Caper Babypants Take 2...

Last year we were fortunate enough to team up with Caspar Babypants (Chris Ballew of 'Presidents of the United States of America' fame) to make a video of one of his super catchy kids songs, Mr Rabbit (check it out here). So we were thrilled when he asked us to tackle another of his songs, My Flea Has Dogs. We've always wanted to something with a 1920's cartoon feel, so when Caspar said he was keen to do something black and white, rubber-hose style we jumped at the opportunity. So... along with some process work, here's the final video.

Mister Rabbit!

Earlier this year we were lucky enough to start up a friendship with, Chris Ballew who you may know as the lead singer of the band, Presidents of the United States of America. We found out Chris had a side project called, Caspar Babypants which, to put it simply, is well written music for children... kids music that doesn't drive you insane ;) As a parent myself (Ryan), it's quite a rare find.

So anyway, it seemed only natural we team up and make something super cool for his legions of young (and old) fans. Chris has an awesome dedication to creating music for kids that allows them to follow easily and engage on many levels... so our video had to reflect that. One of the best parts of making this video was the level of trust Chris put in us, so we were allowed to go away with complete creative freedom and create the following simple and sweet music video for his best selling kids song, Mister Rabbit.

All the Caspar Babypants albums are available on Chris' website

Mukpuddy + Rapper + Graffiti Artist = GREATEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER!

Well maybe not ever EVER, but this was a really fun project to work on for sure! Our buddy and world famous graffitti artist and music video director Askew One came to us earlier this year wanting to collaborate on a music video, we're always keen for a "team up" and jumped at the chance and just hoped it was gonna be for a cool song and artist. He then played us the track by local NZ rapper PNC and we jumped for joy, not only was it a catchy tune and a song that would suit animation perfectly, we're also fans of PNC!

We all sat around the table and came up with a whole bunch of random ideas, some made it in, some didn't, but it was a fun process and cool to be involved in the shoot and every other step along the way... a true collaborative effort and we hope to work with Askew again sometime soon!

A special mention has to go to Tim and his magical dainty fingers which he used to great effect when putting all the shots through After Effects. Now we will allow you to watch it now...

Here's some process work...

Here's a "Behind The Scenes" clip we put together as well...

Drama Queen

My good friend Mikee asked us to make a 'dark, animated, jack the ripper-style' video for his band Autozamm, and this is what we came up with.



You may be thinking that it looks a bit different to our usual stuff, and you'd be right. Our design work usually comes from the highly talented, tattooed hands of Alex - but it seemed like Tim's style was more fitting for the darker tone of this story. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of Tim's style in the future - if he can stop eating his beloved chocolate long enough to draw something...

And as much as we'd like to take all of the credit, a family-sized portion of it belongs to our buddy Andrew Kepple.

Andrew is the man we call when there's too much work and not enough Muks. He animated the majority of this video by himself and did a bang up job too. Virtual high five to you Mr Kepple!

The above version of the video was rated AO (adults only) and could only be played after 930pm, which isn't ideal for a music video. So we toned down a few scenes and sneaked in with a PGR (parental guidance recommended) rating. See if you can spot the difference!

Jeremy

Take it!!!

It's been a while since we last posted anything animation flavoured. We have been working away on a few things. Some really cool stuff, some.......slightly ho-hum.

Last year we were asked to work on a Music video for a NZ HipHop/R&B group. The idea for the video was cool. Kind of a throw back to Teeny Little Super Guy from Sesame Street........but with a tiny budget.

We only had a few days to throw together the animated segments, and it was all very experimental on the directors behalf (we didn't direct this by the way). Unfortunately due to the lack of budget and time the animation suffered. On top of that we were pretty restricted to the amount of room we had to animate within and the framing of the shots was fairly poor, but that was out of our hands.

Anyway, here's the clip. You may want to turn down your speakers unless your a glutton for punishment........ooooo, he went there.

Not our finest moment, but a moment none the less. Twas an interesting learning curve, and one that we are still waiting to be paid for. Shazaaaam!!

Muks on the Fred again!!

Yayyy those awesome peeps over at Channel Frederator have found it fit to showcase us for a whopping third time in their 73rd podcast!! This time around we submitted a music video we made a few years back, 2003 in fact, for a local NZ Hip-Hop artist King Kapisi. It was the first major job for tv we ever did so it's kind of a milestone for us, so we're really stoked to have it featured over there even if it does show it's age a little and makes us cringe a bit!! But we really appreciate all the support the team at Channel Frederator have given us over the last year, so to celebrate we've dug deep deep into the Mukpuddy archives to bring you some stuff from the making of the video... Enjoy! (Watch it here)

Heres some design work:

A sequence storyboarded by Tim:

And some backgrounds:

They also interviewed us about this project, check it!!

We've been Podcasted...

Hey everyone, not an artwork update this time, just some really really cool news!!! Our music video we made for Pluto is one of the shorts being showcased on this weeks "Channel Frederator" podcast. We're huge fans of Channel Frederator and the Frederator Studios as a whole, and it's a real blast to be picked!!!

So a big thank you goes out to Melissa Wolfe and the team at Channel Frederator.... you guys rock!!!!

http://www.channelfrederator.com/

Don't flash me your cold hard one!!!!

Our buddy Aaron over at Cold Hard Flash has, once again, been nice enough to give us and our music video we did for Pluto a small plug on his site.... so go check it out!!!

Thanks Aaron, we owe you one pal!!!

Pluto - Baby Cruel Video

OOPS, LINK IS FIXED NOW. SORRY!!

Well, we're finally aloud to reveal the music video we've been working on for New Zealand band Pluto. It was done on a fairly small budget and the 3 of us completed it in about 3 weeks. Apart from the initial character designs and the bg's, it was made entirely in Flash. Making this vid allowed us to experiment a little with flash so next time around we'll hopefully come up with something even better. Right click here and "save as" to check it out. (It's around 6.9MB)

The band are extremely happy with the final vid, so that's cool. They liked the vid so much that we actually got commissioned to create a 1 minute animated skit, featuring the characters, so we'll post that for you to see as well. Check that out here at mukpuddy.com

Look forward to hearing what you guys think!!

Cheers

The Muks