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It took far longer than I ever imagined it would, but I finally got OOT finished. It took the best part of a month to record the voices, do the animation and edit the whole thing together. Check it out here.

I’m still plugging away at OOT. I’ve got 1 min 14s left to film, then it’s off to the editing suite to tidy it all up. In the meantime, I got a couple of Alpha Team sets in a sale a few days ago and came up with an idea for an Alpha Team short. This is now distracting me from OOT because it’s shiny and new and doesn’t involve lots of tedious dialogue.

Here’s a couple of mock-ups of shots that I did in a spare moment. See if you can guess what the story will be for this one…

Charge in his robosuit outside some kind of mysterious portal. Wherever might it lead?

The evil Ogel and his minions plot some heinous crime against civilisation.

Today I have been mostly working on a single nine second tracking shot.

I spent a while yesterday building the set and today I finally got down to blocking, timing and filming the big tracking shot. Nothing exciting happens, it’s just Mike and Geoff walking down a street. The filming itself took something in the region of three and a half hours and by the end I was tearing my hair out but by crikey it’s one smooooth track.

OK, I know it’s not much to look at in still form but I’m pretty pleased with the finished product.

Just added a couple of new things to the site. The main one is my new tips page (now defunct). It’s interesting that I feel qualified to offer tips to people even though I haven’t actually finished a complete film yet. Some might consider that a little presumptuous.

I’ve also added the films page I meant to add last month. There’s not much to see there at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll become a vital resource in no time at all. Just as soon as I actually make a film to put on it.

While I’m on that subject, I’ve finished scripting and dialogue recording for Out Of Time (pending a replacement voice for one character who sounds rubbish at the moment) and have filmed a massive two minutes of footage so far. All that remains is a four minute outdoor scene complete with tracking shots, special effects, giant monsters and carnage on an epic scale. I’m hoping to get it finished in
time for the Brickswest 2003 comedy competition.

The Christmas message is done, but it’s only a fraction of what I’d intended to put in it. When it gets to midday on the last day of production and you’re still finishing the first minute’s shots, you have to bite the bullet and start thinking of ways to cut it down a little.

The lesson we’ve learned in the last few days is that the run-up to Christmas is not the best time to assign yourself a mammoth stop-motion animation project. I’m not particularly happy with it, but at least I got it out before Christmas day.

Finally, I’ve finished work until the new year, so I’m free to get on with the all-important business of animating plastic toys.

First up is this minor redesign. Nothing special, but I’ve added a few more pages so that everything is arranged a bit better. I’ll still post all the links to new stuff on this page, but there will be expanded info on other pages. You’ll get the hang of it.

Anyway, enough yakking. Now it’s time to get on with Mike & Geoff’s Christmas Message. It’ll just be a short piece - I got the idea for it while trying to figure out some camera angles for OOT and I’m hoping to have it finished in a couple of days.

OK, so I lied. My first proper film has a name now - “Out of Time” (OOT for short). You can download the trailer now by clicking the picture above. Please note that this trailer is completely made up, doesn’t really tell you much about the story and contains no actual footage from the film. Enjoy.

The music at the end is from “Jesus Built My Hotrod” by Ministry, fact fans.

A couple of “publicity” stills from my current project. I’m not going to hype it any more than this until it’s finished, so make the most of it.

The cast (left to right: Red, Yellow, Mike, White, Geoff)

A scientific looking prop - whatever can it be?