HE'S NOT A CAT!!

Last year our friends at Nickelodeon International asked us to make a cartoon for a project they called Open Mic - it was basically a chance for a group of studios to strut their stuff and make cartoon shorts with minimal studio interference. The only condition was that the cartoon must be driven by a 'star character'...

Rewind 10 years to the very early beginnings of Mukpuddy, and a Secret Agent Lemur by the name of Dirk Banzai. Cue hideous 10 year old drawings...





Dirk was the first ever Mukpuddy character, and has been through several incarnations over his 10 years. He starred in a couple of webisodes (back when that seemed like a potential way to make money) and even had his own comic for a short time. We've always thought he had star potential, and thought Open Mic might be a good time to get him out of moth balls and give him a revamp.



The 'secret agent' moniker was dropped, and Dirk became more of a kid who creates drama and intrigue wherever he goes, even when none actually exists. Naturally villains assume Dirk is their nemesis and try to destroy him, but Dirk finds it all quite fun and amusing!



We had a few attempts at trying to find a voice for Dirk, but ended up seeking out the original Dirk - our good friend Matt Kelly. Matt had slipped off the Mukpuddy radar for a few years, but turned out to be irreplaceable. Take that Beyonce!

We also enlisted our friend Richard Simpson as the voice of Dirk's nemesis, The Toyminator.

And Jeremy wrote the theme song (as he often does) with the help of our new-found musical genius Ben Sinclair. It was the first time we worked with Ben, but we doubt we'll ever make anything without him again.

Anyway, it turned out it wasn't really what Nickelodeon were after, but we enjoyed making the short and are grateful for the opportunity. Let's see what you think of it... go on... watch it!

Here's some production work...

Horsing around!

We made a pilot! No silly... not a man who flies planes. A pilot is another name for the first episode of a TV show. Chuckle.

About a year ago our buddies Jamie & Ben (better known in New Zealand as 'Bill & Ben', the creators of the award winning comedy show Pulp Sport) approached us with an idea for a couple of characters called Edward the Horse and Warren the Rabbit.

We took their idea, fed it into the Mukpuddy Cartoon Making Machine, and baked it on high for several months. This is what came out the other side.

We think it's our best work yet, and are particularly proud that we made a NZ-flavoured cartoon that doesn't involve a kiwi. Some of the references may be a little too 'local' for our overseas viewers, but hopefully that will make it seem 'exotic'.

As usual, Alex's pencil went into overdrive. Here's some early development stuff for Ed and Warren...

Secondary character development...

Here's some layouts from the pilot...

And some backgrounds...

Let us know if you'd like to see more!

Jeremy

Didney Lan!

Being obsessed with everything Disney as a kid I don't think there's anywhere more inspiring to be than Disneyland, and these little buggers are a direct result of my recent trip there with my wife. We also visited Comic Con where our buddy Martin Hsu convinced me to do more paintings on wood, ta daaa...





-Alex

Studio 2 Titles!

Earlier this year a local kids show called Studio 2 got us to make their new titles, we incorporated all the characters the presenters play within the show and we think they turned out pretty sweet...

Muk TV!

If you didn't catch it last year, the story 20/20 did on us is finally up on Youtube...


Here's something else we've never posted here before, a few years ago we were asked to be on a local kids show here in NZ and talk about making cartoons. It was our first time on telly and we were crapping in our nappies...

We're still alive!

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, things have been crazy busy here at Muk HQ! After an exhausting 6 months we finished up our 4th series of Sparkle Friends, which we are very happy with and is some of our best stuff to date me thinks, we've now gone onto a "super secret" project we can't say much about at this stage but if it all goes to plan will lead to bigger and better things. Hopefully we can show you something soon! We've also been doing some "bread and butter" freelance type jobbies, so at the moment our brains feel a little melty!
We've held off posting anything else from the new Sparkle Friends episodes because we thought it might improve our chances of selling it overseas, so if you run a tv station and have moolah... email us! But we might post a few gags up soon, so stay tuned!

In the mean time I thought I'd post some stuff to whet your whistle,. I've just come back from an awesome trip to The States with my wife and this is the cover of a dvd I was handing out at Comic Con with some of Mukpuddy's Greatest Hits on it...


And a shirt I wanted to make up for comic con but ran out of time...


And here's something I was mucking around with a while back, I made up some hand drawn badges to sell at Kraftbomb. They were pretty fun to make so wanna do some more...



-Alex

Mukpudafix!

I recently did a couple of paintings of 2 of my favourite comic characters growing up, the stories always seemed a little over my head when I was real young but I absolutely loved the artwork!!


They're acrylic on canvas (Obelix- 5"x7", Asterix - 6"x6") and are for sale if anybody is interested! $45 US each including postage (via paypal).

-Alex

Mukpuddy in the Amazon...

Here's something cool, we just found out both the books we have for sale over at Lulu are now available on Amazon. They're a few years old now but we're still pretty happy with them. 'Sometimes' was our first go at our very own kids book, it's a simple little story told from the point of view of a young boy! And the other is the very first volume of the Mukpuddy Sketchbook, full of tonnes of stuff from our productions over the years!
They're cheap as chips so CHECK EM OUT!!!!

My name is... ROADBLOCK!

In this week's episode of Sparkle Friends we introduce a new character called Roadblock. Although he's not really new - he's been around for about 13 years...

Back in the mid 1990's I worked in a record store with my good friend Jarrod Wright. We'd amuse ourselves by pretending to be Roadblock - a white guy who thinks he's black and never quite gets the tough guy catchphrases right.
We always intended to use Roadblock as a character in something, but it never quite happened... UNTIL NOW! Ta daaaaa!



I thought it would be fun to put him in Sparkle Friends, and it seemed only right to get Jarrod to do the voice (he was always better at it than me)



As usual Xander did a sweet character design, and you can ch-ch-check his process work below.



Obviously Roadblock's 'look' is inspired by a certain Mr, although we think this will just be ONE of Roadblock's many looks. We already have plans to bring him back, so hopefully y'all like him as much as we do.

Check out the full episode on What Now this Sunday morning between 830-9, TV2!

Jeremy