Kaj Pindal's Birthday Anijam!

Let's end the week with a special sumthin' for a special someone. Master animator Kaj Pindal celebrates his 80th on Dec. 1st, and TAIS members Ruth Tait, Madi Piller, Bryce Hallett, Craig Marshall and meself whipped up a special birthday greeting just fer him! Extra kudos to Bryce for editing and prepping everything for the film, which was screened for Kaj at the big event at the NFB cinematheque last night. Go Kaj!

What can I say about the man and the event? Well, I'll leave that up to fellow animation blogger and industry vet Mark Mayerson...he's posted an excellent summary including a list of words from well-wishers over at his Mayerson on Animation blog. Glad to see another local animation blogger! Mark's the cat behind Monster by Mistake, and has been workin' in the animation industry for almost 30 years, so he can say more about Kaj and better than this scruffy pooch. Raise a glass to one of Canada's best. Cheers!

Yo Jeaux! Q and A with Fred

Jeaux Janovsky over at Channel Frederator (remember them? Toon podcast, cool-ass red robot? Yeah, that's the guys, swell fellas.) tossed a few questions my way about 'First Time Out', featured in Fred 108. Here's me chewin' his ear off:

1) How long have you been animating Neil?

I got out of school summer of '95, been workin' since then, so...sweet joosy jebus, 12 years?!? Man, I'm old.

2) Mech-rabbits battling makes for awesome. What was the inspiration of this short Neil?

Too many episodes of Gundam Wing. After seeing yet another mechstravaganza where big awesome robots were being piloted by blank-eyed teens with all the emotive properties of a squashed banana slug, I thought to myself "Man, why don't they create a toon with giant mecha suits piloted by sumthin' that could actually USE a giant mecha suit?" Then an episode of Hamtaro came on, and something clicked. Or snapped, depending on yer point o' view. Originally, the main characters were actually gonna be hamsters, and I may still do that. If I do, it'll be one big valentine to Go Nagai.

3) The short could very well be a cut scene from the GunBunnies video game, do you have any video game aspirations for these cute and cuddly hardcore mech battling robots?

You hit the video game aspirations right on the nose, man! 'First Time Out' was meant to be a great lil' short film, but I also wrote and designed it to introduce the characters and story as a game environment. I'll be posting a 'proof of concept' of sorts, including a demo of how the game would play on the Wii (my platform o' choice) to the GUNBunnies website in early 2008. (www.gunbunnies.ca)

All of the vehicles and characters are game-ready art assets...I could drop 'em into an online game tomorrow if'n I wanted! I originally meant the film to be a realtime machinima piece, running online in Shockwave 3d...couldn't figure out how to code the cameras and lighting, so I decided to render it, but I kept all the art assets 'low poly' to evoke the look of an early/mid era GameCube or PS2 game. The realtime demos still exist, and I'll be putting 'em up online as well when I do the update. I'll update everyone on the RAW site when that happens.

4) What's your favorite videogame?

Tim Schaeffer's Psychonauts. Best combo of animation, design, story, music, voiceover work and gameplay ever, hands down. All that plus Richard Horvitz. Woot.

5) What are you currently working on?

A short lil' Christmas thang in Flash, featuring Emilio the Whooping Llama, a gaming podcast mascot character I designed about a year ago. There's a sample walk cycle and animatic snippet on my RAW page. (http://raw.channelfrederator.com/profile/TempleDog) Hoping to have it ready to submit for the Fred Xmas Xtravaganza, but if not, I'll post it on RAW.

I also included this pic...Zav in her battle armor with shield and OmniRifle. Originally, Zav was going to be the main character, but I decided I wanted the fact that all the characters are bunnies (or bunny-like aliens) to be a suprise reveal at the end of the film. So now she's relegated to a small role standing next to Deg (the green 'tech bunny') in the simpod hangar at the end of the film.

Thus ends self-promotion Fridays here on the TAIS blog. More later!

Pes for Christmas: The Pes Fireplace!

Just in time for the holidays, it's the Pes Fireplace! Yep, Pes, one of my fave New-Yawk animator-type people, has come up with this cheery holiday looping fire animation, done up with candy-corn and pretzels...perfect for animation-themed christmas shindigs, which is why I'm getting a copy for the TAIS Xmas party!

By the way, the TAIS general meeting and Xmas party are both on the 18th of December. All board members must attend. I'll be bringing the Pes. Go on and by one...10 bucks, cheep!

Emilio Xmas Toon: Animatic sample

O.k., just to show I've been doin' SUMTHIN' besides playin' Super Mario Galaxy these past few weeks, here's a sample of the animatic for my Xmas short. I'm not bein' too clean, here...this isn't going over to Korea or nuthin' so I can afford to be quick n' sloppy. Decided to just sketch the panels in Flash with the Wacom. Probably the way I'll be doing animatics from now on, it's a great way to work out ideas quickly without having to scan in post-its. More later!

Fred 108: Masturbation and GUNBunnies! (no, not all at once...)

Oh, damn. This week's Frederator is the shiz-nizzle. We've got a music video about goths. A surreal black n' white bumper. A filthy scot tellin' you how to be a man. And GUNBunnies. Yep, 'First Time Out' is the third featured short in this weeks installment. Which means a whole SCHPITload of peoples are gonna be watchin' it. Ever been happy as a clam and nervous as a bridegroom at a mafia wedding? Good thing I had a light lunch. Kudos to the Frederator crew...hell, I only done submitted it two weeks ago! Now, watch and enjoy!

Joe Murray's site done be ups!

Looks like good ol' Joe Murray, he of Rocko and Lazlo (dunno what's with the names ending in O, must be a fetish) finally came back from wherever he done went and posted a brand-spankin' new shiny website. Go n' look. Seems he's workin' on a short film right about now, lookin' forward to see it.

¿Qué Gigantes?

My attempt to end the week by distracting you with some abstraction has yielded less than favorable results. I'll endeavor to track down some more experimental offerings next week. Meanwhile, howzabout a slice of the surreal? "¿Qué Gigantes?" is a cyber-hallucinatory take on Cervante's illustrious hero Don Quixote's encounter with the windmills. I'll post some more work and info about the filmmakers next week. Later!