RabRab Online!

Finally, it's sorted! Completed it today. Youtube made the video about a second out of sync (and being in sync really matters in this film) and the Veoh version seems to be really choppy, missing out a lot of frames, here's the Dailymotion version. Took longer to animate than I had anticipated, but that's how animation goes I guess! I would of cleaned up some of those 3D glitches you see near the end of the film (although there was a lot more than you see here!) but I really need to get on with my other projects. Oh, and a warning, you may wanna have your volume down just a little..the Tingle is loud.

EDIT: Crap, in the credits I forgot to mention where the light bulb footage came from. It came from here.

Adventures of Sonic on DVD!

My childhood is catching up on me! While Shout! Factory will be releasing a 4-disc box set of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, featuring the first 22 episodes, sometime in June, at the same time here in Brighty we're getting...



A 8-disc box set with all 65 episodes in it! It might end up lacking the US DVD's extras, but look at that time duration: 23 hours and 50 minutes! That's like the Le Mans in cartoon form! I know it was mostly out sourced crap, but it was the awesome kind of crap that shaped by childhood. I know it's hypocritical of me to hate on people being nostalgic for rubbish like Thundercats by liking this series, but I don't care, for about £20 (Well I'm not paying full price! They didn't get his arms the right colour on the box!) this will be a bargain just to makeup for ever selling all the videos of it I had, and for it's many highlights, namely anything Milton Knight worked on, and episodes like the pilot Love Sick Sonic and those classically bad Sonic Says segments, along with crazy off model animation like this:

RabRab: Very Soon!

One of the film's I'm making for this semester at Uni should hopefully be ready in a few days time. I've been animating it for about a week now, and really want to get it finished very soon, as I also have 'The Howdooyoodoo' to make, along with an essay, but I only have about a month to go! These Uni deadlines sure do creep up out of no where and bite you in the arse!

'RabRab' is being animated with the characters in flash and the scenery in Maya (first time using it, the assinment required 3D of some sort). Scattered about are some screen shots of some of what's been done. 23 scenes are ready, only 20 (along with editing and sound) to go! This was going to be deliberately choppy, limited animation, but somehow I ended up going almost full-animation by accident! Doh! Don't be surprised if when the final film is released, there may be a few short cuts taken!

Retro Gaming Event @ The MediaShed 14th April

For those in the Southend Essex area that love their retro gaming, you may wanna come on down to the MediaShed this Saturday for the Retro Gaming event, which is now held on the second Saturday of every month from Midday till 7pm. It kick started in March with Linux computers set up to emulators and a LAN Doom setup, along with a Mega Drive hooked up to a huge projection screen and some other systems hooked up to TVs. Entry is just £3 with all food and drink included, and you can bring your own games along if you want, the more the merrier! The MediaShed is located in the Grainger Road Industrial Estate Unit 38 on Grainger Road. Check this link for information on another event on the 28th-29th April in Cambridge. Here's a map for the Southend gig below:

Also, if you have any unwanted consoles or portable TV's that you can donate, that would be brilliant. A nod and a pat on the back also goes out to High-Level Acumen, the retro game music duo who regularly show up at the MediaShed with their synth keyboards, ready to rock out with music from Castlevania, Tetris, Sonic and more! Check out this great article they got in the local newspaper recently. Now how many newspapers have you ever seen with article titles like 'Keeping Sega Mega Drive Alive'? Fantastic.

Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons on YouTube

Well, I just wasted a whole day uploading the Channel 4 three-hour special '100 Greatest Cartoons' that aired back in 2005. Here's the score: Channel 4 had 105 nominations set up on their website, and you had to pick your ten favorites. You could also suggest your own. The final show put together what the British public voted for the most. Here's a link to the Top 100 list. Of course this was more about the most popular cartoons than the 'best', but still think there is one part of this that was very much fixed in the favor of a cartoon Channel 4 put millions into getting the rights to airing.

Warning: Rant ahead.

The Simpsons got the very top spot. Now why it popularity is a major factor in this, take a look at how Looney Tunes was entered into the chart. There is a Looney Tunes entry in Number 20, but there is also entries for Bugs Bunny (10), Daffy Duck (30), Silvester and Tweety Pie (35), Road Runner (47), Foghorn Leghorn (61), and even Pepe Le Pew (73). The Looney Tunes shorts were never separate series, except sometimes on TV, and character like Pepe weren't even in many cartoons. I swear, if Looney Tunes was only one entry, it would have more than likely of been guaranteed the top spot in the votes, so Channel 4 split it up all over the place. We ALL know that Looney Tunes is the greatest cartoon of all time, right fellas?

There's a lot of other stuff I simply can not agree with in here, like how Barbar is two places above Dumbo, Dumbo of which should have been MILES higher, and how weird crap like Queer Duck (some flash cartoon that used to be on a channel no one watched) and Return of Overfiend (Even if there was a Top 100 anime chart, it wouldn't be in it), and with all the British stuff that was in there, where's Trap Door? They also make the odd error in their information, such as Woody Woodpecker apparently being a Warner Brothers cartoon. Oops!

Despite all this, the program is a real treat to watch, and if you didn't see it back when it aired, or do not live in the UK, I recommended finding the time (and trust me, you need the time, this is Lord of the Rings sized) to check it out. Because YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minutes per file (unless you have a Directors account, which I have idea how to get), so the program ended up being split into 21 parts! Below is the entire playlist, o you can watch it all in one big blow if you like. Enjoy!

Portfolio Version 2 (So far)

I've done (for now) with updating my portfolio, with all the ugly old sugar paper replaced with black and white card. A few of the pages have stayed very much the same as they were before, but there's a lot of newer stuff in there and a few things have been chucked out. here's some photos of the pages that are complete so far, as I'll be adding more at some point.