The second interview that I did with Glynn Greensmith for the ABC programme "It's just not cricket."
I hope you enjoy it! This one is more about us.
As promised, here is part one of the radio interview I did with Glynn Greensmith as part of the "It's just not cricket" programme.
It has been fifty years since Aardman animations started up in the UK and Glynn wanted an Australian stop motion angle on this so he invited me to talk about Aardman.
Glynn, I'm happy to say, enjoyed our chat and invited me back the next week, so I shall post that one tomorrow.
I hope you enjoy it!
Barflies
Flashback...Wednesday......
Here is an excerpt from a short film we made called "Barflies" which was a film about the dangers of drink driving as seen through the eyes of two "risk taking" insects.
This one was directed by Greg Holfeld and was animated by Daz Partington.
It was hugely popular 'pon it's release and contains all the good things about sophisticated comedy....farts and vomit!
Enjoy this little piece of history from the Anifex archives!
(R)Evolution
Here is a short clip from my short clay animation film (R)Evolution. It was made in 2002. This is pre-CGI and all the effects had to be done "in camera" and there was no possibility of any rig removal!
( [R]evolution Clay animated short, 9 minutes Winner of IF (Inside Film) Award for Best Animation.
Finalist at the London International Awards
Finalist at the Adelaide Short Film Festival.
Gold, Experimental and Specialised Cinematography –Australian Cinematographers Society Awards.
3rd prize for In the Realm of the Senses film festival Judges Award,
Best individual piece - Australian Cinematographers Society Awards.
Gold, Fictional Drama Shorts Cinema & TV – SA & WA Australian Cinematographers Society Awards.
Selected for competition: St Kilda FF, Anima Mundi, Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Short Trips, Animadrid, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Flickerfest, Anima, Adelaide Shorts Film Festival and In The Realm of the senses Film Festival Screened at the Berlin Film Festival.)
This will be one of the films that I will be showcasing during my talk at the Melbourne International Animation Festival on Saturday 16th June at 6:15pm as part of my retrospective.
The plot concerns two little creatures that quickly evolve, each trying to outdo the other in a clay animated "arms race:" It's a commentary about life, evolution, religion and how f**ked up we are.
I hope to see some of you at the festival!
USB VISA: GECKO
Flashback Wednesday!
Here is the last of the three commercials we did for Visa in Singapore.
This one features a gecko and as a reptile lover, it was great to get to animate this little lizard!
Ths name of the restaurant is "The Flying Lizard" in French.
The Great Escape
Flashback Monday......
Here's another one of our Visa commercials made for Singapore. Once again, this was in the days before CGI, so everything needed to be done "in Camera."
I particularly like the design of the mangy cat with its "gammy" eye.
We still have both of these puppets on show in our sculpture studio...but I suppose when the cat looks as daggy as this one, the older the puppet gets, the better it looks!
Audacious Surfer
Flashback Friday!!!!!
Here is a commercial we made back in the pleistocene epoch. It was made for Visa in Singapore. We used to do a lot of work for Asia back in the day...right up until the Asian Financial Crisis hit them quite hard.
We were a little perturbed when we first read the script because as any stop motion animator knows, large moving bodies of water are a freakin' nightmare...but we came up with a really good solution I think...remember this was made in the days well before computer generated images had made their appearance, so CGI was not an option....and in any case, I think this looks better as it is more "in keeping" with the overall look and feel of the commercial. A realistic looking sea might well have looked out of place in this scenario.
The waves were made from blue and green modelling clay which was melted down and then painted very thinly onto a rubber membrane. We then animated a cardboard carpet roll centre underneath it to give us the rolling surf action.
There were also sections of the wave that were done as replacement models...all held together by the white water...which was in fact shaving cream. We had to animate this quite quickly as the foam had a tendency to evaporate and dissolve away quite quickly.
Great fun.
Wendys Toupe
Flashback Thursday...I know it's lazy not working out a new one like "Time travel Thursday" or something like that...but at least this is consistent!
Here is a commercial we made for Wendys Hot Dogs...I think the less said about this the better (although it did get into Cannes!) as It's full majesty should sweep over you in all it's glory....
It is actually one of my favourite commercials that we did.
I hope you enjoy it.
Pascall Reunion:
Flashback Wednesday!!!!!
Here's yet another TVC we made for Pascalls a few years back. Shown in New Zealand, it's about a boring banana at a reunion party.
The interesting thing about this one is that all of the characters were either knitted or made of felt, which made for some unique issues when animating...not the least of them trying to lessen the "boiling" that can occur when animating using fabrics. ("Boiling" is a technical term and happens when the fabric seemingly moves of it's own accord, making the cloth move around in an uncontrolled way...of course it's due to the animator touching the model between frames and the subsequent movement looks weird and unattractive.)
The knitting was particularly immpressive as none of them had knitted for an animation model before. I particularly like the celery stick as I think the knitter got the banding on that just right...I also am a little concerned that the Celery seems to be engaging in a little cannibalism in regards to that drink! :)
The mirror ball was driven by our Motion Control rig so at least we didn't have to worry about moving that each frame!
Pineapple Lumps
It's here again! Flashback....Tuesday!!!!
Here is a TV commercial we made for our friends in New Zealand for Pineapple Lumps!
We had never heard of them here in Australia (they are available here now apparently...) but they are really well known across the ditch in the land of the long white cloud.
We were asked to keep the animation style simple as if it were from a kid's TV show....
It was great fun to work on.
The voice was done by the English actor Neil Morrissey who starred in the British sitcom "Men Behaving Badly" and he also provided the voices for "Bob the Builder."
Flashback Monday!!!!!
Flashback Monday!!!!! (I know that doesn't work, but I don't care!)
A couple of years back we were asked to do a series of commercials for Maurice Blackburn. The idea was to have various bills and letters fold themselves into origami shapes that could then be animated....albeit quite subtly.
The commercial you see here was one of three that we made. The folding was done "on set" with a series of replacement, folded models to get us from one pose to another, if the difference between the two was too great. Otherwise it was a matter of folding it as we animated.
I thik they turned out quite well.
Quilton: Love your nose.
Yaaayyy!!! Flashback Friday!
Here is a commercial we made a while back for Quilton Tissues. A romantic story of a girl whose nose leaves her until she entices it back with the right tissues!
This is the Director's Cut version.
This commercial led to one of the weirdest exchanges I have ever encontered for a TV commercial that we have made.
Some time after the spot had gone to air, I received an email from a film festival in Brazil asking if they could have the "film" for its line-up. I pointed out to them that it wasn't a "film" as such, but a TV commercial. They said that that didn't matter and that they wanted to screen it as part of their festival. I'm not sure how the Brazilian film festival got to see / hear about the commercial as it was exclusive to Australasia.
I contacted the agency and asked them if they would mind and they said to go ahead.....now here's the weird part.......
The festival was an Erotic Film Festival........
Yes....you read that right. Who knew that noses were a turn on? I can't see anything erotic in this at all.
Then it got weirder....
After seeing the "film" in Brazil, we were contacted by a Serbian Erotic Film Festival that also wanted to screen it!
Am I missing something?????
Makes for a great story anyway and this is one of my favourite commercials.
Earth Sanctuaries
Flashback Wednesday!!
Here is a video of a charity commercial we made to help our native wildlife. It features a cute little animal appealing for help.
While Australian, we decided to NOT make a specific Australian animal because we didn't want to target one specific creature, so we made a hybrid animal taking features from such marsupials as possums, bilbys, gliders, wallabies and so on until we ended up with this little fellow. I think he looks like he COULD be an Aussie creature, even though he isn't.
The animal was a stop motion puppet (made by Durand Greig...who also assisted me in the animation) and he was shot using the front light / back light technique ( Shot on an opal perspex cyclorama, with two passes on each frame...one with the lighting as it should be and one where we turn off the front lights and fire up the back lights through the perspex to give us a silhouette which we use as the matte pass...) It's a particularly good way of putting an animation character into a live action scene...in fact I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better method. It only works because in stop motion, each frame is still, so the mattes can be perfect. I think he really looks like he's there.
We shot the live action in Adelaide's CBD and used real members of the public with a few strategically placed performers who were on the crew. The majority of the public were all too willing to put up with the inconvenience of us blocking part of the pavement once they found out why we were doing it and even volunteered to walk through once they found out their faces wouldn't be shown....I only hope they then went on to donate to the cause!
Delites Mouse Wheel.
Flashback...Errr, Tuesday...again!
Yesterday I posted a piece about the Delites Vending Machine we made for Clemenger here in Adelaide for San Remo. After we had done that, we were later asked to make a giant "mouse wheel" for another installation in Rundle Mall.
The idea was to build a giant wheel that the punters would run in and once it was going fast enough, they would have to jump out of the rapidly spinning wheel and run up to the original vending machine and hit the big red button in order to claim their box of Delites crackers.
As with the previous machine, it wasn't really about getting the crackers...it was all about having a good time and being cheered on by the crowd. People were queing up to have a go and while it looks pretty brutal...the mouse costumes were well padded!
It was real feat of design and engineering to make the wheel not only functional, but also...and most importantly...SAFE. As you can imagine, the wheel was under tremendous pressure with a mouse/human pounding away, running hard on it....and of course there was the leverage issue, so it was overengineered really to make sure that it continued to work and that everyone was kept safe.....when you watch the video though, quite a few people took quite heavy crashes!
