TAIS showcase 2011 and BunnyJam films

Cookies And Bunny from Onno Knuvers on Vimeo.

Got the list of films in the Showcase and our Bunny themed anijam, hot off the presses from Madi. You can watch one of the entries above, courtesy of animator Onno Knuvers. Naturally, been busy with the work, so didn't have time to animate a bunny film (Noooooo!) but I am tracking down some fine lapidary prizing from some fine local bunnyectic technomologists. Here's the list of programmed films and Bunnyjam participants!

Program animated shorts TAIS SHOWCASE 2011

1. How to get the girl – Anshyn Anstee - Vancouver
2. Amourette – Maja Gehrig - Switzerland
3. Ooh La La – Sharon Katz - Ottawa
4. Black Moon – Brandon Blommaert - Calgary
5. Counting Sheeps - Neely Goniodsky - Montreal
6. Tara's Dream- Patrick Jenkins - Toronto
7. Wolves – Rafael Sommerhalder - Switzerland
8. Hick-Ups – Pascaline J. Knight - Montreal
9. The Manifesto Edition – Rune & Erik Eriksson - Norway
10. Sorry Film Not ready _ Janet Perlman - Montreal
11. Freud, Fish and the Butterfly – Haiyang Wang - China
12. Fitting in - Taylor Annisette - Mississauga
13. Paso Doble – Jamie Metzger - Waterloo
14. Fester Goes Fishing – Aaron Long - Toronto
15. Comin' Round – Barbara Whitmer - Toronto
16. The socking truth – Lisa Leung - Toronto
17. URS - Moritz Mayerhofer - Germany
18. Something left, Something Taken – Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata - US

Installations:
1. The Machine Wolf-Chris Juraschka - Waterdown
2. Courious Lights- Kate Wilson – Toronto

Bunny Jam participants

1. Americo Gomes
2. Ariel Villaverde
3. Bryce Hallett & Emma Lander
4. Cathy Kuo
5. Claire Bennett
6. Dalton Sharp
7. Dimitri Tcherbadji
8. Evan Maruszewski
9. Jerry Fuchs
10. John Creson & Adam Rosen
11. John Weldon
12. Jonathan Cheeseman & Charles Wilson
13. Joseph Troy
14. Joshua Robertson
15. Judith Van Der Made
16. Kayliegh Tresson
17. Kohila & Santhya Kurunathan
18. Larry Barriere
19. Lynn Wilton
20. Madi Piller
21. Mac MacCord
22. Michael Darmanin
23. Mike Weiss
24. Monica Gutierrez
25. Nick Cross
26. Nick Fox-Gieg
27. Onno Knuvers
28. Eurico da Costa Ng
29. Raphael Rosenwald
30. Richard Reeves
31. Vince Vaitiekunas


Quite a lineup! Screening happens June 23, 2011 at 7:30pm at Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto, 2 Sussex Avenue). Big comfy theatre with great seats, a great screen and great A/C. Hope to see you thar!

MONSTERJAM: Edits n' stuff

Sorry for the delay, folks...getting all them logos together. Plus, Christian Nelson's entry still won't work, dammit! Meanwhile, here's a teaser...Joseph Troy's entry. He's worked on My Friend Rabbit and Max n' Ruby, among others. Here, he takes a breather from bunnies and shows us who he thinks the real monster is. More to come...

2nd Channel Frederator Awards

The doods over at Channel Frederator have announced the nominees for the 2nd Fred awards, and I'm desperately trying to not be a pissy bitch over not being nominated for the 'Badass Bunny Award' category. Fred, c'mon...I love Choom Lam, Elizabeth Ito, and Ben Meinhardt's films, but did they give their bunnies huge cybernetic battle machines and killer plant monsters to fight? Hmmm?

O.k., I'm over it. The nominees this year are a freakin' stellar lineup, from 'Make Mine Shoebox' to 'Cocotte Minute'. Go. Vote. And demand more bunnies in battlesuits. I'm just sayin' is all. Phoink me.

p.s.: seriously, I'm messin'. Congrats to all the nominees, and to the fine folks at Frederator for continuing to showcase some damn fine animatin'.


NOTE: Just had someone leave their full contact info as a comment, tryin' to get ahold of Madi. I erased your comment to keep the spammers at bay, but I've passed your info on to Madi. You can also send an email to tais@bellnet.ca. Cheers!

First Time Out

O.k., here it is, film fests be damned. A few production notes: started in 2002 as kind of reaction to the proliferation of cutesy toons from Japan (Hamtaro and Tokyo Pig, shtuff like that) and too many episodes of Gundam Wing. The main jist of the project was: Why not give a giant fighting robot to something that could actually use it? Like 1 1/2 foot tall day-glo bunnies?

I originally envisioned the project as being a machinima piece, fully realtime online in Shockwave 3d with code controlled cameras and all kind of fancy realtime bells n' whistles. When I couldn't get A) a coder or B) the time to learn Lingo, Shockwave's coding language, I re-examined the piece and decided that having a bunch of fancy-shmansy realtime interactivity wasn't going to add to the story or characters at all. So, I decided to just render the whole thing out. Modeling and animation was done in Plasma, a web-only version of Max discontinued before Autodesk bought out Discreet. Animated maps were created in Flash and exported as Mpegs, then mapped on in Plasma.

Bit ass backwards on this one...I designed and modeled almost all the characters and props before doing an animatic in Flash...I knew what elements and characters I wanted for the short, but the story needed to evolve visually. I created a full animatic in Flash over the course of 8 months, refining the story and dumping a whole lot of dialog in favor of action in the process.

Initial designs and model sheets were done in '02, with the modeling taking place in 03/04. Took a break, then started the animatic in July of '04, finishing in September of '05. In April of '06 I started the first scene, and finished animation in May of '07. Enter Drew Frohmann, that most excellent half of the most excellent comedy duo of Rub (Rob Collinet, Splashworks art director) and Tug (Drew), who together comprise the team known as Hot Dog Boy. Drew had a gig at a sound studio, Pirate Radio and TV, and Rob suggested he might be able to help out with sound.

We recorded the dialog at Pirate (3 1/2 hours and 63 takes for around 1 1/2 minutes), with Dan Branco designing fx, Chris Tim and Tim composing, Bill Turchinetz supervising, and Spenser Hall putting it all together in Pirate's Dolby 5.1 lab. Drew and production diva Tyna Myaerzke made it all happen after hours. All just for the kudos and a piece for the ol' demo reel...they, of course, rock the ass. Got the final mixdowns from Spense on Sept. 17th, just before heading off to Ottawa, where I managed to get a copy into the hands of my two college profs, Don Perro and Paul West, as well as Pilar Newton, Jerry Beck and Lev Polyakov.

That's that! The plan right now is to try Kalamazoo and Platform, amongst others. Haven't had much luck finding a fest that the film fits into, but I gotta keep pushin', cuz me Pirate mates worked too damn hard to allow this stuff to not get heard. Let me know whatcha think...feedback welcome, people! And thanks for watchin'.