Rufus Voice test

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

The Big Breakfast

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

Farmageddon - the book

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

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

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

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

Nick Frost voice test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A slightly more finished test render.

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

Tom walk test

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

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

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

***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