Monday, May 26, 2008

SMM - Festival Premiere @ MIAF

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After more than six months in production, we are finally gearing up for the festival premiere of Supermarket Musical Massacre!

Supermarket Musical Massacre will make its festival premiere at the Melbourne International Animation Festival in only a few weeks, and we would love to see you there! Not only will you get to see our film, you will also see some really great animation from all over the world!

From the MIAF website:

"...hear the trials and tribulations from members of last year’s Best Australian Film winners, D.I.Y. Art Films, as they introduce the premiere of their latest film Supermarket Musical Massacre: The Feel Good Homicide Of The Century! finished just days before MIAF’s opening..."

We are screening in the following sessions:

"Opening Night & Sneak Peek Premier Screening"
7:00PM, Monday the 16th of June
$25 (full price), $20 (concession)

and

"Australian Panorama"
2:30 PM, Saturday the 21st of June
$14 (full price), $11 (concession)

Tickets are currently available from the ACMI box office (at Federation Square) and they should also be available online within the next few days @ www.acmi.net.au

The Festival is restricted to people over the age of 18, as the films showing have not been classified.

We would greatly appreciate your support by coming to the festival to see us! You will also (probably) be able to vote for your favourite film of the session, so don't forget to vote for SMM!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Australian International Animation Festival

On the weekend we headed up to Wagga Wagga in NSW to attend the Australian International Animation Festival. We did a talk on self-producing, and impressed the folk with our colour-coded google documents. The course at the Charles Sturt University there seems really great, and we had the opportunity to meet a lot of the students, which was lovely. The Australian Festival is always a good indication of what the Melbourne festival will be like, and judging by the calibre of the films we saw in Wagga Wagga, this year's MIAF is going to be ripper.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

MUTO: A wall-painted animation

Check out this very interesting animation created using wall paintings and stop-motion. It's an incredibly well-executed piece of art, using paint and photography in a fluid way.


The scale of the project is impressive and the subject matter, as the artist Blu admits, is ambiguous. I could say it's a comment on the impermanence of being; but that would make me a wanker.

Here's the artist's website: http://www.blublu.org

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Nat Bartsch Trio & Ok Ok Ok @ The Paris Cat

The Nat Bartsch Trio and OK OK OK
are playing at the Paris Cat Jazz Club (6 Goldie Place, Melbourne)
this Wednesday 21st May from 8pm (its an early one...)
$10/$8 concession



OK OK OK - 8pm
Sophia Exiner - piano
Josh Teicher - guitar
Josh Holt - double bass
Special drummer-less set!

NAT BARTSCH TRIO - 9pm
Nat Bartsch - piano
Josh Holt - double bass
Leigh Fisher - drums
Nadene Sachinidis - very special guest vocalist

These are two great bands so get down there and check it out!

Monday, May 12, 2008

Google Documents

This is the first film we've ever made that has such a huge number of individual components - sound, animation, drawn assets etc. On top of that all three of us (Steph, Chris and Maia) are working in three different physical locations, sometimes on the same shot. This could easily create absolute chaos, with people writing over file versions, continuity problems and a whole host of other problems.  For these reasons we've had to make keeping track of these things a priority, and to do so, we've started using google documents. This allows us to all view and modify the same information, and keep track of who is doing what. For the price (FREE), it sure beats paying for project management software.



Sunday, May 11, 2008

Friday, May 9, 2008

Image Quality vs Processing Speed


I think you can guess which won. I'm using a custom quality setting that's only 5% of full quality to preview the animations (the default options are full, 1/2, 1/3, & 1/4).

Yeah, a new computer would be good.

Sorry Andrew

Introducing Dr. Abs

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Jeremy Hopkins @ The Butterfly Club

Catch cabaret singer Jeremy Hopkins in the season return of his first solo show at The Butterfly Club this month. "Jeremy Hopkins sings John Thorn" features the talented Jeremy singing and drumming songs from the John Thorn songbook, accompanied by the composer himself on piano and David Abiuso on bass.


The season runs from Thursday 22 May - Sunday 25 May.

Tickets are $25 full / $20 concession (or groups of 8 or more)

For more details or to buy tickets, check out:
http://www.thebutterflyclub.com and click on "What's On".

Jeremy Hopkins is an emerging talent and has been tipped by Australian Stage as "the next major export of this country". Make sure to check it out!

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Characters

Here's another SMM sneak-peak. Most of our characters are now rigged and ready for animation. Whoop!

It's also the perfect time to thank our sponsors (some of who may recognise themselves in this screenshot). We couldn't make SMM without the generous donations and help of our sponsors, and we are very grateful!

If you want to score a character in SMM this is your last chance! The option to star in the film will close in the next few days so hop to it people!

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Squishy SFX fun





The rumour goes among sfx nerds that the best way to create the sound of someone's head smashing open is to throw a watermelon on pavement and overlay this with the sound of breaking wood. So that's exactly what I did on Monday, with the lovely help of my sound assistant Timmah (aka our publicist). We made a right mess in her kitchen with all sorts of glorious mushy food products and other household goods. Later that day I was still finding tomato in my hair, melon in my shoelaces and bits of broken pasta in my pants but it was well worth it. Priceless moments included realising snapping large chunks of spaghetti sounded like breaking knuckles and the numerous occasions both Timmah and I nearly slipped head over heels on the mixture of tomato/watermelon innards sprayed across the floor. Thank you Timmah for letting me destroy your kitchen!

Drawings



This weeks drawings are dedicated to the art of animation, because even a tap dancing dinosaur makes more sense than this career choice.