Murray Bain

Far too true.

2008-07-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

... and I get too be the butt smoocher guy too.

If our current client reads this, it's somebody else, not you, we wuv you.

SURF'S UP.

2008-02-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

I missed this one in the shuffle... pretty good stuff. The acting is a cut above; very "in the moment". Worth seeing.

Saul Bass- the father of modern film titles

2008-01-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

Such elegant simplicity. I love film titles.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

Imaginary forces are doing great things too; on films like Seven or the spiderman series... beautiful, and they really bring you into the story.
Picture Mill does amazing things, but they are almost too slick for my tastes. Maybe it's my cartoonness coming thru, but the modern eye candy look is overcooked.
Don't get me started on that tribal tattoo/dripping graffiti diarrhea that is all over MTV and reality TV, but then again it's as obnoxious as what it precedes, so it's done it's job.

I hope to do a film title someday soon.

BRADLEY CAYFORD'S BLOG

2007-10-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

BOO RADLEY CAYFORD Has a blog!!!!! this guy is a conceptual force of nature, a music video genius, and an animation guru.
Brotha from anotha mother, show the blogosphere how its done!

why dont you head over to
Brad's blog and bookmark him.

LEMMY and KEEF as bulls.

2007-08-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

the Project was called "Cowtown" and they were supposedly signed on. Cows are girls, development producer dudes. Im sure 'barnyard' and 'home on the range' killed it.
it was a road movie and they were chasing biker black sheep for the essence of rock and it had satan in it. I have some more sketches in a box somewheres.

MC FLATTERY- Design problem

2007-08-14T17:24:00.001-07:00

" Flattery is tiny but muscular and is wearing
tight black trousers and nothing else. He has the face of
Eminem, the body of Michael Flatley and the stature of a
leprechaun — but rock hard."
I thought the tight black trow wasn't very hiphop... I always loved the tin drum, that kid looked crazy, his low ears make him look like he's looking down at you all the time...

So I came up with this......

Hi Murray,

We think you did a great job in making a rap star out of Mc Flattery. We were thinking of ways in which he could be more Michael Flately less Rap Star, about 90 % Flately – 10% Eminem, this should be shown in both clothing and his physique (we would love Michael Flately-esque stances for this). We were also looking at Barry McGuigan and Jude Law for reference (see attached pics to assist in these references).

We were thinking black ballet trousers (laced up sides, Flately-esque), much thinner drain pipe legs, permanently straight back which seems to defy gravity when he walks, so looks like top half of body is floating and same for his crew (Flately-esque) a baseball cap with a lucky charms type clover on it, piercing green eyes (both eyes), a broken nose with a cute point at end (Barry McGuigan type), we love the current face shape but wanted him to be more pretty boy so all the women will love him (Jude Law type) BMX glove(s), Tattoos and medallions (Eminem type). We also love the high trousers / belt which Flately wears, could we do something like this for him, possibly with a large MC logo on it? We also think he would look great in some gold buckled shoes (Lucky Charms type).

Development poop.

2007-05-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

Aparrently according to broadcasters, talking animals are only for preschool(fritz the cat anyone?!)

so I have to slap a human head on him. hopefully salvage the body keys. Jose did the voice; but I don't wanna do a direct charicature. he's a big guy who owns a club- used to be a musician.
I did some searle studies to warm up, I almost like the top left one? ball point pen assness:

so I'll keep stewing this one. hoo boy.

Animating Hair in flash

2007-04-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

see if this whole embbeddin' swfs thing works..here's a demo I did.

APOLLOS PAD.

2007-04-07T16:47:00.000-07:00

no posts in a long time, NDA's are blogs worst enemies.

a club post shootout

concept by brad, layout and painting by me. I was trying to 'flintstone' it up. I may have went a bit too sponge crazy, but cause its mildy wrecked, Im gonna try and get away with it.
We are trying to get this pilot done for wednesday.

DRAWING for digital animation

2007-01-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

The DD Crew hard at work, or hardly working. Fun times, lookit all the smiles.
L to R Joe Alchorn , Jose Pou, Bianca Siercke Darmali Patel.
not pictured because he was getting coffee(?): Brad Cayford.

"Well, I'm back into animation in the New Year, finishing a cartoon started 15 years ago. Paraphrasing that Led Zeppelin song..."Does anyone remember DRAWING?" -GREG DUFFELL from the comments on his timing lecture notes a few months back.

timing notes

layout an' posin' for shorty mcshort shorts,
kickin' it old school with scene folders and peg bars.

f*ck cintiqs. why would you pay 3 grand to SIMULATE 10 cent paper? sure scanning is a pain in the ass but the result is better, isn't it? If you do drawings on 8.5" X 11" you can sheetfeed it into a desktop scanner. Or full size paper with a digital camera, why not?
drawings have a SOUL, viva la pencil!
too bad about the whole tree killing thing, but at least we are making wee ones laugh, unlike the pentagon.

Storyboards are NOT layouts.(on average) THAT'S whats wrong with flash shows. no individuality scene to scene.

P.S>Thanks for the hole punch lend, Marcus Cappelloious III.
P.P.S.> the best storyboard "software" is post-its.It's real world CTRL-Z.

HABBOSODE

2007-01-16T23:56:00.000-08:00

http://www.habbo.com.au/community/animation

hey the habbo short we did like a year ago is up. Frankly I find ours embarrassingly bad.We got picked late, we had to rush it.waaah wahh blahdyblahdyblah.
the Elliot and noodle soup ones are pretty cool tho!
the direction on the brief was weird, it was like..
friends meets southpark! adult issues! ...for preteens!
I like the wierd script our buddies darryl and dane wrote. And who's that doing that horribly annoying yosemite sam voice rip off? (that was supposed to be a placeholder voice! yeesh.)

Do you think web savy finnish children like royal tannenbaums? I hope so. It's gots bill murray.

The Bandit

2007-01-11T18:43:00.000-08:00

Poor Burt, he didn't even get to put his tight pants back on.I bet Jackie Gleason ends up in the river.

totally inspired by Ariel's Pontiac Fire chicken post a few days back, Check out the sketchotronic-idea-beat-master:

http://www.sketchees.blogspot.com

Thrift Store Beauty

2006-12-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

art rage BG element loosey goosey made up on the spot.Tacky eh? heheh.
Merry Xmas folks, Im off to see the family in ontario, and nary a computer is in the house.(JOY!)

JIMMY SWIFT BAND VIDEO RELEASE

2006-11-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

calling all Haligoniians:

video release party-
TURN AROUND- the Jimmy Swift Band
directed by Brad Cayford
Produced by Copernicus Studios

"the Attic" on grafton street
Friday AND Saturday (the cool folks are going friday)
midnight-ish till 4, beeyoches.

All non Hali peeps keep an eye out for the JSB on much music coming soon. Brad killed it on this one!

Train tressel

2006-11-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

I love that chase in french connection.

here's the ref photo I yoinked off the interweb:

2006-11-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

Ones that got away 2- Wiz Kid

Development trailer created by Copernicus Studios 2003(2?)
"Wayne is an average kid who accidentally receives a high tech USB computer portal generator that allows him to go 'INLINE" (as opposed to 'online') to help himself and others. The only drawback is that silly GATOR and SPAM are always popping up and chasing him around cyberspace when he is trying to solve the problem. "
The producer on this one decided to cut his losses before we really shopped it around, the buzz was that "there's a million shows like that" ah vell, it was fun, the show shoulda just been "the gator and spam show" but kids apparently have to look at themselves when they watch cartoons nowadays. I realize now I totally stole the blacklight poster colour scheme from the futurama when they go to the internet. It works so well for an electronic world.

Jessica's Birthday.

2006-11-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

It's Jessica Lynn Borutski's birthday (thanks for the reminder Mr. Kircfalusi) She's 23 years old(!!!) in a few years, she'll be an animation deity. So I did a card to say thanks for all the cool development work Jess has been whipping up for us.

It's all too rare to meet someone as gifted as Jess, and she super professional and fun to work with too.I always joke she's somebody like Grim Natwick reincarnated, like that scene in Kundun where the young future Dali Lama had to pick his belongings out of a bunch of stuff laid out on a sheet, but its a metronome, blackwings, peg bars ect. Go dig the cute bordering on psychosis thing she has goin' on over at:
http://jessicaborutski.blogspot.com/

2006-11-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

Atomic Monsters- one that got away.

Here's a development trailer we did 2 years ago. Brad Andrew, Walsh and I whipped the animation out in a week, and we did some fancy(at the time) after effects. I know it's a big time butch hartman rip, But I still dig the hand held camcorder thing we were going for.The motion blur doesn't show well in this version, but It seems like "El tigre" does a lot of this kind of stuff. My good friend Ali Wells is doing the fake brit kid voice, It was gonna be a UK copro.(we woulda hired a real limey voice if it hadda got picked up.) The creator/writer Steve Aylett is pretty brillant,And it was on the cover of kidscreen, but brodcasters never bit.It had a futurama meets pokemon vibe, and would of been a blast to work on.We did a whole bunch of sketches of the monsters, I guess they wanted to do trading cards too.Development is all the fun stuff anyway. Full production is sometimes nothin' but factory work.

CLASSICO

2006-10-31T12:51:00.000-08:00

Here's John K's new video for Tenacious D!! It was a blast for the crew to work on. I hope they post a quicktime of it, the colours are pretty washed out in this version.

CL)SE BUT NO CIGAR

2006-10-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Weird Al - Close But No Cigar

Interview exerpt:
My favorite of the tunes on the album is "Close But No Cigar," so I was doubly pleased to see the video animated in the wild, rubbery style of Ren & Stimpy's creator, John Kricfalusi. How did you chose him to direct the project and did he surprise you with the results?

"I can't say that I was surprised with the results, because I think John K. is a genius and I would really expect nothing less than genius work from him. I'm so thrilled that he agreed to do this project. He and Katie Rice did all the layouts, and as you can see, it looks amazing. If I was surprised at anything, it was at how good the actual animation is. We sent the animatic and the original cels to Copernicus Studios in Halifax, and they did the video in flash animation. I'm not a huge fan of flash animation in general, but this was by far the best flash that John or I had ever seen - they really blew us away."-Weird Al Yankovic

We did some cool stuff with John for Tenacious D, With Genius Nick Cross doing the Background and crowd paintings, watch for it soon!(it's not for the kiddies or your mom.)

JOHN K THIS THURSDAY!!

2006-10-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't hear, John K is in Halifax, and he's giving a seminar on BOB CLAMPETT fo' free.

7 PM -10 Thursday Oct 5

At King's College
6350 Coburg Rd.
Halifax

"See a whole pile of cartoons made by cartoonists back when cartoonists were allowed to make whatever they wanted without idiot executive interference!"

WIP Theatre

2006-09-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

"Its time to play the music"

"Its time to light the lights"

I still have some of the background buildings to paint, and the poster details, and some city grime and shmutz.
I tried to ape the lady and the tramp BGs, I love the rainy street look. I also stole colours from peter jackson's kong. The walleye vision is all me.

"HEEEEeRRG-YUK!"

the final Shack

2006-09-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

I tweaked the colour as I went. Too bad this will be on screen like 4 seconds. A day's work a second, heheh. oh well now that I have the lighting figured out it should be alot faster to do the other angles.(I hope.)

WIP shack attack.

2006-09-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Still adding props. Geez, I paint slow. Too many boards! wood grain, bah! I wanna work on THX 1138 the animated series. Those BGS would be a cake walk. Character drop shadow, done.

Puppet Master's Shack

2006-09-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

Good old paper layout. Lemay would be proud.

The Puppet Master Memorial

2006-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

Painted in ARTRAGE2, try it its fun!

Bird rats (bats?)

2006-08-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Bird Concepts.

2006-08-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

Who knew birds were so hard to design? I've never really tackled them except for that birdz show I worked on at funbag for nelvana. Those were lumpy little buggers to draw. I was trying to do walter lantz woody woodpecker type birds.

GREG DUFFEL'S TIMING SEMINAR

2006-08-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

HEY LOOKIT! THIS QUOTE IS FROM ANIMATION MAGAZINE:
“I’m bringing two cartoons that I just made this year in Flash, and they’re about as cartoony as you could imagine,” he comments. “One of them I did with Katie Rice [http://funnycute.blogspot.com], a super-extreme, cartoony, brilliant cartoonist who does pretty-girl animation. She and I did this cartoon and we had it animated at Copernicus Studio, a Flash-animation studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia. And I just did another thing where I did all the drawings myself and Copernicus animated it. So there is a way to use [Flash] and still make it cartoony. It involves more drawings.”- JOHN KRICFALUSI

I’ve been meaning to transcribe the notes I took at timing Seminar Given by Greg Duffel(Who did Xsheets on ren and stimpy) that I attended a few months ago, SO here goes:

The first thing Greg showed was a comparison of the openings of the Bugs bunny and tweety show; one was from the 60’s animated by Jerry Shanicky(sp?), He was Friz Freleng’s “dance” guy. It wasn’t drawn that hot, it was TELEVISION animation, for sure. Greg then showed us the Revamp from the mid 90’s.It was the same scene (“overture, light the lights, this is it, we’ve hit the height”) and it was drawn in the more “consistent” modern bubbley WB style, BUT it slid all over the place, and it didn’t have good timing; it wasn’t ON BEAT. How far we’ve fallen, because most people would look at the modern clip and think it was better.

Society use to be more musical, people could sing harmony, they could read sheet music, A large number of people could play the piano. Musicals were popular, and people liked to go dancing.
Music CAUSED timing in cartoons; because the sound was done after. The director used a metronome to discuss with the Music composer the pace he wanted. A “click track” was then made. It had every beat as a Click sound, so when they played back the cartoon they could see it was happening “on beat”. Greg showed an early warner's sound cartoon that illustrated this dramatically, the ‘click’ was still discernable in the music.

Fleischer cartoons were the most blatant; everything moved and swayed to the beat.

Before exposure sheets, animation was timed out on musical “bar sheets”.

In Tom and Jerry, Each bar was a 16 frames block (8 drawings on 2’s, or “on 8’s”), equal to one foot of film, one beat, or one measure of music.

Back then every cut, blink, landing, step, or action happened on the beat or half or quarter beat. Modern cartoons, such as tiny toons, never planned for a beat, that’s why the music and action was so jarring, (doo dee d-DAHHH!) because it was never planned out musically.

Charts:
There should only ever be variations of these three charts, weird charts = bad keys.

The director is responsible for the overall storytelling timing (do the gags work?), and the animator is responsible for micro timing (is it believable? interesting? does it read?).

6 frames is the bare minimum for an expression to read.

On a walk, the beat is when the WEIGHT hits, not the contact.

Greg then showed specific animator’s work, Greg seems to be able to tell who did what just by watching it.(wow, I wish I could do that!)

Ken Harris- When Greg was starting at Williams, he noticed Sometimes Ken Harris would draw just an arm or a head on a “breakdown” drawing to break up the timing.
Every 5th frame was a key, and he had very simple charts. If the accent fell on an inbetween, he’d put a breakdown for the inbetweener. Greg showed a clip of the coyote balancing his head on a unicycle on a sloped wire; balancing carefully- carefully, just about ready, and *snap* the wire breaks. Greg pointed out it seems like an easy laugh to pull off, but the timing of the balancing act was so carefully done, you never expected the wire break. Cool. When Greg worked with Chuck Jones in the mid 90’s (he said the cartoons were awful, just chuck’s daughter selling cels) Chuck said to the crew: “I don’t care what you do with my drawings, but don’t change my timing”.

Rod Scribner and Manny Gould- force of nature straight ahead animators.a combination of Believability and extreme exaggeration. Bill Melendez was trained by Scribner. Robert Mckimson- Virgil Ross-Subtle-master of attitudinal head tilts(VERY important)

- from here my notes kinda trail off, I just wanted to watch the all the mind blowing clips. To sum up, musicians and animators are the same; it’s all in the rhythm, and riffing off of that. It was a real pleasure to hear Mr. Duffel speak; his passion for the medium was very inspiring. He does funny Left wing talk radio now, and doesn’t animate any more. Too bad, he’s the best animator I’ve ever met. He said if he WAS going to do something new, he’d avoid computers all together (cels, painted BGS, the whole smear!) I sure hope he does.

VEIRD KAVINKYDINK

2006-07-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hollee, FAKAT's show got of the ground, "My adventures' with Cloe."Congrats!
it's funny, we pitched a show 3 years ago that was visually similar.... To the development FATKAT is doing right now!!

http://fatkatanimation.blogspot.com/2006/07/my-adventures-with-cloe-pilot-go.html

Fatkat's CLOE:

ATOMIC MONTERS

I wanted to have a lighthouse keeper in the light house, and thats airforce one on the wall. notice the baseball diamond doormat, the chrysler building coffee table, Gene i gots tons of ideas that teletoon never wanted from us, so if you want em, lemme know.

TOYS MORE (ee)

2006-07-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

A bit of colour slapped on. I just noticed I reversed the joint on he-guy's opposite wrist. Oh well. Theses are just cruddy concepts. Drew will fix them later. Andrew and I have a shampoo/conditioner relationship, I draw my ideas out all eye stinging and soapy, and Drew makes them way shiny, with volume and bounce that lasts all day long! The He-man-alike has a darker face on purpose, to signify the rubber head/plastic body heman had goin on. I used to make skeletor cave hemans rubber face in, and heman would hulkster up while it expanded back out...
HEMAN: "RRRRRRRRR!!! WHATCHA GONNA DO SKELATOR!"
SKELATOR:(in his thirties gangster voice) "MYAH! HELP ME, GENE HACK-MAHN!"

TOY Action Figure Action

2006-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

Here's some "toys come to life" concepts for a show we may be developing for a client. As a kid, I loved using toys from different sets together in my playtime scenarios. He men were giants to GIjoe ,transformers got divyed up between the good and bad guys, smurfs were innocent lil'buddies to be saved by the thundercats or destroyed by the starscream/gargamel/king kong bundy connection. A lot of Kids today are vidideeots; XBOX has sucked all thier imagination away.

TOONBOOM.

2006-07-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

A while back, a rep from toonboom visited us for a show and tell. We found the software was WAAAY too complicated, on par with most 3D packages. Not only that, it costs about 3G per license, compared to $800 for flash. Kind of hard for the little guy to afford..

Production and human resource practices are all mandated by the software, much like a hive mind, or “the matrix” every one logs on, assigns and gets assigned tasks, approvals, and pulls materials and elements. All organized by this one software. In my opinion, Pretty silly to put your whole business’s eggs in one unproven software basket. I know people at MERCURY filmworks who went through Toonboom program bug HELL.

I love flash, it ain't perfect, but it's simple, and cheap, and *I* decided to use it. Maybe if I see a foster's quality product I'll change my tune.

Institutatorium- Staircase.

2006-06-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have re-occurring dreams about staircases.

Here's a "Vertigo" type staircase/foyer for Scott's proposal "Uncle Oscar's experiment" .Scott wanted more of a "shining" treatment for the halls, but given the mortality theme of the piece we thought vertical moves would be more symbolic. I guess scott will have to paint a stairmaster greenscreen green when He goes to shoot the live action. I originally had a garish, almost Christmas green and orange colour scheme, but we toned it down .I used the image>adjust>photo filters dealee in photoshop that Brad showed me.

"Cinch" the Usher

2006-06-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

he's a wise guy usher for a theatre chain mascot ; here's the brief:

He's a twenty or thirtysomething movie usher turned movie director who after his first feature spends his time solving gift giving scenarios and shilling for the Theatre gift card.
He may still wear the Usher's coat, but it's now open and stylized and Cinch looks like he could be comfortable in the clubs, with a bunch of kids and he could charm the pants off your great aunt.

Thank goodness he's animated, or I'd hate him. (We just got word he's a girl named "the giftster" now, oh well.)Ushers should wear coats still, heck for the price of tickets, they should have tuxedos.

Country girls

2006-05-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Katie Rice "inspired". I'm such a scam artist. I can't even rip off well, bah.

my line acts like I do around woman, nervous. Maybe I can get a potion that makes me a suave good artist like in "the nutty professional animator." (The lesser known unreleased Jerry Lewis sequel)

alpha bravo charlie DISCO

2006-05-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a bunch of developmental doodles:

This is a "disco dude". (I dont write this stuff)

ouch thats a piss poor hand. I like drawing a bunch on one page, until ol' fugly hand rears his head.(fugly hand is my drawing pal lately. boo)((a hand with a head? I'm strange.))

WIP painted institutatorium

2006-05-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

well here's how I did over the weekend. after showing the line-drawing to Scott, he said it looked like a wooden structure, and he wanted a stone one. A lot of the detail has been killed, so it looks more institutional. I still have some balconies, railings and the front entrance to add. I always passed the gooderham and worts distillery on my GO train ride to school, and the rusty iron brick always made me think the walls were bleeding.

2006-05-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

hmm, I havent touched this blog.
Here's some production design I'm doing for my friend Scott Simpson. He wants to do a green screen Live action short, its Tim burton/sin city-esqe. this is the "Institutitorium". Im gonna paint this up over the weekend.

2006-03-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

Bug soccer players. With art deco-ish masks.
RIIIIIght. that'll fly.
I like the Elvis mic mask.

Thom Thom

2006-03-19T14:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of little doodles of Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead.

His eye suits his music,somehow. Radiohead is a cool band, when they use guitars.( I like the bloop bloop stuff too)
Here's one without looking at a pic:

hmm. I'll try again. He's a toughie.