So It Came Back After All...

I'd got to the point, this time last year, when I really didn't think Arbitrary Stopframe would be coming back, having been replaced on the slate by things like Papercuts and The Murkum Show.

As of this Christmas, the allegedly-defunct series has aired another 25 episodes.  So much for predictions.

I won't bore you by recapping the tale of how Episode 14 got made.  If you don't know already, you can read it here.  Having written off Series 2 back in January, though, I promptly came down with a new idea for how I could go ahead with Series 2 - as one does.  The phrase 'animated advent calendar' popped into my head, I realised that it would mesh nicely with the AS format, and that was kinda that.

In the earlier stages of development, I considered various stylistic options, e.g. trying to set up the title sequence so it would do a traditional Advent Calendar opening-door effect, but I never got round to implementing that; the actual title sequence ended up being very short (which is probably a good thing when it's going to get used 24 times in rapid succession), cutting out the signature segment and Zooky's appearance at the end, giving everything a vaguely-frost-ish colour-grading, and reverting to the original AS theme tune, albeit in a specially-commissioned jingle-bell-ified remix. The format of the episodes in general ended up being broadly similar to the original episodes, although a bit shorter, and of course featuring the number of the day in each clip.

I had hoped to have a bit more of the series in the can before December rolled around, but I didn't, so that was that.  When I published Day 1, I'd only finished editing up to Day 5, and filmed up to Day 9.  I spent most of my spare time throughout Advent producing the remainder of the Calendar in a bit of a frantic rush, and there were two days (Tues 9 and Tues 16) when I actually ran out of finished episodes and had to spend the rest of the day editing some more so I could carry on publishing without an interruption!

In case you haven't seen it already, here's the complete Advent Calendar playlist:


And finally, here's a selection of behind-the-scenes fun facts from the project, in a vaguely chronological order:

• The Animated Advent Calendar was written by the same four people who have penned The Murkum Show Series 1 and 2 - me, Tim Johnston, Sarah Johnston and Sam Arthur.  Sarah was the most prolific guest writer, bucking the usual trend of Tim taking that accolade.
• The episodes weren't written in anything like the 'correct' order - the first storyline I came up with was the one with Monster Movie spitting bits of another chewed-up DVD case at Murkum, which became Day 15, and the last episode written was Day 22.
• Some episodes contain less-than-subtle back-references to the original series, most notably Odom weilding a Sharpie again on Day 1, Cylinder making a nuisance of himself on Day 3, Zooky interfering with a jar of instant coffee on Day 5, and of course Monster Movie making a few more appearances and usually roaring a lot.
• Some of the cast had only been in one episode each by the end of the original series; this time round I wanted to make sure everyone had been in multiple episodes.  In the end, Arthur got two more outings in the Calendar and three overall, and every other character (apart from the webcam, which arguably doesn't count) had been in at least four overall.  Murkum has made the most appearances in AS overall, with six.  Harrison is the only character whose AS appearances have all been solo.
• The episodes have individual titles - although they don't appear within the videos themselves or in the YouTube descriptions, they will be published soon on the AS page at mattghc.com.
• This was the first animated project I filmed using my new Nikon D7100.  As a side-effect, it's also my first animated project with source imagery created at a higher resolution than 1080p.  I could shoot 4K stopmotion if i wanted - but I can't edit 4K with my current version of Sony Vegas, so that'd be a bit pointless.
• The first five episodes, plus nos 9, 12 and 24, were filmed in the correct sequence, but the rest were all shot out of order - 7 and 8 were shot before 6, 11 before 10, and 13 to 23 were hopelessly scrambled.  The reshuffles were made for practical reasons, such as availability of the kitchen (which was why I pulled 7 and 8 forwards), or filming episodes with a shared character or prop together (most notably 12 and 21, which were shot as a pair, and the three with Monster Movie - 15, 20 and 23 - which were all shot on the same day).
• You might not have realised it, but if you've been watching my other animation output this year then you'll already have seen that little battery-operated string of LEDs several times before - it was an integral part of the lighting setup for most of the episodes of The Murkum Show Series 2 and its spin-off Greasy Food with Gonce.
• The longest episode in the Calendar was Day 3 (52.44 seconds), and the shortest was Day 14 (33.72 seconds).  All 24 days were shorter than the previous-shortest AS video, Episode 2 Fruit Pastilles (56.52 seconds).
• Murkum's little grumble at the end of Day 4 was the first piece of actual dialogue ever used in AS (his screams in Series 1 don't really count as dialogue, and they were stock sounds rather than original recordings anyway); I performed, recorded and processed his lines for Days 4, 10 and 15 using exactly the same techniques as I do for The Murkum Show, except that the AS lines were recorded after I'd shot the videos, instead of before rolling cameras like I would do on his main series.
• After filming Days 6 and 9, I left the string of blue lights sellotaped to my desk for several days (mostly because it had been such a faff sellotaping them down that I couldn't quite bring myself to rip them off again already), before clearing them up so I could shoot Day 11.
• The episode with the most troubled production was probably Day 10 - I shot the first half three times, and had to scrap the first two and revise my plans due to technical problems.
• Day 11 was not only the scariest episode of the Calendar to film, but the scariest bit of animation I've ever done, point blank.  Working with live flame in both that episode and in Day 22 was pretty nerve-wracking, but at least the tealight candles in Day 22 were fairly staid; the matches used in Day 11 burnt a lot faster than I'd hoped, and came upsettingly close to melting Snow to a dirty yellow blob a couple of times.  In the half-dozen-or-so frames it takes her to spin around between lighting the match and igniting the 'fuse' in the crisp packet, I had to film faster than I can ever remember working before (apart from live-action stuff, obviously!) and actually had to swap out the original match in her hand for a new one after 3 or 4 frames, because they burnt so fast.  I ate the crisps afterwards.
• The most productive filming day was Thursday 4 December - I shot an unprecedented five videos back-to-back: 12 to 14, plus 16 and 21.
• The disappearing number on the gift label in Day 14 was done with a combination of practical and digital trickery - but I won't tell you all the details because that would spoil the fun.
• In case you were wondering, the other DVD whose remains Monster Movie spits out in Day 15 was 300.  I didn't want to tear up something from my own DVD collection, so I went into the charity shop a few doors up from where I work and rummaged around for something with a cover that featured a BBFC '15' logo on a suitable background; they were all the same price, and most of the '15' logos were about the same size, so I picked 300 based mainly on the background texture.  As a consequence, there might (although I can't confirm) be a tiny little fragment of Gerard Butler's leg somewhere on-screen for a couple of frames' worth of Day 15.  I haven't actually watched the film, just ripped the corner off the cover and got a plasticene-legged South Korean kaiju DVD to spit out the shreds.
• Day 15 was also the first episode in any of my animated mini-series to credit somebody else for creating or co-creating a featured character (Sam, for providing the original concept for Monster Movie).  I suppose I could have credited or co-credited Tim for various characters who have featured in Arbitrary Stopframe or The Murkum Show over the years, but there are so many characters in the Murk Army and the history of their creation has been so complicated that it would have added several extra credit screens to each episode trying to explain who was responsible for writing who, so Tim and I have a tacit agreement that we don't bother with character credits for Murk Army videos, for the sake of people's mental health.
• The idea for Day 18 emerged out of discussions over Tim's pitch for Day 14 - but I ended up filming Day 14 as originally pitched as well.
• Day 20 was the first time Arthur has ever been heard speaking - his original film Arthur & the Punk was silent.  I had a cold the day I edited Days 20 to 24, and the otherwise-annoying throatful of phlegm came in surprisingly useful when I was trying to do an old-person voice.  I still ended up recording all of his lines twice.
• Day 23 re-used some of the chocolates Cylinder was messing with in Day 3, and some of the dolly mixtures that Murkum got mixed up with in Day 10.  I don't know if you'd noticed, but I like to sneak a dolly-mixture joke into my stopmotion work every now and then, particularly in the X-Battles GT shorts.  As with the crisps from Day 11, I ate some of the sweets after filming with them.
• This was the first project to feature the revised mnimation logo - the logo's lighting colours have been subtly altered, the text style has been changed to match that used in the main M.C.Media logo (stronger overall corporate image, and all that... heheh), and the awkward capital N has been dropped, leaving the official stylisation entirely lowercase.  I like the fact that the previous mnimation logo made its debut on the same video as the D80, and this one made its debut on the same video as the D7100.

- The Colclough

But All I Wanted...

...was to reply to a comment.  Seriously, I'd got a comment on a YouTube video (which is now a rare enough event that it merits being remarked upon!), and I wanted to reply.  Google, in their infinite wisdom, wouldn't let me reply without generating a new bleeding Google+ page attached specifically to my YT channel... as if one useless G+ page attached to the top level of my Google account wasn't bad enough!

I'm getting seriously hacked off with the whole YT/G+ thing.

Back in the day, if you wanted to be on YT, you had a YT account.  You logged into that account, and you could add videos to your channel and leave comments and stuff, just like what happens on any other website whose designers have brain cells.  End of.

Now?  Sure, you can sign into YT, albeit using your Google account, and post videos, like before.  But it seems that leaving comments requires the existence of at least one (preferably fifteen) G+ pages bolted to various parts of your Google account like so many tumours.  That's basically what it comes down to - unifying YT accounts into Google accounts, fair enough, but now they've gone and given YouTube cancer.  G+ is a hideous, cancerous growth infecting the system and ruining everything, and I FREAKING HATE IT.  You hear me, Google?  I'll bet you don't, but I'm gonna yell at you anyway: I HATE GOOGLE+.  ALL OF IT.  IT'S STUPID AND POINTLESS AND ADDS NOTHING TO THE YOUTUBE EXPERIENCE, UNLESS YOU COUNT FRUSTRATION AS AN ADDITION.  GET IT?

The thing is, it does nothing.  If G+ did anything that was worth doing, then I might not mind adding a page or two, but it doesn't.  It does nothing.  It's one more platform where you can allegedly connect with people, but I've never made a single meaningful connection on that platform.  The people I actually want to talk to, I talk to on Skype or Steam - or, shock horror, in person!  Going through the treadmill of adding them all as contacts on yet another online platform does nothing for me.  And even when I add people there, they don't do anything there to make it worth my while having bothered to add them there.  And neither do I.  The cool stuff is happening on other platforms.  ALL OF IT.  Nothing - nothing whatsoever - of any interest happens on G+.  You go to any G+ page you like, and it's got the same hollow, vaguely depressing feeling that an empty room has.  And I find it very, very frustrating being forced to connect a bunch of depressing empty rooms onto my YT account.

Dear Google: G+ has failed.  Please kill it immediately.  Keep Google accounts by all means, but please delete every trace of G+ code from the system, take down all those soul-crushing empty pages, and let the world go back to the way it should be.  And fire the person who instigated G+, because they're stupid.

Thank you.


- The Colclough

The Twit in the Breathing Mask Is Back

My last post offered something of a post-mortem on Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2.  This one is rather less morbid: The Murkum Show Series 2 is alive and kicking.  I'd already decided on the new location and started getting scripts together before the camera fell silent on the set of Series 1, and the project has been steadily picking up steam since about mid-January.

If you've been watching my YouTube output, you'll have noticed that my post-Papercuts-7 output included an Arbitrary Stopframe special, and then three new Fifteen-Minute Fortress videos - and if you were really observant, you might even have spotted my clever segue from one project into the next: FMF IV "I'll Explain Later" showed me building a rather odd little structure, which remained unidentified at the time (in terms of what I told the audience; obviously I knew what I was doing...), but later turned out to be a specially-built set for the Prologue to Series 2 of The Murkum Show.  No prizes for having spotted that, I'm afraid, except for the feel-good glow inside.

Fifteen-Minute Fortress IV: I'll Explain Later

...and the explanation - The Murkum Show: A Prologue to Series 2

Having filmed the Prologue, I knocked down the set, and (via one or two false starts) began assembling the much larger and more elaborate one which would represent Fort Murk's new Staff Lounge and one or two adjacent areas, ready to film the fifteen episodes which I'd got lined up for the new season.  (In case you're wondering, the recurrence of the number 15 across multiple projects is entirely coincidental; don't start expecting me to make Fifteen: The Movie any time soon, because I won't.)  Series 2 is proceeding much the same way Series 1 did, with episodes being recorded in batches of three at a time, and episode numbers and production-block codes picking up where the first season left off - restarting at Block F and Episode 16, in case you were wondering.

Progress has been (deliberately) rather headlong for the last month or so, with everything finished up to and including Block H / Episode 24 already, and I filmed Block I (Episodes 25 to 27) late last week, with help from Tim and guest appearances from some of his characters.  Oney, also seen in Tim's Alpha One stopmotion shorts, is one of Murkum's men, and his films exist in the same continuity as The Murkum Show (hinted at in Episode 5 last year, but only by video-conference), so it was nice to finally get both characters filming on the same set at the same time.

Last year, I managed to release all 15 episodes on 15 consecutive weekends, with all but one of them releasing on the Saturday, except that Episode 8 had to be pulled forwards to the Friday to accommodate a family weekend away; with no family weekends away planned for the next two or three months, I'm hoping to improve on Season 1's consistency of scheduling and get all 15 of this year's episodes out on 15 consecutive Saturdays.  Two down, thirteen more to go, with the season finale due to broadcast on the 7th of June.

Those two down, which I just mentioned

I'm also hoping to be able to stop saying the number 15 soon.

Check back to my YouTube channel this weekend for Episode 18...


- The Colclough

The Remnants of 2

Don't get used to this.  Arbitrary Stopframe isn't back on a permanent basis, or anything approaching one - this is just a one-off special.

When I finished Series 1 back in November 2011, after filming Sam's rather excellent literal-Monster-Movie script, I decided that enough desk was enough, and if I did a second series then I'd try setting it in the kitchen.  It didn't take me long to come up with two work-in-progress storylines, which I earmarked for Episodes 14 and 15 - one with Zooky the Alien Dog Thing getting into the kitchen and finding a new food source (which may or may not have ended up being chocolate drops), and one with Emily and Snow making a mug of coffee for their animator.

Two years later, however, neither idea had reached a fully-developed filmable state, no more ideas had presented themselves, my attention was being increasingly taken up by Papercuts and The Murkum Show, and I'd been slowly drifting towards the opinion that Arbitrary Stopframe was dead - good and proper dead.  But then (I think on Sunday 5 January) I had an inspired idea: mash those two stories into a single episode, and produce it as a one-off special after Murkum Show Series 2.  That was followed by an even better idea: why wait?  Why not go ahead and do it right now, before TMS S2 had even got started?

So I did.

The revised title sequence is a hint at what might have been - I designed it at the end of 2011, with a view to using it for the entire second season, but now it'll probably only ever appear on this one episode.  The new music is part of the same 7-movement suite as the original theme tune (thanks again to Tim), and already appeared on the show once, as one of the radio selections which Odom doesn't approve of in Episode 8 Headphones.

Turns out our kitchen isn't a great working environment for animation.  A large part of the problem is that it's almost impossible to block out natural light, which neccessitated filming in the evenings when it'd gone dark outside, and it was surprisingly difficult to find an evening when I could have the room to myself - Episode 14 ended up being shot in two halves a week apart, on the last two Wednesday evenings (I'd be interested to see if anybody can spot the break).

Also worth noting: I had no assistance filming the shots of myself holding the mug, and I'm wondering whether anybody can figure out how I got to the shutter release for the frames where both of my hands are visible on screen... not that I'm offering any prizes.

Anyway, as I said, don't get used to this.  My little Arbitrary Stopframe revival thingy is over, and I'm now gearing up for the second season of The Murkum Show.  But I hope you enjoyed the blip while it lasted.




- The Colclough

In Which I Waffled

In case you were wondering how the heck Papercuts ever got made, here's a little peek behind the lens... thought I'd blog this before hurtling off into other projects.




- The Colclough

Ta-da!

I mentioned last time that I was nearly finished with Papercuts Episode 7, with the last remaining components being of the audio variety.  Well, today Tim finished and delivered his ninth composition for the series, I plugged it into the edit along with a handful of other freshly-minted audio elements, and Debt of Gravy-tude was finished.  And released - you should see it embedded a paragraph or two down from here.

I hope you've been taking note of the music in Papercuts.  Like the visuals, every last bit of it has been specially created for the show - no stock footage, stock score, or stock anything around here: I took the decision relatively early on in Production Block A, last spring, that since I was going to so much effort over the project anyway, I may as well go that bit further and record all my own sound effects too.  But the point is, Tim's actually been building up quite a broad-based collection of cues over the seven episodes, ranging from a slow, minimal guitar solo in Episode 3, up to rather more complex and breakneck-paced chase theme in Episode 6, via music for a windmill and a flower, for China, and even for outer space.  You can convey a lot with hand-drawn visuals (if I say so myself), but sometimes there's just no substitute for having a composer on hand to help with the scene-setting or (as is more common in this series) with the 'punctuation' of a scene.  The main point of this post, apart from showcasing Episode 7, is to offer Tim a public thank you for the Papercuts score.  So: thank you, Tim.



In case you were wondering, yes, the vlog is still coming.  Just taking a while to edit.  Keep watching this space!


- The Colclough

Not Much of a Wrap Party

As you might have heard already if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (I tweet now - sorta - @TheColclough), I just finished up filming on Papercuts Production Block C; Episodes 5 and 6 have already been released, and 7 has taken another crucial step towards its completion - I'm still hoping to be able to have it finished by the end of 2013.

I think I've mentioned before that for some reason I don't tend to get much of a buzz from finishing a film; it just happens, I feel a bit meh, and I move on to the next thing.  This time, though, it's gone beyond mere "not getting a buzz": in the half-hour since the camera shutter fell silent, I've actually started feeling a tad depressed about the whole thing.

Why?

Well, this might be a good time to explain that Episode 7 is, to all intents and purposes, the end of Papercuts as we know it.  I decided a couple of months back that the physical cutout process is too fiddly and time-consuming, so after finishing Block C (i.e. Episodes 5 to 7), I would pack it in, and produce any future episodes using a digital process.  I'd still create the various elements with paper, ink and photography, but the cutting-out and movement stages would take place inside the computer.  I've also considered making one or two revisions to the title sequence, and Tim's made noises about wanting to rework the theme tune, so there's looking to be quite a distinct break between Episode 7 and Episode 8 - the end of "Phase I", and the start of a "Phase II", if you like.  It struck me, a minute or two after finishing the closing shot, that that right there might have been the last time I ever did any work for this show using the physical-cutout technique (which I first dabbled with nearly three years ago), and that was when the almost-sad thing came in.

To be honest, I don't even know what the storyline for Episode 8 will be, or whose pen it'll come from - there are various ideas I've had, and various stories which have been pitched in various forms by one or two others (you know who you are), but nothing that's ready to film yet as far as I'm aware.  The Murkum Show is a different matter, as I've got several new episode scripts ready to go, but as far as Papercuts is concerned, I just finished shooting the last known script, and I suspect the unknown-ness of the next instalment was a contributing factor to my little bout of unhappiness.

Anyway, I think I'm getting over it now.  Just need to do a little bit more editing and audio work, and wait for one new music track from my resident composer, and Episode 7 will be ready to show off to the world, which is a very happy thought!

And in the meantime, since I haven't posted them on this blog yet, here are Episodes 5 and 6.  Enjoy (again, if applicable)...





...and have a very Merry Christmas and (in case I don't see you again before then) a happy New Year!


- The Colclough

The Slate, November 2013

I'm not entirely sure where the phrase 'the slate' came from, but these days it seems to refer to the list of projects which a film studio is either working on now or planning to work on in the near future.  I thought this would be a good time to publish my own slate (or M.C.Media's, depending how you look at it) - so here goes...


Current project: Papercuts Production Block C (Episodes 5-7)

I've got a trio of scripts which came together around late summer, comprising the show's first two-parter, written by Tim, and a one-off episode by me.  Dialogue recording is complete, and the photography and editing stages are well underway for all three instalments.  The production block also includes some additional material: a short prologue to Episode 5, and a vlog showing the filmmaking process for Papercuts, specifically following the progression of work on a single new set which needed to be built for Block C.

 A moment from Papercuts Episode 5... coming soon!

The prologue was originally going to be the opening scene of Episode 5, but I felt that it wasn't necessary for the story and was slowing the episode down; initially I was going to tell Tim to just delete it, but then I decided I actually liked it in itself despite it not really being needed for the overall story, so I thought I'd go ahead and film it anyway, and release it separately as a prologue (inspired by the 'prequels' which Doctor Who has been doing for the last 2 or 3 years), under the pretext that it's a marketing thing.  It's finished, as of this morning, and you can see it here:



The production vlog will probably be the next thing I release, followed by Episode 5 itself.

Beyond the release of Episode 7, I don't really have any fixed plans for Papercuts; I'm open to doing more episodes in 2014 or later, but it all depends on getting scripts ready.


The next few projects: Fifteen-Minute Fortresses, Inanimate HD and The Murkum Show Series 2

This part is subject to change, but here's what I'm currently thinking in terms of my next work beyond Papercuts 7:

First up, you may or may not remember a little video I did earlier this year, titled The Fifteen-Minute Fortress?  Well, I might do a couple more of those.  Revise the parameters of the exercise, but still keep it broadly similar in spirit.  Watch this space.

Meanwhile, thinking even further back, you might recall my five-minute live-action short Inanimate from 2006.  This summer, armed with a vastly better camera and a friend who knew how to make said camera behave itself, I staged a remake of the film, now in shiny HD and starring Tim.  At some point, I need to knuckle down and edit the thing, and once the edit's complete, I'll take the logical next step and release the film.  Inanimate HD is rather more definite than Fifteen-Minute Fortress II, mostly because it's already been filmed, but the editing process could prove to be rather slow.

 Tim Johnston in the new version of Inanimate

And finally, the third and probably biggest thing on my near-future-projects slate is a second season of The Murkum Show.  The first was a lot of fun to make, and there's a lot of momentum building up for the second: I've already got a good idea of what the set will look like, and got seven episode scripts lined up (fun fact: all four of the people who wrote for Series 1 have already got scripts in the queue for Series 2).  It's very unlikely that Murkum Show S2 will see the light of day before next year, what with the work that remains to be done on my current projects, but I'm 98% sure it'll be happening in the first half of 2014.

 

Doctor Murkum in a recent adventure - expect more in early 2014

Other stuff that may or may not happen next year

I've got a few other bits and pieces on the go.  These include Improbable (a very odd little cel short, which I released a teaser clip for several months ago), Empire of the Pond (a remake of Fishy Business, a 2003 short whose storyline I thought was alright, but whose animation was so embarrassingly bad that I'm never going to let you see it), and a perhaps-over-ambitious CGI production titled Golden Cube, about a robot who works in a strange, futuristic dolly-mixtures factory.  No particular release schedules for any of those yet, but since I'm publishing the slate, it seems only fair to mention that they're on it - albeit down at the bottom.

 No, it won't start making any more sense when you see the finished film.

- The Colclough

Faster than a Speeding Camera Shutter

You know how they say animation is usually a slow process?

In my last post, about two-and-a-half weeks ago, I introduced you to a little project called The Murkum Show.  At that point, I had finished Episodes 1 to 3, got Episodes 4 to 6 in pre-production, and written Episode 7, and I had no real idea of how long the series would continue.

Well, in the world of The Murkum Show, it seems that two-and-a-half weeks can be quite a long time.  I've now finished Episodes 1 to 9 and got Episodes 10 to 15 either written or mostly-written, with various contributions from Tim, Sarah and Sam - and we'd got ahead of ourselves a bit, and started writing material for Series 2 already, so I've decided that it's time to close script submissions and lock down the episode lineup for Series 1.

I admit that I might have cheated a little by having the episodes be so short, but it's rather gratifying to have a series progressing so fast for once, instead of the snail-esque crawl that my animation work usually moves at.

There's a huge amount of Murk Army back-story which would be very hard to publish due to its rambling nature and the disparate formats it's been written in, but there are certain frequently-revisited elements which have found their way into The Murkum Show - one example being Murkum's hopeless attempts at motivational speeches, like the one in Episode 3 Headlong Dash ("War is... um... war!"); various others will be cropping up in later episodes, and although their in-joke nature might not be apparent to the casual viewer, it's rather satisfying for me (and I think for Tim and Sarah as well) to have them in there.

Here are Episodes 2 to 4.  Enjoy - and tune back in next Saturday for Episode 5 I Want the Droids!








- The Colclough

A Show of His Own

Back in 2011, in the days of Arbitrary Stopframe Series 1, one character emerged as the clear favourite out of the eleven who had appeared in the show.  Everybody else got just one appearance, or at best two, but Doctor Murkum (one of the many denizens of Universe XGT) got three episodes to himself - well, two-and-a-half if you take into account that he had to share the last one with an angry DVD copy of a South Korean monster flick.  And somebody - I think it was Tim - suggested that perhaps Murkum should get a show of his own.

Well, he's got it.  Tim's suggestion rankled away throughout 2012 - if I gave Murkum his own show, what sort of show would it be?  I considered making it a chat show, but that one fell by the wayside; I could never come up with a workable answer to the questions of who he would talk to, about what, and why.  I briefly considered having a split-timeframe format, intercutting footage that was meant to have come from Murkum's first camcorder back in the 1980s with other footage of him in the present day reviewing his past escapades on tape and trying to deny or explain away the more embarrassing bits; that one floundered due to its technical over-complication.

Eventually, I settled on a less-is-more approach, and decided that each episode should be a short stand-alone sketch, set at Fort Murk in the present day, in which Murkum brings injury and/or embarrassment upon himself.  He does that a lot anyway, so it made sense that The Murkum Show should bring it to the screen.  The fun thing about writing for Murkum is that he's numb-skulled, arrogant, violent, a kleptomaniac and a pathological liar, so I can write/animate him suffering all sorts of indignities without having to feel even remotely sorry for him - he deserves every indignity that comes his way.

So, with that premise in mind, I built a set out of Lego, scribbled down a trio of short episode scripts (half a side of A4 each, if that), and sent them to Tim for appraisal.  It's worth mentioning at this point, for those who don't know already, that I've known Tim for a very long time, and Murkum is almost as much his fault as he is mine.  So that's why he gets to read the scripts before anybody else.  Basically he agreed with my own assessment, which was that Episodes 2 and 3 worked, but 1 felt unfinished; combined with the fact that I'd decided I wanted the series opener to feature some of Murkum's highest-ranking employees, it seemed like the logical thing to leave Episodes 2 and 3 as Episodes 2 and 3, but push back the previous 'Episode 1' to become Episode 4, pending a rewrite, and pen a new episode to begin the series.  Which I did shortly afterwards.

The next step was dialogue recording and processing - it took a lot of faffing about with a constricted throat and a pile of audio filters to make Murkum-on-speakers sound like Murkum-in-my-head.  The job was made more complex due to Murkum being a cyborg (with an artificial voicebox, mechanical components in his chest to keep his respiration and circulation going, and all of his limbs at least partially cybernetic), and I needed to try and make his voice sound like it was being electronically generated, but without ending up as a clone of Microsoft Sam.  Got there in the end, though, with some more assistance from T.

The actual animation process was relatively short and painless, with the first three episodes (collectively 'Production Block A') shot back-to-back over the course of last Thursday, and I then completed sound editing for the trio and released Episode 1 Elite Class on Saturday.  As you can see right here:



Ta-da!  The Murkum Show has landed.

I've already finished dialogue recordings for 'Production Block B' (Episodes 4 to 6), and am aiming to film the visual components in the next few days.  The plan is to release one episode every Saturday while stocks last, so come back on the 25th for Episode 2 Drinkies...


- The Colclough

Videos from March

I've uploaded a couple of videos this month, and forgotten to put them on here at the time, so this post is a little end-of-month roundup of videos that should have been on here earlier...


Made second but posted first: The Fifteen-Minute Fortress, in which I do some rambly bloggy stuff, intercut with footage of me trying to build a Lego castle thing (of sorts) in 15 minutes flat.  Watch below, and judge for yourself whether or not it was any kind of success - and what the answer might be to the question about a sequel which I pose at the end...




Made first (shot in October, in fact, and finished in February) but posted second: X-Battles GT5: Exploding, in which some Lego (wait, thematic connection going on here!) characters have a fight with laser weapons.  Produced in conjunction with Tim and Sarah, and all rather fun to make.




- The Colclough

It Also Animates!

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was given a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet as a Christmas present, and I showed off my first piece of serious Bamboo-based artwork.  Today I decided to move ahead with another semi-related project which I've been thinking about for a couple of weeks: an experimental animation using the Bamboo, the GIMP and Sony Vegas.  I started drawing the test scene this morning, and finished animating it around mid-afternoon, and it came out looking like this:

As rumoured in the aforementioned previous post, the clip features Elbows Dude, a heavily-stylised character who had featured in just one previous work, a one-off comic strip from 2006 which was called The Short Adventure of Elbows Dude and was about Elbows Dude flexing his elbows a lot and generally being in a comic strip.  That's him in the picture above - no, he's the green one, silly; the purple ones are dead cows.  And to satisfy the historically-curious among you, here's his debut outing:

Fun fact: I've never published that thing before, perhaps because I thought nobody would get it.

I've got a few other Elbows Dude-related story ideas drifting around, which have been festering in my head since about 2010, and now (along with today's segment) have semi-congealed into something approaching a plot, albeit a really surreal one.  Hence the clip I've just made will - hopefully - go on to serve as the opening of a larger production.

Now, I could be all mean and make you wait for the whole film to come out, but I'm not feeling mean today.  So rather than keep you all on tenterhooks waiting to find out what the animation actually looks like, I decided to use the existing segment as a teaser trailer for the film.  Alright, hush the clamour already - here's your video:



Confused?  Yeah.  Me too.  I have no idea why it's raining cows in there.

Just you wait until you see the rest...


- The Colclough

Trailerish

Having mentioned in my last post that I've finished video editing for Root Hill on Camera 2012, it occurred to me that I should stick the trailer on ye blog, for completeness' sake if nothing else.



Not much else to say here right now, only the trailer.  And if you didn't like it, then just be grateful you didn't see the first draft.  It was pretty terrible.

Normal blogging service will resume whenever it resumes.


- The Colclough

The Storm Has Subsided

My goodness, that was slow and awkward.  Script written in February, voices recorded in June, and it still took until December to complete the fourth episode of Papercuts.  I usually count the production time from the voice recording session, which gives Pedroelectric a total of nearly six months, shattering the four-month record set by Episode 2 Germination Without Authorisation back in the summer.

I think the killer factor was the technical complexity - or rather, not so much the technical complexity in itself, but more the fact that the complexity made the task seem more daunting, and put me off from knuckling down and getting on with it.  As I wrote in the episode's YouTube description: don't write animation scripts with thunderstorms in them.  The rain, thunder and lightning did nothing to ease the convoluted process of bringing this story to the screen.  This might have been a good opportunity to point out that unlike the previous three instalments, which I wrote myself, this one was co-scripted by Tim... but then again I don't think I can shift the blame for the thunderstorm, as that was my idea anyway.  Tim was the one who suggested that they should be watching TV, and that Pedro should be sent up the aerial to fix it, and that the Captain should try to make some commercial use of Pedro's electrified condition, but I have to hold up my hand and admit that the basic concept of Pedro getting electrified in a thunderstorm was entirely my fault.

The previous three episodes were achieved almost entirely through an honest-to-goodness single-pass cutout process (the passage-of-time ideograms and the space scene in Episode 3 Jalapeno to the Skies were exceptions), with any given frame usually being a single unaltered photo.  But this time round, something like half of the film comprises multi-layered material, with the stuff on the TV screen, the rain, the various lightning flashes and electric sparks, and the non-speaking extra in the penultimate scene all being either composited or outright computer-generated after the fact.  That probably went a long way towards slowing me down, because it not only requires twice the amount of material to be shot, but requires both plates to be designed with a view to synchronising them in post.  It's finnicky enough designing a set to function at the right scale and so on even when it's only for a single-layer shot.

But as I also mentioned in the YouTube description, I think it was worth the effort.  Not only am I pleased with the storyline, I also think Pedroelectric has turned out as the most visually interesting episode to date, and perhaps the most aurally interesting as well.

The soundscape includes all sorts of weird and wonderful things this time round: a rainstick, a sheet of cartridge paper (the lounge set, as a matter of fact), white noise artificially generated by Audacity 2, a stapler, a cushion borrowed from our leather sofa being smacked really hard with a metre stick, my grandparents' un-lubricated driveway gate several years ago, the plug of the family vacuum cleaner (you wouldn't believe how hard it was to record the sound of a cable being picked up or put down), me eating Doritos a lot louder than I usually do, and me doing a move which I can only describe as trying to spit as sharply as possible from somewhere underneath my tongue.  Also watch out for Millimetre's dialogue - somewhere in this episode is the first occasion where I actually thought about what he's trying to say, and based his screeches off an actual sentence or two.  I'd be very interested to hear whether you can figure out where or what any of these items are...

Musically, Pedroelectric retains the main theme as usual, and revisits Pedro's heroic sting from Episode 1 Lemon Juice for the Captain, but also introduces the longest new piece of incidental music to date, titled Windmill and Flower.  I don't know if the show the trio are watching on their TV is a documentary about green energy (which is what the script says) or if it's metamorphosed into a really bizarre meta-cartoon within the cartoon, per Itchy & Scratchy.  I'll leave it to you to decide which interpretation of Windmill and Flower you prefer.

It seems I never got round to embedding Episodes 2 or 3 on the blog, so I'll do that first, and then wrap up the proceedings for today with the debut of Episode 4:








- The Colclough

All Quiet at the Front End of the Camera

It's been a mere (yeah, right) three and a half months since I recorded the dialogue for the first two episodes of Papercuts, way back on the first of March.  I've had several patches since then when I felt as if there was far too much work involved in the project and it was all taking far too long and I wanted to just pack it all in and cancel the show.

However, after 48 hours of focussed work on the project (it's amazing what you can achieve in 48 hours of focussed work sometimes), I've fnally finished Episode 1, and very nearly finished Episode 2... and then jumped straight back in and started recording dialogue for Production Block B (i.e. Episodes 3 and 4).

A large part of Thursday was spent filming the last bits of Production Block A: specifically, Ep 2 Scene 10, then the last snippets of the title sequence with the ink barely dried on the background I was using, and last but not least Ep 2 Scene 11.  Rounded off the day with a bit of editing.

Yesterday was all about the noise.  Depending what time of day you dropped in, you would have seen me scuttling in and out of my room clutching various ill-gotten gains including the old clock of the mantelpiece, the cutlery drawer, a plastic bucket full of dirt, a full watering can, and a trowel... not to mention the various strange sounds I ended up making a capella.  I also pestered Tim into writing a snippet of incidental music for Episode 1, so that I could complete and publish the episode.  Which, about an hour after I should have been in bed, is just what I did.

Here's what all the fuss has been about - or at least, the first instalment of it:



Episode 2 is complete apart from one track of incidental music, which I'm hoping Tim might be able to sort out while I'm in Kent over the next week, and the general plan is to publish the second instalment about two weeks after the first one, followed by the third as soon as it's ready.  Beyond that, I don't really know yet.  If the scripts for episodes 5, 6 and maybe 7 are ready to go by the time I finish making 4, then I might go straight into Production Block C.  Otherwise, I might look at re-starting Arbitrary Stopframe.  But don't take any of that as final - the only definite decision I've made so far is to stick with Papercuts until at least Episode 4 is finished.

I'm really hoping the second pair of episodes won't take as long as the first did.  I do have a bit of a head start this time in terms of major sets already existing, and things like that.  Watch this space.


In unrelated news, I've been meaning to do a post about how I might have handled certain challenges from The Apprentice Series 8, but that'll have to wait for at least another week, if it happens at all.  And I'm sure I've got some drawings and paintings that I haven't shown you.  Must try and remember to do that before too long...


- The Colclough

Preview Time for the Third Time

Root Hill 2011 was my sixth year attending the camp, and my third time as official videographer.  As per last year, I documented events with my Sony camera, and edited the footage in Sony Vegas.  Yes, there's a bit of a Sony theme going on there, despite the fact that Dad works for arch-rivals Samsung.  And as per both of the previous years I videoed (2008 and 2010), I have made a little trailer.

It's a bit different to my last two Root Hill on Camera trailers, this time using a pared-down "less is more" approach.  But I think that's a good thing, as it wouldn't do to just keep repeating the same old ideas and let them go stale.  Those of you who weren't there will probably be hopelessly confused, but for those who were: I hope you'll enjoy it.

Two things to watch out for in the trailer:

1. Josh's reduced afro.
2. The Mistake.  There's at least one 'error' that I'm aware of, but I decided I liked it so I let it stay.  I'll be interested to see if any of you can work out what I'm on about.

Just a bit of DVD menu authoring and disc burning to go, and then it's on to the post & packaging!

Okay, there wasn't much text in this post.  But then again, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Vegas tells me there are 2376 frames in this video, which - at least in theory - means it's worth approximately 2.4 million words.  And I think there should be bonus points awarded for Root-Hill-relatedness, maybe...


Statisticables, again:

• First 12 for '12 status: 4 down, 8 to go - still at the back, but closing the gap
• Latest book read: still A Brit Different
• Latest film/TV watched: still Sherlock
• Latest music listened to: Ode to Jim by Phil & Has, as featured in the Root Hill on Camera 2011 trailer
• Latest edible item eaten: still that hot chocolate
• Predominant colour of clothes: same stuff as earlier today
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

Darlan in Motion, Take 2

I've finished a second paper-cutout short film starring George Darlan, alien inventor and philanthropist.  It's a bit more complex than its predecessor, technically speaking, but not so different in terms of the type of humour involved.  Here, without further ado, is the clip:



Total production time on this one was more than a week, including writing up the script (which I didn't even bother doing last time as it was so short).  The parent webcomic Brothers in Shells is still at http://brothersinshells.webs.com.

Since I finished the film, the word 'trilogy' has presented itself to my brain, but I have no ideas whatsoever for a third story at this stage.  I won't be rushing into making a third film for the sake of it, but I'd be open to doing one if I came up with a decent gag.


- The Colclough

That Concludes That

After ten months in the making, I can finally lay Arbitrary Stopframe to rest.  Episode 13, the finale to the group of episodes which I'm calling 'Series 1', is now out on YouTube not just once, but twice.

Monster Movie was guest-written about two months ago by Root Hill veteran and Godzilla buff Sam Arthur, and I've kept it back on purpose because I thought it was one of the better stories/jokes the series has had, and I wanted to make it the closing instalment to send the show off with a bang.  The prospect of Murkum running for his life from a giant, angry DVD amused me.

For the pun to work, the DVD obviously had to be a monster movie.  I might have used my copy of Jurassic Park, but I'd loaned it to a friend, and I'm not sure it counts as a 'monster movie' anyway, in the strictest sense.  So I went on Amazon, and ended up with a copy of The Host, partly because I'd heard good things about it (including a review from Sam), and partly because at £3.99 it was the cheapest out of the ones I looked at.  Which makes Episode 13 the only one with a budget greater than zero pence, and puts the average cost per episode so far at £1.07.61538461538461538461538461538.  Or so my Windows calculator tells me.

Anyway, budget stats aside, here's the finished article:



And then, since I was in Monster Movie territory, I couldn't resist the urge to create a second version, turned monochrome and matted to 2.40:1 cinematic widescreen, as a homage to the monster films of old.  Here's the result of that little tangent:



Judging by the commentary in his latest blog post, it seems that Sam is happy with how his script has translated onto the screen.  Which is good, of course - if your writer isn't happy then you've probably got a problem!

Finally, one more video to round off the project: my sign-off blog, including a montage of some of my favourite moments from the series, and some waffly commentary on the show's future:



There you have it.  End of Series 1.


- The Colclough

Sellotape Defeated

I've been having a staring match with my sellotape dispenser, on and off, for the last two months.  Since finishing Arbitrary Stopframe 11, basically.  Thing is, I've been pretty darn sure it must be possible to do an Arbitrary Stopframe episode with sellotape, but I couldn't get the story to hold together.

But as of yesterday afternoon, I've won.  At long, long last, I worked out what to do with the tape, and I've spent a large chunk of today shooting and editing the episode.  Was it worth the wait?  Dunno.  I'll leave that for you lot to decide.  Embed follows...



I could have made a 12th episode a while back, as I've had Sam Arthur's spec script sitting on my hard disk for a few weeks now.  But I wanted to keep that back to use as the grand finale to the series, so it's been waiting around until I could sort out the sellotape.  However, now that the obstacle of Episode 12 is out of the way, I'm hoping to film Sam's script as Episode 13 next week, and put the series on an indefinite hiatus.

In case anyone's panicking, reading that stuff about 'finale' and 'hiatus', I suppose I should clarify: I don't mean I'm permenantly terminating the series.  I'm just going to take a deliberate several-month break (maybe multi-year, but I hope not), and if/when I restart the project then I'll probably make a couple of alterations, mainly moving away from my desk and finding a different location to work in - most likely the kitchen - as this would open up new possibilities for things the characters could interact with.  It's been getting harder to keep coming up with the ideas, as there are only so many items on my desk that are animatable with.

And before you all go cold turkey on me, remember there's still Episode 13 to come before the hiatus...


- The Colclough

Stuff I Made: September 2011

Been a while since I did one of those several-different-paragraphs-on-unrelated-subjects blogs...


1) Arbitrary Stopframe: I mentioned the other week that I was working on an idea for Episode 11.  Here it is.





2) Painting: did a little painting the other day, experimenting with paint surface effects and trying to make it look like running water, but I forgot to photograph it yet.  Also did more to the kingfisher - new photo follows.

Untitled Kingfisher Painting - now with some paint on the kingfisher!

3) Root Hill on Camera 2011: pretty much finished editing the Concert reel (runtime circa 70 minutes).  Might go back in and add some video filters on one little segment, but otherwise I think the Concert's all done and dusted.


4) Writing Megastropulodon: now nearly 2/3 of the way through the third draft for the opening episode.  Haven't decided yet whether my next move will be the third draft for Episode 5, or starting work on a first draft for Episode 2.


- The Colclough