ShoePie.co.uk Animation Blog

Fun Runs and Robots

2009-09-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

After Three and a half months I finally have a new animation in progress! The voice acting is complete and I'm currently designing the characters and artwork for it. Eric Gusky, who did the narration for Tarboy recorded the audio for me and it sounds amazing! I've also been given permission to use some very, very cool music as the soundtrack but I'm going to keep that a secret for now.

Besides the animation I'm working on 4 new sketches to be sent off for various writing opportunities that I've heard about. These kind of things are always a long shot but I will keep you informed about how they pan out.

One last thing. I am running a 5 mile fun run in a couple of weeks and I'd like to raise some money for the British Heart Foundation. If you fancy sponsoring me you can do so here. I've never run further than 3 miles before so It's kind of daunting but I'm super confident I'll get round in less than a day.

If you haven't seen Tarboy then check it out. It's great! It's got robots, fighting and evil villains! I wish i could animate like this!

A Short Walk

2009-08-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much animation lately so I thought I'd try and get back into it by doing a short exercise. It's nice to be able to just focus on the animation and not have to worry about characters, plots or trying to make it funny.

A Short Walk

I haven't got any new projects on the horizon at the moment. I'm fighting off various annoying illnesses and I'm also moving house in a couple of weeks. Hopefully in September when everything's sorted I'll find some inspiration from somewhere because at the moment I have no idea what I want to do next.

Auto-Tune the News

2009-08-06T03:49:00.000-07:00

These auto-tune the news videos are great but this is easily the funniest one.

Newsjack and TheSpoof.com

2009-06-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

No news is good news right? Well no, not always. Sometimes no news just means that the news is really bad and nobody wants to tell you. Fortunately my lack of updates is just down to the simple reason that there's been no news.

The topical comedy news show Newsjack has started on BBC Radio 7 and it's really rather good. I submitted two sketches last week but neither were used, oh well, I'll keep trying. Because you can't re-use a topical sketch I've decided that whenever I write one I'll also try to write a version of it in a newspaper format. That way I can post it on this website I found called TheSpoof.com. It's sort of the British version of the Onion except with contributions from the public.

So here's a couple of Spoof news articles I've written.

Princes William and Harry to get BBC3 sketch show

Ahmadinejad wins Iran's tallest man competition

I'm working away on a small animation for someone but other than that no new animation projects on the horizon. When I've moved house in a few weeks I'll hopefully get back on to that.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic

2009-05-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

I thought I would try and make something a bit different with this video and overall I think it worked quite well. Hopefully the cuteness of the fuzzy, wuzzy, puppet Bear medium allows them to get away with swearing so much. It was brilliantly voiced by David Bussell and sound mixed by Mat Davidson. I hope you likes.

This was my first proper attempt at Green screening characters and it turned out to be VERY fiddly. Adobe Premiere and Blender's green screening functions each had their problems so I ended up having to buy VisionLab Studio. It's a bit expensive but it worked perfectly and I'm looking forward to using it again. Especially the grading features which should bring a more professional look to my videos.

Spreading Rumours

2009-05-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I was lucky enough to win a sketch writing competition run by FunnyOrDie.co.uk and the prize was that they were going to film my sketch. Well it's finally here and they did an absolutely amazing job! I can't believe the cast they got for it either... they're like famous people!

Spreading Rumours (ZHURA WINNER) - watch more funny videos

Sadly I can't take any credit for the ending which is hilarious. They also made the dialog a lot slicker in places. I said I was happy for them to make chages to the script if it wasn't working on the day. I'd much rather have a funnier end product than them sticking religiously to what I'd written. It's actually quite a humbling experience to see what professional writers were able to do with my script to take it to the next level! Maybe I need to start looking for a co-writer? Preferably one who can do this to my scripts!

In other news, I completed my second ever 5K fun run yesterday and set a new personal best! Woohoo! I came 175th out of 177 runners, just behind a couple of ladies called Maureen and Moe! But I won't dwell on that too much, it's still a personal best!

April News Update

2009-04-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hello, this is just a quick update as it's been a while since my last video. Not much has been happening on the animation front recently as my PC decided to die after less than two years (Thanks Mesh Computers!) The good news is that I now have a new PC on order from Dell. Here's the specs. below for any nerds out there who might be interested. According to these CPU benchmarks it should be about 40% faster than my old PC without taking into account the extra RAM or 64bit OS.

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 920
8GB 1067Mhz DDR3 Dual Channel
512MB ATI® Radeon® 4850 Graphics card
1TB Serial ATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive
Vista® Home Premium SP1 64Bit

Despite the lack of hardware I still have two sketches in production. One should (fingers crossed) be online this Friday, it's being produced by FunnyOrDie UK so that's very exciting. The other sketch should be finished towards the end of May and that's currently being recorded for me by a couple of writer/actor friends.

And Finally! I saw 'In the Loop' at the cinema yesterday and it's one of the funniest films I've seen in ages. Great writing, great acting, great British film, go and see it!

P.S. Hooray! The IT crowd just won a BAFTA!

The Inquisitor's VLOG

2009-03-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

Well this one's a bit rushed but here's my latest animation 'The Inquisitor's VLOG'. I wish I had made two small script changes (and that I was a better animator!) but nevermind. The great voice acting by Chris Lumb covers up those deficiencies rather well.

Oh! And I've just found out a topical sketch that I Co-wrote is being performed at The Newsrevue stage show this week. So there was some good news after all!

Justify your Existence!

2009-03-25T15:44:00.000-07:00

No major news this week, no celebrity names to drop or exciting developments to unveil. Just boring WIP stuff.

I'm working on my next animation and it's going to feature this guy. Hopefully some of you may recognise him.

I was planning to produce the animation in 3D using Blender but unfortunately my PC keeps overheating when I try to render it. So to save my sanity I've had to revert back to 2D.

With all this technology failing on me it's about time I tried to get back to old school 3D animation and have another go at stop motion. If any further inspiration was needed these awesome Patrick Boivin videos should provide it.

What If Pigs Could Fly?

2009-03-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Piggies animation is finally here! This is my attempt at making something with a bit of a snappier pace than usual. Voiced by Chris Lumb.

Good News Part I

2009-03-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Part One of my good news, and the reason I was reading all those newspapers.

On Monday I was invited to a BBC comedy writing Masterclass run by Gareth Edwards and David Mitchell. It turned out to be a really useful day, very encouraging with lots of great sketch writing tips. I'm even starting to think I could enjoy writing topical comedy now. Before I considered myself too polite or easy-going to write topical material but now I'm thinking it might not be that different from normal sketch comedy.

It was held at Broadcasting house in London. There were about 15 or so writers invited from hundreds of applicants although I don't know how many people couldn't make it on such short notice.

David Mitchell was very funny and friendly. I wasn't brave enough to speak to him but I did pop-up at the end and shake his hand as he was leaving.

I do mean literally pop-up too, I think I startled him as I sprung up from behind someone who he had been talking to. I basically turned into the sneaky Butler from Mr Deeds.

At the end they asked us all to send in some more topical sketches from this weeks news. I've sent mine off and now it's just wait and see if they like them.

The unrelated Good News Part II is hopefully coming soon.

Exciting writing news....coming soon!

2009-03-07T02:33:00.000-08:00

I've had two pieces of fantastic news this week in regards to my writing. Although I'm not going to share either of them with you today as I don't want to jinx anything. Sorry!

I've been working on writing topical sketches recently, this is partly related to my good news. That's all the hints I'm giving! So yesterday I read the Sun, The Guardian and the Daily Mail from cover to cover. Surprisingly the newspaper that I actually learned the most from was the Sun. I now know about inflation, deflation, sub-prime mortgages, quantative easing....the list goes on. I suspect though that as I become less of a current affairs dumb-ass the Guardian will be my paper of choice. Although I do like the pictures in the Sun (especially the Boobies!) and I will probably still buy it just to get a different perspective ...of the Boobies.

I've written a topical sketch this morning that I thought I'd share. It's about Michael Jackson's new UK tour. I've sent this script to the Treason show and MySpace comedy. Hopefully one of them will pick it up.

Oh, and don't think I've forgotten about animation! My Piggies animation is frustratingly close to being finished. I'll try and get my lightbox out this afternoon and do some more work on it.

Doing a George Lucas

2009-03-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

To fill the gap until my next animation I've uploaded an old sketch from 2007 to FunnyOrDie.co.uk. It's not just a straight re-upload though! Oh no! I've spent about an hour or so revamping the animation, adding little details to help bring the characters to life. The fact that there were so many improvements I could make just goes to show how much I've improved since 2007. Either that, or it shows how much of a slacker I was in 2007!

Another Ian and Steve project is in the very early development stages. Until then enjoy!

Ian and Steve (And Lance Armstrong too!) - watch more funny videos

Oh and if anyone knows why the traffic to my Facebook page has jumped up I'd be interested to find out.

Spoon, Jar, Jar, Spoon!

2009-02-09T02:12:00.000-08:00

It was a quiet weekend so I decided to animate this version of an old Tommy Cooper joke. It took about 6 hours from idea to upload, much better than the 2-3 week long projects I've worked on in the past. This may be a new way of working, keep it simple and get them out fast.

Superman is a Dick was featured on FunnyJunk so it's getting lots of hits now.

Animating Petals in Blender

2009-02-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick 4 second test animation that I made with Blender. One of the many amazing features of Blender is the SoftBodies physics simluation which I used here to automaically animate the petal's flowing motion. This is going to add a great secondary movement to my otherwise simple character animation.

Another feature used in this test is the Inverse Kniematics tool which allows me to control the Flower's entire body just by moving a single handle (An Empty) on it's neck. My old Judo teacher used to say that wherever the head goes, the body follows. He must have been a Blenderhead too!

Animating a Flower with Blender test

Superman is a Dick! - Version 2.0

2009-01-31T04:42:00.001-08:00

Youtube recently switched their default video format to widescreen so I decided to re-upload my old Superman sketch from last year as it was meant to be seen. I also took this opportunity to make a few major fixes as I was always disappointed with how my previous flabby edit turned out.

Changes made: 30 seconds removed, sound effects added, Gamma (ray?) correction to lighten the visuals. Timing of music and dialog re-jigged to make it snappier.

I think it's a much tighter and funnier sketch now, hopefully the ratings and comments will agree. Here's Superman is a Dick version 2 point oh!

For those of you who are interested here's 8 minutes of out-takes from filming.

The Flower Show

2009-01-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

I've written four 1 minute episodes of a mini web series and after leaving the script alone for a week I now can't decide whether it's good enough to warrant the time making it. It will take me about two months to make which is a long time to spend on a project if ultimately it's unfunny and nobody watches it. On the other hand this project is perfect as a stepping stone to learning 3D computer animation.

Over the four episodes it's a story about the relationship between two flowers sharing a pot. Exciting stuff I know! But the character designs had to be simple if I was going to attempt this in 3D. And you can't get simpler than "Heads on sticks" (TM).

I'm going to post the script for the first and last episodes on BSG and see what sort of feedback it gets before continuing on. My feeling is that's it's not amazingly funny but over the four episodes it could come together as a nice story with some funny moments. We shall see what the feedback is like!

If I had a penny for every time...

2009-01-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

According to TubeMogul.com my ShoePie videos have now been watched over a million times! WooHoo! It's kind of pleasing to officially break the big 1 Mill. milestone. Although the head honchos at Youtube have yet to come round with a celebratory basket of Muffins.

The majority of views have been for the Star Wars and Incredible Hulk parodies that I made very early on. I could try and make more of this type of geeky stuff but I'd prefer to focus on trying to come up with an original web series. Besides, AtomFilm's Star Wars competition already has a winner this year...it just hasn't been nominated, voted for, or awarded the prize yet.

....just awesome!

I'm currently writing a 4-part web series about... Flowers! ....Yeah I don't konw what I'm thinking either. I should be writing a sketch about Bobba Fett getting his head stuck in a toilet. But I had an idea about Flowers so I have to write that now. So I won't be posting any sketches for a while but I might post a few test animations as I'm using Blender quite a bit at the moment.

The Christmas Special 2008!

2008-12-22T01:43:00.000-08:00

It's finally here! No not Christmas, that's Thursday. I'm talking about the ShoePie Christmas special. James and Chris did an excellent job with the acting, their finest work to date. Unfortunately the animation was a bit rushed due to the immovable deadline. I tried emailing the Pope for an extension but he was unwilling to budge on this whole 25th of December. So here it is in all it's glorious widescreen Youtubery.

Merry Christmas!!

The Elves are working hard!

2008-12-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

The Christmas special is progressing very, very slowly! Due to time constraints I've decided to ditch the idea of using hand drawn sketches for the character animation. Hopefully I'll try the technique again when I don't have such a tight deadline to hit.

For the time being here's a sneak look at the characters who will be appearing in the Xmas special.

Fingers crossed it will be sliding down chimneys next week.

The Project Managers 2

2008-11-25T12:14:00.000-08:00

Episode 2 of the Project Managers is now live! Please check it out. Warning though! There's lots of swear words. If you enjoy it please comment and rate here.

One down one to go! Now I can start work on the Xmas special which is recorded and waiting to be animated.

How Many?!

2008-11-17T16:17:00.000-08:00

TubeMogul.com have released a new feature. It's a public profile page (and badge!) to show the world just how many views you've had across all the video sharing sites.

Closing in on the 1 Million video views mark which is kind of cool.

Update: The stats seem quite unreliable at the moment! But it should be about 966k!

My Current Projects

2008-11-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted to have a bit of a news section on ShoePie.co.uk so I could post animation updates and maybe some links to things I like. I'm not sure if this is going to work out yet but anyway, here's what I'm up to at the moment.

Project Managers 2
We recorded the audio for this sketch last week, just from the audio I think it's going to turn out funnier than the first episode. Most of the artwork is reused from Episode 1 so this should be out within a week or so.

The Xmas Special
I wanted to make a Christmas special last year. In fact I wanted to make 24 of them for an animated advent calender! ...but that was a stupid idea! So I'm glad I have one in production for this year. I'm going to be using a slightly different method for this one where I draw the characters by hand using my lightbox. This should end up somewhere between a traditional hand-drawn look and a cut-out style animation.

Secret Project
I'm not giving anything away about this one except to say it's not comedy.

Hmmmm, well that was fairly painless. Now I'll do the usual blogger thing of leaving it 4 months until my next post.

I'll just finish by saying COME ON RANDY COUTURE!!!

The Muscle Whisperer - Episode 2

2008-06-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! Bob Johnson finally gets some love! This animation was featured by Youtube. My first ever feature!

To say reactions were mixed is an understatement. A lot of people hated it but thankfully a lot of people enjoyed it too. Many people who liked it went on to check out my other videos and left great ratings and comments. So it's definitely about finding your audience and not being too put off by the thousands of people who get the unbearable urge to tell you how gay you are.