Mukpuddy gets on their high horse...

So here's a great new pilot from our New Zealand homies Mukpuddy Animation. It's a buddy comedy featuring a neurotic horse who's a lil', um, embarrasingly deficient (hence the pants) and his adorable, anti-social dickhead of a bunny room-mate. Definitley could see this as a recurring web series, could make a good fit on Comedy Network...'course, they'd have to change it to a Moose and a Beaver. My only issue; Stallion makes it sound like a western somehow. I'd suggest 'Horse in the City', but Mo Willems might send his rabid ninjabats after me. Either way, check it out, give 'em a lil' positive feedback or constructive criticism on their YouTube page. Thanks to Aaron over at CHF for bringin' this to my attention! Cuz, I'm all important n' shit. I am, you know. Sniff. More later.

Da hardest workin' man in Flash-biz...

Gotta love that Aaron Simpson...dude not only takes time to give TAIS some serious pimpage on Cold Hard Flash, but now, he's a one-man employment site, tryin' to get his animation homies work in these troubled times. Check out da amination from Brittney Lee above. Then hire her, 'cuz Aaron sez to. Yep, he's a great representative of the online animation community.

Plus, I hear he makes one hell of a vodka martini.

O.k., 'nuff with the gush. Check out CHF and the sister site Line Boil for animation shtuffs that you will likes. More on the ChickenJam later...with possible mentions of Hawaii?

Black and White

Geez, talk about an excercise in minimalism. Everything you need to know about getting emotion out of a block of wood is here in Jon Izen's 'Black and White' series. More available on the Mondo YouTube page. Thanks to CHF's Aaron Simpson for bringin' this to my attention.

Boil n' Pes

Two quick notes...first, new PES! Here's his promo for the new Scrabble Diamond edition...hmm, may have to get Rob a copy o' this. Can't get enough PES? Here's the link to his page on them there YouTubes.

Second, this post comes courtesy of LineBoil, Aaron Simpson's 'other' site, covering all aspects of animation, not just the stuff commmon to the webbernets. They's gots a ton o' posts on upcoming Nick series, trailers for works in progress, links to studios and animators, all that there goodness. Go say hi, n' shtuff. More later!

Aaron go Boom

O.k., made it out to Aaron Simpson's shindig last night at the Mod Club. First off, Mod Club theatre is a real great joint...complete with a stage setup that would make any band in the GTA uncomfortable in the pants region (they've got a freakin' steadicam setup for filming the crowd, fer corn's sake!) Great bar and staff...kinda knew the club kid's weren't linin' up down the block for nothin'. I can't say nuthin' about what Aaron's fave venue of the three (New York, L.A. and T'rawna) was, but, y'know...if he does another event here, I've got an idea where it'll be.

Now, everybody knows Aaron as a big proponent of Flash and interwebs animation, so to see him shillin' (and come on now, shillin' he was) for Toon Boom was a bit odd. Then he starting demoing the software, and I can kinda see why he's a convert. Aaron's like Jerry Beck...he don't back no junk, and if'n he tells you he likes sumthin', there's a damn good reason. He grabbed some characters and layouts from an ol' wartime toon and showed off some of what the new soft can do, and it can do a lot. Some highlites:

Animation Disk: Now why in the name of sweet Georgia Brown hasn't anybody done this before? If you need to get a better angle on your drawing, hold down a key to bring up a superimposed old school animation disc. You can now rotate the entire stage area!

I.K. support- for the uninitiated, this means you can link images, like a hand, a forearm and a bicep, and the whole chain will move and pivot by just moving the hand.

Auto VoiceSyncing- draw and set up your mouth poses, import your v.o. audio, and the software will analyze the wave and place mouth poses automatically. How well it does it, I have yet to see, but it looked darned impressive.

Multiplane and 3d orbital Camera- You can actually set up a camera view as a layer element that will allow you to multiplane your layers...move and animate the camera, and everything in the camera view moves in relation. Nice!

He also profiled a bunch of other smaller features like custom palletes with global color settings, drag n' drop library element setup, and cleanup brushes. The guys at Toon Boom really seem to have gotten their act together from a UI standpoint...the software seems to be a helluvalot easier to learn and use than previous iterations like Studio.

They capped off the night by giving away two free full commercial licenses and handing out full versions of the software to one and all...o.k., sort of...these were the '30 days free' versions, but the boxes include all the tutorials and documentation. By the way, that documentation...a mere shadow of the massive tome you had to leaf through for Studio. As I said, they've really made an effort to making the software streamlined and accessible.

Unfortunately, there's still the price issue. Don't get me wrong, you get a lot of bang for your buck, but at a thousand bucks a license, that's a lotta bucking for an indie to take...might just buck him right over to the Flash camp. To be fair, though, they do show promos all the time, and anybody who took home a 30 days version last night can buy the full version within that time period for half-price.

I'll have a full report for ya just as soon as I get it installed and figure out a lil' test project to kick the wheels and rev the engine, so to speak. I'll keep you posted with my findings, and I'll have a final verdict in the next few weeks. Either way, big ups to Toon Boom and Aaron for the free drinks and the demo!

Two treats for Halloween

O.k., Aaron over at Cold Hard Flash just gave me the go-ahead, so here's yer two treats from this ol' pooch for Halloweenies. Aaron is going to be hosting three big shindigs across North America, sponsored by those magnificent vector-loving bastards over at Toon Boom Animation. Come for free drinks, free gifts (am I reading this right?) and the chance to nob and hob with some of animation's best peoples. Here's the dates and locations:

November 19th, 2008
*LOS ANGELES - 7 to 9pm*
Forbidden City
1718 Vine St
Los Angeles, CA 90028 (map here!)

November 21st, 2008
*NEW YORK - 7 to 9pm*
M1-5
52 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013 (map here!)

November 24th, 2008
*TORONTO - 7 to 9pm*
MOD Club
722 College Street
Toronto, ON (map here!)

The MOD Club theatre is like 2 blocks from casa de T-Dog, so you'll definitely feel my presence, barring a bout of the plague, er sumpin.

The second treat? I've gotten off my ass and authored up a DVD (with like, menus and everything) for the MONSTERJAM. Both MJ 1 and 2 have been compiled onto a widescreen NTSC DVD, with animated menus and buttons to jump to each individual animators work. I'll be workin' on packaging and cases this weekend. Once that's done, I'll letcha know what the plan is...chances are, I'll just be whippin' up copies by hand as we need 'em, but we'll see what the reaction is.

Well, there ya has it! Go eat some candy and watch some movies...animated scariness, of course. More next week.

When Candidates Attack

The most terrifying, and hilarious, thing I could find on the internets for y'all, courtesy of our homies at Pandemic. Man, looks like both Obama and Palin have that whole international diplomacy thing down.

Have a happy halloweeny of weeny goodness. Next week, nooze about a very cool event being held around and about by CHF head honcho Aaron Simpson, and some monster goodies just in time for that other holiday comin' up. Later!

Cold Hard Flash: Top 10 Flash Cartoons

Aaron Simpson and a cadre of his animation homies have got together and came up with a list of what they consider the best o' the best of flash animated films on them there interwebnets, and they're all available to view on the Cold Hard Flash site. Along with the shorts themselves, Aaron's serving up in-depth interviews with the creators. Go, watch, learn, enjoy. And big kudos to MyToons for continuing to support independent animation on the web!

Melons...

Good luck gettin' this tune outta yer head. Animated by Wonchop, music by Weebl...and if you happen to frequent the home of catchy nonsense Weebl's Stuff, you'd know of what I speak. Aaron Simpson recently interviewed head egg Jonti Picking over at CHF. Drop by, read up, then hit up Weebl's for more danceable looping nuttiness. Hey, Jonti, howzabout adding embed links to the site? And howzabout not verbally kicking my ass if you don't enjoy it when large hairy Canadian knuckledraggers surreptitiously grab the code from yer site and embed it in their blogs? Seriously, nothin' but love, dood.

Crash of the Titans intro by Atomic

Aaron Simpson, dark master of the Flash, just posted this over at Cold Hard Flash. Tipped him off to this lil' slice of puppet-styled goodness after playin' the game last week. The doods at Radical, the dev. co., did their level best...it's a great playin' game. But it's no where near as groovy as this lil' intro. Ah, well, it was a client job. Enjoy!