Gnomes now on sale!

hurry over to the Cutesypoo Toys online shop and grab yourself a gnome! 

they are going fast so act quickly

everyone who buys one will get a special gift

its a set of 4 mini papertoy gnomes! print em out and put em on yer desk for some extra happiness!

Cone Gnomes for sale Friday March 6th

Cutesypoo Toys will be releasing 7 cute cone gnomes for sale on friday March 6th 2009!
they will be available at 12pm on their Etsy online store

Handmade in Canada and printed by Spoonflower.com 

there will also be one rare Angry gnome available for that grumpy puss out there...

learning Maya 3D animation- first try

I've been trying to get in to 3D animation to expand my skillset an open more chances for work. It took me a while but i finally had a chance to actually animate a character. i found a clip from an old peter sellers movie and animated to it using a free character i found online. take a look.

i'm going to do some more soon to add to my portfolio. it won't be enough to get into Pixar... but maybe a local studio will take a chance on me.

eskimo ice-cream!

it's been a while since i've posted anything.... been busy doing stuff that can't be posted here. but!

i just finished some new plush toys for another gallery show.

it's called "Freezer Isle" at Phantom Gallery March 14th in L.A.

from what i understand they are going to fill empty store windows with art displays.. so i'm not exactly sure where it will be.. but you can check HERE for more info.

So i made these... ICE-KIMOS! basically ice-cream eskimos (i know it's not entirely politically correct, but Ice-Cream Inuits just don't have the same ring) 

they are in the colours of  Neapolitan ice-cream... which looks better than it tastes (i'm an ice-cream snob)

Now for sale at Cutesypootoys.com

You can now purchase your very own Musseloom from the Cutesypoo Toys website! he's only $25.00 (usd) plus shipping. hurry and get yours now before Christmas!


BUY HERE

Monster Plush now for sale on ETSY!

If you head on over to Etsy.com you can find my monster plush for sale through the Cutesypoo Toys Etsy shop!

Made with various types of fabric and each with its own unique theme, they range in price between $45 to $50 each (plus shipping). Remember, each is a one of a kind handmade work of art. Once these are gone.. they're gone! 

Cutesypoo toys soon to release Musseloom!

Cutesypoo Toys are proud to present, MUSSELOOM!

coming next week! Musseloom plush toys will be released through DKE toys. they were designed by yours truly and manufactured by ESC toys.  just in time for Christmas! 

stay tuned for more news!

Happy tree friends new short!

I again had the pleasure of contributing some animation to another Happy Tree Friends, Ka-Pow! short. this ones called "Splendid’s SSSSSuper Squad : Mirror, Mirror" I have to say, the whole thing came out FANTASTIC! kudos to Roque and all those involved for such a bang up job! but coming from Ghostbot, i'm not entirely surprised.

My sequence starts at 1:48 and goes until, 2:15. yes, i destroyed a couple of endangered species. it was fun.

PLUSH IT

Serena Kuhl's group plush show, PLUSH IT is under way down in AUS at the Ruban Rat gallery in Sydney. If you're in the area, go check it out.. and check out my piece, Rick Licorice as shown below.

*UPDATE!* you can now buy the pieces in the show off the Ruban Rat website HERE!

SUPER POWER TIME FORCE!

I recently had the pleasure of creating a song for a compilation album that my good friend Hobo Divine produced. It is now available on ITUNES only ten bucks! thats plenty affordable...and you can listen to previews of each song. My song is "SPTF! - Closing Credits" under the name GET!

the concept was to make a piece of music inspired japanese hero TV shows from the 70's and an image made by Hobo Divine. So check it out... then BUY IT! it's completely independently produced and all revenue is divided equally amongst all the artists.. so you know your money is not going to some big mean corporation.

Stop motion tests

I never thought I would get into this... but i've become obsessed with stop motion animation.

My wife and I have been commissioned to make a short stop motion film for an upcoming project which will remain nameless for copyright reasons... but I thought I would share my first attempts at this new craft. 

this one was my first try. I just wanted to do a quick test to see if I could actually do it. I found an old robot sculpture I made like 8 years ago that had wire arms I could pose. i dusted off my old DV camera (used only once) and downloaded a free iStopMotion software trial. the lighting is quite bad and I had no real purpose other than to make it move... so don't judge me too harshly.

this next one I actually tried to create better lighting and used my wife's Canon digital camera. I downloaded a trial of Dragon, a great little stop motion program developed by the guys who made the United Airlines Dragon commercial (yes it was all stop motion), it can control a digital camera so the resolution of the frames is much much higher than using a stinky old DV cam.. plus its reasonably priced at around 250 bucks.

 I used an old plush doll my wife made a long time ago that she didn't care about.. stuck in some 20 gauge steel wire from home depot (which i do not recommend since it is too springy and does not hold its position well). I tried attaching the feet to the table using magnets... but i found that even though i used  super strong rare earth magnets, which you can barely pry apart, it still was not strong enough for balancing at precarious angles. So for the short I will be using bolt and screw tie-downs. 

 So I made it move... again with no purpose other than to test my own ability to make the thing move. (the table kept moving and i wasn't concentrating on it very much... so it's not my best effort).

my dad and I are working on a proper steel armature with ball joints that will give me the ability to do much more subtle movements and be much sturdier, you can buy armature sets online.. but they are pretty expensive, luckily my dad has a workshop and knows all about metal parts, so we are making our own from scratch. i'll post pictures of it later.

WEBSITE UPDATE

hey i finally figured out HTML and remade my website www.goldenrusset.com ! it looks much better and has a nicer navigation. plus new images! go check it out.
as you can see here i also updated the look of the blog. now it matches the new website. ooh so co-ordinated!

Turkey Lurkey Time!

well today is Canadian Thanksgiving... so i think this is appropriate. even though its technically a christmas song.

Cone-Gnome

here's a new guy, the Cone-Gnome.
He's 7 1/2 inches tall and made from natural canvas with an iron-on print. i plan to make more of these since the iron-on makes it easy. maybe i'll even sell them! just in time for christmas.

Monster Art Rally / Plush It

So i got in to 2, count em, 2 art shows this year! my first ever. both are plush art. both are this October/November.

first is "Monster Art Rally" @ the Gallery 1988 San Francisco. these are the pieces:

and here's my piece for "Plush It" @ the Ruban Rat gallery in Australia .. also in October

HTF on CHF

Check it out, there's a whole article about the new Happy Tree Friends, Ka-Pow episode i worked on... i even got mentioned as "the nefarious" Jayson Thiessen... hahahaha.. *GLOAT*

http://coldhardflash.com/2008/09/ka-pow-series-ready-for-battle.html

they isolated the huge fight scene on one of the vids posted... which i animated the first half of.

New Happy Tree Friends cartoon

I got to animate some scenes on a cool new "Happy Tree Friends" episode, produced by the good folks at Ghostbot.
it's part of a new series of action shorts called "Ka-POW"
check it out!

my scenes start when Flippy bursts out of the dead carcass, and ends when he gets stabbed in the gut. ENJOY!

Cutesypoo toys at dke toys booth at SDCC

Cutesypoo toys at dke toys booth at SDCC, originally uploaded by cutesypoo.

My wife and I have joined forces and became, Cutesypoo Toys (basically i just joined her). we are releasing 3 plush toys in the near future, 2 versions of her Egg Tarts (one has a happy face and the other has a sleepy one)
and Musseloom, a mushroom character i designed.

our handmade prototypes were previewed at this year's San Diego Comicon at the DKE toys booth, and are being manufactured by ESC.

pucca season 2 episodes

one of my fave episodes of Pucca from season 2 someone posted on youtube. the song and dance at the end turned out quite well i think. (forgive the high pitched sound.. bad youtube recording)



and here's another one



yet another one... (this story was actually my idea :D )

beaker croons to rick astley