THE TOPANGA MONSTER
Good morning. How are you? I thought I’d put the important thing up front for once and launch right into a brand new Monster. Karen Linderman of the Topanga Film Festival invited me to make a new Monster advertising the event, and I sprung into action. Or rather, I came up with an idea, and then asked friend of the Monsters Simone Giuliani to spring into action, which he did by writing and excellent, suspenseful 45 second music cue that became my guide for the animation part.
I’m teaching myself animation as I go along on the Monsters — you can see the very first one on Monster 10 — and because of it most of the Monsters tend to move at a rather stately pace. They also tend to inhabit smallish spaces. There’s no real reason for this beyond an odd mental barrier towards changing the size relationship of creature to sheet of paper. Well, no more of that! This time around I thought I’d try for a fast Monster in a big space. Just to see if I could.
Simone’s excellent music really spurred me on to push the speed and the mood, so that the animation could keep up with the music. I hope you enjoyed the result. (If you have a reasonably fast computer, check it out full screen. It’s quite nice that way. :^)
More Monsters are brewing.
Please stay tuned.
I LOVE IT! 🙂
Fantastic job! It does look quite nice in full screen. Now I want to see a film starring these little guys.
I love to see a monster in bell bottoms running like that….*S*
You have really opened up a lot of possibilities here.
Very, very nice Stefan. I really like the new approach. The ice cream cone is my favorite part. As if a monster would tempted by yummy goodness of dairy.
Hee hee! I love the shot of him running from underneath and the narrowed eyes around the corner. Very cautious, this monster!
I knew there was something off-kilter the minute he pushed me off the paper. Fer starters, that guy’s fingers didn’t fit no-way, no-how, with what he was doin’ to me. He had slim, soft fingers, you know, the type you’d except to paint one a dem paintings, ya know, wit da oils and all?
I was all dis-comboobulated. He sets me down in a real doozy of a place, all hallways, ya see? All corners and knicks and knooks and crap, no place to go but one, and then I starts hearin’ these noises, right, clippity clop, like some dame in Chelsea runnin’ fer her life in a pair-a bad platform heels? And then I sees it–the hand. Leastaways, it had proper criminal=like meatloaf fingers, just the type for offin’ a meddlesome Pee Eye like myself.
So I makes a run fer it, and then I sees what he’s offerin’ me, and that’s when I know fer sure that this ain’t no ordinary criminal; this is what we call a Mastermind, since practi-cally no-one out there knows about my weakness for ice-cream, leastaways, no one but the strawberry blonde what fed it to me.
Anyhow, I blinked, and meatloaf fingers was pointin’ a piece at me da size-a Milwaukee, so I figgers we’re past da song-and-dance-with-a-strawberry-blonde-down-memory-lane anyhows, and I start to run again, but den I see dere’s only one place left to go, see?
It’s a door.
No choice. I throws it open, and what do I see? A party. For me.
Those lily-fingered, artist-criminal types, you gotta watch out fer ’em. They can make a monster cry, even this one, Guy Monsta, Pee Eye.