I Have the Power!

When I was about 10 years old I got lost one evening coming home from a friend's house,  I found myself at a dark scary crossroads which had four possible alleyways to choose from.  And then from the darkest of the Four directions I heard someone shout 'By the Power of Grayskull'.  So I chose that path, and when I came out the other side, I knew where I was!  He-Man had saved me!... from ending up back at my mate's house.

Anyway, I've come up with the idea for my next sketch and it's He-Man related.  I have this incredible voice actor lined up who is going to record all the voices for me and I'm pretty excited about the idea as I've not seen anything like it done before.  I can't wait to get started on this one.  ETA is mid to late February.

As I'm on a bit of a nostalgia trip I thought I'd share some great He-Man related artwork that I found a while back. The first two are from MonsterBrains blog which I highly recommend you check out for all sorts of crazy monster artwork.  These are posters or artwork that would come with the toys.

Here's Skeletor looking like a Pimp (Click for larger versions), I don't remember Webstor being such a short arse though.

And here's an epic battle scene.  I love how much is going on in this poster, everyone just doing their thing.  It's not exactly a great military tactic but if wars were won by adopting cool poses then Mer-Man would be a shoe in for king of the universe.

If you want to see more of these posters check out MonsterBrains.

Aswell as the old Mattel artwork many artists have been re-imagining He-Man over the years.  Here's some artwork by a guy callled Mattias Fahlberg.

With his Spiked skin and Trident arm Spikor was already one of the most bad ass characters from the MOTU world.  This image takes his evil brutishness up another notch.

Whereas the toy of the Webstor character (the short arse from earlier) never really looked that terrifying.  But this image really taps into his creepy Spider origins.

Check out more of Mattias's images here.

And the final image is from an artist called Raul Abonitalla Jnr.  An incredible Frankenstein\Zombie looking re-imagining of Trap-Jaw.  This makes me want to see a darker, more adult targeted MOTU film.  Surely Chris Nolan can't be that busy now can he?

ShoePie's Year End Review - 2011

What just happened?!

I'll start with the positives.  I became a professional comedy writer this year (sort of).  In that I wrote 5 episodes of a children's TV show which will be on the telly next year.  Unfortunately it's not enough work to justify giving up the day job just yet.  It was however a great learning experience and proof to myself that I can achieve a certain standard, hit deadlines and generally not suck when thrown in at the deep end.

My video output took a dip this year thanks to a 7 month layoff.  Only 5 new videos produced and two of them don't really count.  But I was pleased with the feedback for Terminator Ultimatum and the Penguin Thief sketches so the year ended strong.  I've also made a lot of improvements on the VFX front by adding Syntheyes to my skill set.

But what about the Stats?

According to Youtube statistics for 2011 my videos were viewed 363,000 times and my subscriber count rose by 64.  That sounds good until I look at 2010 when I had 602,000 views, and an increase of 211 subscribers.  More worryingly, the videos produced in 2011 accounted for only 7,000 of the 363K views, which is very sad because they're some of my strongest stuff.

I think I can improve next year if I start upping my output again although I probably need at least one big hit if I'm to get anywhere near 2010's figures.

Next Year

I'm currently working on some CG character animation for a friend's sketch show pilot.  I've learned a tonne of stuff working on that and my next Blender animation should be a giant leap on from what you've seen with Brian Park.

I have the same old ambitions this year as every year.  Develop a web series, make a kick-ass short film and do some television writing.  So fingers crossed I can achieve at least one of those goals!

Thanks for the support and here's a teaser for one of next year's sketches :0) - Happy New Year!

Christmas Card Designs

It wasn't all messing about with Penguins this year.  I also designed these Christmas cards for a friend and local personal trainer to send out to his clients.

The Christmas Penguin Thief

The ShoePie Christmas special tradition keeps going for another year!  Here's my 2011 effort, I hope you enjoy.  If you would like to share this video please share this link as that will help keep the traffic coming to my site.  Happy Christmas!!

But it's not all bad news!

In less depressing news I have brought one of these:

That's not me by the way!!

It's a Chroma key suit that's used for removing an actor from the scene.  I thought it would be helpful tomorrow when I'm filming a hand puppet sketch.  It means that I don't have to hide under a table when I move the puppets...  What a loser I would have looked if I had to do that!