Inspire: Hamilton

I've been recently involved in a project down in Hamilton, working with Trevor Flynn and a group of students from some of the local high schools to create a bunch of animation. A real mix of animation styles, drawn, paint on glass, stop motion and the whole thing then got projected onto the side of one of the buildings there as part of the Promenade of Sacred Music Festival. Happily the weather held out and we got a nice warm evening for the occasion.

Here are a couple of stills...

And a shot of me faffing around with the computer in the background...

There were a few people there with decent cameras so I will upload a snippet of video if and when I manage to track one of them down.

Pearls Before Swine - Game Trailer

Here's a trailer for the new iPhone app

Just how addictive is Pearls Before Swine iPhone?

Pearls Before Swine for iPhone

Finally, we've got it together to release a version of Pearls Before Swine for the iPhone.

 http://itunes.apple.com/app/pearls-before-swine/id398894917?mt=8

I have been eyeing off the iPhone app market since it first happened but just been too snowed under with other projects to do anything about it. I made the original version in flash back in 2001 (it was the first game I made in flash) so it seems appropriate that it should be the first thing to be ported to the iPhone.

Hopefully people are into it. I have lost track of how many million times it has been played since it was first released and if just  a small percentage of them go for the iPhone version I've got a swag of other game ideas to follow up with. I've been bottling them up for the last few years now and I'd love to spend a bit of time bringing them all to life.  If this idea excites you as much as it excites me... then get along to the app store now and buy yourself a copy of pearls (even if you dont own an iPhone)

 

And finally... Hooray for Bart Pindor who did all the recoding to get it up and running on the iPhone. Without a bit of external motivation and coaxing from him it might never have happened.

Nati Frinj Festival

Ive just been setting up a blog to help promote the upcoming 2011 Nati Frinj Festival and thought while I had the embed vid code in my copy buffer I might as well put it up here too.


The show "Space and Place" was performed on the side of the Natimuk silos as part of the 2004 Nati Frinj Festival. Y-space did the aerial performance and Transience (mostly me) did the animation. I know these days every other building you see has got some sort video installation taking place on the side of it but back in 2004 when we did this I think it was at least vaguely innovative. Also I think the combination of aerial performance and video projection is a niche that still has a lot of potential. We are hoping to develop a new Silos show for the 2011 festival but it is still very much "funding pending" at the moment. Ive got a whole lot of new ideas Im pretty excited about....just need a few dollars to make it all happen.


Also of note...this is the show that inspired the"silo" scene in the Rhyme of The Ancient Merino.

I have been involved in a few other projection type shows as well...I will try and get myself organised to finds some links to a few of these also.

goats on the silos..at night..in the cold

Another Merino update...just some raw stills at the moment...these shots are going to need a fair bit of post work to remove all the people before they are usable. I carefully took a clean plate of each of these shots but because of the spotlight and shadows cast its not as simple as just "cutting out the people".

We filmed these bits a little while ago at the local grain silo (mostly). Some shots were done with a green screen but, where possible, Ive tried use the actual silos. All had to be done at night...was bitterly cold....and needed lots of helping hands to pull these shots off (thankyou Paul, Doug, Greg, Jac, Kate, Calum, Hannah, Mary, Lynne, Tash).  I really hope I've got everything I need here. I do not want to go through all that again (or put anyone else through it).

For all the potential for stuff to go badly wrong...there weren't that many complete disasters...a couple of expensive bulbs blown. And one puppet dropped from about 10 meters up the silos and smashed to a thousand bits...I'm getting used to completely reassembling them so this was just a one day set back (luckily nobody was underneath it when it happened.)

GrainCorp who own the silos were very generous and very good about letting me access the silos, hang the puppets off them and use their power for the lighting. Thankyou.

The Rhyme of the Ancient Merino

Just a quick one.

Here are a few more stills from the film.

I will try and get a bit more "making off" stuff up soon but Im more focussed on just trying to make the film at the moment.

And I'm having (another) exhibition of the puppets props, sets, bits and bobs soon at the Horsham Regional Art Gallery.  I'm not sure about the date for it yet ... but when I find out I'll be sure to post it up here.  

Wimmera CMA ads

Still plodding along with the Merino film and the Yallourn book.....slowly but surely.

Meanwhile here is a series of stop mo ads I did for the Wimmera Catchment Authority a while ago to promote awareness of the Wimmera River. There hasn't been a heap of rain up here of late and the river that used to be quite a focal point for the population has become more of a series of salty ponds. Last year was the first time in a decade that the river had actually flowed. So the ads were about getting people to remember what it was and not to give up on it just because its going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment. Amazingly enough a lot of river life has managed to hang on somehow in those isolated pockets of salty water... biding its time till the river flows again.

Jacqui Schultz collected all the interviews from locals reminiscing about the river, most of the models were made by local paper maché genius Mary French (I made the Egret and the Water skimmer) and the sound design was all done by David Franzke. Most of the interviews were recorded at the Wimmera field day and Jac did a great job grabbing little pearls of wisom with a minimum of background chatter. I think my favourite voice was the muscle at the end of the second ad. He was a truck driver who Jac just managed to nab at the end of the day and as son as I heard the voice I just knew he was going to be a muscle in the mud at the bottom of the river.

For the third ad (with the tree) I did the stop-motion component all in one horrific 30 hour stint as I had to leave immediately after that for a few days. I literally got up one morning worked all day, all night, finished the shot the next morning walked out, hopped in the car and drove off (was driven rather) for a few days not knowing if the whole thing was a complete disaster that would all need to be re-shot.

Wimmera CMA 1.

Wimmera CMA 2.

Wimmera CMA 3.