Well if it isn't 2011... or as some movies would have us believe... "The Future".
So we thought we'd kick off the year with a new series of skits. We've called this series, "Mukaroons" partly because it has the "Muk" bit in the title... but mainly because it's a hilarious word to say out loud.
Here's our first skit
That's my (Ryan's) 3 year old daughter, Ilah singing. She started making up a song while playing with her toys so I quickly grabbed our camera and filmed her... which in turn inspired this first skit. Thanks Ilah
*UPDATE*
Here's Ilah watching herself in the cartoon for the first time...
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!
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.
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!)...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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!
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!
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"!
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!
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...
