A quick video to say hello, and to give you a little insight into how I fit Flash into the world of traditional animation.
Meet the Star – Mrs Cat
Whilst the original idea for ‘Man In A Cat’ stemmed from this silly pic (http://tinyurl.com/maninacatpic) the cat’s personality and mannerisms are pretty much stolen from my family’s own massively over weight cat, Lucy Hudson, aka Mrs Cat, aka Fatbum, aka Fluffy Slops, aka Liz.
So cue pointless cat video! My god, I’m actually contributing to this madness.
Rotoscoped Stop Motion Car
Some jerky test footage of the model car I modified, stop motion animated, then rotoscoped. Really I should have used a green screen as when the white bits of the car hit the white background I had to do a lot of guess work. Which kinda defeated the point.
I stole this technique from the way they animated the cars in 101 Dalmatians. They obvously did it a tiny bit better. Check how they did it here:
Animation Passes of Yorkie’s Reveal
First ‘behind the scenes’ from Man In A Cat from the new Man In A Cat dedicated YouTube channel.
It’s quite a complicated scene involving the rotoscoping of Michelle, the animation of the Cat, Yorkie, a Car, and a boom shot in homage to the famous shot in Citizen Kane:
Man In A Cat Diaries YouTube Channel
For fear of this becoming the Man In A Cat /Popcorn /Man In A Cat blog, we’ve set up a new YouTube channel dedicated to any behind the scenes interviews, ‘making of’s and in-progress linetests. Subscribe to it at: http://www.youtube.com/AllConsumingLove.
In other news, I got me a big lightbox! A lot of scenes could do with being cleaned up in A3 and I want something proper to draw on. Here’s the evolution of my (until now) homemade lightboxes. That little one is still my trusty companion. His name is Arthur. The red one is Gordon, named after the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This new one is secondhand but I didn’t catch it’s name. I’ll have to take it to the vet to find out what sex it is. What do you think?
In unconfirmed news we have a very lovely producer attached, plus I’ll be sharing some new offices to get me out of the house and stop me becoming the summery equivalent of Jack Nicholson in the Shining. More on that later.
Man In A Cat is Commissioned!
Start the fanfare please Freddo!
We’re amazingly chuffed to say that out of over 130 proposals All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat) has impressed Screen WM and the UK Film Council enough to become one of the final 6 commissioned films! It’s not all that often you get to be completely self-indulgent on a project for 6 months, especially with the support and backing of some the most experienced people in the country.
So far we’ve had to be fairly hush hush about the development process, if only because we’d look like wankers if the film never actually took off, but now would be a nice time to say thanks to the people we’ve met and who have helped us get here.
The process up to getting commissioned has been fantastic. Before that development process it was getting hard to know what to do with the story. On the first day of development we met Kate Leys, who just with a few anecdotes and case examples, completely opened our eyes to the art of story telling. That was really empowering.
I also had the priveledge of bashing out ideas with Camilla Deacon of Lupus Films and about 15 other talented animators in London. That was really invigorating and affirmed a lot of what we’ve been learning over the last 3 months. Big thanks to The Square for seemingly unlimited chocolate, fruit, coffee and some quite spiffing toilets! Not unlimited toilets. That would be incredible… ANYWAY.
Simon Flynn and Dan Lawson from Screen WM, and June Goldrei on behalf of UK Film Council were in charge of commissioning the final films. They had the balls to see that this could work, and their notes and questions have made sure the story has developed in a very nurturing and understanding way.
Overall, we’re really thankful that we’ve been given the chance to make this unsual and edgy film, and that everyone involved were nuts enough to with the idea in the first place. Now we’ve got to hammer out the last few kinks in the script without desmantling the whole thing, get the look of it all completely pinned down, get some communal office space/therapy for me, and round up some amazing talent to help out with the project. All within the next couple of weeks if we’re to have a good chance of finishing this by the end of August! Ha ha ha!… Oh my God.
Recommence the fanfare please!
Wait! Is that…? Nah. Couldn’t be. Doesn’t matter.
Man In A Cat’s Shortlisted for Funding
All Consuming Love (Man In A Cat) has been shortlisted for Digishorts funding! Nice Stuff!
X-Factor styley, over 100 entries have been whittled down to 12. After the development process 6 of those will be commissioned. Next week we’ll be starting off with a day of discussion and workshops with the other shortlisters and Kate Leys. The development process will go on through till March when we’ll see… If all goes well and we get the green light, we’ll be chucking up regular updates here for you to track the progression of the film.
While ‘Man In A Cat has been talked about for a while, and the tester trailer alone has got over 850,000 views, it had to stand on ice for a while as our other projects and work relationships developed. But after having the storyboards on my wall for over a year it’ll be great to get some outside input. I’m particularly excited to see how the original story changes. While I love the idea of a Man, Woman, Cat love triangle (not like that), there’s still plenty that could be done on the script.
So let’s start from the beginning shall we? Here’s where the original idea taken from my sketchbook when I was 16, which was taken from Tony Lopes’ Odd Streak strip.
Huh, will yer look at that. Message in a Bottle was on the same page. Page 32 was obviously drinking well that year.
Huh, will yer look at that. Message in a Bottle was on the same page. Page 32 was obviously drinking well that year.The Secret Identity of Santa Claus
Unwanted husband and father, Paul Slater is a check out assistant in Tesco. But Paul leads a secret double life… He is… Santa Claus!… in the Tesco Christmas Grotto Mega Value Clearance section.
Like the awkward time when you watched a loved one dissapointedly unwrap your present bought on a shoestring budget, I would have liked to have offered you a slightly bigger, more raunchy present, but time’s been tight lately. Where’s the sherry. Sherry will dull this guilt.
Trivia: I wrote this when I was 13. Gadzooks! 10 years ago! In the ’90s! Jesus. Here’s the original sketch while I go and spin out in the corner.
Circa 1999
Christmas Card Animation For Go’Proces:
Danish company Go’Proces: came to me with a script for an animated Christmas card. So I made one. It’s only occurred to me recently that Scandinavians have a particular sense of humour. Like the sort of joke that doesn’t have a punchline… or a joke. Just a big vast dark cold landscape of subtlety. I like!
As their friend base is exclusively Danish they decided not to go for subtitles, so good luck working out what they’re saying! Let me know what you think they’re saying so I can laugh at/with you.
Lastly, big up to long suffering Amy Commander for doing the voice of 6 characters – possibly even a man’s voice too with help from my computer.
P.S. Seems there’s some audio sync problems with this uploaded version.
We Were on The Culture Show Ma!
As you can see from the pic above, Message in a Bottle was included in a little montage during Josie Long‘s segment on the rise and rise of online comedy, which focused squarely on Funny or Die UK and Popcorn Comedy, in which we’ve had a little more active role through October’s Electric Cinema screening. Ian’s giggling face was also spotted on the show enjoying Popcorn Comedy at the Roxy Bar and Screen in October.
Watch the video below and skip to 51 minutes in (if you haven’t got an hour to spare) to see the clip in full.
If Josie is to be believed (and I think she should be), online comedy is where it’s at. We totally agree that being able to produce and distribute your own content gives you so much more artistic freedom to experiment and not be so precious about ideas. Like Jon Petrie attested, you avoid the ‘too many cooks’ situation. As everyone knows, an overabundance of chefs does not good comedy make.
Now these creations are making their way into the clubs, bars, cinemas and underground Victorian toilets of Britain, through nights like Popcorn, there’s never been a better excuse to pick up a camera or sit down at your computer and create something hilarious, challenging or downright baffling.
If we’re honest, a glimpse of Ian’s face (above) and Louis’ hands are not the only things exciting us this week. Hopefully we can tell you more about those things some time in the near future.
To go to an upcoming Popcorn Comedy night, check out the future events section here.
Follow @louishudson on Twitter
