I haven’t posted since the 6th January because of a mixture of being busy and taking it easy. Right now I’m working on the third D&D short which is due late this month so it should be live early next. In between scenes I’ve been looking at the sky with my binoculars, playing World of Warcraft on weekends and in the evenings and sleeping well.

I entered Waterlollies into Annecy International Animation Film Festival, sending my DVD by express international courier on Feb 11th so that it would arrive by the deadline Feb 15th. It cost $50 to send but I figured it would be worth it, being such an important film festival for animation.

February 20-fucking-9th it arrived at their offices (grr!) but they graciously allowed my film to be judged because it was postmarked Feb 11th. Phew! Not that it did me any good. I hadn’t heard anything for a while so I went to the Annecy website and saw that Waterlollies hadn’t made the cut.

I was, I guess you could say, devastated. I usually make my films in NTSC aspect ratio and frame rate, but I made Waterlollies in PAL, especially for Annecy (France). The Annecy festival was a golden rung in the ladder towards getting recognition and finance to make the Brackenwood feature film.

Co-writing

I was feeling really low for a couple days until I spoke with my friend Ryan, who is co-writing the Brackenwood feature film with me. We had a 2-hour story meeting over Skype and it lit some rockets under me. I’m really excited about the project. There’s a lot of work to be done but I’ve basically been giving Ryan the bare bones of the story and he’s tearing it apart, telling me where and how it sucks and what should be added, moved or deleted to make it work.

Ryan lives and works in Los Angeles and is currently head of story on a couple of big-name upcoming features. I’m 100% confident that with his help in writing this movie, Brackenwood will be a success. Several times, people have expressed concern that I’m teaming up with someone on the other side of the world, but Ryan is one of my three closest friends and we’ve worked together for almost 15 years. So ssshh now :)

Ween

When we went to see Ween play their sold out show in Sydney, I wish I had taken the camera, especially when I got backstage and met the band. It was an amazing show and in true Ween style, the theatre was a complete mess of smashed plastic cups and crushed beer cans by the end. A security guy told me that he had never seen the theatre in such a state and it the big topic of conversation among the theatre staff was that the bar sold over 6000 beers to the crowd of 2500. Brilliant.

The show itself was the best thing I’ve ever seen, and probably the loudest thing I’ve ever heard (apart from the time my hearing was temporarily damaged from using a 12g shotgun every morning for a couple of months). Meeting Aaron, Mickey, Claude, Dave and Glenn afterwards was just awesome and they were really cool. Jeanette and I got to chat privately with each of them, except for Dave the bass player - who was catching up with old friends at the time. Aaron even mentioned that my Transdermal video had become an integral part of his kids’ lives growing up (can’t believe it’s been 5 years since that video).

Mickey was just brilliant.. he loves hanging out and chatting with fans and his tour blog has been calling for fans to come fishing with him. I just love the way Ween treat their fans.. like old pals instead of the frothy freaks we are!

Anyway, the backstage meeting was the perfect end to a perfect night. As much as I wish I had photos, I can’t think of anything worse than meeting your heroes and just snapping a camera in their faces the whole time. Memory’s good enough for me (touch wood) :D

Don’t touch that remote

Next post, I think I’m going to talk about Toon Boom Digital Pro (and perhaps Storyboard Pro if I get find a little more time to actually use it!). Until then!

gnighty, Phillips

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Welcome to the all-new WoodenBlog, powered by WordPress and beautifully set up by my new friends at Amplifier. I’ve been adding images to customise the theme a bit and it’s turning out awesome. Before you go any further, subscribe now using the huge shiny ‘Subscribe’ button at the top right.

.. aw yeah and the Search doesn’t work yet, but we’re working on that.

So apart from the release of Waterlollies (which is well and truly live on Bitey Castle, Newgrounds AND YouTube) what has been keeping me busy?

BrackenShirts

As of right now, t-Shirts are available to buy directly from the Brackenwood Store. The design shown above, Bracken is now in its second run, being by far the most popular Bitey shirt design. Many more designs and styles are coming soon. They are Gildan shirts available in Heather (an earthy, dark grey with a hint of green) and Black. Choose from Mens and Ladies cuts.

Coming in the next few days, official Brackenwood mini-poster prints. Comment on this post with any questions you have and I’ll do my best to answer.

Please note: As we’ve just opened for business, orders for new shirts will ship within 3 weeks. We’re taking pre-orders now for Christmas, so check out the gear. There is a tracking facility available for certain orders.

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I was holding off on making a new blog post in the hope that my next one would be the release announcement. However, we’re delayed again so I think an update is necessary.

I know some readers understand that this ain’t no drag-and-drop audio hack project, but 10 minutes of original orchestral score + full custom environmental soundscapes. Those people will wait patiently for another 2 months if necessary and still enjoy the movie when it’s released. To those people, thanks! Here’s a new screenshot:

If on the other hand, you are one of those who are increasingly irritated at the ongoing delays and demand an explanation, here it is:

The reason for this particular delay is the simple fact that part C is more than half of the movie. It’s greater than A and B put together. Because part C > (A+B), I don’t think any of us truly appreciate the sheer volume of work needed to fill Part C with audio. This is the reason my timeframe estimates consistently fall short.

Having said all this, the new estimate is as follows: Part C music will be finished by October 15 and the sound effects will be completed in the week that follows. Each time Nathan delivers audio to me, I make notes for changes, which are promptly seen to by him. This process usually takes an additional few days.

Therefore, we’re looking at Oct 15 + a week + a few days = Oct 25 (ish). Here’s how it will be released and who sees it first:

• Day 1 - send out Waterlollies to my preview list by email (industry people, journalists, bloggers, friends, family)
• Day 2 - Selected groups on the Brackenwood forum (Mods, Admin, MotM)
• Day 3 - Brackenwood forum, General members
• Day 4 - BiteyCastle.com front page announcement and WoodenBlog article
• Day 5 - released on Newgrounds.com

click image for full size

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TRAILER COMP SECURES SPONSOR
More info on this in a later update but for now, the makers of the fantastic Digital Pro software, ToonBoom Animation have kindly agreed to sponsor the upcoming Brackenwood trailer competition to celebrate the launch of the Brackenwood Store. This means that the grand prize-winner* will score a full commercial license of ToonBoom Studio v4.0. worth US $399.oo

Check out the personal learning edition and don’t forget to download the excellent tutorials.

*I say “grand prize” because there will be Brackenwood Store prizes for two runners up.

Files to be made available
To make it easier for you to create your Brackenwood trailer, I’ll be uploading chunks of my movies in .mov format and posting links for you to download and use those files.

Once the competition is under way, your entry should be uploaded to YouTube and the winner will be decided by community vote on the Brackenwood forum.

Some of you may be able to work without my .mov files and get a slight headstart (note - a headstart doesn’t gain you any real advantage, other than the time you have to work on your entry). Check out the first entry here.

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Guess what! No need for a Waterlollies graph this week because I’ve finished all of the animation. The final scene was difficult, time-consuming and complicated.. but heaps of fun (you’ll see why sooner or later).

When the music is finished I’ll announce the release here and on the forum. There’s also a little matter of the actionscripted effects that are still being worked on, but I anticipate it to be finished before the music. I hope to release on or before September 20, but as it’s now in the hands of other people, I can’t say for sure.

The movie is generously sponsored by Newgrounds so I’ll also be submitting it there a day or two after it’s live on biteycastle.com.

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Next project!
Bernard Derriman and I are working together on a freelance job (for television) using ToonBoom Digital Pro - the latest and most awesomest version of ToonBoom Solo. Bernard has been using Solo for a few months now and will be helping me learn the ropes, trying to get me up to speed quickly enough to be useful on this project. Who knows..? Maybe the next Brackenwood will be my first non-Flash movie :O

More Brackenwood
I have a few ideas for my next Brackenwood project, which will break away from the “random scenario” pattern of stories and focus more on the bigger Brackenwood picture. Bitey had to come from somewhere right? Why is Brackenwood so sparsely populated? Where did everyone go so suddenly and without warning? Why has Bitey grown up wild and completely alone?

These questions will be answered if I’m forced to continue making internet episodes. I say “forced” because ideally the Brackenwood feature film is next on the agenda. Therefore (and it’s a sad, yet exciting thought) it’s possible that there won’t be another web episode of Brackenwood.

If that worries you, I hope you take comfort knowing that a Brackenwood feature film is what I’ve been leading up to all these years and will be better, more complete and more satisfying than all the internet episodes put together.

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Launch It! Challenge
Today was probably the first Sunday in months that actually felt like a Sunday to me. As a nice break from animation, I made a video showing how to make a small slingshot with piano-wire. It’s my entry into the Launch It! Challenge on instructables.com so drop by and take a look at my instructable. Don’t hurt yourself!

Here’s the video.. the audio is by French band ‘The Hush Puppies’. I bought their CD after hearing them play live at Annecy, France in 2006.

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Speaking of slingshots
I’ve posted a human slingshot in the past, but when you watch my YouTube how-to video, this other video comes up in the ‘Related’ column. The term “crazy bastards” comes to mind.

Seeya!

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As most Australians saw, there was a total lunar eclipse recently and I took a few hours away from Waterlollies in order to set up my telescope. We made a night of it and we were joined by some friendly neighbours who brought vodka.

With binoculars, telescopes and cameras we saw plenty of the moon that night and I managed to get some amazing shots simply by aligning my camera lens to the telescope’s eyepiece. By fantastic coincidence, my digital camera’s lens fits quite neatly into the telescope’s eyepiece. Here are my favs from about 75 shots.

High-power lens: The earth’s shadow creeps in from top left.

Low-power lens: Taken about 10 min after the above shot.

Towards the end of the eclipse as the light starts to reappear. Increased the exposure (+1.3) here in order to see detail in the darkness.

My favourite. Same shot as above but decreased exposure (-1.0). I have this one as my desktop wallpaper.

I took this photo from the window of my home-made spaceship, shortly after lift-off.

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Waterlollies progress

oO0oh.. contractions are very close together now. The biggest and most difficult scenes are finished. Part C has 85 scenes and there are 13 to go. Here’s the graph:

As you can see, storyboard is complete and we’re days from finishing..

Flash Forward People’s Choice
Thanks everyone who voted for 30 shorts. People’s choice voting closed on August 30 so now we sit tight and wait for September 19-21. The Flash Forward Film Festival (”FFFF!”) night is held at the end of the conference and the winners of the individual categories are announced.

To stay up to date on the conference itself, keep an eye on the Flash Forward site over the coming weeks.

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By next update, I’ll be finished Waterlollies and music/audio should be in its final stages. Talk to ye then!

-Phillips

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