2000AD Message Board Advent Calendar COMMENTS thread.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

CARROLLTACULAR

How long did that take?! Amazing 

[von Boom]

That was fantastic animation work Mike. Brilliant stuff!

Keep 'em coming please.

[David Broughton]

Thanks Lee and Bolt,  I wish there was more of this story.

Beautiful Art Darren, love all the detail and the blurred city scape through the window really adds depth. I love the gag too...Santy klegg!  Love it!

[Eamonn Clarke]

Sensitive Klegg as Santa it is he playing old St Nick Klegg?
Brilliant stuff, Mr Stephens

[shaolin_monkey]

It's always good to see Sensitive Klegg make a misunderstood appearance!  I also loved Clarence going for a second set of wings re the Angel Gang!! 

[von Boom]

Santa Klegg  Love it.

[Mike Carroll]

Glad everyone seems to like Cambermeg Green! The idea came from a conversation I had with Leonia about this year's advent calendar: originally I was working on another Christmas Presents from Another Dimension scene, but Leonia suggested I should do something animated instead. I resisted that idea at first because I figured it would take too long to do anything complex, but then she said, "Keep it simple. Do a Mega-City One version of Trumpton or something like that."

We bounced a few story ideas around, and quickly developed some rules to keep it Trumptonesque:

1. The characters don't have mouths (yay! No lip-synching!), so the story is mostly told through the narrator.

2. The character designs should be pretty basic: this is why the Judges don't have knee-pads, elbow-pads or badge-chains, and why there's no detailing on their badges, belts or shoulder-pads.

3. The camera is almost always stationary because it's tricky to move the camera when doing stop-motion animation (but I allowed myself to break this rule after Dredd addresses the narrator!).

4. It shouldn't be too violent - Trumpton and its neighbouring towns aren't know for their levels of violence. You'll notice that there are no Lawgivers in Cambermeg Green, not even a holster for them on the Judges' boots.

I wasted about two days trying to design MC1 buildings that looked like they were made of painted cardboard, but they just didn't work - they were too distracting.

I also spent far too long trying to make the characters' movements look slightly jerky to mimic the stop-motion effect. Like most stop-motion of the time, the Trumpton shows were animated at twelve frames per second, which is pretty much the lowest FPS rate you can use to maintain the persistence of vision (that's the illusion that the objects are actually animated, as opposed to a series of individual frames), but I wasn't easily able to copy that effect in the time I had available.

How long did that take?! Amazing 

In total, it took about eight days to do the graphics (so that comes to about 17 seconds per day, which is actually a very high rate compared to real stop-motion animation!), then about three days to stitch the individual shots together and do the narration and music. Leonia did the voice of Mrs Gunderson, but didn't want to be credited for that because Gunderson's voice appears after the credits roll up on Walter's screen: if the rest of the story is supposed to be an old cartoon that Walter is watching, it wouldn't make sense for Gunderson to be credited on that cartoon!

-- Mike

[Eamonn Clarke]

Stunned by the amount of work that must have been, especially Giant nipping through traffic

[Mike Carroll]

Stunned by the amount of work that must have been, especially Giant nipping through traffic

Thanks, Eamonn!

Oddly enough, that was actually one of the easiest shots to animate! The trick with something like that is to move the vehicles (they all move at pretty much the same speed) then work out the path the Judge has to take. It required a little tweaking here and there to make sure Giant didn't clip or pass through any of the vehicles, but not much.

Getting Hershey to throw the book, on the other hand, was a nightmare - though mostly that was because it took me ages to tweak the book's path so that it passed under the camera with the front of the book closest to us... Which can barely be seen in the clip!


--Mike

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

shaolin_monkey - Really great work and plenty of laughs too.
eamonn1961 - Fantastic work. Clever idea, excellently executed.
Beeks - Awesome and some nice artwork there too.
-MikeD- - That was incredible, great art and excellent story.
Mike Carroll - Lovely. This put such a big smile on my face and several laughs too.
Bolt-01 & Lee - A fantastic daily treat. Great art and story.
Darren Stephens - Excellent. Made me love Sensitive Klegg even more.
shaolin_monkey and Steve Green - Great idea. Still laughing at it.

[Judge Nutmeg]

very good stuff so far, best Dredd animation released this year by a cursed earthmile

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Cambermeg. Wow.

[shaolin_monkey]

Stu, that is inspired! It has a real 'Attack of the Mutant Snow Goons' vibe about it! All the battered snow perps in the background made me chortle!

[Fungus]

Nice one Stu
Snow Judges, staring us in the face!

[Pete Wells]

A wonderful couple of days! Just like in real life, the advent calendar is the first thing I do when I wake up, so getting up in December is a real treat! Over the last few days:

Mike Carroll: I watched this when I'd come home pissed on Friday night. When I woke up with my stinking hangover on Saturday morning I thought I'd dreamt about a Trumpton MC-1, so it was a nice surprise that it was real! Beautiful stuff!
Bolt and Lee: finished the tale in fine style, Dredd is a shit, isn't he?
Darren Stephens:  Santative Klegg was beautiful! So many fun little details in the picture, glorious!
Shaolin Monkey & the tireless Steve Green: Breathtaking stuff, the Sale of the Century music was inspired!
Stu: Good Grud, that's brilliant! I love Mean's arm! It's a beautiful picture!

Thank you to all for putting a sloppy grin on my fat face!