I guess it’s a good thing that The Happy Pumpkin is still getting views?
These kids didn’t do as well with the video as this other kid did.
In case you missed it, here is the original video:
At first I felt a bit bad about the videos of little kids getting scared. It’s not cool to be responsible for kids’ nightmares, but then I remembered the winged monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, and how bad they scared me as a kid. I then imagined the kids I was scaring were maybe the distant relatives of the guys in those monkey suits, and in some weird way I was getting them back through the terror of their relatives. I don’t feel so bad about it now.
I’ve temporarily traded Maya for Microsoft Office while I write an article for the upcoming ASIFA Magazine. The topic of the article is the independent animator and how they can use the internet to their advantage. I’ll be covering everything from self promotion to film distribution. The magazine is only available to ASIFA members, so if you’re not a member, you’re out of luck.
If you look at the image of the early Microsoft, everyone seems too young to know what they are doing. Obviously, this wasn’t he case. If you look at David, or any of the other young people in the article Fred linked to, you wouldn’t necessarily think they are capable of what they have already accomplished.
At a voice recording session last week, some people from a film crew assumed I was an intern. This happens a lot.
I guess the point of this post is to never judge a person’s achievements or abilities based on their age (or their assumed age). Not all brilliant people are old white haired men, and not all twenty somethings are scatterbrained extras from Jackass.
Del has played with Gene Autry and Frank Zappa. He’s been in films with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. He produced and arranged music for “The New Zoo Revue”. He was featured on the soundtracks for “The Ghost and Mr Chicken” and “The Shakiest Gun in the West”. He is the anime producer for the Tenchi Muyo DVD series. He’s the inventor of the Wah Wah pedal, and friends with Les Paul, who does stuff with guitars or something like that [Read more…]
So one of the reasons my posts have been a bit sparse this month is that I’m hard at work on a new animated project called “The Academy”, written by Michael Tabb.
When I was in and around Burbank on Thursday, the strike was still quite visible. I think it’s interesting to get the story from the guys and gals on the line (I didn’t shoot this video). This is film from outside of the Disney Studio early on in the strike. The picketers are still going strong, with a presence at each entrance to the lot, and not just at Disney. Writers and their supporters can be seen at Warner Brothers, NBC, and many other places in and around town.
With the changes made to this year’s Golden Globes and the awkward People’s Choice Awards, the effects of the strike are only starting to manifest. We’ll have to wait and see if the two sides can come to an agreement before the Oscars on February 24th.
So I’ve begun to set up my controls for Virgil in Maya. We’re basically swapping out pieces on this character in order to create the animation, in a method similar to cut out animation or something you might see on South Park.
Here you can see Maya’s Connection Editor. I’ve created a control curve for the mouth which will be a place where I can control which mouth is visible and when. I connect the “Aah_mouth” geometry visibility to the “Aah_mouth” attribute on the mouth control. When It’s set to “1″, the mouth will be visible. When it’s set to “0″, it will be invisible. The dialog will be animated by turning on and off the appropriate mouths.
Here’s the drawing of Virgil I’m working from to create the 3D model.
Remember these guys? I posted about them a few months back on the Channel Frederator blog. I WAS going to do a short with these guys using Flash, but I’m no Avi Tuchman, so I’m going full 3D instead (which Avi is also really good at, by the way).
A few years back, my studio did a short called “Opposites Jamboree”. It got quite a bit of attention at the time, and was also in the first episode of the Wubbcast.
“Opposites Jamboree” screened in a few festivals (including Ottawa) and got us a few projects as well. While most people thought that was done traditionally, or in Flash, it was actually done in Maya. We will be doing the same for this new piece.
This short with the old men will be the second piece in the new super short series (which I still don’t have a name for), but will be [Read more…]
If you haven’t noticed, there is now a Floyd Bishop blog. So what’s it all about? Well, I’m still figuring it out. I met with Fred in LA a few weeks ago, and talked about short subject cartoons. Really short. Like ten seconds or less. A series of those.
This is in line with Fred’s institutionalization of cartoons. Instead of making one big thing, make lots of smaller “somethings”.
This snowman film is the first “something”. Think of the one panel cartoons you have seen in some magazines, but animated. That’s kind of what I’m going for.
I don’t have a name for the series yet, but maybe you, the blog readers can give me some suggestions?
Keep watching this space for more cartoons and more info on the series, and Happy Holidays!
