Black, White & Red

A little while ago we created something called "Black, White & Red" which is intended to be entertainment for infants. It's widely known that infants as young as a couple of weeks old respond well to high contrast colours, specifically, Black, white and reds. So when my son, Cohen was born I went searching for something that he would respond to but that my 3 year old daughter would also get some sort of entertainment value out of... I couldn't find anything like that. There were plenty of black and white "showreel" type animated clips but nothing that had character and enough cartoony-ness to keep me happy. So we saw a gap and decided to fill it... These are what we have created so far.

If you know any proud new parents, please pass this on to them and we'd love to hear some feedback.

Lance Loves to Draw...

Sorry for the slack updates here on the blog, things have been pretty busy here at Muk HQ the last couple of months, making things and pitching ideas around, some of which you'll get to see here soon but in the mean time check out the last of the "How To Draw's" we made earlier this year. What Now loves them and we love Lance so there will no doubt be more of these next year!

FINALLY!

So about 2 months ago now we took part in a short film competition that takes place in New Zealand every year. It's called 48Hours and basically, like the names suggests, gives you 48 hours to make a short film.

So all the teams gather on the Friday night and are given a genre and a bunch of elements that they must include in their film and all of which change every year, we got the following:

Genre: Quest
Character: Bobby Young - an ex-bully
Line of dialog: "What have you got?"
Prop: Bent piece of wire
Technical: Freeze frame ending

Quest was an unexpected, but pleasant, surprise. Although... it did play a huge part in making what we had always hoped would be no more than a 3 minute film... in to a 6min epic.

It was a super tough weekend for us... our "slightly ambitious" idea had us awake for 60+ hours once all was said and done... There were moments during the weekend that had the 3 of us doubting our film and also questioning whether we would actually finish it... but we did and we're extremely proud of it and super proud of our 3rd place and "best animated film" wins in the grand final

So, here it is...



And here's us with our bronze "Apee" trophy...

One of the best things about the competition is the fact, if all goes well, you end up with a film, characters and story you would never have thought of otherwise, and also something that can exist outside of the competition. We're really keen now to see what interest our film gets and what we do with the characters and world we created on that crazy blur of a weekend!

UPDATE >>> here's an interview Alex and Ryan did on U Live about the competition and making cartoons...

Onwards and UPWARDS!

Well colour us CHUFFED! The National Grand Finalists were just announced for the 2011 v48hours and low and behold our film is right there amongst our mates in the finals. Considering how proud we are with our effort over that 48Hour weekend and how stoked we are with the finished short... we must say we're pretty bloody thrilled that to top it off, we were "hand picked" by Sir Peter Jackson himself...

Here's a little vid we filmed in the last minutes leading up to the announcement of the finalists...

So the Grand Final is next weekend, July 2nd, no doubt we'll experience a whole new level of nerves but we are truely stoked to be there with the best films out over over 800 teams that entered!

Auckland Finals!

So a couple of nights ago we had the City finals for the V48Hours and to our surprise we walked away with "Runner Up" and "Best Animated Film" for our short, Meanie Pants... Considering the caliber of films on the night we were honored to get anything.

Each team that enters the comp has to make a 30 sec intro to their film, we thought it'd be fun to try something a little out of the ordinary (no surprises there), perhaps we went a little over the top on this one but it was a fun experiment all the same...

We can't post the full film just yet (have to wait and see if we get in to the grand finals) so we've quickly thrown together a teaser trailer to tide you over... and we really wanted to have a go at making a trailer, so it was a good excuse.

AUCKLAND FINALS AHOY-HOY!

Well the wait is over, after winning 'Audience Favourite' in our heat we now know we're in the Auckland City finals for the 2011 V48Hours! As you'd imagine we're pretty excited and to make the top 13 out of 270 teams in our city is pretty awesome and to make things even more exciting (read: nerve wracking!) we're in there with a bunch of sweet film makers and some good buddies so it should be a good night! As always, we don't do things in halves and thought it'd be fun to throw together an "official" movie poster for our short...

And we've also cut together some of the footage we filmed of us making the film over the weekend, it's part behind the scenes part sleep deprivation experiment, so enjoy...

If you're in Auckland and want to come along you can grab tickets HERE!

COMING SOON...

I thought this would be fun to throw together, might do a few more too...

Done and dusted!

Well we did it! We actually completed another 48hour short film, it was bloody hard, way more than the last time we entered the comp in 2007, and we didn't sleep for roughly about 60 hours when it was all said and done but we've come out the other end with a 6 minute, fully animated short that we're pretty proud of, at least it makes sense to us, we just have to wait and see what the judges think.

We're not allowed to post the film online until the competition is over but we'll be posting bits and pieces along the way, if you're on Facebook check out some of the photos we took over the weekend...

Makin' a short in 48 Hours!

So this weekend we're taking part in the 48Hours, where teams of filmakers have to make a short film in just, you guessed it, 48 hours. We actually competed in 2007 and made it all the way to the 'National Finals', the first time for an animated film.

We had a bunch of fun but haven't really had the time to do it again since but we thought this year would be a good time to give it another go. So it kicks off tonight where we'll get our genre given to us, as well as a random prop, character and line of dialogue that each team has to use in their films!

Wish us luck! Here's the film we made in 2007...

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

More Drawin'...

Here's a couple more shorts featuring your favourite happy-go-lucky USB device, Lance...

HAPPY EASTER!

For a few years now we've wanted to put together a little Easter short, similar to our Christmas ones, and we finally found the time over the last couple of days. We also wanted to try something a little different for this one. Alex designed the background and made it up in Flash as usual, we then printed out each layer of the hills etc on a separate piece of paper and constructed a mini set...

We then had Ryan ad lib a bunch of dialogue and we cut together the stuff we liked and then played it back "live" while we filmed the set with our Flip HD, Ryan provided the table shakes at the start with a few swift uppercuts to the table as well as the animation and Tim, once again, worked his magic in After Effects. So without further ado, here's our new mate.. Doofy Bunny!

Our plan is to cut together a little "behind the scenes" vid of us making this so stay tuned to the blog!

Draw Pirates!

The 2nd new episode of our 'How To Draw' series sees Lance talking you through drawing a very particular type of pirate, whom you may recognise from his "day job" in Sparkle Friends...

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...

Ladies Love Lance!

The 5 "How To Draw The Sparkle Friends' shorts we made last year were such a hit down at What Now they commissioned us to make 10 new ones. We jumped at the chance because it turns out Lance is a pretty easy character to animate and one that's easy for Ryan to ad-lib in, you may even notice Lance has gotten a lot more "sarky" in these new ones, which we thought was a pretty funny attribute to give him. So we've been working away on them for a while now and will post them online as they air on tv down here in NZ, here's the first short for your viewing pleasure... if you ever wanted to know how to draw a bipedal cow turn your eyeballs to this...

Mukpuddy does Strange Kid...

Hey check this out, The Strange Kids Club have just posted up an interview they did with us. It's a rad site all about the cool stuff we loved when we were kids and more.... CHECK IT OUT!!!

We were also asked to contribute some art to a book they're putting together. 'The Strange Kid Anthology' features over 20 indie artists who have contributed both pin-ups and short comics featuring their blue-pompadoured mascot...

We decided on a comic, and here it is...

Ryan does silly voices!

Just recording some voices at the studio for our latest 'Mukaroons' skit...

Tim's made a game!

I was doing some little tests, and they eventually mutated into a game I've called, Tedium - The Generic Space Survival Game!

Download it for pc from here

Take it to the Street!

This is a silly idea we've had for a while, but we've always kept it on the "back burner" as we were never too sure what to do with it. So, when we were discussing ideas for the 2nd "Mukaroon" skit, this idea seemed like a perfect fit.

Ok, I've been mysterious enough....here it is.

BUY MY ART!

Hey all just a quick post to let ya know I've set up an Etsy page where I'll be selling my artwork when I can!!!