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Here's a little piece we did a while back for the Dallas Mavericks. It has Santa in it. Other than that, really no reason to be posting it.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!
T
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Mavs Save Christmas
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Here's a little piece we did a while back for the Dallas Mavericks. It has Santa in it. Other than that, really no reason to be posting it.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!
T
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Here's a little piece we did a while back for the Dallas Mavericks. It has Santa in it. Other than that, really no reason to be posting it.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!
T
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Inspector McCloud in espanol, senor!
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Currently in the process of mixing the Spanish Language voice track for Inspector McCloud's Stormwater Adventures. Here is a taste of scene 11, where McCloud brings in some celebrity muscle to sway the crowd.
Enjoy it while you can... as you can see, there's an outside chance that someone will cry copyright infringement (even though it is clearly a parody!).
T
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Currently in the process of mixing the Spanish Language voice track for Inspector McCloud's Stormwater Adventures. Here is a taste of scene 11, where McCloud brings in some celebrity muscle to sway the crowd.
T
Monday, November 2, 2009
More BetterKidsTV Character updates
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More to come on that, BTW...
T
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This fella is Jake - a beach bum yes, but don't let looks deceive you. Jake runs the most successful business in Atlantic Beach.
He's also got a pretty sweet pad, fully loaded with the latest in entertainment and desktop technology.
More to come on that, BTW...
T
Friday, October 30, 2009
Bellisima!
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Updates of one of the characters we're developing for the BetterKidsTV project.
Though we're still in the script development stage, we're close enough to start finalizing the designs on most of our characters, so these assets are not only designed, but prepped for animation!
She's a cute kid, and I think she'll be a fun character once voiced and animated.
T
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Updates of one of the characters we're developing for the BetterKidsTV project.
Though we're still in the script development stage, we're close enough to start finalizing the designs on most of our characters, so these assets are not only designed, but prepped for animation!
She's a cute kid, and I think she'll be a fun character once voiced and animated.
T
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Stainboy in HD
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Flinch Studio just finished remastering the Stainboy series we created for Tim Burton back in 2000 and 2001 for a Museum of Modern Art exhibit honoring the director's work.
Because this series was created entirely with Flash vector art, it is Resolution Independent, so none of the design assets had to be recreated at higher resolutions... but we faced huge challenges and spent a great deal of time converting the compositions from their original 4:3 screen ratio to 16:9 for HD.
The first challenge was updating these assets to the latest versions of Flash. For some reason, many of these old Flash 3 & 4 files were opening up and we simply weren't seeing the animation as we created it... heads, eyes and arms were just not there anymore. The original SWFs we output in 2001 still look okay, but the newly-reopened FLAs and their subsequent outputs were a monstrosity. This strange compatibility contradiction occurred somewhere between Flash 4 and 7... so we've been looking at it and scratching our heads for years.
To fix the issue, we would have to drill down into every single problem symbol to simply reveal each element - pupils, fingers, etc... and then it would show up on the stage, like "look Flash! See? there it is"... "oh yes, thanks, I got it." This was the case for dozens of deeply nested symbols in each file.
So you save as a new file... but the next time you open it - poof! All the changes were gone! So it was fix fix fix, output, pray. We had to figure out how to make our fixes more permanent for these files, so we could make changes after post if necessary.
Part of the problem may have been the odd way we chose to execute the animation. Because of limited bandwidth back in "those days" our file sizes had to be ridiculously small - we're talking under 1MB or no approvals from Shockwave, who hosted the movies. So every 40 or 50 K we could shave off mattered... hence, we kicked into R&D mode.
We did a fair amount of R&D in 2000 while working with Shockwave on this gig, including finding a practical way to portray Burton's watercolor stain FX with vectors. Shockwave had a team of coders working on it (this was a very prestigious project for them), and we figured out a solution in 2 days using the tools at hand.
We also discovered that executing the animation segments as movie clips and controlling their frame designations with commands would save us hundreds of KB (rather than using animated graphics clips), so entire files were rebuilt that way like some kind of animation/code hybrid. We were outputting SWFs, so the final product looked fine... but trying to decipher the animation in the FLA (or any non SWF output) was pointless. So for this project, we had to reconvert the movies entirely back to a linear playback so they would output into post-production-friendly frame sequences correctly.
And of course, there were the stains. All of the animated stains were created using multi-layered shape tweens of raw gradients of varying transparencies. They worked fine when we originally created them, but... well, shape tweens are finicky enough, but 8-year old shape tweens from 5 releases ago are nothing short of a nightmare. Much time went into repairing the tweens and making those stains work again. Permanently!
Finally, there was the challenge of Post Production, including our first foray into Blu Ray DVD production & authoring. After much learning & testing (our biggest problem turned out to be audio synch), we had a product that looked and sounded amazing on a Blu Ray / HD screen setup. It even looks pretty good on YouTube!
It was kind of amazing seeing Stainboy at this size, this resolution.... like we've never seen it before. It's not often I get the chance to be thankful I chose Flash as my medium of choice - this was definitely one of those times!
I hope you enjoy these shorts equal to or greater than the amount of hair we pulled out bringing them to HD!
T
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Flinch Studio just finished remastering the Stainboy series we created for Tim Burton back in 2000 and 2001 for a Museum of Modern Art exhibit honoring the director's work.
Because this series was created entirely with Flash vector art, it is Resolution Independent, so none of the design assets had to be recreated at higher resolutions... but we faced huge challenges and spent a great deal of time converting the compositions from their original 4:3 screen ratio to 16:9 for HD.
Episode 1
The first challenge was updating these assets to the latest versions of Flash. For some reason, many of these old Flash 3 & 4 files were opening up and we simply weren't seeing the animation as we created it... heads, eyes and arms were just not there anymore. The original SWFs we output in 2001 still look okay, but the newly-reopened FLAs and their subsequent outputs were a monstrosity. This strange compatibility contradiction occurred somewhere between Flash 4 and 7... so we've been looking at it and scratching our heads for years.
Episode 2
To fix the issue, we would have to drill down into every single problem symbol to simply reveal each element - pupils, fingers, etc... and then it would show up on the stage, like "look Flash! See? there it is"... "oh yes, thanks, I got it." This was the case for dozens of deeply nested symbols in each file.
So you save as a new file... but the next time you open it - poof! All the changes were gone! So it was fix fix fix, output, pray. We had to figure out how to make our fixes more permanent for these files, so we could make changes after post if necessary.
Part of the problem may have been the odd way we chose to execute the animation. Because of limited bandwidth back in "those days" our file sizes had to be ridiculously small - we're talking under 1MB or no approvals from Shockwave, who hosted the movies. So every 40 or 50 K we could shave off mattered... hence, we kicked into R&D mode.
Episode 3
We did a fair amount of R&D in 2000 while working with Shockwave on this gig, including finding a practical way to portray Burton's watercolor stain FX with vectors. Shockwave had a team of coders working on it (this was a very prestigious project for them), and we figured out a solution in 2 days using the tools at hand.
We also discovered that executing the animation segments as movie clips and controlling their frame designations with commands would save us hundreds of KB (rather than using animated graphics clips), so entire files were rebuilt that way like some kind of animation/code hybrid. We were outputting SWFs, so the final product looked fine... but trying to decipher the animation in the FLA (or any non SWF output) was pointless. So for this project, we had to reconvert the movies entirely back to a linear playback so they would output into post-production-friendly frame sequences correctly.
Episode 4
And of course, there were the stains. All of the animated stains were created using multi-layered shape tweens of raw gradients of varying transparencies. They worked fine when we originally created them, but... well, shape tweens are finicky enough, but 8-year old shape tweens from 5 releases ago are nothing short of a nightmare. Much time went into repairing the tweens and making those stains work again. Permanently!
Episode 5
Finally, there was the challenge of Post Production, including our first foray into Blu Ray DVD production & authoring. After much learning & testing (our biggest problem turned out to be audio synch), we had a product that looked and sounded amazing on a Blu Ray / HD screen setup. It even looks pretty good on YouTube!
Episode 6
It was kind of amazing seeing Stainboy at this size, this resolution.... like we've never seen it before. It's not often I get the chance to be thankful I chose Flash as my medium of choice - this was definitely one of those times!
I hope you enjoy these shorts equal to or greater than the amount of hair we pulled out bringing them to HD!
T
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
If you like chasin' your tail...
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This one bubbled to the surface many years back. Still tickles me a little bit. Sorry for the roughshod appearance - these are the raw squeezins, right out of the coconut.
Copyright 2000 Tony Grillo
Puppy Boy. Like so many superheroes before him, born of a radioactive bite. Hey, it was either that or being fused in some kind of transporter. It's really just an excuse to show dogs doing funny things... and introduce the world to this talented canine cast:
Copyright 2000 Tony Grillo
I don't know if we'd ever see any actual action... when this was conceived, it was more about the silly, mundane day-to-day life of a hero - in this case, among a city of dogs who attempt to deny their base, doggish desires - like rolling-off in the grass and butt-sniffing on a first date.
Nowadays, Adult Swim shows like like the Venture Brothers, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Family Guy cover this subject matter pretty completely. Still, I hope we get to churn out some dopey laughs with this one sometime.
T
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This one bubbled to the surface many years back. Still tickles me a little bit. Sorry for the roughshod appearance - these are the raw squeezins, right out of the coconut.
Copyright 2000 Tony GrilloPuppy Boy. Like so many superheroes before him, born of a radioactive bite. Hey, it was either that or being fused in some kind of transporter. It's really just an excuse to show dogs doing funny things... and introduce the world to this talented canine cast:
Copyright 2000 Tony GrilloI don't know if we'd ever see any actual action... when this was conceived, it was more about the silly, mundane day-to-day life of a hero - in this case, among a city of dogs who attempt to deny their base, doggish desires - like rolling-off in the grass and butt-sniffing on a first date.
Nowadays, Adult Swim shows like like the Venture Brothers, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Family Guy cover this subject matter pretty completely. Still, I hope we get to churn out some dopey laughs with this one sometime.
T
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Better Kids
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As we wrap up on the Inspector McCloud project, we're putting together a new project for Better kids TV. It's a series of videos designed to educate kids about finance in an entertaining way. The project is pretty involved, incorporating multiple media and new technologies to present a combination of animation and live action.
Here's a peek at the main characters from story that weaves through the lessons and interviews.
I'd love to tell you more about the project, but it's still early in the process, and we can't share too much info. As Willie is busy cranking out some more looks for the project, we're digging into our live-action production roots to "cast" some of the live action roles. More to come...
T
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As we wrap up on the Inspector McCloud project, we're putting together a new project for Better kids TV. It's a series of videos designed to educate kids about finance in an entertaining way. The project is pretty involved, incorporating multiple media and new technologies to present a combination of animation and live action.
Here's a peek at the main characters from story that weaves through the lessons and interviews.
I'd love to tell you more about the project, but it's still early in the process, and we can't share too much info. As Willie is busy cranking out some more looks for the project, we're digging into our live-action production roots to "cast" some of the live action roles. More to come...T
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