OG’s BLOG

I’ve got a bit of a late Christmas present for you all – HERE’s a shot from Moon Town featuring archival footage of a historic launch. I’ve included larger format renders in a variety of desktop-friendly resolutions. Enjoy.

Speaking of resolutions, Happy New Year, everyone!

Several years ago at AnimWatch, I profiled a short film called “9″ by young director Shane Acker. As happened with a few of the other AnimWatch profilees, Shane got a feature film deal for the film, when none other than Tim Burton saw the film screening at a film festival. Talk about your classic star-discovered-at-a-soda-fountain scenario.

Well, several years later, I am pleased to see that the film is almost out, and there is a trailer for the film up at Apple. It will be released in September of next year (yes, on 9-9-09). There are some significant changes to the film now that it’s enlarged from short to feature. I was initially disappointed to see that the directors made the decision to have the characters speak, when part of the appeal of the original was its reliance on pantomime. But from what I can see in the trailer, it hasn’t hurt the appeal of the film. The trademark look of the film is there, and I recognize a couple of shots that look straight out of the original. And I suppose adding Hollywood names to the cast might help get the film a wide audience, and since I want the film to succeed, I guess that’s OK.

But it’s good to see this happening for Shane, and I wish the film much success.

TIP: While you wait for the film to come out, why don’t you read the original interview with Shane at AnimWatch?

(Thanks to Tom Dell’Aringa for the tip).

Andrew Glazebrook is an artist in the UK who makes really super-cool CG spaceships. Some, like the one above featuring a motion-control camera, can even fool you into thinking they are actual “practical” hand-made spaceship models. I urge you to check out his blog for more spaceship eyecandy.

The fine folks over at StudioAKA have released the trailer for their sweet film Lost and Found. See it HERE.

Hey, kids! Now you can learn how to animate in Flash just like Adam Phillips, the director of the animated series Brackenwood! Adam knows how to make Flash jump through hoops, and he understands animated storytelling like few in the business. Let Adam show you that Flash is more than just an idiosyncratic mess of buggy software. Let Adam prove to you that Flash animation isn’t just for ugly, jerky fart-joke animation. Dive into Bitey Castle Academy and learn how to tell beautiful stories with beautiful graphics and state of the art animation.

The first two chapters are free… this is a great opportunity!

I’m pleased to announce that Croaker’s Gorge is a member of the online collective Palace in the Sky, and even more proud that Croaker’s is the humor site of the week! Stop by and see the other comics… there is quite a collection.

As you know, I originally thought Moon Town episode one would take me about a month or two. DEC 20 will mark one year since I started this blog and began working on Moon Town in public. So, it’s taken longer than I thought.

It’s tempting to beat myself up for this. After all, one of my goals on Moon Town was to see how fast I could make a film series. Seen solely from the standpoint of completion speed, I’ve failed miserably.

But there is a silver lining in the fact that the project’s taken longer than I planned. Ordinarily, I work extremely fast. But in slowing down on Moon Town and letting the project take whatever time it needs, I’ve been able to redesign and revise some of the assets I was never quite happy with. As a result, I’m seeing a cohesive look beginning to develop that is much more interesting than some of the quick designs I did earlier. So as I move toward final assets for Episode One, the project is benefiting from the fact that I was able to let my designs and the project mature a little bit and see what designs truly belong in this project.

In other news, there are a couple of shots I’m using which feature archival footage of the original Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and when I first designed those, I thought it would be cool if that hardware was a mildly caricatured version of the actual vehicles. After sketching a few more designs, I’ve decided the archival footage should have the same look as everything else. Which is probably as it should have been from the start. *shrug*

So, you’re seeing some changes in the look and feel as it develops, but I think it’s all heading in to a very good place. Such is the nature of developing this thing publicly.

Seen from the standpoint of what I’ve learned about the project over the past year, Moon Town has been a success. I know a lot more about this film series I’m developing, and I think it’s much better than it would have been had I gone with the first solutions I came up with. So many times those solutions are pedestrian, even lazy. Take the moon:

It’s chunky. It’s lumpy. It looks like something you’d make out of clay. And the starfield and even the lighting, is more stylized. It’s all been pushed a lot farther. It’s all been designed. And that’s what I think I’ve learned in the past year. Everything needs to be designed, and just because you’re moving fast, or you’re tired, or you think it doesn’t matter, that’s no excuse. Effects, lighting, and environments need as much design attention as characters and props do. It’s all part of the look. It all goes to feel, so it’s all important.

Basically, the Big Secret to good design, or really any good work on a film, comes down to time. That’s bad news for a film that started out to prove how fast I could make it, but it’s pretty obvious that speed sacrifices quality and vice versa, and that’s just the way it is. But given the time to develop properly, the project seems to be on better footing. I’m really looking forward to the next year.

Today’s my turn on the Guest Strip Project, a charity that benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Guest Strip Project gets various cartoonist types to guest write-and-draw the strip, each one for a day, and that the ad proceeds will go to Make-A-Wish.

Lotta fun, and good to be asked. It’s always an interesting experience to try to get into somebody else’s characters and universe, and try to write gags for them. By funny coincidence, my strip goes pretty well with the one before it, even though each of us drew the strips with no knowledge of what the other was doing, or even what was coming before or after us.

Anyway, I encourage you to go have a look, browse through their archive. Quite a variety of entries, and you help Make-A-Wish just by browsing through the comics.

Wallace and Gromit are back! No, not another Hollywood-flavored feature film, but a return to the charming exceedingly northern British excellence of Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit short films like A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave. The BBC announced the short, “A Matter of Loaf and Death“, in which the duo own a bakery – Top Bun – only to find that a “cereal killer” is targeting all the bakers in town.

The 30-minute short is to debut during this Christmas season… but sadly it appears only on BBC1 thus far. But one can cross fingers.

In other Excellent British Animation news, my buddies over at StudioAKA have a new short based on the children’s book “Lost and Found” by Oliver Jeffers. In true AKA style, the crew has put a LOT more into this film than was in the book. That said, the book was so charming I bought it last Christmas and thought seriously about trying to animate it myself. Darn you, StudioAKA! Always one step ahead… and lightyears more creative, of course.

The 25-minute film is directed by Philip Hunt, and will be on TV on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas for the uninitiated) but… once again, and alas… only in the UK. For more info, see the post at Cartoon Brew.

Did I tell you how much I enjoyed my trip to London? Oh, I did? OK.

Just asking. I have a couple of funny and/or embarrassing stories involving Zach Braff and the St. Martin’s Hotel staff that I never mentioned. If you want to hear, you know all you have to do is ask. (Though I should make it clear that the events are mostly unrelated).

Thanks to Tom Dell’Aringa for the tips…