Farmageddon Blog

Farmageddon continues online

2011-06-15T13:48:00.003+01:00

Don't forget to keep up with Farmageddon at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloon website.

Here's the latest installment!

Speech Balloons

2011-01-08T11:27:00.004Z

The Farmageddon comic strips are getting a long overdue re-run, courtesy of Paul Birch at the Birmingham Mail.

http://blogs.birminghammail.net/speechballoon/2011/01/farmageddon-saturdays-at-speec.html

Dusting off the cobwebs

2011-01-07T10:46:00.003Z

What happened to 2010? It's been a while hasn't it?

The good news is that things are moving again, so expect some more posts in coming days. In the meantime we're sprucing up the look of the blog, and the website is not too far behind.

New renders

2009-11-12T12:23:00.001Z

Yes, we're still kicking! Here is a new render of Cool Bob.

Housekeeping

2009-05-05T10:54:00.003+01:00

Quiet, isn't it.

Things are still happening behind the scenes, so its not actually that quiet! We've done some development recently and have been using TV's Curtis Jobling in the role of consultant/Executive Producer. He's eaten a lot of biscuits but has also given us a lot of good notes. More on this later in the year.

Also I've just merged in the old Mad Tom blog, so all the posts can be found in the archive here. The old blog has now been deleted! Oh the power!!

31,689 and counting

2008-11-26T16:38:00.003Z

I was just sorting out a video upload on You Tube when I spotted that our little tractor test has been viewed a staggering 31, 689 times to date. That's about 80 new views every day since its been up there. Madness!

138 TODAY!!!!!

2008-08-13T17:59:00.003+01:00

Yes beloved readers.....it is our Grand Leaders Birthing Day today, just but a scant 138 years ago, in the deepest, darkest pits of Mordor, our Niel was born. Former co-founder of Picturebox Publishing, Spiral Staircase Publishing and founder of top notch animation studio Qurios, artist, cartoonist and writer supremo (and top bald geezer) may I be the first to congratulate my bestest bud many happy returns!

Here's to another 138 years of fun and brain storming old man....and this time next year....the BU better be completed....I'm getting tired of walking everywhere!!

George Carlin

2008-06-23T15:40:00.003+01:00

The name for Rufus was partially inspired by the character of the same name from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, played by George Carlin. The Grammy-award winning comedian has sadly died at the age of 71.

We wish him an excellent adventure.

The Empire Strikes Back!

2008-04-28T09:50:00.003+01:00

Hello friends, just a quickie to blatantly abuse my powers here at Farmageddon Towers and promote my new blog EMPIRE OF THE GOTHTWINZ....please feel free to make a visit for all types of mayhem and madness from the wacky world of a freelance illustrator! I've tried to link everyone that I know from here, but if I've missed anyone or you'd like to exchange links then just let me know!

Be seeing you!

Hmmmmmm....how Odd!

2008-03-28T13:30:00.004Z

One of my many favourite characters has always been Professor Odd, we both have a certain thing for Victorian inventors and the whole beginning of the industrial age, all those valves and steam pistons, visually, a great period in time. There's something about that age, maybe it was the whole Empire, spirit of adventure and almost stupid heroics of the upper classes that makes it an easy period for a vast array of stories to be told....I don't know...but it just works!

We wanted some sort of slightly mad inventor, maybe on the lines of Doc Brown from the Back to the Future trilogy or even a Dr Frankenstein type character, somewhere along the lines we decided on our Victorian hero Odd. He didn't appear in many of the original strips but he featured in some of my favourite story lines (20,000 leagues under the paddling pool and when they travelled to a future Farm still crack me up!)

Well, imbetween my daily chores of freelancing what seems like an endless task of greetings cards, I was working on a character for a 'Grandpa' birthday card. I was a little concerned about the original design of Odd (created many years ago for a black and white newspaper strip) and whilst designing my 'granpa' geezer it suddenly dawned on me that I was infact subconsciously drawing an updated Odd! The Grandpa card was eventually changed to an image of a map so I've officially rescued Odd from the cluthes of the Evil Greetings Card Empire!

So, dear readers, here he is, in all his new found glory....I really like him as he appears a bit more pompous than before, what do you all think?

Mini Trailer

2008-02-18T15:41:00.004Z

We are still kicking!

Here is a short trailer I've put together of the most polished tests we've done so far. Music is by Steve Luck.

Merry Christmas Y'all!!

2007-12-23T21:00:00.000Z

Hello dear readers, it's at this time of year that you look back on the past 12 months with rose tinted glasses, all the ups and downs, the highs, the lows, the laughs, the tears, goddammit even those pesky dreams about giant Edam cheeses chasing you down a dark street, dressed in only a bowler hat somehow brings a lump to the ol'throat....ahhh....memories........well, they mean sod all coz it truly has been the most hectic year I can remember.

A trip to Annecy for the Farm with Niel, coping with Mr Bling for almost an entire week.(trying me hardest not to sing out the Bob the Builder theme tune whilst happy slapping him for inadvertingly making me buy hundreds of pounds worth of Bob toys for my oldest daugter) My freelance work has literally been non-stop this year. Sorting out secondry school, one million nursery events to attend, PC's exploding with 2 years worth of artwork locked in them, car dying on me....the list could go on. So in all honesty, I feel like I've let down our characters a tad on The Farm, the guys at Qurios Towers have done sterling work though to make up for my sins.....so all I can add is wishing you all a very Merry Chrimbo and a fruitful New Year, keep checking us out for more updates soon and more new stuff to show you all!!

....and as a final gesture of desperation, heres an ancient illo from the Farm I did eons ago....I was aiming on doing a new Xmas one...but....well, you all know now!

Toodles

T-shirt tales

2007-11-05T21:23:00.001Z

This was me just over a month ago on a crisp sunny day in Newcastle having fun in the Great North Run.
What's this got to do with Farmageddon? Well I was running to raise money for Cancer research who sent me a very bright T-shirt to wear on the day. Well, the t-shirt was a tad on the snug side and made me feel quite uncomfortable. So instead I wore one of the Farmageddon T-shirts we had made for our trip to Annecy earlier this year. This design is Dalton smacked into the front of a plane. On the back of the shirt in large white letters is Farmageddon.tv.
I managed to complete the run in 2 hours 38 minutes and 10 seconds. It was bloody hard but I'm hoping to do it again next year. I'm still getting in the last bits of sponsorship money so its not too late, if you'd like to donate you can do it online here.
Thanks!

Rufus Voice test

2007-09-20T11:24:00.000+01:00

This test, animated by Matt, uses a short audio clip of Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz.

The Big Breakfast

2007-09-13T21:19:00.000+01:00

Hello there me dearies! Many apologies for my utter lack of posts, I could bore you with tales of having to take a certain Ring on a dangerous journey to the land of Morder, where I should cast it into the mouth of Mount Doom to save all of the North East of England....but I'd be lying. Truth is I've had a shed load of freelance work on which I'd started before our trip to fair Annecy and have just about finished as I type!

No matter though as the crew at Qurios Towers have been beavering away like a ...erm...pack of beavers doing some sterling work on the Farm and its characters! Well done you lot!

Here's something that I finally managed to finish...the character was done many a moon back and at last he's been placed in all his glory where he belongs....ON A BOX OF THE FABLED CEREAL 'NUK'EMS'!

Niel and and I did a couple of the newspaper strips where the gang were sat at the breakfast table and for some reason I did boxes of Nuk'Em cereal. Of course, it was all Black and White in those days (they hadn't invented colour yet), I seem to remember having a tiny character of me on the box instead of our new full colour hero, Captain Nuke.

I was heavily influenced by the works of genius of a certain Mr Dunn who's cereal boxes where a definate 'inspiration' for me. I love the way he managed to get the 'yellowy' retro look. Anyway, this box is for you Mr D! Stand up Sir and take a bow!.....(Don't sue me.....)

Who knows.....I may post something new in another year or so!

Barn exterior work-in-progress

2007-09-12T15:12:00.000+01:00

Farmageddon - the book

2007-09-11T16:42:00.000+01:00

Want to know more about the origins of Farmageddon? Well now you can! We've put together our first collection of comic strips, available for the first time ever! Over 100 pages of madness! Click on the button below the image to buy your very own copy!

More Tractor Tom-foolery

2007-09-07T12:19:00.000+01:00

Following on from the earlier tests Ciarán has been working on a new version that has helped to determine some of the look for the environment. We have had many discussions on clouds and smoke; the clouds are 2D artwork positioned as required, the smoke is still a particle system but we've tried to make it a simple style that fits in with the comic origins of the show. We like it but what do you think???

Cool Bob model turnaround

2007-08-24T15:19:00.000+01:00

I know things have been a bit quiet on the blog lately but there is plenty of development still going on here. Chris has started to build Cool Bob and here is the first 3D render of the model.

Also ,you can see a little interview including some Farmageddon work here.

Screaming Tom

2007-08-08T14:59:00.001+01:00

A still from the test posted earlier. Proper updates on their way.

Nick Frost voice test

2007-07-20T10:43:00.001+01:00

As well as doing some tests with Mark Benton we have tried out Nick Frost's voice for Tom. While we don't think it's quite right we still like his voice and I'd like to try him on one of the other characters some time soon. This audio clip is from Hot Fuzz.

Dirty Tractor Action

2007-07-11T09:13:00.000+01:00

We've been playing around with methods of pushing the tractor around our world. We want to have some real world physics but not be too bogged down by it. Ciarán has set up a system that does just that, and here are some nice tests!

Tom's new Tractor

2007-07-04T10:43:00.000+01:00

Ged built this model from a fairly vague brief, some mood board reference images and a pretty basic sketch! We are very pleased with the end result - its a tractor but its got some nice twists that make it a bit special!

Annecy pictures

2007-06-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

Here are Gordon's pictures from Annecy! Hell, we're not going to win any awards from photography but we had fun. This first picture is the view from the front of our hotel looking over the lake. Unfortunately our room looked out onto the steep hillside at the back of the hotel. Curtis swears he saw a deer at his window but we have our doubts.

We really enjoyed Curtis' Frankenstein's Cat stand, there was a lot of activity going on around it and it seemed to be getting a lot of positive nods from passers by. The only other stand that really caught our attention was Uli Meyers.

We had a fun afternoon at Dreamworks picnic, thanks to Shelly Page. We made some new friends and I bumped into one or two old mates from long ago!

As part of my Great North Run training I went for a 30 minute run by the side of the lake, it was a lot harder than I expected due to the higher temperatures. Gordon was waiting to snap me on my return up the VERY steep hill to our hotel! Thanks a lot! I can return the favour by showing you this lovely picture of Gordon relaxing on our flight home - he has a thing about the great silver birds of the sky and wonders why they don't flap their wings. I think he's been watching too much of Bill Shatner in the Twilight Zone!

The Madness of Annecy

2007-06-25T16:34:00.000+01:00

I've been pestered by TV's Curtis Jobling to update our blog with our many adventures at this years Annecy animation festival. I've been holding back on an update because Gordon has all the pictures and he's being a bit of a girl in getting them to me! So you'll have to conjure up beautiful images in your head for now!
The trip was very eventful, the keyword this year seems to be 'serendipity'. We managed to be in the right places at the right times, talk to the right people and make the right impression (mostly). Even my own backwater ways didn't seem to stop us.
It was great to see some old friends again, like Uli, Matt, Jean-Paul and Mark Broecking. We were looked after in style by the ever courteous Chris Williams who happily drove us around the fair town of Annecy. TV's Curtis Jobling was always on hand for a giggle, moral support and bottom burbs.
There is a picture floating around somewhere of myself and Mr Bling sitting in a bar, me holding the fattest cigar I've seen in many a year. If it ever turns up I'll post it here.
Farmageddon got some serious attention which we are following up on, as did a second project in development with the aforementioned Mr Bling. Gordon and I threw some ideas around for a new pre-school show we'd like to develop further, its early days on that one but we are both optomistic. Another contender for development features a character who started life on The Funny Farm but didn't make it into Farmageddon. More on all of this very soon I hope!

Jampix

2007-06-04T10:13:00.000+01:00

I've added a link to Jampix blog, or Jean Paul Vermeullen as he's actually called! I worked with Jean Paul back in the 90's at Uli Meyer Studios in London. Jean Paul is a funny guy and a talented artist, so check out his blog!! http://jampix.blogspot.com/

Tom facial animation test

2007-05-25T16:10:00.000+01:00

We've spoken to Mark Benton about voicing the part of Tom. This test uses a piece of dialogue from Mark in the excellent Early Doors. The animation was done by Ciarán. We've found less mouth shapes seems to give a better result rather than trying to hit every single inflection. We think the voice fits Tom pretty well, what do you think?

Rufus takes shape

2007-05-24T16:10:00.001+01:00

The 3D model of Rufus is taking form. He's changed a bit along the way, see the artwork below, but he seems to be working well. We're trying out the copper hair as his name means 'red hair'.

Tom Walk test 2

2007-05-23T14:15:00.001+01:00

A slightly more finished test render.

Here are a couple of still which show the detail a bit better.

Tom walk test

2007-05-17T14:17:00.000+01:00

This latest test by Matt shows the Tom model in action. We've spent a long time getting the rigging to work, its something that will be ongoing but we are fairly happy with the results so far. We widened Tom's hat a bit too and his shirt will be getting a bit lighter shortly.

Oh, Matt said to look at the footprints in the grass, he was very pleased with that, (and rightly so!)

The outside world - full of green stuff

2007-05-08T16:15:00.000+01:00

I managed to get some time away over the weekend and spent a very sunny day at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Right now it has some fantastic work by the very talented Andy Goldsworthy and is very much worth a visit. It made me realise just how rich and textured the British landscape is. I would love to capture some of this essence but without grinding our 3D scenes to a standstill. I think what I'm talking about is those Summer afternoons of endless possibilities, that feeling we had as kids where you were free to explore, sit by a stream, think, explore or just throw stones into a river. Calvin & Hobbes captured this feeling perfectly, as does My Neighbor Totoro. Thats what I'd really like to capture on screen. No small order!
Hope you enjoy the pictures, if you like the outside world take a look at Gretel Parkers blog, it's a magical place which often is full of lovely pictures of the countryside, (don't let the skip full of books convince you otherwise!)

Gordon's Run

2007-05-04T15:59:00.000+01:00

I mentioned this a while ago and have just re-discovered it. This was for Gordon's 30th birthday. If you are familiar with Logan's Run you'll understand why! Sorry Gordon, guess I owe you a pint or two!

T-shirts & Book mockups

2007-05-03T10:59:00.000+01:00

***UPDATE*** I've put two T-shirts on Ebay, tell your friends. Here are the links: Ka-boom design, Wump Wump design

Thanks to everyone for sending in their colour choices, its been really interesting. The red shirt seems very popular so far. I'llp ut up some new images soon to see how that might look.

I've just ordered some sample T-shirts for our first range of designs. They are all black & white and use a single comic frame as a front image. This is a mockup of how the final t-shirt will look. Please let me know what you think - and if you want to order one that would be splendid!

I've also got some mockups of a book collection made. This features about half of the 400+ comic strips as they might appear in a published book collection. These will be going out to some publishers shortly to try to generate some interest in doing a book for real.

We are also working on a website and shop front which can feature all of this stuff. In the meantime we are preparing stuff for Annecy and working on our trailer. We'll post more images shortly.
Niel

Colour choices

2007-04-09T15:26:00.000+01:00

Which is your favourite?

Morph slider test

2007-04-04T13:58:00.000+01:00

Chris has been testing out a system for using a set of sliders in the viewport to control the morph targets of the characters. This isn't something we've devised from scratch, there are plenty of examples of it around but Chris is doing a great job of getting it working for our characters. Given that animators and artists are primarily visual people this seems like a much better system than inputting values to control the face morphs. Plus its can easily combine two morphs onto one controller which gives some great results, for example the eyebrows on Tom are seperate objects to the rest of the head (this is so we can make sure they don't cast ugly shadows over his face) but by using the slider control system we can combine their seperate morph animation into the one controller.

More Tom morph development

2007-04-03T15:05:00.000+01:00

More Tom development

2007-04-02T10:04:00.000+01:00

Tom continues to evolve. We feel this is getting close but he still needs some subtle tweaks.

Have a good weekend!

2007-03-30T17:14:00.000+01:00

Night in the kitchen

2007-03-27T13:07:00.000+01:00

We are testing out the interior under different lighting conditions. We posted a test earlier of it in a daytime setting.

... now here is the same scene at night.

We've also done a small test render to see how it might look. (The orginal render was done at full HD size but youtube tends to mush it all up!)

Over the edge!

2007-03-26T17:10:00.000+01:00

Gordon came over last week for a catch-up and a story meeting. He loved what we had done with the farmhouse on the hill. Then he said "wouldn't it be cool if it was almost falling off!" Everyone liked the concept so we went to work on a revised version which tiltled the house almost over the edge.

The theory is that the house was built at least 100 years ago when the hill top was probably much bigger and safer. Since then the cliff edge has eroded away making the hilltop much more of a dangerous place to be. Rather than move house Tom and his family have used wooden props to support the Farms receeding base.

Brighter interior

2007-03-22T13:02:00.000Z

The Farm on the hill

2007-03-16T15:25:00.001Z

Remember the farmhouse we were building? Well it's grown a hill now.

It's based in no small part on a local landmark called Roseberry Topping which has a very distinctive sharks fin shape. This is the highest point locally and can be seen from alomst anywhere in the area. It's also where I proposed to my wife so it's a special place as well as being a distinctive shape. I'm hoping we can all go over there for a field trip some time soon, with sandwiches and everything!

We've also been doing some work on the farmhouse interior. Like all good shows it's a lot bigger on the inside! The doors and windows are in roughly the same place as the outside but we've been creative with the rest of the dimentions. The lighting hits us hard on the render times but we think we have a cunning plan to make this workable.

Title sequence

2007-03-15T09:16:00.000Z

We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago, myself, Gordon and Clive Tonge. Clive is going to be supplying musical wonderment to our little trailer, he has already come up with a potential title piece. As well as being a musical sort Clive is an award winning animation director in his own right.

It was a really good meeting and we threw around lots of ideas, we focused on our musical influences that we wanted to capture.

I spent a hour one night fueled with inspiration (or red wine) and jotted down these proposed lyrics for the title sequence:

Rufus was a lonely boy
Without a proper home
One night a scary cosmic storm
Caused his little bed to roam

It took him far far far away
To a strange and funny farm
Where animals can walk and talk
And dinosaurs are calm

Tom and Bernie love him so
Like he was their very own
But Flossie doesn't like this much
It makes her plot and moan

His best friends now a two rabbits
Dalton and Cool Bob
He learns at school with Dr Odd
Which is not an easy job

Madeline and Moonstar
Round off our friendly band
But Auntie and her evil schemes
Are always close at hand

Welcome to Geddon Farm
It's a crazy land of mud
You wouldn't want to ever leave
Even if you could!

It will need some work and is probably too long right now but the process getting here has been a lot of fun so far. We are having another story meeting on Monday and we will be starting to storyboard next week too.

Cell render tests

2007-03-14T15:33:00.000Z

We don't think this is the way to go but we tried anyway.

Head test

2007-03-14T09:04:00.000Z

This is a head model built by Chris. He's used a basic bone setup for this test, no mesh morphing yet. The results are very nice already, it has a 'muppet' quality about it which I really like.

Render tests part 1

2007-03-08T12:26:00.000Z

Taking 2D artwork and translating it into 3D throws up a lot of
questions. Much has to change in translation but what is kept should
still hold the essence of the source material. Chris has started
working on a model of Tom based on this fairly loose model sheet.
Once he has something to show I'll post it here.
In the meantime we are using two older models to test out our render setup, surface detail and animation. They are both 'Tom' models, one is a head built by me about 4 years ago, the other is a full body mesh built by Ged about 2 years ago. This was one of Ged's very first models in 3D, the proportions are not quite right but its good enough for our tests.

I think I mentioned before about trying to get some surface detail into the models to take the edge off the 3D look. 3D is great but it can often look clinical and cold, we are trying out various methods to avoid killing off our characters before they have really come to life! This is one of those tests, the surface has a bump map made up of marks and finger prints to emulate claymation's unique look. (Ged has brought in a large slap of Sculpy clay for us to hammer away at and use for reference.)

It's hard to make out on this clip so I've enlarged part of the image. The full resolution version shows the surface detail nicely.

Chilling developments

2007-03-07T14:29:00.000Z

We are in the middle of lots of separate strands of development, eventually they will all come together into a coherent whole, hopefully! This is one of those strands, continuing development of the world the characters inhabit. This test uses Ged's fridge as it was the more finished between Geds and Glazys, but thanks anyway Mr G! (See old posts.)

Ged's sick brand of humour is fairly evident in this clip!

As always please let us know what you think so far!

Hell-o-matic

2007-03-02T16:20:00.000Z

Ged has been building a 3D model based upon Gordon's concept sketch we posted a while ago.
This is the original drawing:

These two test renders show our ideas for the final look and feel. We are still not sure if we should go down the route of stylised flat colours or give the objects more detail in the textures. Have a look at the two images and tell us what you think!

More Publicity

2007-01-28T10:06:00.000Z

There was a small piece in this months copy of Televisual magazine about Farmageddon, which was nice!

I've decided not to post all of the daily comics here as if I miss a few days posting they clog up like in the previous post where there were loads of strips! From now on I'll post the current strip along with the post, if you want to see all the daily episodes please subscribe to our email edition, see the box to the left.

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip

2007-01-20T12:35:00.000Z

Phew! What a lot of strips! I really should do this more fequently! Anyway, news to come shortly of our first production meeting and Gordon is going to tell you all about MySpace! Hurrah!

Glazy's Tread & Hoof Service - no horse or Tank too large

2007-01-04T15:03:00.000Z

Mr Glazebrook has added some lovely tracks onto the tank model he started eaons ago while working here!

Today's comic is one of my favourites, I really like the centre panel and hope to have it on a T-shirt one day soon!

Early test animation - Zimov turnaround

2007-01-03T19:45:00.000Z

As we are about to embark on test animation and character building I thought it would be good to review some of the basic tests we've produced so far. This first one is of Zimov, one of our two resident aliens. The models will be getting redone but the principle is pretty much the same. We're trying to embed some feel of stop motion into ther CG including putting 'plastercine' marks on the surface of the characters.

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip

2007-01-02T11:26:00.000Z

Happy Birthday Mr F!

2006-12-30T10:49:00.000Z

Yes, its Gordon's birthday. He is one of those unfortunate chaps whose birthdays are somewhat obscured by the Festive period so I think its only fair that I sing and dance about it here on the blog, no doubt a few bloated merry-makers are still wandering past here during the break! So raise a glass with me to our good chum Mr Fraser! Happy Birthday matey, have a good year! (I'll dig out a poster I did a few years ago for Gordon's birthday and post it here next week!)

Not done a lot of work over the last week, just enjoyed sitting on my large arse and spending time at home with the family. Here are the most recent daily comic strips, if you've been subscribing you will have noticed their abscence from your inbox. I've just given it a short festive rest - normal service will resume next week. If you haven't already subscribed then shame on you!

Niel

Farmageddon hits the news!

2006-12-22T08:50:00.000Z

The news of our development work has hit the newspapers! We've had coverage this week in the Necastle Journal, The Northern Echo and the Evening Gazette, (all newspapers in the North-East of England for those reading this living in the wilds!)I was also interviewed on Radio Cleveland on Monday, I didn't hear it as I was on my way down to London but apaprently it went out as a 'news' item!! Core blimey!
We have our first proper development meeting in the New Year too! Plans are in place for some T-shirts and the book is also plodding along. So keep dropping by in the New Year for lots more stuff!

In the meantime we both wish you a great Christmas and a festive New Year. Thanks for supporting us during 2006!

Merry Christmas

2006-12-21T09:03:00.000Z

So... the good news!

2006-12-13T20:19:00.000Z

The good news is that we have secured funding to help us develop Farmageddon as an animated trailer. So from the New Year we will be posting losts of ongoing development work right here. The main website will also be getting a makeover.

Anyway here are the most recent comic strips for your delight. If you like them please subscribe to the daily email which has todays strip delivered for free!! You know you want it! So go on, subscribe to our daily email and have a giggle.*

*We cannot guarentee that you will actually giggle, a range of emotions from apathy to contempt and sometimes hatred are the more usual reactions. But we live in hope. Subscribe!

More Farmageddon strips

2006-12-09T10:37:00.000Z

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip - Spiders, cartoons and canibalism

2006-12-05T15:17:00.000Z

Great News!

2006-11-30T15:24:00.000Z

I'm bursting with news! Sorry to tease but I don't want to spill the beans until next week when its all confirmed, suffice to say I'm a happy bunny this afternoon! (Got two more pages done on the book too.)
Here is today's strip:

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip

2006-11-29T12:58:00.000Z

The book collection is coming along nicely. I've done the first 40 pages which has been quite an epic job! It covers the first 80 strips which have now all been re-lettered, toned and had numerous other minor tweaks done. These have needed the most work as we were learning on the job so I'm trying to make them more consistent with the later ones. I know I'm on rocky 'Lucas' ground when it comes to re-inventing work from the past but I think its worthwhile. At least now the spelling should be correct - but please let me know if you spot any typos!
So, 40 pages down, just another 140 to go!

Farmageddon Daily Strips - the last few days

2006-11-27T11:58:00.000Z

I've been busy out and about so have missed a couple of recent updates. Here are the last few strips.

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip - Chicken Gag

2006-11-22T11:47:00.000Z

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip - Dictionary deception

2006-11-21T12:35:00.000Z

Not much to say about this one - we moved away from these sort of gags as the series progressed. Instead we tried to concerntrate on the characters more.

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip - Gaseous anomaly

2006-11-20T10:57:00.000Z

Cross-blog pollination

2006-11-19T10:29:00.000Z

That Mr Glazebrook has been at it again. Take a look at his blog for some Farmageddon related fun!

International rescue

2006-11-18T18:08:00.000Z

Just wanted to share a little observation with anyone who drops by. This blog has only really been up and running properly for a few days and already we have had visitors from around the globe. Hello to our readers from Illinois, Toronto and Buenos Aires. We have had quite a few from the UK too but if you're reading this and are from somewhere more exotic than Hartlepool please leave a comment and say hello!

Today's Farmageddon Comic Strip - The Termite-nator finds Tom

2006-11-18T18:02:00.000Z

Is this the end of the line for the Termite-nator??

This strip didn't need much tweaking doing to it, most of the lettering has been retained from the original. (I have made a font from scans of my original lettering so any reworkings I do have the look of the original but can just be simply typed in via the keyboard instead of being a time-consuming labour of love!)

A tiny clue...

2006-11-17T19:15:00.000Z

... to Gordon's post below!

The Termite-nator

2006-11-17T18:55:00.000Z

The Termite-nator was one of Gordon's ideas and is obvioulsy inspired by everyones favourite Terminator. we enjoyed playing with the squadron of flys and their attempts to overthrow mankind. We returned to this theme later in the strip.

As I'm posting these strips I'm doing quite a bit of restoration work on them. The orginal artwork was done on A3 sheets - 2 strips to a page. We've scanned in all the original strips into the computer, (apart from a few that have mysteriously disapeared), and I'm in the process of doing some tweaks to lettering, tone and general clean-up. Some take no time at all, others need a bit more TLC. I'll dedicate another post soon to a more in depth look at what I'm doing to the original artwork and what has changed. In the meantime enjoy todays strip. And remember you can get this in your email by subscribing here!

Here are a couple of earlier Termite-nator strips for completion.

Captain Atomic!

2006-11-17T18:48:00.000Z

Here's the fully coloured piece I was working on in all his ATOMIC glory!!!! Bet you still don't know what he's got to do with the Farm!!

A quick thanking you to the honourable Mr Gary Dunn.....I've been admiring his fine wares for a while now, an inspiration to us all!! (Daddy, when I grow up I wanna be like Mr. D!)

Farmageddon!

2006-11-16T20:45:00.000Z

Things are happening backstage, so to speak. The first major change is the project name. This is something we've been working on for months now and after some market research, (asking friends, forum pals and family) we've chosen Farmageddon as the new project name!

So in order to make things simple we've started a new blog which you can find here, http://farmageddontv.blogspot.com/.

The Mad Tom's Farm blog will remain here for prosperity but all new updates will be found on the Farmageddon blog, so please update your links to the new address!

So what is going on?

2006-11-16T20:42:00.000Z

If you've found us from the Mad Tom's Farm blog welcome! Farmageddon is the new name for the same project, so you are in familiar territory! The plan hasn't changed much - we still aim to bring this baby to a wider audience but we have some new ideas about how to get there. One of our ideas is to make some use of our back catalogue of 400+ comic strips. to that end we aim to get them into as many regional newspapers as possible over the coming months. we are also putting together a collected book which should be available in the New Year. So all good stuff hopefully!

Farmageddon Daily Strips

2006-11-16T18:31:00.000Z

We are testing out a system for delivering daily Farmageddon comic strips to your inbox. Its still in its early days but please sign up for it here!

WE LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-11-15T10:15:00.000Z

Blimey it must be Christmas......a new post at last! Here's a quick sketch I've been working on for myself really. It is Farm related but can anyone work out how (Niel is an employee of the company so therefore not allowed to join in) Answers on a postcard or a piece of red paper with the Queens head on, forward all mail to me!!

Hopefully I'll get this finished at some point in the next 20 years or so!

Welcome!!

2006-11-06T15:56:00.000Z

Tumbleweed

2006-11-01T16:32:00.000Z

I know, I know! Its been a while since we did some proper updates. Well things are happening behind the scenes and it won't be long before we have a lot more to show you.

So keep coming back please!

Niel

Ka-Boom

2006-10-25T14:38:00.000+01:00

Ok, a little bit of market research here. Would any out there buy this t-shirt, as beautifully modelled by our very own supermodel, Gordon.

That tank

2006-10-17T17:01:00.000+01:00

The importance of Tom's tank has diminished somewhat, but we still love it, so what the hell!

Brand Licensing report

2006-10-13T16:57:00.000+01:00

Last week saw us wandering the isles of Brand Licensing, the annual UK exhibition for all things brand-related. This was our first year attending and it proved to be very interesting. We saw this as more of a fact finding mission than anything else, so we spoke to lots of exhibitors and picked their brains about how they brought their brand ‘to market’, as they say!

All very interesting stuff, each seemed to have had a different journey with different methods that worked for them. The overriding message was that TV is not the only route, especially in recent years. We came away buzzing with possibilities and are currently putting tighter a plan of action using some of the stuff we learnt from the show.

It was also a great place for goodies! Gordon met Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt of Tracy Beaker fame. They were signing copies of their new book (which we got for free) and chatted at length with Gordon about illustration, book publishers, jewellery, vegetarian restaurants and Whitby! They both seemed very down to earth, friendly and unspoilt by their success and fame. I missed out as I was in a seminar about royalty payments! Gordon was good enough to get a signed copy for my daughter who is a big Beaker fan. The signed book made her day!

The show also had more than its fair share of suited characters including Curtis’ Bob the Builder. Some of them were a bit disturbing to say the least! The full sized Dalek on BBC Worldwide’s stand was a popular one.

Eee I ee I yo!

2006-09-25T09:29:00.000+01:00

Curtis Jobling has remininded me of one of my favourite Funny Farm comic strips, just wanted to share it with y'all. Take a moment to enjoy Curtis' blog here, especially his trampoline prowess!

A Great Book

2006-09-25T08:56:00.000+01:00

Its good to see the influence of 2D animation is still alive and well, as this book proves. I have high hopes for Open Season, its a 3D film that leans heavily on the huge history of 2D animation. This book shows some of that development and is well worth a look. Also I love the fur on the main character, we have had many fur related discussions for our rabbit characters, it would be great to get it looking something like this.

(Shame we don't have a feature film budget to experiment with, but we'll do what we can.)

Roof work

2006-09-10T17:49:00.000+01:00

As some of you suggested we are now working on improving the roof of the farm by building individual tiles instead of using a texture map to do the job. This is a work-in-progress.

On top of the World

2006-08-23T11:52:00.000+01:00

This image shows the other side of the farmhouse, we've added two bedroom windows onto the roof section.

Sunrise on Tom's Farm

2006-08-21T16:18:00.000+01:00

It is a crisp summer’s day in late August. The dew and mist slowly evaporate off the fields at the start of another day on the farm. This image shows the completed farm exterior model; see earlier posts for work-in-progress images. The grass is made using 3DS Max's hair & fur modifier.

Character Profile - Madeline Odd

2006-08-21T11:05:00.000+01:00

Madeline is a relatively new addition to the series; she never featured in the original comic strips. As we started to develop the show we quickly realised we needed a new human female character that could interact with Rufus. We toyed with using Flossie but realised that this would mean changing her character quite a lot. So Madeline was born. We took two existing characters from the comic strip, Dr Donald Odd and Madam Madd, and made them into a married couple. As Donald Odd is a Victorian-esq man of science and Madam Madd is a crazy mystic type we thought the clashes of culture would make for an interesting dynamic.
Madeline is basically a mix of her parents which makes her one of the most rounded characters; she has less of the extremes of her parents. She is intelligent, confident and usually knows the best outcome to a situation. She will not force her views on others which can sometimes mean her opinion is not always heard.

Lorie - the rabbit that never was

2006-08-11T12:09:00.000+01:00

During our tenure with Nelvana we had a conference call with an American writer whose name escapes me. She had a very good pedigree having worked on numerous animated shows as well as one or two live action comedies like The Cosby Show. During our discussions she suggested introducing a female rabbit called Lorie. To be honest neither Gordon nor I saw much mileage in the idea, but that’s just our opinion. Anyway, I did the quick sketch below to explore the possibilities. She’s a bit mumsy and not very exciting, probably because we weren’t set on fire by the concept. Just thought I'd share this with you, it’s a long time ago now and Lorie doesn't feature in our plans now. Onward and upwards eh!
Also worth mentioning, in a blatent attempt to get the number of comments up, its my birthday on Sunday! 23 already! Let the jokes commence.

Summer Magic

2006-08-10T10:17:00.000+01:00

It’s been a busy few weeks. We haven’t posted much but there has been a lot going on. We appointed animation consultants Red & Blue Productions to help us bring the Farm to market. They have already provided some much needed advice. We had a meeting with them in London during the middle of the heat wave a couple of weeks ago. What we realised was that we have got something worthwhile but we needed to refine it in certain areas. There were questions about the tank to resolve, the age of Rufus, who the main characters were, even the name of the project has come under much scrutiny. (So don’t be surprised if the name changes!)

Since then we’ve had many discussions and we believe we’ve managed to address all the issues and make the project into a more coherent entity too. We’ve now got to do some rewriting on our pitch material and come up with a new script.

I had a week in Northumberland on holiday with my family. As we spent a few nights on a Farm and lots of time exploring castles, woods and gardens I’ve had lots of inspiration for the Farm! On one particular day we go caught in a heavy rain storm while we were in a thick forest. The rain hardly got through the tree canopy and it made everything really quite magical. This is me camping it up on the edge of the covering.
It really was a good day for thinking and I hope the new ideas will feed back into the show. I really like this next pic as it reminds me of a Totoro style landscape of tree-tunnels! We defiantly need to get some of this magical feeling into our farm.
This week we’ve had meetings about funding and we are hopeful that by the end of the year we might have our first animation tests of our main characters. I’ll let you know how this goes over the next few weeks.

Ding Dong the Bells are Ringing!

2006-08-06T08:01:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the extreme lack of posts recently, Niel and myself have been very busy with Farm related work and our own illustration and animation jobs. (That's our excuse anyway!) As a reward, or punishment, for the huge gap in posts, I managed to locate one of my missing Farm paintings. I'm afraid that this is a scan of a pretty duff colour photocopy so apologies for the quality. For obvious reasons, Niel has the original as this was a wedding present for himself and his lovely wife Diane. Since this was done, Niel's hair seems to have slipped off his head and ended up on his chin.......surreal!

Ciaranator 9000 - Glazy Strikes Back

2006-07-14T08:45:00.000+01:00

That mischevious modeller Andrew Glazebrook has been at it again! He's taken one of the concept drawings from here and built it as a 3D model. Thanks Glazy, we think it looks great! Andrew has this posted on his blog:

Here's a quick 3D model I made based on Niel Bushnell's concept that he posted over on his Mad Tom's Farm blog. The model took around 75 mins but the render took 3 hours at 1024 x 768 in Vue, I did have it on the superior setting though. I've worked with Ciaran who this fridge is named after, and it bares little resemblance to him...for one thing Ciaran has a beard.

Gerard is building this here too - he started it a few weeks ago but we had to put him onto another project pretty quickly. His model has a few more details on it as I'd given him a lot of reference pictures that Glazy hasn't seen, including these:

When Ged is free to complete the fridge I'll post the results here.

In The Mix

2006-07-12T10:39:00.000+01:00

We've both tried to think of the influences on us when we came up with the main concepts for Mad Tom's Farm. Here are the results, (inspired by SFX magazines charts), although Gordon protests loudly about the Darling Buds of May!
The biggest two influences were Calvin & Hobbes and Garfield, not surprising considering it was a newspaper comic strip first and foremost. We were both big comic fans anyway, reading mostly UK comics like 2000AD. I'm still a fan of black & white artwork, there is a simple honesty to the the work that is lost is photoshop coloured comics.
The other infulences were from some of the shows we both enjoyed at the time, namely comedy and sci-fi! The Farm has a bit of each of these shows as well a being peppered with my other influences along the way that have either been unconcious or forgotton with time!

Character Profile - Tom

2006-07-07T17:12:00.000+01:00

I can't believe we've not done a proper 'character profile' for Tom yet! So to correct the oversight here is all you need to know about Tom.

Tom's not the sharpest knife in the draw, not by a long way, in fact he's not even in the draw! If he was in the draw it would be full of sheep and all the other knives would soon be blunt and living in tents. The draw itself would probably go a bit soggy underneath and no doubt all sorts of mushrooms and fungi would begin to grow on it. Shall I go on?

Tom was the first character we came up with and to be honest he was pretty two-dimensional to begin with, no pun intended. We wanted a typical country bumpkin sort who would be good for laughs and probably not much more. Over time Tom has, like all our characters, evolved. (He couldn't stay as simple forever now could he!)

Yes, he's still pretty stupid but what he knows about is the Farm and he knows it bloody well! The farm has been in his family since the dawn of farming and its traditions and methods, (unorthodox as they are), have been honed and passed down through the generations. He may give the outward appearance of just bumbling along but he knows stuff! Lots of stuff! Tom knows all the secrets of the farm, he a one-man confessional booth. Tom isn't judgemental, has no emotional baggage, no issues to resolve and no axe to grind, so he's the perfect person to work through your problems with. (Like all the best Psychiatrists he'll just throw your questions right back at you!)

He's also perfectly in tune with his surroundings, knowing when it’s going to rain, when to harvest and when to dance nude under the full moon! Tom is a classic family man, he loves to spend time with Bernie and little Flossie who can do no wrong in her fathers eye. The only time you would see Tom angry or raise his voice is in defence of his family and his farm.

Gordon posted some of the first Tom sketches in an earlier post but here are his first and last appearances to compare how his look developed over time.

Stand by!

2006-07-04T12:16:00.000+01:00

Gordon is receiving a message from the Mother Ship!

Sorry Gordon, I couldn't resist!

ITB: The End of the Beginning.......

2006-07-01T16:30:00.000+01:00

Well dear readers, these are the last two sheets of the earliest sketches that I could find. This first set is of some of my pencils of Bernard, Tom's HUMUNGOUS wife and all round lovely cook type woman.

At this stage, she was almost complete, I think the only major change we made was to enlarge and round off her bottom jaw line.

The main illo has a tiny homage to the Hellraiser films, an assortment of butchering knives hanging from her belt. I've always had a problem with the characters eating their friends(ie, cows, pigs and sheep etc!) I doubt we'd do that in the animation.

Another crazy thing I've just noticed is that Bernie has currant eyes (the bane of all greetings cards illustrators fact fans!) Her and Flossie were the only ones with eyes like this, whereas the rest of them have the classic, whites around their pupils. Mad eh?

This is it then, the last one! One last set of Tom's (funny how we concentated so much on Tom, but hardly anything else on the others!) Like the Bernie illo's above, we'd almost got him ready for the outside world, all he needed was a tiny bit more refinement and off he goe's!

Quite a few sheep illos on here as well, I like sheep...sheep are funny and soooo easy to draw. One of my all time favourite strips was of the sheep being sheared and then getting their wool knitted into wooly jumpers which they had to wear! All very silly!

ITB: Episode IV: The Phantom Thomas

2006-06-30T12:41:00.000+01:00

Here's the last set of Niel's character concept designs. Another selection of various Tom's (a herd of Tom's perhaps?) Again, you can see the basic's of the final Tom starting to show, espcially on the bottom few designs. I'm not to sure about the full length sketch, he kinda looks a bit creepy in a 'D'ya wanna see my puppies' type of way!
Yet some more portraits, I never knew Niel had done so many! These are some of my favourites of his, the geezer look's mad as!

This one's interesting. We have what I believe to be Niel's first ideas for Bernard and the fabled 'Nurse'. Bernie seem's a bit too fat and her hair's mental but you can get the basic idea about where we were heading with her. The right hand image of her still crack's me up, she doesn't appear to have any torso area, just a head, chest and to stumpy legs! To say that Nurse is slighty different to the yet unborn Flossie is an understatement!Special mention must also go to Niel's awesomely feeble attempt at getting into Uncle George Lucas' good books with his Darth illo....'Rufus.....I am your farmer!'

ITB: Episode III: Return of the Farmer

2006-06-29T08:54:00.000+01:00

Here's Niels last early Rufus design (that I can find anyway!) At this point we'd pretty much got Rufus nailed, as I mentioned yesterday, we still had to compress him a bit and make him a tad more cartoony but all the core ingredients are here!

I've got a couple of piggy images on here as well, I've got a feeling that the one on the left of Rufus was actually used in the first handful of strips.

This next set is of some basic Rufus poses. I'm not sure who the middle top face is meant to be, but whoever he is, he's got a cracking ear....IT'S GINORMOUS! I also love Niel's version of Wallace (top left)....ooohhh I really fancy a nice bit of cheese lad!

Here's some more Tom design's that I was playing around with. We really liked the idea of what Tom's hair would be like under his seemingly nailed on hat. As the whole theme of the Farm is madness, I like the idea of some type of insane hair that couldn't possibly fit inside the hat but once revealed, would spring out and have a sort of 'rooster' quaility. I seem to remember that we did a small handful of strips with Tom minus his hat but we eventually toned down his hair. As the ol'saying goes....Hair today.....gone tommorrow! (Thanks to Mr Bling for inspiring me to fill this blog with as many crap jokes as possible! This sheet also has the very first drawing of Rufus' Russian hat, which like tanks, I'm obsessed with! RUSSIAN HATS RULE!

ITB: Episode II: The Rufi Strike Back

2006-06-28T07:56:00.000+01:00

This next lot concentrate on designing Rufus. These were all done by Niel apart from the crappy one of Rufus looking angry! Again, like yesterdays blog, you can see how Rufus is starting to take shape. I've just noticed that Niel gave Rufus an earring on a few of his sketches, very cool but we must have dropped this as well to make him appear more younger.

The full length body sketches are pretty funny. Niel, being the perfectionist that he is, started by making Rufus more 'human' size. In practice this is great, but for a three panel strip which will be printed to a very small size, it could have caused problems. A lot of the secondry characters are animals which talk and are naturally smaller in height than your average geezer so we had to squash Ruf down to fit him into the frame (and also have room for the text bubbles)

I keep seeing my handwriting all over the place with the words 'my farm' this was a lame attempt to have the Farm actually called 'Myfarm' so we could crow bar the 'hilarious' joke into the strip.....I still don't get it!

In the beginning.......

2006-06-27T20:19:00.000+01:00

I finally found the very first rough drafts for Mad Tom's Farm, previously known as The Funny Farm. I'll put them up over the next few days as there's quite a few of the little blighters!

There are notes dotted on them all over the place and at first I was tempted to Photoshop them out but upon thinking about it (over a nice glass of Merlot 1869 and smoking my pipe) I decided to leave them in as a testomany to how close the strip nearly turned into a more adult aimed comic then what it finally morphed into!

You'll notice the names GOF and NIB here and there, GOF was my 'cartoonist' name (which I still use to this day but altered to Goth or Gothtwinz) and Niel's was NIB. You'll also see 'Picturebox' on most of the examples. This was the name of our former business (it was Niel's really....but that's a story for a long winters night dear readers) which Niel and I ran for a year or so, producing amongest The Farm, the Daily Sport's strip 'Flasher Mac' spot cartoons for the Sun and the Star, our baby, the comic 'Over the Edge' and various other arty related shenanigans.

If you can read my coffee induced scribblings, you'll see that the core characters were basically set up (but NO rabbits) the only major difference is the role of the daughter. Our first idea was to have her as a sex interest for Rufus (at one point she was a milk maid!) she was to be named Nurse (which I think we 'borrowed' from the nursey character in BlackadderII) We soon realized that the Farm should be for a wider audiance and so any 'adult' references were dropped and eventually, Nurse became Flossie, our much loved mini version of Bernard, her mother, with a taste for violence and revenge!

The funny thing that I noticed but never thought about before, is that above the name of Rufus are two characters a dog and a cat (called Dog and Cat....we must have been tired) These two never made it after our intial brainstorming session but instead, over time, were replaced by Dalton and then Cool Bob.

There's some of Niel's first designs for Tom, including his straw hat and bit of grass hanging from his mouth and my first page of very rough roughs mainly of Tom and Rufus. The geezer shouting 'DIE' must have been me venting my anger after a hard day at the office! There's about 2 or 3 of the Tom drawings where you can really see the beginnings of the soon to be fully designed character.

Evolution of a sketch

2006-06-23T16:59:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd posted this a while ago but looking back I can't find it anywhere, so here goes! This is a drawing I did as a valentines card for my wife. The first version was a black ink drawing done with various pens and indian ink.
Some time later I re-did it adding in letratone-style shading in Photoshop.
Finally a colour version!

Big Hug!

2006-06-22T17:16:00.000+01:00

Sometimes everyone just needs a big cuddle!