2010 DONE & DUSTED!

So that's Mukpuddy done for 2010 huh? That was quick! What started off as a slightly rocky year (thanks recession) quickly turned in to, easily, our most productive year to date... and we're very tired because of it, but it's a good tired... if that exists?

2010 saw us create a ton of new properties including Lanky Lampton, Roodie Toodie and Take Out (Thanks Studio 2 Live) which ended up garnering enough attention to get us a presence at Mipcom which has already sparked a few relationships that could make for a very interesting 2011 and beyond.

We also created the Star Wars inspired shorts Cuppa Jawa and R2 & Derek, both of which we plan to create a lot more of... Star Wars is in our blood.. sue us (no please don't, George). And it wouldn't have been another year at Mukpuddy without a visit to the Sparkle Friends universe, this time creating a new spin-off series, What's a Gungi Good For?, How to Draw the Sparkle Friends and the recently aired 2 part special Sparkle Friends: Next Level.

On top of all that we also helped out on the more adult skewed comedy series WANNA-BEn creating a theme, titles and animated segments. Launched our online "behind the scenes" series Around the Office with the Muks, had a bit of fun with Rambo and farted around with our new green screen and puppets... good times! All of this of course amongst our more corporate gigs that help keep the machine running, stuff that usually goes unseen by our followers like Barx, Moonblooms and Library Kids Clubs.

2011 is already shaping up to be a goodie but what excites us the most is continuing to work in an environment that oozes creativity, the fact that we can take something from conception to completion (usually within days) under one roof makes us super proud to work at Mukpuddy and lets us see that the company we envisioned, oh so many years ago, is a very real thing. To all those out there that continue to support us and constantly share their kind words... Huge thanks to you! Here's hoping you have the Merriest of Christmases!

We'll leave you with some Christmas messages from our animated pals, Drunk Santa and Lanky. Take care and we'll see you back here in 2011!

WHO NEEDS ANOTHER CUP?

At the start of this year we made a little skit called "Cuppa Jawa" it was a whole heap of fun so we just had to do another one before 2010 came to an end....... Plus Alex has quite the knack for Mukpuddifying Star Wars characters....so we can't let that go to waste.

Ryan lost his voice after this years Armageddon Expo, so we had to capitalise on his new found "huskiness" and we quickly recorded a brand new skit .....thus "Cuppa Jawa 2" was born.

Tim made this look super special with a little "After Effecting" and it's also our first true HD short so you can crank this sucka all the way up to 1080p!

A big thanks also to Damien Caine who helped Tim come up with an original piece of Star Wars-esque music.

And here it is

If you like the shorts buy the shirts!!!!

LET'S GET GRODIE!

Well... I guess at this stage it would be silly of us to say (again) that Sparkle Friends has come to an end. Looking back it seems we've "officially" announced "the end" at least 2 times. So even though, for now, it seems Sparkle Friends will end with it's 42nd episode...who knows what the future may bring. If anything Sparkle Friends has been an amazing training ground, not only in fast turnaround animation but in short form story telling, quick fire gags and rapid character development. We always tried to fit so much in to each episodes 3-4min duration....I guess we considered every episode our chance to make a mini-movie.......the problem was we'd have to cram that movie in to a trailer length short.....tricky.....but like I said, an amazing training ground for future projects.

Thanks to everyone who have had amazing things to say about Sparkle Friends over the years, it's really meant a whole lot to us.

Anyway, this episode was quite the monster resulting in the longest Sparkle Friends episode to date. As with most Sparkle Friends episodes - coming up with a new villain was the most fun and the musically inclined, Grodie Starlight was definitely the most fun to date.

So without further a doo doo.....here's Sparkle Friends: Next Level Part II



Here's some development stuff too, it was fun trying to come up with Grodie's design, trying to capture a 80s glam rockstar! In the end I went with a costume from one of my favourite 80s rockstars...




Grodies minions were pretty fun to design too, I thought it's be cool to have a throw back to some of the goblins in The Labyrinth, it also worked quite well since we saw them as kind of being like bikers or Grodies road crew when he was on tour...



If we had more money and time we would've we originally thought it'd be cool to do Emilio in CG, so we decided to make him a box shape to make it easier, maybe we can do it next time (if there is a next time!)...

So much room for activities!!!

This is an activity page we made especially for Armageddon a few weeks back, we thought it'd be cool to hand these out to kids for free, just a little something something to take away with them for free! The idea actually started as an entire 'Lanky Lampton Activity Book' but, again, like many Mukpuddy ideas was just a little too ambitious and we ran out of time. We really wanna do the book for next year, but in the mean time print this sucker out and have a play...

Making Muk Stuff...

So here's another little insight into the happenings of Muk HQ, we actually just got ourselves a Flip HD so were just testing it out but we'll be using it to do more of these thingys...

This is also pretty cool, Amid over at Cartoon Brew posted (briefly) about the above clip, so thanks a bunch for that dude, we really appreciate any exposure we can get, especially on a popular site like CB!

Surprise... It was all lies!

So we pretty much lied about not doing any more Sparkle Friends episodes, What Now (the local kids show Sparkle Friends is made for) got a new female presenter part way through this year and they wanted to introduce her to "the kids" via the magic of animation. So 2 new episodes were born, yip it's an epic 2 parter, introducing the new Sparkle Friend, Gem and yet another villain voiced by Ryan. We tried really hard to make these look pretty and Tim did a bang up job putting his After Effects fingers to work! It was a mountain of work, yet again, but might I say both episodes look bloody swank for being made by 3 blokes in just a few weeks...

Drawings by Alexander, Aged 30...

Draw Da Gungi!

WANNA BEn Titles...

We finally posted the opening titles we animated for the new show we're working on. Ben and his team are awesome to work with so we hope they get picked up for a second season so we can keep working with them...

Drawing A Monkey...

Mukpuddy @ Armageddon

Well the long weekend is over and with it so is the very fun but very exhausting Armageddon. It was a real blast to see kids of all ages recognise our work and buy our merch! We also got a few potential jobs out of it so that's always a plus. We'll be looking to do it all again next year with some brand new ideas for our stand so stay tuned!!

Here's us setting up our stand on the Friday morning...


And Ryan trying to get more kids to come to the Mukpuddy stand by hi-jacking the PA system...

And some pics...

Muk-A-Geddon!

So 2010, amongst other things, will celebrate Mukpuddys first appearance in 4 years at Aucklands Armageddon Expo. Armageddon is kinda like the San Diego Comic Con but on a New Zealand scale... so pretty small, but it's definitely grown since our first few times there 6 or so years ago.

We're actually pretty excited about it too as we haven't had a booth since we actually got good at making cartoons, so it's gonna be interesting to see what reaction we get from peeps to our work, from Sparkle Friends to Lanky Lampton, and everything else in between!

We've been planning our booth for a while so hopefully it's gonna look cool and we'll be selling badges, stickers, comics, dvds and a few shirts. You'll even be able to get your photo taken with Lanky Lampton himself (see below)...

Thought we'd post this again too, we made it earlier this year for the organiser of Armageddon to promo the event...

So if you're in the Auckland area definitely come check out the event and come by our booth (#99) and say hi!

Draw Tu!

Here's our second short in this series...

How To Draw Charles...

If you've ever wondered how to draw The Sparkle Friends then let Lance be your guide to artistic glory. We made these earlier this year and weren't sure about them until the addition of the host Lance, who was almost completely ad-libbed by Ryan in the voice booth... fun times!

Wanna-Ben!

So as well as being flat out making 2 new episodes of Sparkle Friends we've also been creating titles and episode animation for a new tv show here in New Zealand called 'Wanna Ben'.

Ben and his crew are a swell bunch of chaps, we actually made 'The Stallion' pilot with them last year which also lead to us briefly working with them on their last show 'Pulp Sport'. We've still got a long way to go on this project but it's been fun making animation that will be seen in "prime time"!

Condiment War!

So here's our last skit in the 'Take Our' series and the last work we did for 'Studio2 Live', they were really cool to us this year and let us do whatever we wanted which was really refreshing. It made for a awesome experience all around and we can't thank them enough for that! We were looking forward to expanding our relationship with them next year but, unfortunately, they've been cancelled, which, in our minds, is a huge loss for New Zealand television and all kiwi kids! RIP Studio2 Live!



We're currently figuring out a way to keep these shorts alive so hopefully, all going to plan there will be more of Lanky Lampton and his mates on tv screens next year!

PWND!

Eggs are cute... FACT!

This short marks the debut of Ryan's daughter Ilah (2 years old) in a Mukpuddy cartoon, it wont be the last time either...

Good For Nuttin'...

Thought we'd post the rest of these "What's A Gungi Good For" skits we made earlier this year, so yeah we created a spin-off skit series that features some of our favourite special guest characters from the last 40 episodes of Sparkle Friends, each finding interesting ways to use Gungi...

More Mukpuddy Malarky...

Bananas and Fountains...

A combo that never fails!

Here's some sketches too...

Ja-Bungee...

Here's the first short in our last batch of stuff for 'Studio2 Live'...

Double Rambo all the way!

For those of you who are fans of the wonderfully "enthusiastic" Double Rainbow fella and the Internet sensation clip that he stars in........you might get a sniggle (that's a snicker giggle) out of this...

So yeah, a little different from our usual stuff. We don't normally jump on any Internet "band-wagons" but this idea made us laugh enough to give it an hour of our time. Tim did a wonderful job of putting it all together in After Effects. We now return you to your normal programing!

Food is your friend!

Here's a sneak peek at our next bunch of shorts for 'Studio2 Live'

This ain't no Beyoncé ditty!

Thought we'd save this one until the end as it's one of our favs. So it's the end of the run of Roodie Toodie shorts for now but these fellas will be back for sure, we've had so much fun making these and wanna thank all the peeps up at Studio 2 for letting us make them! We have another 5 episodes of another idea coming your way very soon but in the mean time enjoy this lil' golden piece of Ryan ad-libbery...



HOLD THE PHONE... NOW WITH SPECIAL FEATURES>>> We've put the song online as a MP3 so if you wanna use it as a ring tone or something just as cool feel free! (right click to save)

Caught by the fuzz!

Here's our 2nd to last Roodie Toodie...

The Talented Mr. Ryan...

We thought it'd be cool to show you guys at peek at how much ad libbing Ryan does in the vocal booth. This is from the last episode of 'Roodie Toodie' where Toodie is doing some impressions, unfortunately we didn't record all of them because the camera ran out of battery...

Auditions can be hell!

Ryan did all the impressions contained within...

The "REAL" Lanky...

Thought it'd be cool to post the raw footage from the Lanky Lampton interview that was on Studio2 Live a few weeks backs, so here it is...

Sweet beats!!

Let the mentalness ensue...

So here's the first episode of our brand new series of shorts called 'Roodie Toodie', as with Lanky Lampton, the peeps up at Studio2 Live we're making it for just said do what ever you want and this is the result! It's the sort of cartoon we've wanted to make for a while now, just nonsense that makes us laugh!

Pretty much all the dialogue was ad-libbed by Ryan in the voice booth. We think this episode nicely sets up the characters and their relationship...



More to come soon!

Who Framed Lanky Lampton?

When we pitched the idea of Lanky Lampton to the good folks at Studio2LIVE we also pitched the idea of having Lanky interviewed in studio with the presenters of the show......if he proved popular that is. Well, he did prove popular so we went ahead and did a "live" interview. We wanted the interview to feel natural and "real" so we filmed the entire thing unrehearsed. I (Ryan) sat in as Lanky and answered the questions with no preparation or planning as we really wanted to catch any little stumbles or mistakes that may occur. That sort of stuff can really add realism and charm to this sort of thing.

Once it was all filmed we removed me from the scene and added in the animated Lanky. Keeping the same eye lines and poses so that it felt like the presenters we're really connecting with Lanky.

Here's what went to air last Friday (June 11th)

Lanky Darby!

Hey folks,

Well so far Lanky Lampton has proved a glorious success......we seem to have found a character that really does appeal to all ages.....and that warms our ear lobes! Right from the offset we were only going to make 5 Lanky Lamptons with the hope that his popularity would dictate whether we make more or not (so at this stage I'm guessing this isn't the last you'll see of him). So we knew we wanted the 5th episode to be a real hum-dinger......a real frown upside downer. We had a long list of "good ideas" Lanky could talk about, but we knew it had to be a little more obscure.....so what's more obscure than Rhys Darby! So we sent off a message to the man himself and thankfully he loved the idea and was on board immediately.

So here's the finished episode, it was super fun to make and Rhys was a great guy to work with. Hope you enjoy.

Oh and if you're wondering, yes.... that is a real beard Alex has upon his face (photo below). The word you're looking for is.....lush! When he shaves it off he'll be donating it to the "Restore Billy Crystal's Hair Foundation" or the RBCHF as it's commonly known.

iMuks!

Check this out, we have no idea what the game is actually like but we were asked recently to design some elements for a soccer game for German game developers 'Blacksmith', and now you can buy it... SPEND MONEY!

Us being dicks...

What's coming next...

Here's a peak at another new cartoon we are currently making...

Lanky and bees...

This can't possibly go bad...

Drink that bubbles...

What a good idea!

Lanky explains Dogs...

A NEW MUKPUDDY CARTOON!

So when one cartoon door closes another cartoon door opens......and behind this new cartoon door is Lanky Lampton. I said "cartoon door" 3 times in one sentence......now it just sounds weird.

Anyhoo, below is the first episode of our brand new series of cartoon shorts called "Lanky Lampton: A Silly Idea". It's an idea we pitched to NZ after school kids show "Studio 2 Live". They loved the idea and gave us the green light for a bunch. So with complete creative freedom comes complete creative nuttyness. .....enjoy.

Everybody loves a spin-off...

except for that show 'Joey'.......he's nothing without Chandler.

Anyhoo, as we mentioned in a previous post, last year was the end of the line for the Sparkle Friends. After 40 episodes it definitely felt like it had come to a natural end and it was time to move on. We love what we've created and are extremely proud of the progress we made while working on the show, but we'll take that experience and apply it to new projects.

However... Over the 3 years of making Sparkle Friends we came up with far too many fun secondary characters to just throw to the wayside and felt they needed a bit more screen time. So with the inclusion of Sparkle Friends star, Gungi.....we created a spin-off skit series that features some of our favourite special guest characters from the last 40 episodes, each finding interesting ways to use Gungi.

So enough blabbing from me, here's the very first "What's a Gungi Good For?"

Ryan



p.s a big thanks to musical genius Ben Sinclair who did a great job of making my mediocre jingle singery sound pretty rad!

A New Thing...

Here's a sneak-peek at our new cartoon, all shall be revealed very soon...

End Of An Era...

We didn't know it at the time of making these, but these 2 episodes (an "epic" 2-parter) might be the last Sparkle Friends episodes in this format... EVER!

The original plan with these was to run a competition where kids would draw themselves as a Sparkle Friend and the 2 winning entries would appear in the episode which was going to be in 3D and kids would grab their glasses from a local shopping center. Well like a lot of things down here in little ol' New Zealand, it proved a little to ambitious, and the 3D elements were dropped because of time constraints... but, good gracious, that would've been cool!

However the comp still ran though and we got to see a bunch of really cool entries and the 2 kids, Olivia and Wallice, do appear in the episode, just in case you were wondering who those randoms were! Episode 40 also features the return of one of our favorite "elements" from Series 1 (that's a long time ago, if you're counting).

Here's the 2 winning entries...

As for the future of Sparkle Friends, it's a little uncertain at this stage but we are making some short skits involving Gungi at the moment. They've have been a bunch of fun to make and will be hitting the net very soon!

Nothing but the tooth!

Here's a new Sparkle Friends episode that's full of lovely weirdness. Sometimes we look back at an episode and are amazed by the chain reaction that occurred between us which resulted in the finished episode....I don't want to give anything away from this episode, but I will say that the ideas that ended up in the episode lent themselves perfectly to one of our favourite Sparkle Friends end gags ever.

Once again a big thanks to Jocelyn Christian who did a wonderful job as the voice of the Toothfairy.

Here's some design work, twas fun designing these two ladies...

Armageddon a cup of water!

Look who's here......it's you!

Enough of that, lets get to the real story. Soooo, every year something called the Armageddon Expo is held throughout NZ (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin) and it's kind of a comic-con style geeky extravaganza of all things comics, movies, TV and anime.

Mukpuddy first had a stand at Armageddon in 2003 and it definitely helped in getting our name out and about in the industry.

We have had a stand at Armageddon on and off over the last 7 years but we thought this year we would make a grand return to see if the kids who were trying to scab free stuff off us years ago have grown up to be rich and want to give us lots of money to make cartoons.....ahhhhhh.......thems the dreams of crazy folk.

Anyhoo, if all goes well we will be at Auckland Armageddon October 2010 and to help promote it we've created a short viral skit......enjoy or don't enjoy.....that's up to you ;)

A little green...

A week or so ago we created a permanent green screen in the Mukpuddy studio (our landlords were gracious enough to let us deface a wall!). We thought it would be a nice feature to have on hand whenever we needed to jump in front of a green screen.......as we often do......wah?

Anyhoo, to give the new toy a whirl we grabbed Tim's puppet, Ember, and ad-libbed a bit of puppet tomfoolery. We filmed it with an old digital camera (which is all we had on hand that day) then took the footage in to After Effects and threw in some BG elements we already had made up etc, and this is what we produced.

It's a tad rough, but it's only a test. We have plans for some more........next time we might try proper lighting as this test had none. Hopefully they'll only get better.

Stay tuned.

WHAT TIME IS IT?

...ADVENTURE TIME!!!!!!! Here's my contribution to the up and coming tribute book! Thanks to Chogrin for asking me to be a part of it...

-Alex

Lets Get Girly!

A Sparkle Friends episode with a message....get outta here. Don't worry......it's still full of random weirdness, but we thought it would be nice to tackle an issue that kinda bugs us, growing up.

This episode also features a TV commercial parody that Jeremy had been dreaming about for some time......so like we always do, found a way to slip it into Sparkle Friends. See you if you can spot it.......it the one that looks like a TV commercial parody.....silly.



ALSO>>> Check out the brand new Mukpuddy Animation website and let us know what ya think!!!

Donut look here!

For over a year now we've done some work (on and off) for a company called Donutology. They specialise in Donut related merchandise, mobile phone jewelry, t-shirts, rings etc



We've designed a bunch of characters for their merchandise, mainly t-shirts and posters (see above), but at the end of last year we pitched the idea of donut related skits to help promote Donutology in a viral form. The idea was well received and we knocked out 4 skits based on the "bad uses for a donut" theme.

Mukpuddy does Star Wars...

Here's an idea we've had for a while and thought we'd put it together to get the creative juices flowing as we start to get into the year...

Luck Of The Irish...

This episode was a pretty fun one to come up with, last year we met an Irish dude that boasted he never forgot a name but kept getting ours slightly wrong, we thought it was hilarious and wanted to put it into a cartoon, and here it is...

And some process work...