George Carlin

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!

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!

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

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!!

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

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

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?