Two Double O Seven is over!

Well, 2007 has come to an end, and to be quite honest it's been awesome.....if not slightly....surreal. Come with us as we take a stroll down memory lane, it's a bit on the grubby side, so please wear shoes.

We started off the year with our 2nd season of Sparkle Friends. The second series was leaps and bounds ahead of the first season, thanks in part to far more prep time. Obviously we were still cutting our teeth on the whole episode a week dealio......but we managed to create bigger more involved story lines and introduce new crazy characters each episode. It was a wicked, if not completely draining, experience.

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos that was Sparkle Friends S2, we managed to find 48 hours to make a short animated film, Camp Fear, for the 48Hours NZ short film festival. It still makes us warm with giddyness to think that we made probably our fave Mukpuddy "thing" to date in a stupidly short amount of time. It helps when the guys you work with all share one brain. Did I mention we also managed to win Best Film in our city's final.......yeah......we did......and it was awesome.

Oh yeah, and while this was going on, Jeremy was moonlighting as a live action director on a NZ kids show to help bring in a few extra bucks to Mukpuddy.......thus giving us the spare mullah we needed to fly our Mukky bums to the U.S of A. Where we did things like go to the San Diego Comic Con, attending parties where we hung out with Peter Petrelli and Sylar from Heroes and were mistaken for Australians by Stan Lee. Then it was playtime at Disneyland for 4 days, then a few days of pitching to CN, Nick and Disney. Then because we were completely exhausted.....we headed to Las Vegas where Alex married his Girlfriend Karla in the presence of Elvis himself........I know.........I thought he was dead too!

Upon arriving back in NZ, it seemed like we had become the go to guys for "corporate revenue animation presentations" or C.R.A.P for short. It's not something we love doing, but hey, when the river runs dry......sometimes you have to fill it.........with crap? I'm not sure that's how the saying goes, but from where I'm sitting it seems pretty prophetic.

We ended the year with a few animated TV commercials and a music video that we'll show you in the next few months. Now we've got a few weeks off to recoup and get ourselves jazzed to do it all again in 2008.........yes I said jazzed.......trust me you'll all be saying it soon.

I must say, looking back at the awesome things we've done this year, I'm so glad that I get to do it with people who are my closest friends, it's not very often you get to mix work and play everyday, but we do, and I'm so grateful for that. Makes me realise that Mukpuddy has something unique going for it and there's a reason we're still around after 6 years.....oh god, that means we're getting old.....ish. Cheers you nutty Muks!

Oh yeah, and somewhere in there my wife had our beautiful little girl, Ilah. High five.

2007.......what a crazy
Ryan

P.S In case 2007 wasn't busy enough. Alex decided to do an exhibition with his wife Karla just before Christmas no less. It all looked awesome.....and one of the paintings is now hanging in my daughters nursery.....but I've rambled enough. Look at the crazy man's talent below.

A kids school desk...

And some small skate decks...

More pics soon!!