the Birds (Rhyme of the Ancient Merino)

It's been a long time between updates on The Rhyme of The Ancient Merino, been a bit distracted just lately with the making of the Highly Strung giant puppet.

Anyway, here is a clip "making of" clip of sorts with a few shots on the birds, a mix of raw green-screen shots and some with the green keyed out.


The landing on the fence post shot I actually filmed in reverse....starting with the bird propped on the fence and then flying him back out from there. And somewhere in the middle of the shot (and at about 2 in the morning) one of the wings fell off. Distaster! There's a reason why rusty metal is not the animation material of choice for stop-motion. After a few high-stress minutes of cussing, soul-searching and consideration of the awful possibility that the entire shot might need to be redone, I managed to re-attach the wing with a discrete splint, get the bird back in position, finish off the shot and go to bed. Hot glue saves the day....again. See if you can work out which frame this all happened on.

Highly Strung-Silos Show is Go!

Exciting times! The Funding is in (thank you Festivals Australia and Arts Victoria) and its looking very much like there's going to be another big silo show at this year's Nati Frinj Festival (28th-30th Oct).

The new show will feature animation I made with the local Natimuk school kids projected onto the front of a 12-meter puppet. The animation is mostly done and looking great and I'm just now starting to get my head around the construction and operation of a puppet that's 12 meters tall.

Here's some concept art cobbled together variously from tea-towels, bed-sheets, projectors, silos, maya, photoshop, etc.

The actual puppet will most likely NOT look like any of these but I'll be sure to post some actual real photos once the R&D gets a little further down the track and Ive got something more impressive to show than a back veranda waist deep in fabric and broken poles.

D'days, B'days & frogs

Well, as far as I can tell, we seem to have survived the forecast end of the world. I can tell you how much this pleases me, as I would have felt like a complete idiot having spent the world’s last week, writing grant applications (speaking of grant applications, stay tuned for some VERY exciting news in the next few days).

The frogs however would do well to listen to the words of nut bag kooks like Harold Camping.

I did these sketches for a project a while ago (for a project I’ll hopefully be talking a bit more down the track) and today seemed as good as any to put them up. It may not have as much to do with god as he thinks and his dates may not be spot on, but (with about 170 species lost in the last decade and 1,900 species on the way) for frogs on the whole, the end is nigh. Unless something fairly miraculous happens.

It bothers me greatly me when people talk about biblical proof for the end of the world, or some god or other intends this or that. If the world ends any time soon it will almost certainly be at the hands of humans, and it would be good if we (as a species) would face up to that, be perhaps just a little bit accountable, and stop point fingers in stupid places. Now I realise that sticking a bunch of half-arsed scribbles up on the web isn’t going to do a whole lot for the frogs either, and frankly I’m not sure what is. Frogs are just one good example of the sort of actual real problem that I wish people were spending more of their time and energy looking into than stuff like judgment day.

And on a final note… Jill, who’s birthday it is today, was also very pleased to see that the world didn’t end on Saturday. Happy Birthday Jill.

Animated clips from Hamilton Inspire project

I found a couple of (very brief) clips from the Inspire project in Hamilton




...none of the paint on glass bits though which were my favourite.

Here is a clip of the paint on glass animation by the students from Balomoral on its own but I couldn't find any of it when it was projected onto the building.

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.