I’ve just come across the blog of artist Mark Fearing. He’s an illustrator of children’s books, and he’s got a really great style. I particularly love his robots, but then evidently so does he:

I’m drawing a LOT of robots these days. It seems that 3 out of every 4 projects prefer robots over non-robots. I am well-roboted. A robot in every drawing pad. Just call me Mr. Roboto.

Amen. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

Part robot, part muppet, part character from some incredible animated film that hasn’t been done yet, Brian Marshall’s found object robots are just fantastic!

Lots of Robots is one of those films that tortures my brain. How does Andy Murdock get so much done?

He gets asked that all the time, and my favourite quote of his seems to answer the question: “What should we do with all this grey matter? Park it in front of the TV? Hell NO!!”

Armed with his technical acumen, artistic and musical sensibilities and scripting genius, he has marshalled 3D Studio Max’s features into a well-oiled animation machine. His army of mutlilegged robots swarm over his landscape in a satisfyingly realistic way as the film peels back layers of increasing visual complexity and meaning.

Andy’s website is packed with lots of behind the scenes information, and his DVD is brimming over with tips, techniques, sample files and those wonderful animation scripts. Pop over and check out the project, and if you like what you see, and want to see more, buy the DVD. It’s a nice addition to your library, and it financially supports further development of Lots of Robots.

Andy’s first solo short film “Rocket Pants” was seen at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Santa Monica Film Festival a Moxie finalist, Santa Fe Film Festival and ResFest 2000. Andy also worked on “Gone Bad” which was accepted at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. “LOR” has enjoyed screenings around the world.

IN THE DIRECTOR’S WORDS

I have many goals for this project. One of them is to create an animated story entirely by myself sitting at home using off the shelf software. By using software and equipment that is readily accessible to everyone, I want to prove that anyone with enough spare time and determination can bring their ideas to life without the need for a team of programmers and a big budget.

This is by no means an “Attack of the Clones” scale project, but let’s face it, big flashy technology doesn’t make emotion and good story telling unnecessary. I think you can tell a great story and entertain the pants off of people, with tools that are cheap and easy to use.

After years of working for other folks full time (I like them all by the way), I grew tired of having to ask permission to be creative. If you sit around waiting for permission to follow your dreams then you are just sitting around waiting to die.”

–Andy Murdock