Sparkle to the power of 3!

Remember that time we said that thing about the thing and how we weren't doing any more Sparkle Friends and then it turned out we lied and now we've made a 3rd season!

Yeah....neither do we. Anyway, a brand spanking new series of Sparkle Friends is due to play on NZ TV in a few weeks, so we'll be posting the new episodes as they've gone to air.

We're pretty happy with the new episodes. We've pushed limited animation to its..... ah.....limits;) Anyhoo, here's the promo that's currently playing over here to wet your appetite.



IN OTHER SPARKLE NEWS!!!
So we just won a Freddie at the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards and were asked to contribute an acceptance speech, so check out the clip of us being stupid below! (we're at about the halfway mark)

One more for the trophy cabinet...equals 2!

Well we've had to keep this under wraps for a few weeks and now we can shout it from the rooftops!! (remember capitals means shouting) WE WON THE KIWI AWARD AT THE 2008 CHANNEL FREDERATOR AWARDS!!

So firstly we want to give a huge thanks to the Channel Frederator team for nominating us in the first place. Fred, Eric, Jeaux and everyone else at "Red Robot HQ" have really supported us and our creations from day one and we will always be eternally grateful for that!

Secondly, thanks to everyone who voted. We're always pretty stoked with what we make but aren't to sure how it'll be received by the general public so it's super cool to know that you guys out there like our stuff too!!

Old Freddy is a little wary of his "upgrade"...

WE GOT NOMINATED!!!

Well smack my bum and call me Keith, we've been nominated for a Freddie!!

Over the last few days Channel Frederator have been announcing the categories and the nominees for the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards, and right there, in the thick of it all is a crazy new category called the "Kiwi Award" and by god if an episode of Sparkle Friends isn't all up in it!!

So if you care about orphans and baby seals........vote for us. We'll use our win to try and right the wrongs of the world.

http://www.channelfrederatorawards.com/

The power lies with you, don't screw it up. Orphans!!!!
Lots of love
Keith

Frederator Artwork!!

We were once again asked to contribute some artwork for the Channel Frederator Awards programme, the theme this year is "Robots in the Metropolis". Thanks for letting us be a part of it fellas! Maybe Camp Fear will be up for an award this year ;)

Happy Fred-O-Ween!!!

Check out the awesome Halloween episode of Channel Frederator!! Our short "Camp Fear" made it in so we're happy little ghoulies....



A big thanks to Jeaux and the rest of the Frederator team, we owe you our lives!!

Also here's this weeks comic...

Woooo Hoooo!!!

We delayed posting this episode a little bit as we wanted our buddies at Channel Frederator to have the exclusive!! That's right The Muks are back on The Fred, for an awesome 4th time!!! We're really stoked and as our pal Jeaux Janovsky said, we're BFF!!

This is the episode where we put a call out a few months ago for Flash animators to contribute some animation to a scene where the kids are flicking through channels on the TV. We thought it'd be a cool way to collaborate with some of the awesome artists animating in Flash out there! We got some really cool stuff so check it out!

A big thanks to everyone that gave us clips, below is a list of all those who's work made it into the episode (a couple of clips went bung when we brought them into flash so really sorry to those guys!), they were all really cool, and we'd like to think we could all work on something else in the future!!

GREG GUNTHER

DAH VEED
MATT TORODE

RAMIRO OLMOS

ASHLEY DAVISON

DUSTY HAZE

NELSON C WOODSTOCK

TODD RAMSEY

JERRY FUCHS

PAUL LALO

MICHAEL FOSTER
STEPHEN LEVINSON

AARON BLECHA
NIKO ANESTI

Here's some sketchy stuff too...

Feelin' the love!

Chances are you're probably getting sick of us getting plugged on the Frederator blogs, if so, you won't like what I'm about to say.... Our good buddie Jeaux Janovsky has kindly posted about our Sparkle Friends Myspace page, so don't be a hater and go check it out!

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!!

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......

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...

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/