Hmm. Maybe I'll go the other way....

FAUX poster give-away!

I've ordered the posters that I made up for the IndieGoGo campaign for Faux5. I thought I'd give a few away. All you need to do is "like" FAUX on facebook to be eligible. If you haven't liked FAUX yet, you can do that. (There's the box below for your clicking convenience.)





There will be 5 posters available. The winners will be drawn  randomly from a giant sombrero on September 1st, 2011. Good luck!

Ren and Stimpy are 20!

Hey! It's Ren and Stimpy's Birthday. 20 years old they are. Easily one of the most influencing cartoons of our age. I still remember the first time I seen R&S, it was at a camp belonging to my parent's friends. They had a satellite dish which was pretty rare at the time. I fell upon an american TV station that showed only cartoons! All day long! It was called Nickelodeon, and on this channel I first caught a glimpse of that stupid cat and deranged chewawa. It was so twisted and weird I didn't know what to think of it, suffice to say I was hooked and I think it's probably to blame for my becoming an animator as well as my collection of magical nose goblins (it's sitting here on my desk in front of me.)

cheers to you Ren Hoek and Stimpson J. Cat.

I made this in their honour.

Testing a new animation build of Jan.

Here's a test of the latest animation build for Jan. I'm also testing out different shadow and lighting techniques. 

FAUX5: further casting. (Lhasa)

Have another role to fill for Episode 5.

Here are the details.

Lhasa
Age: 32
female

info: she is confident, determined and has a single-mindedness in her duty. She isn't afraid to make tough choices even at the expense of others. She is calm under pressure.

There will be two lines for the audition there are below:

1st line:
"Don't be foolish. You know very well you are here because I allow it. And you leave here by the same grace."


2nd line:
"Not at all. This is dead serious. Perhaps i'm just nervous."
(This line is said mockingly.)

OTHER INFO:

-Deadline is: 20th August 2011
-please send the files in mp3 format unzipped to marsoupskin AT gmail DOT com

Thanks and good luck to everyone who auditions!

Jan and Armand Audition update

The decision has been made, it took a while and that owes to the large amount of talented people who auditioned. So without further ado.

JAN - Caxx
ARMAND - Neo Skywalker

There is another role open for Chapter 5, I will try to put together the info for that this week.

cheers.

Reflections

So, I'm back from New York, feeling refreshed, lightly toasted.

As I plow forward on Episode 5 I've been thinking about FAUX up till now and how things will change, as well as the experience with motion comics as a storytelling medium.

I'm sort of taking stock of things since finishing Chapter 4 is sort of a milestone personally in that it's the end of the beginning and I still remember when it seemed quite a distant goal to reach.

Motion comics was always sort of a compromise. I preferred animation as a way of telling the story but it just didn't seem feasible in the sense of releasing episodes in a timely manner. For example the original 3 chapters that appeared on Newgrounds in 2009 where released 3-4 months apart. Though at the time I was incredibly busy with work. In the end I found that the end products were rushed messes, too many corners cut, I set myself impossible deadlines, would often be drawing till 4am in the morning. The result is often uneven quality and lack of proper reflection. 

I recognize that ones work won't stand the test of personal scrutiny over time. As we get better we can not help but cringe looking back at work we did. But that's part of the learning process. But I think if you feel you did the best you could at the time then there shouldn't be too any reason for auto-flagellation. 

So after I finished the 3rd Chapter in 2009 I got pretty bummed out. I was not happy with it at all. I thought it was horrible and could not understand what I was thinking while making it (I was thinking get'r done). I started to question my choices. Work on Chapter 4 ground to a halt, I lost my confidence.

FAUX was shelved until I found myself between animation contracts, I decided I was going to crawl out of my funk and get back on Chapter 4, but first I'd do some small fixes to the first 3, especially the 3rd one while I did the 4th. In the end the small fixes ended up being big fixes and Chapter 3 was completely redone. I'm much happier with them now. Are there things I'd change? For sure. But I did the best I could at the time. And that's what's important.

I don't think I'm gonna get too much into motion comics in this post. (I think that was the original plan, but went off track) but maybe in a follow-up post. It's an interesting and strange medium, And I would like to talk about it a little, also talk a bit about the  motion comic to animation transition.

Also, this week news on the casting front. Stay tuned!

P.S. and I made a drawing!