Seems like just yesterday that we watched the first Sparkle Friends episode, and below you can watch #27, titled How Now Sea Cow. It’s the latest Flash-animation from the New Zealand gang at Mukpuddy.
The Mukpuddy crew was asked to create an animated short for this year’s 48HOURS event - New Zealand’s largest filmmaking contest. While producing the short, they felt two D’s just didn’t cut it - so they made it in 3D!
The folks at Mukpuddy have created a new original pilot - It’s the Pughs (pronounced “Poos”). The series focuses on a “typical New Zealand family” who welcome a newborn baby, and a little brown baby poop into their happy clan. It’s the latest in a strong tradition of dookie characters in animation, that arguably started with John K’s first episode of The Goddamn George Liquor Program.
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.
