MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Hey Folks,

well we've come to the end of a crazy year. 2006 has been Mukpuddy's best year to date, and we're glad it's over so we can have a relaxing Xmas holiday!

We've managed to have work all year round (some of which was far stranger than others), so it's awesome to see that 2D still has it's place in the world. Yay for 2D!

A major part of our year (and Mukpuddy's history) has been the introduction of Jeremy to the team, not only has he brought a truck load of talent to the table, but he has become a great friend and is now most definitely a true Muk! Cheers bro, we're glad to have you around!

I have to say a big "nice one brudda" to Alex who manages to constantly amaze us with his always evolving artistic talent, your hard work doesn't go unnoticed bro. We've decided to extend your contract for at least another year. Congrats.

And Tim, what can I say? You keep rock alive! Plus you relieve our animation struggles, you da man bro! (Struggles is a weird word, sounds like mean Fraggles).

As for me (Ryan) well....I wrote this Blog post, so I've earned my wages. Plus I do silly voices and I like to constantly distract everyone, I'm a must for every animation studio.

And to all of our awesome new Blog friends....

Mukpuddy Sketchbook

Hey folks,

It's been a while since our last post. Things have been pretty busy at Mukpuddy. Got a bunch of jobs we are trying to complete so we can have a bodacious Christmas holiday.

This October we attended the NZ Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo (Imagine San Diego comic but 100 times smaller). We made up our first Mukpuddy Sketch-book which we had on sale, it proved pretty popular, so now we've slapped all 36 glorious pages on Lulu for you all to buy. Hoorah! What better gift could you give someone this Christmas? Probaby a PSP or a Wii, but a Mukpuddy Sketchbook should come in a close 2nd.

We've added buttons to the store on your left. But if your mouse cursor happens to right here, then click there to save time and effort. Smiles!

Fred Interview

Hey peeps, we just wanted to direct your atttention over to the Frederator Studios Blog where our buddy Jeaux Janovsky has posted an interview he did with us! We're really excited about it and feel really privileged to be included with many of the other artists interviewed over there (many of whom are great inspiration to us!). So a big thanks goes out to Jeaux, we really appreciate your support dude and when we make it over to The States next we'll buy you a beer!

Also thought we'd post the illustration we created for the "Channel Frederater 1st Birthday Program", the only criteria was to have a robot and an ipod......

My new Painting

Fellow Mukster Jeremy had his birthday last week and his girlfriend wanted to give him one of my paintings. He's a huge fan of Sesame Street and his favorite character is Grover so, for me, this was a perfect subject (once again, acrylic on canvas)..... Alex

The Muks go Cereal Killing!!

Hey peeps, we were asked recently to contribute to Von Kreep's Cereal Killer book so without further adieu, heres Alex and Tims efforts....

Heres Tims effort!








And Alex's!

Fredex

A few months ago we were invited to take part in a Channel Frederator project called "Fredex". 15 or so animators were given a subject, ours was "Salad Bars" then we had to make a 10 second short which dealt with the pros and cons of being a robot.

The compilation short has just gone online over at Channel Frederator or you can see the Fredex short on it's own at Mukpuddy. There's some awesome examples of the talent that's out there at the moment. Makes us proud to be a part of it. Now for some stuff made with pencils...

Server go Bung!!!

Hey all, the Mukpuddy.com server is currently down, so please bear with us!!!

I Spy Plush..

Hey, Alex here, the plush toys me and Karla (my fiance) have finally found a home on the web at www.geekfreeks.com , so go check them out!!!!

New Paintings!!!

Sorry for lack of posts lately, over the last week or so we've been busy organising stuff for the Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo we mentioned a few posts ago. We'll give ya a full run down of how it went soon as, but in the mean time heres some paintings I did for the show, to my surprise they all sold, yay for me!!! (They're acrylic on canvas) -Alex

Buttony Badges!!

Hey all, well we're almost ready for our triumpant return to Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo this weekend. We've put together a sketchbook (which will be available online soon) and had some badges made (see designs below), if theres any left after the show we may be able to find a way to sell them to yous guys overseas!! Peace out!

WE ARE SO MUCH COOLER NOW

Well, last week marked a true milestone in Mukpuddy's 4 and a half year history.

WE GOT A WATER COOLER. BOO YA! (Hence the clever use of the word "cooler" in the title. Clever!)

Now we have another reason to stand around and talk about Transformers, Thundercats and all things Star Wars. Ahhhhh, casual lighthearted banter mixed with refreshing H20. Nice!

Gather around.....if you look at the photo really close, really really close, and wish upon a golden star, you may just see a magical little powerpuff girl peeking out to say hello.

Real live flash!

Hey folks,

we just finished up a new tv advert/promo for TV2's "Saturday Disney", a New Zealand saturday morning kids show. This one was a little different for us as we got to experiment with a bit of live action/flash animation mix. Jeremy and Tim went out and filmed the live action parts, then we spent a couple of days adding in the flash animated elements. We're pretty chuffed with how it turned out, it all came together very smooth.....The Fonze smooth.

Sketches first....



and then the clip....



As always, if the clip doesn't work, head over to www.mukpuddy.com and look for the quicktime version under 'animation'.

Mukpuddy at Armageddon 06

Its with great pride and a buldge in my knickers that I announce Mukpuddy Animation's triumpiant return to New Zealands premiere Comic-Con, "Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo". It's not much but it's got it where it counts, so if your anywhere near the South Pacific you should stop by, we'll be located by the toilets on Level 5 of Aotea Centre (Stand 27), so stop by and have a chat when you go wees!

GO KIWI!!

What is a Mukpuddy?

For those of you out there who have always wondered, heres what one looks like under a microscope....

CKC-ya!

Hey everyone,

it's been a while since our last post, sorry 'bout that, been a little busy here at Mukpuddy. Anyway, the last couple of months we've been working on a new live action kids show called "Cool Kids Cooking" (renamed CKC for extra coolness). We originally created the animated opening titles and transitions for the show, but the characters proved quite popular so the creators of the series decided to incorporate them throughout the set. It's a very weird experience seeing the characters you've created blown up to 8' tall. Anyway....

Here's the character designs



Here's the final opening titles



(if the file above doesn't work, head over to mukpuddy.com and check it out)

and here's how the characters look on set (and yes....Jeremy has turned into a pumpkin in the 3rd pic.....but dont worry, Tim soon turned him back with a tender kiss).



CKC-ya. Out!

Taste this...

Hey folks,

We've been busy working away on a new project for the last 2 weeks and we're finally finished. So here's what the idea was. A kids show here in NZ, Studio 2, ran a competition asking kids to make a comic strip starring the "Colgate Taste Buddies" as part of a month long dental hygene promotion. The winning entry would then be turned into an animated short made by.....us!! We thought this was a pretty cool idea, so we were keen to jump aboard (even though once again we had an ungodly time limit of only 2 weeks).

So here's the winning entry that we chose, we felt this entry had the most potential for some great characters. The main bad guy, Mouth Evil (whom I got to provide the voice for), was too cool a character to pass up. Big props have to go to Tim for his kick ass job animating the villian, nice job dude!!





Pretty cool aye? Now here's our redesign attempts....



and here's the final animated short. Hope you all enjoy it. (If the Youtube player below doesn't work, head over to www.mukpuddy.com and check it out under animation).
Ryan.

Hard 'N Phirm

Hey peoples.

Got a chance to work on something a little different last week. We were approached by the comedy duo Hard 'N Phirm (made up of Chris Hardwick & Mike Phirman) to make a poster for their current tour. And already being big fans of their work, we jumped at the chance. So below is the poster we came up with. The idea for the poster comes from (Chris' words) "old artwork that depicts science from an alchemists point of view, like instead of showing formulas to depict removing mercury from a substance the "directions" involve pouring a dragon out of a jar."

No offence to anyone who still use Dragons in their mercury removal, but that's hilarious!!

I've included a couple of sketches as well as the image we based the final poster on. Be sure to check out the Hard "N Phirm site too. Enjoy!

Stop it, you're making me plush!

Heres some more toys me and my fiance have been busy making. Some more monstery ones and a retarded turtle, my favorite kind of turtle by the way!!

Sparkle Friends Ep10: What Becomes of the Broken Gungi

Well, this is it, the last episode of Sparkle Friends. Amazingly we got away with ending it on a cliffhanger (hoping kids will demand a 2nd series).

Check it out at the usual spot under animation at www.mukpuddy.com

By the way, check out our inspiration for the title and title card of the episode. How did we get away with this stuff!