Mike Scott Animation

(Featured image by Kazmology).

Whaddayear eh, whaddayear.

Honestly don’t know where to begin. It’s all a bit of a swarm. So, what I can remember is – obvs did a full series of 20 Moosebox shorts. That was my main thing this year. They’re finished btw, we finished in September, but Nickelodeon haven’t yet released them on web. I’m doing what I can to get them to do that.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

#Moosebox teaser promo! Playing every day at 16:24 CAT after Spongebob on Nicktoons, DStv ch308 🙂 SO MANY NICE THINGS TO SAY ABOUT MOOSEBOX HNNN

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Sep 26, 2018 at 4:34am PDT

We launched Moosebox at the inaugural Comic Con South Africa:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

I dig this pic @shan_gia snapped of one of our #moosebox talks at @comicconafrica_official where we showed a few completed shorts. Lel, Dr. Hipster’s snarky mug on the big screen. Shannan also did fantastic boards for one of the Moosebox shorts. We should be wrapping soon, woo!

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Sep 16, 2018 at 11:53pm PDT

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Best photo lol! Team #Moosebox unite! 🙂

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Sep 14, 2018 at 6:07am PDT

Went overseas to Canada, and Annecy in France and Amsterdam with Kayla the awesome, did the Orange River river rafting for my brother’s birthday, did about 1,000,000 comic jams, prob went to Cape Town and Joburg a few times.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Holidaze. Paris and Amsterdam w. @kazmology

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Jun 18, 2018 at 2:40am PDT

Bought a house last year and it’s been one of the most stressful years last year and beginning of this year as I poured all my resources into getting it ready to rent out for end of year, and throughout the year, and also living in it when it wasn’t being rented out. Repaired a wall that cost a bunch, and various other bits and bobs. Anyways, love the place now, it has 5/5 stars on Airbnb, and it’s really just fantastic. Would have little mini panic-attacks shortly after getting it, trying to figure out how on earth I’d make it work with repayments. Luckily, that’s just about when I got the Moosebox 20-shorts gig. Worked with Mind’s Eye Creative on Moosebox 9 months overtime unpaid (to be honest, it’s been one of the smoothest-sailing ‘big’ jobs I’ve ever been involved with, Mind’s Eye know their 2D pipeline well), and took on odd jobs throughout to try and float myself, doing work in the evenings after Moosebox which was for all intents a full-time gig. It was an exhausting year, and has slowly tapered off into a nice vibe where I was finding more time to catch my breath, play some PS4 and Switch, see my buddy James and generally just ‘breathe’. Kayla and I met someone in Annecy that turned out to be a really great contact. We got signed up to develop a rad animation show for some really lovely clients in the UK and US. We’re almost done with that, and are both super proud of this new show.

I started a Bru & Boegie short last year and still haven’t finished it :/ would have liked to have done more on it, but it just kind of got mad scope-creep and I keep adding stuff to it.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Started this little #bruandboegie episode mid 2017, and guess what – HE STILL NOT DONE, LOL.

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Dec 6, 2018 at 2:17pm PST

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Bru’s best ‘I’m the boss of me’ walk. #bruandboegie #toonbooming #ughtoonbooming

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Aug 15, 2018 at 2:22pm PDT

Been earning some not-too-bad Youtube ad revenue. Clearly my 8bit animated vids with rad music by Japanese artist Take have rocked the party and pulled in the most loot with one vid clocking 6mil views.

I’m still feeling the effects from the fallout I had with my Bru & Boegie project in 2016. I think I had been building up all this energy for years to do Bru & Boegie, then when I finally got the deal, it was all systems go and I was firing on all cylinders. Soon into it, client was clear that I’d need to change some fundamental things about the show and characters to continue with the deal – it’s probably the only project where I’ve ever dug my heels in so deep with not wanting to budge. And I needed to quickly pack back all that energy and close up again. Weird time. It’s a hive of energy that continues to move in and around, and I’m just so grateful I got rights back early on in the process.

Haven’t really been making much music, played some live gigs with an old band and noodled in Ableton, some Sundays I bang around on the drums – soon as I got my place, I pretty much started working like a trojan. Things have levelled out thankfully, I’m finding a little more time to do passion projects.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

My 1st person VR Drum Simulator will be on Steam next month join the beta jks. #drums #vr

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Nov 1, 2018 at 2:03pm PDT

Also, Otter Trail. Did that with buddies. Was a highlight. Damn that’s a great walk.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Did Otter Trail. So much kiffness oh my sack. Gonna put up a multi-pic thing soon. #ottertrail

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Jan 23, 2018 at 4:46am PST

We had some more fires in the Garden Route which was nerve wracking.

Did a Game Jam with the inimitable Free Lives crew at St. Francis I think.

Started learning 3D, which is rad.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Song: Evergreen by my brother @thekiffness and @tresorofficial. Bru kind of dances like my bro. #bruandboegie #blender #b3d #lowpoly #glitch #mixamo #digitalmess

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Dec 5, 2018 at 6:50am PST

 

View this post on Instagram

 

🐸 ‘Inbetween work attention, I noodle in the 3rd dimension.’ #bruandboegie

A post shared by Mike Scott Animation (@mikdog) on Nov 27, 2018 at 2:13pm PST

Off to Prince Albert soon with Kayla-bean to meet some friends there, and the year’s turned out really nicely. Folks are down here in Plett and might be staying here more frequently, our cat Angie-Pange is here too, my bro Dave and his wife Jüte are here, so, it’s nice having a full house.

♥♥♥

Quick little post before I head off to Annecy! Annecy is the world’s biggest animation festival in France that happens every year. I luckily got to be part of the South African delegation going over, sponsored by the DTI (Department of Trade & Industry) and arranged by Animation SA. Thanks guys.

Thanks to the beautiful, the lovely Kayla Archer for helping me put together my mini show bible pitch 🙂 Looking forward to showing this around. Kayla also helped me with my new business card – so nice!

  

So, what’s been happening? It’s been a busy time, but, has it ever not been busy? I can feel things tapering off a little bit recently, which has been great to catch a breath.

Moosebox is looking so flippen’ kiff 🙂 Really so proud of what we’ve done here. A couple episodes are complete proper from start to finish, and we have a bunch more to go. Mind’s Eye Creative continue to knock it out the park with the animation and production, Audio Militia continue to knock it out the park with music & sfx and final mix, and it’s been a pleasure being involved in the process.

We recently completed a little side-project: an animated short with Cartuna for College Humor, called ‘Slide Into the DMs: The Gameshow’ – a throwback to Nickelodeon’s classic gameshow ‘Double Dare’. There’s something very satisfying about figuring out how to make a small budget work for a project. I worked closely with 2 collaborators: friend James Wolfaardt designed the characters and backgrounds, I created the boards and animatic and directed the short, and animator-extraordinaire Kevin Goliath (currently working at Mind’s Eye Creative) built the rigs and handled animation. We did things as efficiently as we could and are pleased to have this one in the can for 2 great clients we admire. It’s got 250k views in 2 days. Kiff! Here’s the vid:

I was looking for a Bru & Boegie pic I drew a while ago (couldn’t find it) but found a bunch of stuff, including a bit of dev for a Bru & Boegie film I wanted to make. When I read the 2-page script out at the workshop, you gotta believe me when I say the room was in hysterics:

And then, oh ya, I’m putting up a new video every Wednesday – about 10 years ago I made 52 episodes of ‘HappyLand Shorts’ and I’m putting ’em up. Nice! Would dig it if you could please subscribe to my YouTube channel, been really great seeing it grow slowly, almost at 10k subscribers. I’m starting to get paid for advertising views on the video, so, that is nothing short of amazing.

I’ve just come back from a ‘Game Jam’ week sponsored by Free Lives. They booked out a house in Hermanus, and MAN it was rad just making games for a week! We started some cool stuff, I jammed a lot with Ben and Cukia from Nyamakop! Gonna add a bunch-o-images in a gallery below:

Cool beans!

Guys, I started this post weeks ago and never finished it, so, here it is, as is. I figure lemme rather get this out and keep things ticking along. What I’ll say is – Moosebox is looking flippen’ amazing 🙂 Everyone’s been doing really fantastic work to make this thing as awesome as we all know it can be. Really, can’t wait to share once it’s done 🙂 S’gonna be GREEEAAAT!

Hello dear my best dear best of friends and strangers. Today is an unusual day, in that I find myself with a bit of time on my hands to ponder the universe and do a thing or two, like make a new post on my site, perhaps read a bit more of my book and then doodle some new ideas for shows. What a blessing.

It has been a busy time, but I’ve found great relief from someone who’s agreed to take on a job that threatened my sanity, and then for other work, everyone seems to be doing what they’re doing best for Moosebox which is fantastic. We talked about Moosebox during CTIAF (Cape Town International Animation Festival) to a pretty full house, and that went down really well.

Vice President of #Nickelodeon Animation @alexiwheeler with friends from #munkyntrunk #junglebeat #moosebox #viacom @fathimabeckmann and #SuperStrikers creators at #CTIAF #ctiaf2018 @viacom_intl

A post shared by Nickelodeon Africa (@nickelodeon_africa) on Mar 2, 2018 at 9:22am PST

Moosebox!!!!! #ctiaf2018 #animation #festival #nickelodeon #moosebox @ctiaf @nickelodeon

A post shared by Toni Andrews (@tonimonao) on Mar 4, 2018 at 12:21am PST

What is he going on about? #CTIAF #MOOSEBOX #RoadToMoosebox

A post shared by A L E X I (@alexiwheeler) on Mar 4, 2018 at 1:55pm PST

Super privileged to have had @alexiwheeler VP of animation & development at #Nickelodeon , Tansania Parsadh head of channel Nickelodeon Africa & @mikdog creator of #moosebox pop into our office to meet the JHB #mooseboxteam Thanks for giving us some of your precious time😉 #mindseyecreative #2danimation #animationstudio #proudmoments

A post shared by Mind’s Eye Creative (@mindseyecreative_) on Mar 6, 2018 at 2:54am PST

The dream team #moosebox #CTIAF #kiff #roadtomoosebox @mikdog @mindseyecreative_

A post shared by A L E X I (@alexiwheeler) on Mar 4, 2018 at 1:58pm PST

I recorded the audio for the talk, which you can hear here (Edit: I haven’t uploaded it yet). Not quite the same without the visuals, but still pretty interesting?

Thereafter I went to Joburg to meet with Alexi Wheeler at Mind’s Eye Creative, the animation studio that’s producing and animating the series. It was super cool having Alexi there where the show’s being animated.

While I was there I got some time to get to know the MEC crew a bit better, to chat with Ryan the designer and Steve the animation director, as well as spending time with Jen and Nick that run the show and other stuff. Was a great, productive, time. Would have dug to go to MEC’s 7th birthday braai, but alas, I was knackered by the end of the week and spent much of the day horizontal.

Also, we went to The Animation School in Joburg to deliver another Moosebox talk. We had 2 hours this time and could afford to really get into it, and *still* were rushed for time. So, we could easily do a 3 hour indulgent talk on Moosebox 🙂

At the moment, we’re busy doing music and sfx for Moosebox with ‘Audio Militia’ in Johannesburg.

That’s the post, folks!

Bonus: kiff little featurette here where I say a few supportive things about everything and Moosebox gets some lurvin’. Nice:

http://themediaonline.co.za/2018/04/south-africas-booming-animation-industry/

[hr]

Friends! Howzit. What a time it has been, what a time since I last wrote, to shoot my digital words into the vast imagined space of ‘The Internet’.

What do I bring you this time? Well, lemme tell you a story. TLDR: a Beatboxing Dave short that was largely made by other people.

Last year I finished the first leg of development on a kids show. I was tired after it and decided it was time to do something purely for fun. ‘Play’ – a task that kids do effortlessly but something that’s sometimes noticeably missing from some types of commercial work.

So, I financed a few ‘play’ shorts – one of them was the ‘Bru & Boegie vs. Trump‘ short I wrote while on holiday, the result I’m proud of. Another was this Beatboxing Dave short, which I decided to hire mostly other people to make. I wanted to be the change in the world, and give someone the kind of brief I’d like. I really wanted everyone who worked on this to feel like they could – and should – just do whatever they wanted to do. I was saying ‘this is the budget, whatever you give back to me, I’m gonna accept and make. I trust you to do your thing, and please, enjoy your process.’

My buddy James Wolfaardt had been mentioning that he’d dig to write a Beatboxing Dave short, or at least encouraging me to do another BBD. He used to be a copywriter in Joburg for an ad agency, and is generally a very creative dude. So, I commissioned him to write an new episode of Beatboxing Dave and design the new characters, with the caveat that he can do whatever he wants and I’ll get it made.

We had a few discussions about story and then I left James to do his thing. Soon we had a cool script.

It was then time to record voices. We went to BASE Studios in Plettenberg Bay – a little recording studio tucked away in a coffee shop on the main street, run by the coffee shop owner. I commissioned fellow friend and musician Ben Badenhorst to do some voices (he does a really funny Cowbell Cow and Drum Circle Craig voice), and James and I did the other voices. We recorded, Ben and I brought along some instruments to record the drum circle session that happens in the story. Once that was done, things sat in inertia for a while until the little voice of ‘you need to finish your projects that your start, Mike’ came knocking.

Next step was to find someone to sort through all the recordings and pick and choose voice selections to make a voice track according to the script – no mean feat, as we did a couple read-through recordings. I listened to them and I think it was the first read-through that I thought was best (the first take’s often the best). I found Garth Jacobs through the Internet. He’d messaged me on Facebook, said he’s a recent graduate from SAE in sound engineering, and he’d ben keen to do some sound-to-animation stuff with me. Thinking this may be a perfect opportunity to work together, Garth readily took on the job, and did great work. A few suggestions here and there and soon we had a fixed voice track. He offered to work for free but I insisted on a nominal amount.

With that done, next was to find someone to board and animate it. I was originally going to take this on myself and get super experimental, but with other work brewing and a fair bit going on with house-stuff, I thought best thing would be to entrust this to someone else. I put the word out there and Nick Welch, 1st year lecturer at ‘The Animation School’ in Cape Town, agreed to do the job. My budget wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination – and this is a couple minutes of animation – so I’m lucky and pleased that Nick agreed to it 🙂

He did boards and an animatic first, which were great and I didn’t have any changes – again insisted that he could do whatever he wanted. Nick pulled Benito Kok, 3rd year lecturer at ‘The Animation School’, into the fold to help with animating, and then brought Luke Viljoen in to do backgrounds. I got emailed tests every now and then, it was really encouraging to see that things were still ticking over for Beatboxing Dave.

It doesn’t matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

– Confucius

Before we knew it, the piece was animated!

I could then ask my buddy Arnie Rodrigues in California if he’d consider doing music & sfx for the short, again, with the caveat that I’d encourage him to go as experimental as he’d like – I would love to take whatever he can give me 🙂 Again, the budget I was offering him was small, and I’m thankful Arnie agreed to it. He’s a talented musician and has done music for a couple of my shorts before – once he even created an orchestral score and had it played live to my Bobo short – super kiff. Arnie sent through bits and pieces, and as usual, I felt like I needn’t really give much input as the short was in good hands. One or two suggestions once the finished track was sent through, and then, the music was done.

Arnie’s a Youtube vlogger, and his channel is fairly new. He’s such a cool dude I just had to post his latest video here (this is the latest at the time of writing):

I got the separate audio stems from Arnie and forwarded them to Garth, who was handling final mixing and mastering. Garth added a few more foley sounds and locked down the final mix. My plan was to have the short ready to show people at the meetings I had set up at ‘Ottawa Animation Festival’ in Canada but time was so tight and my energy so little that I didn’t get to create the title card and credits before the festival, so I left it until I got back to South Africa. I feel like I made up for not having the actual shot by doing some improv Beatboxing Dave voices at some of the meetings. Luckily, it’s a really easy pitch: ‘There’s a guy who Beatboxes badly, but he always manages to save Princess Lollipop from the lecherous clutches of Passive-Aggressive Steve who thinks Dave has the SIKKEST beatboxing skillz ever, bfff ksssh.

So – I got the final render files from Nick Welch, added everything together in Premiere Pro, drew a title card in Photoshop and made an outro sequence. I did some minor cosmetic fiddling but wasn’t keen to noodle too much, rather to let other people’s work stand as is.

Lo and behold – a new Beatboxing Dave short!

I’m super grateful to everyone who put their time and energy towards it. It celebrates creating for the sake of creating.

For myself, my motives were not purely altruistic – I was always going to put the film online on my Youtube channel, and monetize it. While I’m not earning mad bux off Youtube, the hope is that one day I have enough content generating decent bux, and that one day I create something SOOO kiff (maybe like the one Goldfish we made that’s clocked 7 million views) that a deluge of people look for the other stuff I have online, and that leads to a big influx of interest. In the meantime, I continue to make and put up work I think is cool.

I currently have 2 new Bru & Boegie shorts in various stages of completion, and a list of 4 possible shorts I’m considering working on next. One that I’ve been resisting for a while is a personal story short, which is probably the one I should probably focus on. It’s easier to do random wacky stuff than plumbing the internal depths. My mom taught me that sometimes the thing we avoid the most, the most shadowy part, is the part where we should be shining the light.

For other work, we’re months-deep in one super exciting project – 20 episodes of 90 seconds each. I’m pretty sure we’re under an NDA, and in some ways it’s been nice working under the radar for now to be able to focus on the work without the hoo-ha that can get in the way. It’s like we’re working on a really awesome present for an unsuspecting audience.

Also, the one music video I made for Takeshi hit 2 million views! That’s nice:

8bit / pixel art is the gift that keeps on giving.

Bonus: I got a SNES Classic Mini recently and made an unboxing video of it. Here that it.

And SUPER bonus – Goldfish today released the music video we made! I’ll do a separate post on this, but for now it’s viewable 🙂

Until next time, friendo’s.

[hr]

Beatboxing Dave – ‘Forbidden Dance’ credits:

Created, Produced & Financed by
Mike Scott
https://www.mikescottanimation.com

Script by
James Wolfaardt
http://www.happychickensuicidecult.bl…

Additional Character Designs by
James Wolfaardt

Storyboards & Animatic by
Nick Welch

Animation by
Nick Welch – https://vimeo.com/nickwelch
Benito Kok – https://twitter.com/benikes

Backgrounds by
Luke Viljoen

Voices:

Beatboxing Dave, Passive-Aggressive Steve:
Mike Scott

Drum-Circle Craig, Cowbell Cow, Princess Lollipop:
Ben Badenhorst
http://www.benbadenhorst.co.za/

Funken, Derek-San, Metrognome:
James Wolfaardt

Audio Wrangler & Mastering by
Garth Jacobs

Voices recorded at BASE Studios in Plettenberg Bay

Music & SFX by
Arnie Rodriguez
https://www.youtube.com/user/ArnieRod…

Title Card & Credits by
Mike Scott

Off to Joburg for a few days boet, a few days, cool story bro.

A post shared by mikdog (@mikdog) on Sep 14, 2017 at 12:24am PDT

Hello. It’s Thursday, I’m at the Cape Town International Airport, and I figure this is a good time to write a new post.

Heading to Joburg for a few days to see my folks, and to attend some of the A MAZE video games fest that happens there, see some buddies and hopefully attend some talks and try out some games! And then, off to Canada to attend the ‘Ottawa International Animation Festival’. I’ve never been to Canada, and thanks to some good luck and Nick Cloete at Animation SA who made contact with a Canadian delegate, my Canadian VISA is valid until 2024. Kiff. The trip is sponsored by South Africa’s DTI (Trade & Industry) and put together by Animation SA, the events company is Catalyze, and has been planned by Iconique Brands. Like Annecy (which was the initial spark for getting Moosebox into Nickelodeon’s hands), the idea is to generate International work, so, with any luck, the trip proves fruitful one way or another. I have a number of meetings set up.

You can watch the full MTV short James and I did here:

Look James @happychickensuicidecult this thing got like almost 800 comments on music.ly breh w. @cartuna @bruhitszach Learned The Hard Way: Don’t Trust Anything Inflatable #GreatestPartyStoryEver (made by @ mtv with @musical.ly) ♬ original sound – mtv. #musicallyapp #mtv #originalsound #music #musicvideo #musical #musica #followme #bestoftheday #instadaily

A post shared by mikdog (@mikdog) on Aug 22, 2017 at 2:37pm PDT

Busy with a new Bru & Boegie short, that I think is very funny. Keegan Thornhill‘s been helping me with some animation bits ‘n pieces:

Gave a live animation demo at Comics Fest in Cape Town this last weekend (did some more of a Bru & Boegie short), and launched my Bru & Boegie comic book! Had a chat with Stuart Coutts in front of a small gathering. Nice.

Bru & Boegie books for sale at Comics Fest at Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, today and tomorrow 🙂 naas vaab here

A post shared by mikdog (@mikdog) on Sep 9, 2017 at 4:15am PDT

Gave a talk at City Varsity in Cape Town to 2nd and 3rd years. Showed them a couple things, and one brave student had an issue with Bru & Boegie, which has given me food for thought.

I reviewed the ‘Henge Dock for Macbook Pro Retina 13’:

I came across a small cache of some old work on a friend’s blog that had a couple contributors, so here’s some stuff from 10 years ago. The ‘Red Riding Hood’ stuff was for a kids musical puppet show called ‘Jakkals Jol’ which was made, and I saw on TV. I was impressed at how accurately they copied the puppet’s designs. The other show, a community hospital puppets show, wasn’t made I don’t think. The other show ‘Happy Land’ I made and later sold.

My bro launched a new music vid, directed by Daniel and Christy Morcos. It’s excellent 🙂

My fren James Wolfaardt is in full swing of doing his weekly editorial cartoon for Sunday Times magazine. S’a nice gig.

Sunday Times

A post shared by James Wolfaardt aka AARDWOLF (@happychickensuicidecult) on Sep 10, 2017 at 12:14am PDT