Boredom the Movie 4 (Oh dear.)

So back in 2004 I made this pointless little film called 'Boredom' (spelled 'Bordem' for some reason), which was followed up by two sequels later in 2004 and in 2006. The second was pure insanity and the third featured Surreal-8 (a mate of mine) and more general tomfoolery. That last one is already almost 3 years old, blimey! I started working on this new on a couple months ago using footage of me mucking around with the mirror feature on the Playstation 3 camera software, and have been adding random junk to it including a bunch of odd stop motion stuff since, and now it's done! How exciting! Except not, as this is all rather pointless and silly.

With a ton of in-jokes about the previous Boredom movies and the odd meme here and there, there is literally no rhyme or reason to any of what you see above, but i at least tried to make it vaguely entertaining and not so self indulgent, though that's not saying much. Even my newly acquired My Pet Monster is in there, doing a take off of this odd meme.

Look who's found it's way back into my house!

I found a My Pet Monster (well, two in fact) at a car boot sale this morning. There was a small one which was really tatty and ruined, and a bigger one which was in better shape (but sadly without the bright orange chains). I couldn't leave him there though: he was only 30p! He has some scratches on his nose, but it gives him character!

Commence MOODY (but generally a bit rubbish) PHOTOGRAPHY.

He now resides above my wardrobe, next to my Count Duckulas (I have three for some reason) and Pogman. It's like my childhood condensed into a pile of lumpy materials.

Anyone that thinks that My Pet Monster is ugly and creepy can sod right off, that Teddy Ruxpin is the hell-spawn you should be worried about..

Game fart doodles

Found a bunch of sketches in my previous sketchbook that were either not scanned in yet or not inked yet, so I spent today sorting those out. They're all game fan art, mind.

I quickly coloured this one up, for some reason. I rented the Cooking Mama game on the Wii once and as you may of may not know Cooking Mama talks entirely in broken English. When you complete a level I'm convinced this was what she was saying (though I would imagine it's actually 'Kitchen'). Another favorite line has to be what sounds like "Door not Dying!" (You're not trying, I presume.)

This one was inspired to draw it while watching Ace's James Pond II play though on youtube. A BATH IS THE BEST MODE OF TRANSPORT IN A VIDEO GAME EVER. NO, SHUT UP, IT IS.


These last three are all characters from Wario Ware, to compliment this Wario one I never posted on this blog, but will now (above) for those who are not DeviantArt regulars!

More art of sorts.

THE CHIHUAHUA OF THE FUTURRRRRE.

Tinkered about with it for ages, but still not 100% happy with the colours. Oh well.

PRETENTIOUS.

Also, here's something I did for the folks over at the Dreamcast Junkyard. Whoop.

More Youtube mucking about

I found this really old remix of mine on my hard drive combining a scene from Ren & Stimpy with music from Sonic CD, made back around 2005 using a program called Trackor DJ, which I don't have any more. Either way I thought it was kinda neat so I threw together a quick video for it. Also an excuse to try out all those Premiere Pro effects I've never tried out. Meh, someone might find it amusing.

Space madness is still one of my all time favorites episodes of anything ever. I must know the whole thing line for line, almost.

Teeny tiny TNC update!

Not much to speak of, just gave the front page (before you enter the website itself) a new layout so you can now either enter the site itself or go directly to this blog or my Youtube account (which has been getting a lot of loving lately, with some old animations going up as well as the new play throughs). It only made sense to use my new self portrait art (as seen on Deviantart and as my blogger icon now) as it has a crumpet background. :)

EDIT: Fixed the broken youtube account link.

So I'm starting to do game play through's on Youtube..

Why not? Something to do, innit? To start of, I've picked a game that requires no skill or reflexes (just luck): Panic! (better known as Switch) for the Mega CD, a very odd point and click type adventure in which you literally just press buttons to make weird shit happen. I'll be uploading two videos a day of it, and there's six currently up as I type this, so this playlist should be updating every day for the next week or so (I've already recorded the whole thing).

Mr. HugMeh the Valentine Bear 2009

I drew this character back in 2005 then again in 2007, so may as well make this a tradition!

A terrible pun, I know. Sorry.

Movies I'm going Gaga with Anticipation for this year

2009 looks to be quite an interesting year for animated features, here's a few I'm looking forward to seeing this year (if they all indeed get released over here in some form):



UP
Official website

May as well get the obvious choice out of the way first. It's by Pixar so that's pretty much all I need to go see it but even still much like Wall-E it sounds quite daring for a major CGI release from what little I've heard about it so far. The movie stars a cranky old bloke which on it's own is something no other huge studios would even think of doing (how can you sell toys of an old man to kids?). Anyway this old codger goes off to seek adventure by tying thousands of balloons to his house, making it fly.

There was a (rather spoiler-rific) article about this film over at Aint it cool news that described an early screening of the film's first 20 minutes, and alreday it's sounding like a bit of a tear jerker, and I must admit Wall-E had me tearing up right near the start, when he was rocking himself to sleep. Lol. Either way this kind of reminds me of that flying house animation Winsor McCay did, and also sounds almost like something Miyazaki would do. Speaking of which..



Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Official website

..here's Hayao's latest upcoming movie, already out in Japan but on it's way to the UK sometime in April (according to Wiki, so take that with a grain of salt). Much like Pixar films anything with the word 'Ghibli' slapped on it is going to have me rushing towards whatever cinema can be bothered to screen it. This time around Miyazaki is taking a break from epic fantasy stories like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and going for a more light heated, family friendly movie possibly like My Neighbor Totoro, starring a little fish girl of some sort. I've shoved the trailer in your face above that should do all the talking for me (no English trailer yet, though). Looks beautiful as always with Ghibli films, though that theme tune gets kind of grating after a while. Apparently this one is 100% traditional animation though, with no CGI shortcuts! Oooh!




Coraline
Official website

I'm so glad to see that stop motion is well and truly alive in the dog-eat-dog world of animated feature films (something that 2D animation is still struggling to break back into) and this latest from director Henry Selick (Nightmare before Christmas) and a feature film first from studio Laika, looks to be a real tour-de-force of eye candy (or eye buttons, as it were). Stunning animation a great dark story based on the book of the same name, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing this when it comes out very soon.

Now we've got the no-brainers out of the way, here's a bunch of films you may not have heard of, but are well worth a look!



The Secret of Kells
Official website

I recall talking to a guy at the Comix UK thing convention last year who told me he was working on this movie, though I hadn't seen anything of it until just this week. All I can say is WOW. Just look at it, holy mother of god! Stunning stylized 2D animation and a celtic setting, what's not to love about this? It's being published in Ireland by Bunea Vista in March. So far I'm not sure if this is getting a release over here in Britain, but I sure hope so! Can I say wow again? WOW.


Mary and Max
Official website

I was wondering what Adam Elliot has been up to ever since his fantastic short film Harvey Krumpet, turns out all this time he's been putting together a feature film! There's something about Elliot's dark humour that I just love to pieces, and this looks to be no different. As always his stop motion puppets are brilliant, too. Please can someone distribute this in UK cinemas, pleeeease?


Sita Sings the Blues
Official website

This one is technically already out, touring around festivals and such, and I'm not sure if we'll ever get it over here even on DVD, as even in America it's creator Nina Paley is funding all the publishing of this movie herself (with some help from donations). Yep, this is about as independent as you can get, but proof positive that even with a tool like Flash you can make a award winning film if the storytelling is top-notch. Cartoon Brew has a rather juicy preview of the movie to watch here.


'9'

Yes, that really is the title. Based on a short film that came out a few years back, this is not your typical CGI release. No witty farting talking animals here, but rather a group of rag dolls fighting for the future, or something like that.Either way it looks brilliant as the trailer above clearly shows. We don't tend to get enough action orientated animation from America that doesn't involve either kung fu or Star Wars, but this is looking very tasty indeed! Tasty enough for Tim Burton to wanna slap his name on the producer credits, anyway.

These are just a few of the many animated films coming out this year, there's tons of other stuff that I haven't seen any trailers for yet like a stop motion Fantastic Mr.Fox, an Astro Boy movie from the TMNT guys (though apparently that's been put on hold due to financial troubles, hope they can survive these tough times), The Illusionist from Belleville Rendez-Vous creator Sylvain Chomet, and a third Ice Age movie (which would be awesome if it was 60 minutes of just the squirrel, but I know it won't be) and maybe some more surprises too.

..and before anyone asks "where's the live action stuff you berk?": I don't know really whats coming out live action wise this year, but I can predict most of it will be more sequels, more horrid attempts to turn old cartoons into live action, and at least one film that will get hyped to the heavens and win 700 awards (oh wait, we;ve had one of those this year already).