Thursday, March 22, 2007

Hamish's word of the day....

Any of you that read my blog....all four of you...know that I'm lucky enough to call Hamish McKenzie my buddy, my pal, my dear old chum (becasue if you put him in the water, sharks come a swimmin'.) One of the many, many other things that I find so gosh darn swell about Hamish is his never ending ability to increase my vocabulary with the wonderfully discriptive vernacular of the Australian peoples.

Todays phrase: "That's the duck's nuts"

That just leaves a mental image that is both distrubing and freakin' hysterical all at the same time.

Remember, use it three times and an angle gets it's wings, then kills a kitten.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

9 to get feature treatment



Over at Ain't it Cool News they have a small write up on Shane Acker's dark and wonderfull short film "9". Seems like Tim Burton has taken a liking to it and is setting Shane up to direct a feature version full of big name star voice talent. I hope they keep the feel of the short. Will be interesting to see though since so much of the great vibe of the short comes from the fact that it's all in the body performances. Not a word needed to be spoken.

Anyway, here's the short...sorry for the quality. Youtube probably isn't the best venue to present this fine piece of work.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Caught like a rat in a trap...



Here's a nice over seas trailer for Pixar and Brad Bird's next flick. Kinda slow but still beautiful. I'm looking forward to Ratatouille. I wasn't a huge fan of Cars and I'm hoping this is a return to form for the house that Luxo built. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it by any means. It's beautiful...BEAUTIFUL if every respect except story, which is why it was a disappointment. I know "they" say there are no original ideas left (which, for the most part is true according to the never ending flood of mediocrity spewing onto the movie screens) but Pixar's strength was taking that idea and making it their own and making it "their own" made it feel fresh and new...well to me at least. Cars didn't feel like that, it didn't feel like it was a story unique to the talents of the great story department in Emeryville. I'm not saying that every other Pixar film is perfect, but man, they're all damn entertaining and all in my top 20 animated films. Cars story felt, well, plain and predictable. I guess it's kinda hard to follow something like The Incredibles and maybe that has biased my opinion of Cars...wow, have I gone off on a tangent. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to Rata-ta-tat-tat-tatouille.

Heros in a Half Shell !!!



I loved TMNT when they came out in the original black and white comics. I loved TMNT when they came out with the animated series. Dear lord, I loved TMNT when the video game hit and sucked up countless quarters and I even loved all of the live action movies....yeah, even the one with Vanilla Ice in it. I was a little leery about the idea of a new Turtle movie. It just felt like all the other 80's merchandise that's making a comeback...but man, after seeing this last trailer/featurette I have to say that I am seriously excited about this. This is fun, different...it's not talking, fuzzy, smart ass animals trying to out smart the humans and live happily ever after...it's talking, smart ass, genetically altered reptiles who eat pizza and kick ass....the only thing that would make this better would be if they fought hordes of the undead. They could be our only hope (since Zombies obviously don't eat turtles....d'uh!)...ok, I digress. This movie will own the monkey's heinie.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Spline-ly Explained

The uber talented and damn good-lookin' Victor Navone has a new tutorial up about the mysteries of the spline. Part 1 of a 2 parter, Victor get's into the importance of good spline work as well as looking behind the curtain at what splines really are. A definite must read especially for those who would rather hide under the covers and whimper and cry than open up the graph editor.

The Animation Show on I-Tunes

Cartoon Brew posted that you can now find The Animation Show in nice bite sized chunks over at the i-tunes for $1.99 each.

A few years ago I loaded up the truck and headed down to Austin with some friends to catch this at the Alamo Draft house. Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt were there along with a million adoring fans...ok, closer to a couple hundred drunk animation geeks. It was tons of fun and ended with a 2am run to the I-Hop down the street from our hotel...all of us enjoyed the goodness of pankcakes, except for Gas. He was too busy being unconscious.