 minutes), with Dan Branco designing fx, Chris Tim and Tim composing, Bill Turchinetz supervising, and Spenser Hall putting it all together in Pirate's Dolby 5.1 lab. Drew and production diva Tyna Myaerzke made it all happen after hours. All just for the kudos and a piece for the ol' demo reel...they, of course, rock the ass. Got the final mixdowns from Spense on Sept. 17th, just before heading off to Ottawa, where I managed to get a copy into the hands of my two college profs, Don Perro and Paul West, as well as Pilar Newton, Jerry Beck and Lev Polyakov.

That's that! The plan right now is to try Kalamazoo and Platform, amongst others. Haven't had much luck finding a fest that the film fits into, but I gotta keep pushin', cuz me Pirate mates worked too damn hard to allow this stuff to not get heard. Let me know whatcha think...feedback welcome, people! And thanks for watchin'.

GIRAF3: nope.

Sweet joosy jebus. Here's sumthin' every animator looks forward to seein' in his inbox on a cold, wet October mornin'...another rejection letter. Yay!

-----------------
Dear Neil,
Thank you for your submission to the 3rd Annual Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF3). We regret to inform you that your work entitled, “First Time Out” was not selected for screening at our festival.

We were impressed by the amount and quality of submissions we received, and unfortunately our programming resources only allows us to program a certain number of films. We strongly encourage you to submit again to GIRAF4, as we will be expanding our festival to accommodate even more screenings next year.

As a thank you for submitting to our festival we would like to offer you a complimentary one year associate membership with Quickdraw Animation Society. This Membership will keep you posted on upcoming events, workshops and opportunities at QAS. It will also give you free access to our library of over 3000 animations and books.

The 3rd Annual Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival, takes place this November 2 + 3, 2007 at Quickdraw Animation Society. GIRAF celebrates the spirit of independent and underground animation, showcasing Canadian animators and presenting animations from around the globe. GIRAF is the only festival of its kind in western Canada; it plays an essential role in the promotion and education of animation in our community.
We look forward to reviewing your work in the future.

Sincerely,
Keith Murray
Programming & Communications Coordinator
Quickdraw Animation Society
----------------------------------

Hooboy. O.k., sure, it may have been a mismatch. 'First Time Out' is big robot combat action and QAS, like TAIS, tends to skew more towards the art side of animation (hey, Richard Reeves...thanks for that there DVD, dood!) Plus, apparently the ratpack over at QAS got theyselves a shitload o' cheese this year. From Keith:

---------------------------------
Hey Neil,

Sorry we didn't get a chance to fit you in this year. We had to turn down a lot of really amazing stuff, we were really overwhelmed with submissions this year and just didn't have the budget to program them.

I'm sending out a press release today, i'll make sure you get it.

cheers,

Keith
---------------------------------

Still a kick in the balls. Whelp, there goes me dreams of premiering my film in a Canuck fest. Phuck it, I'm gonna post it to YouTube and my Frederator Raw account tomorrow, then y'all can see what I've done been fussing about. Plus, I'll give y'all the rundown on the GIRAF3 lineup...cuz I'm not really a pissy bitch. Not really. More later.

More Madi Madness! Zinebi 49

The woman just don't stop! 'Toro Bravo' is an official selection in the Zinebi 49 International Documentary and Short Film festival in Bilbao, Spain. Fest runs from Nov. 26th to Dec. 1st...it's a juried competition accepting both foreign and Spanish-language films...so Toro is covered coming and going! I'll keep y'all posted as to where Toro shows up next. Meanwhile, an open call to anybody who visits the blog regularly. Got a film screening somewhere? Picked up a prize at a competition? Lemme know, and we'll profile y'all here on the TAIS blog. Cheers!

Madi Madness: Toro Bravo and Poetry Projections 2

O.k., one last post to fill y'all in on what's happenin' with Madi's films. Besides having a new film in the Poetry Projections 2 screening, Madi's film 'Toro Bravo' is also screening at the St. John's Women's Film Festival, and was picked up by the Cucalorus Festival in North Carolina and the Filmpool Festival in Sask-Atch-Chew-Wan (pronunciation key provided at no extra cost to you.)
Go Madi! Still no word on GIRAF3...I've sent them the e-mail, hopefully have an update for you tomorrow. Late.

Graham Annable: Last Duet on Earth

I believe I've mentioned this dude before. Graham Annable is a Youtuber of renown, posting his own animated films, replete with a twisted, dark comic sense. He's taken to posting a weekly strip on the Telltale Games site (home of perennial faves Sam and Max as well as the game adaptation of Jeff Smith's immortal Bone comics). Although he currently hangs his hat in the Bay area of them United States, he's a Sheridan alum originally from Sault St. Marie. His stuff is frequent front page material on Youtube...here he gives us a musical spin on zombie horror. I'll see ifn' I can't get a few words from the man hisself on what he's currently workin' on. Meanwhile, click the link above and check out his blog!

Happy Beaver is mine!!! Muhhahahaha...

Okay, after seein' this lil' dood on Jeff Pidgeon's blog yesterday (hopped over from that there Drawn article on his toy collection), I just couldn't help meself. I jumped into Firebird and got my erstwhile buddy and all-round good fella Jey to order me up one. Hey, and Jeff's even gonna sign the box! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Here's a few shots courtesy of a website called Plastic and Plush.

Few notes: It's a 5" rotocast vinyl (whatever that be meanin') figger with no movable parts (like it's gotta move...look at that toofy grin! Tail detail is beauty too...John K. would be proud). Although it's a character that Jeff designed hisself, along with the box-art, the modelin' kudos go to a fella by the name of Vin Teng. Note that there's only gonna be 500 of these lil' fellers made up, so get yers now! It'll cost ya just over fitty bones to get your very own Happy Beaver just in time for the Holidays. Or, y'know, fer whenever...whenever's good, right?

Jeff's had a perty storied career....just check out that IMDB page! Hopefully Happy is the first in a long line of figgers he'll be whippin' up for us, him and Ving. Meanwhile, I read that once all the Orange Happies sell out, we may be seein' him in other colors of the rainbow. Good on ya, Jeff! I'll post a pic of Happy on the Bloor Subway once I gets him. Late.

p.s.: Hate to be spurious here, but doin' a search for 'Happy Beaver' and 'Plastic and Plush' or any combo thereof without your Google filters on is not recommended for the faint of heart or the non-ironically inclined. Just use my handy article links, and be safe from all them yiffers out there.