Lunar Cactus Animation

Dark

2009-05-09T12:10:00.005+02:00

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.joost.com/0449tkj/t/The-Pearce-Sisters"&amp;amp;gt;The Pearce Sisters&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

An amusingly bleak hearted tale of two weather lashed old spinsters. Lol and Edna Pearce live on a remote and austere strip of coast. Taking shelter in a beaten driftwood shack they scrape out a miserable existence from the sea. ...

Ninjerktsu

2009-04-23T11:22:00.003+02:00

With the uncomfortable silence around the Bullies, I'm looking around for other ideas that inspire: Ninja's make great animation! And it can be funny AND short too.

Create and replicate

2009-04-21T21:24:00.005+02:00

Over and over and over and over...

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Bullie Animatic Test

2009-03-23T19:47:00.005+01:00

Viktor did a test for shot 05:

Always exiting when something starts moving ;)

tower

2009-03-22T10:35:00.001+01:00

Work in progress for the 30 sec. animation "I am not a human being'

Logo

2009-03-12T16:17:00.004+01:00

Thanks to friend Bobbypola, the Bullies from now on fly with an official logo! Probably with business-cards too ;) How professional!

Bullies StoryBoard Reworked

2009-02-20T11:31:00.013+01:00

Finally the board is done! It was a bit of a 'behind the scenes' operation and I'm sorry for it. Thanks goes to all the test-readers: your comments were of priceless value and is highly appreciated! For the time to come posting will come much easier, because it doesn't need to go through this unavoidable 1 person 'secret' funnel any more. Now we all know what we are talking about. So let the games begin!

a good use of batteries

2009-02-19T23:41:00.000+01:00

The Battery Menace from Mysh Mashko on Vimeo.

bullyalien and bullyship layout

2009-02-10T21:37:00.004+01:00

Finally I took a shot at making some designs for the bullies and their ship.

I already had a couple of sketches laying on the shelve for some time now. So just for the fun of it I attempted to translate them in illustrator.

I tried to keep the designs simple so there's room for suggestions. Please let me know what you think..

Storyboarding

2009-02-05T12:38:00.003+01:00

This clip about storyboarding from the Academy of Art Animation Notes is very insightful and comforting in the sense that a lot of work needs to be thrown away in favour of a better end-result.

Go check it!

a Notch Up

2009-02-03T22:05:00.007+01:00

I'm thinking out loud about how far to take the Bullies concerning design. The amount of animation increases with this new look at the Bullies and would it simply be worth it? My conscious forces me to not just move stuff around, it all needs to have meaning, but animator's might disagree heavily. From their perspective, every movement needs to be multiplied by at least 12 and the pace is killing anyway, so maybe it's all not rewarding enough.

Hop in color

2009-01-30T15:20:00.002+01:00

Back and forth

2009-01-30T15:05:00.002+01:00

Well, for whoever that maybe interested, the meeting yesterday with Maarten and Ramon
was good, for sure the lunch i made went down well :). There were constructive comments about my script and the actual narrative where also improvements need to be made. There's another, yes another, deadline for 17 february to have a written concept for the story which needs to be solid and then build from the ground up.

The truth is out there

2009-01-30T11:39:00.006+01:00

I 'researched' alien abduction. I know, it's an excuse to not work and I regret it. I found out there's an almost religious following of people who desperately want to be abducted. You can even buy books about how to enhance your chances, on how to smoothen abduction-situations or get consults from people who succeeded. That was a bit of the fun part going through an infinite pile of bad 'real proof' of actual kidnappings... When I stumbled upon an image of an abduction set against a full moon and a howling wolf I realised it wasn't beaming me anywhere...

hop

2009-01-28T20:59:00.004+01:00

Still hairy

2009-01-27T15:15:00.003+01:00

It's taking me some time for the storyboard to get it right. The first draft got shot out of the air almost immediately, so I'm reworking the rework. As compensation here's a new version of the hairy alien. It's sketchy, but I'm confident the designers will land it down later. And maybe tonight I decide to alter it once again. The writing part is the doubting part. But it's better to get that out of our system anyway so we can continue with confidence :)

Bullies StoryBoard

2009-01-17T15:15:00.009+01:00

For people visiting this blog and wondering what the Bullies-project is all about I publish this storyboard. It's been made about half a year ago and it will be the basis for the story. A lot of things have happened since then and the story has changed a little bit, mainly to keep focus on the event and get the story clear. The basic plot is unchanged. Maybe Ces can tell us more about 'what happened before it got into production again' ;)

The whole idea at this moment is to try to get a 30 second to 1 minute short out of it, which will be some kind of 'school-project'-short on how to produce animation. If we succeed, LunarCactus will have it's first animation and sort of business-card to help find money to produce larger projects. All comments are welcome and appreciated, since it's meant to be a project to learn from :)

Old Wuppie

2009-01-16T21:02:00.007+01:00

I already have taken a shot at designing the StoryBoard to see if I wanted to actually do it. This is how the poor Wuppie looked like in that first 'draft':

To me, the 'new' ones are the same in essence (just a heap of hair, eyes & mouth), but stylized further to be clean for easier 'reading' and animation. Since this is going to be an ultra-small fast-paced short, there's absolutely no room for distracting full-blown design. That's a pity, but also the challenge! I am also not going to do the animation, but I dó feel responsibility for the one who will. The animator might look at both the designs and don't see the difference in animation-work, but I know I am going to be less happy with the result with the first model. If I see all this hair, I want it to be animated like such. With the new one, I wouldn't have this problem. Shapeshifting will do the trick, it's sci-fi right? :)

But please feel free to not agree with this! I'd like to hear your opinion :)

Eating and Flying

2009-01-16T16:53:00.005+01:00

the Bullies say 'Hello again'

2009-01-15T22:40:00.006+01:00

The Bullies are back! The idea is to take the existing idea of the hair-hiyacking-duo and shake an animated business-card out of it for LunarCactus.

Script pages 01-05, draft 1

2009-01-15T11:12:00.007+01:00

First draft for the script for the 5 minutes animation. At the moment I am still thinking about titles, one that was suggested to me is 'One less fish to fry', also an english expression.

Studies of underwater fish farm

2009-01-14T23:24:00.007+01:00

Study of Kelpifera, a small planet covered by sea and giant seaweed. As the fish has been all eaten, it is now produced in an underwater fish farm.

Marvin the Martian

2009-01-14T21:55:00.002+01:00

They are coming, watch out!!

All the guns you'll ever need

2009-01-13T12:43:00.004+01:00

Since we've started the year with ever more violence and bloodshed across the globe, it seems only fitting to link to a site where all possible guns featured in movies have been listed, really instructive ;-). Now if all this violence just remained in the realm of fiction....

Nice waves

2009-01-09T14:37:00.003+01:00

Brendan and the secret of Kells (French trailer)

2009-01-09T14:29:00.004+01:00

The people of Cartoon Saloon (Skunk fu) are behind this animation, I really like the characters style and the animation is super, can't wait to see it!

Food fight

2009-01-08T12:51:00.004+01:00

A brief history of modern warfare illustrated by food. To see which foods represent what country, check out this cheat sheet

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Mouse

2009-01-08T12:34:00.002+01:00

Love all about this one, scenes like the evil potion that Tom makes and Jerry's turning into Mr Mouse are just excellent...

2008-12-23T11:26:00.003+01:00

I grew up with this kind of animation, for some reason it stuck in my mind, especially the music....pure Hungarian animation classic.

"Fish fingers" Working title

2008-12-18T16:30:00.000+01:00

I am also developing a script for a 5 minutes animation:
Working title: 'Fish fingers'

I got a lot of essential feedabck from Maarten, which I am going to incorporate in the next version. More infos will follow.

A fresh start

2008-12-18T15:42:00.000+01:00

After the most intense meeting yesterday of my entire working life with Maarten 'Muscle' (his words) Janssesns, btw the smell of my roasting balls must have permeated the whole restaurant..., we're ready to move on.

Just a few words about the name, "Lunar Cactus". This is a type of cactus that flowers only in the cool of the night, I find this image quiet beautiful and surreal.

Here is the planning for things to come in the near future:
Title: "The Bullies Show",
-30 seconds Flash animation
-Deadline: 10 february 2009

-Script, Director: Cesare "CEO" Davolio
-Storyboard: Maarten "Muscle" Janssesns
-Animatic: Mustafa "Don't say no" Kandaz
-Design: Mitch
-Animation: Mustafa, Cesare
-Sound: looking into possible people that can do it for free, once we have the animatic ready.

There's a mid deadline for the animatic as soon as Maarten is finished with the storyboard he's currently working on and the designs from Mitch are in place.

I have chosen Mitch as designer since we had already been working together on some designs for the bully gag which Maarten can easily adapt for the storyboard.