For the launch of the multi-platform video game Condemned 2, Sega turned to director Julian Stokoe at Yukfoo Animation to bring their viral campaign to life. Stokoe, along with Clemenger BBDO Sydney Australia directed 3 Flash-animated shorts that play counter to the gory visuals inside the game. Mukpuddy produced the animation. Here’s Pony Heart Quest:
Watch the other two - Lollipop Gift Parade and Clown Flower Time.
This year’s Channel Frederator Awards will take place on June 4th in New York City, and I hereby implore you, as a Flash-loving fool, to go vote - especially in the Best Flash Film category. Last year Jessica Borutski took the top prize for her I Like Pandas short, and this year the 3 finalists should all be familiar to CHF regulars - The Bros. McLeod (The M Man), Doug Bresler (Trapped in the Drive-thru) and Chris Harding (Make Mine Shoebox). We posted about Make Mine Shoebox, a collaboration between Maura Cluthe and Harding, back in 2005 - but let’s enjoy that again…
Alex Dron, who was featured here back in November, is up for the Kiwi Award, which will highlight the top film from New Zealand. His short Fot is up against Mukpuddy’s Sparkle Friends - go vote!
Alex Dron, an animator out of Auckland, New Zealand, spends his days at Yukfoo Animation Studios, where he swims in a talented director pool. The studio lists him as a talented artists with “imagination and the ability to realise it,” and this aparently extends beyond his TV spot projects at Yukfoo. From his home studio, Dron created this dialog-free short about a football (soccer) player with high ambition and low results. It’s titled Fot.
Animation can be a tedious process, inching along at 2 or 3 seconds a day. It can also be lightening fast, as proved by Mukpuddy at the New Zealand 48Hours Film Competition. To ensure no teams write their work beforehand, the film must include random elements announced at the beginning of the competition. This year’s list included a hypochondriac character named Jerry Reed, the use of the dialog “What do you call that?”, and the use of a rope.
Mukpuddy’s film Cape Fear went all the way to the National Finals, winning the Auckland division. Congrats, guys.
The talented gang at Mukpuddy Animation have posted a few new episodes from their series Sparkle Friends. Episodes 11 and 12 each feature over 3 minutes of animation and are airing on New Zealand TV as part of a variety show called What Now. Here’s episode 11, titled Return of the Gungi. Head over to the Mukpuddy blog to see episode 12, Yabba Dabba Don’t!
New Zealand-based animation studio Mukpuddy is back with a second season of Sparkle Friends, due to air soon on New Zealand TV. You can watch the trailer below, and to all Flash animators out there - the Muks are looking for a clip of broadcast-quality animation to place inside a TV screen on their show. Head over to their blog to read more.
Celebrating Oral Health Month, New Zealand’s 
Studio 2 program recently unleashed The Adventures of the Colgate Taste Buddies Competition. Kids were challenged to create a comic strip featuring the Colgate Taste Buddies, and the winning submission would be animated by Mukpuddy, the New Zealand-based Flash-animation studio.
The winners were Liam and Rachel Thompson, and after their character designs were polished by the Muks, the short went into a blindingly-fast 2 week production. You can see pre-production materials over at the Mukpuddy blog and below is the resulting animated short.
