Musica! (by Eddie)

yes, it is an old pic

One thing we have always done is try to embrace our other interests and bring them into animation.  I mean, you can obsess about animation itself as an art form – and there are plenty of people who sit around doing just that – but that’s never really been our thing.  Animation has always been more of a means to get our ideas out there. Music as always, is still a big influence, and I have a few places where you can listen/download my tracks

here, here, and here

And don’t forget the Fwak! jukebox here! (Think it’s time for another one, Lili?)

Well seeing that different cultures start their new year at different times, we’ve decided the Fwak! year officially starts March 1st!  That’s when we can be ‘out with the old and in with the new’.  And what does the new year hold for us?

• A new ‘Rocquita’ short with Cartoon Network Asia (Hello Japan!)
• Goodbye Macromedia Flash.  After 8 years we are truly over you.  Those buggy filters you tantalisingly tempted us with in Flash 8 were the last straw.  And you got an ANNIE AWARD for your inadequate software?  We’re looking forward to working in some new kind of HARMONY for Rocquita
•  
  
  We hope we never see this error message ever, again!
• Adios Lucha Libre.  We still love you and will be at the matches wherever they are held, be it Compton or Cudahy, Tijuana or South Central - but we have collectively drawn our last luchador. 
• Hello subculture.  Apart from Rocquita, we are looking towards our Dance Crasher project (amongst other music related thingies)
• Bye bye Sydney   Sad but true.  Our studio on Sussex Street is the best, the BEST!  But it ain’t no good to us while we are based in LA.  So a trip is in order to pack everything up this year
• And as we move into Post production, we will finally be done with Los Campeones, the animated feature that has taken up all of our time for the last 20 or so months.  We’ve been posting images along the way…and there are more on the LC Myspace page…but here are a few personal faves

And finally bye bye to Xanga.  This editor is the slowest clunkiest thing ever and has been for far too long.  Not quite as infuriating as Flash (you pay Macromedia a lot more money to be dicked with), but annoying nevertheless. This should be our last post here, but stay tuned for the new address… 

UPDATE:  We are moving here

This may seem like the lamest excuse in the world but it’s true… One reason we have not updated this blog in ages (other than the fact that we have both been really really busy and still are)  is because we had lost the password for this xanga account and when my browser no longer automatically logged me in, we could not post anything. And this account was registered using an email address that I had stopped using. And when I checked that email address to reset my password, there were 14000 messages/spam to download which crashed Mozilla Thunderbird… etc etc etc  Anyway… We’re back! Blog entries coming soon.

The blog of Martin Klasch
: Pop culture, music, YouTube links and more

All-Mighty Clothing:
I am especially enamored with these stuffed Boston Terriers. (I am
fostering a sweet blind bostie boy called Rocky, so this makes me an instant
fan of all things Boston Terrier) Here is my illustration of Stinky
Pierre, a gift to Jen from All-Mighty Clothing.

Get Up Edina! podcasts: Miss Upsetter spins 60′s Jamaican rocksteady, ska, reggae. Bit crackly and low-res but still fun.

This Is England
has already had its run in the theatres over here, but for those who
are like us, obsessed with youth/music subcultures, and particularly
Skinhead/Mod culture, we cannot recommend this film highly enough. It
will be out on DVD this month. A great insider view of British Skinhead
subculture in the 80′s during its transition period from
“Unity/Two-Tone/reggae” to “National Front/Racism/Oi”.


Ullo John Gotta New Motor?
- Do not be surprised if this song makes no sense to you. Alexei Sayle
was a Liverpudlian comic (he was also in ‘The Young Ones’) who had his
own very silly variety show  which we used to watch back in Sydney
circa mid 1990s. Also check out I
‘m Pissed. Really really silly stuff.

Tulsa Skull Swingers
- This Zombie Surf/Garage band is performing every Thursday in
September at The Taix (Sunset Blvd, Echo Park). Go! You WILL be
entertained! (Our favorite moment: The Mummy)

Cartoons, Model Sheets & Stuff 
- We were searching for HB character model sheets (… reference for a
little job we’re working on right now) and found this awesome blog. I have been absent from the blogging world for way too long.

These Are the Damned
was on at the Egyptian recently as part of a Brit-Horror
festival but I missed it. Too much was happening that day. Memo to
self: Hire DVD. The theme song (“Black Leather, Black Leather…”) is
pretty cool and be sure to check out Eddiemuerte’s version!

Scoops Ice Cream: Are we spending too many lunch hours at this place? Yesterday’s lunch: Coffee Cheesecake & Pineapple Lychee ice cream. $2.
(Our other favorite lunchspot: The Fish Taco Nazi of Los Feliz  We are addicted to their shrimp tacos)

Galco’s Soda Pop Stop - They don’t have Ribena
or those Asian fruity waters you get in Chinatown, but they do have
more varieties of old school soda pop and ginger beer than you can
imagine.

And a little something new that we have been developing – (Not a new concept, but new designs)

Playing in a theatre near you!

(If you happen to live in Mexico, that is…)

Click here and select to see a short teaser that will be showing before the big summer movies – Shrek, Pirates, Simpsons, Ratatouille, Fantastic Four, Harry Potter, Transformers – in Mexico.

More soon on the new Los Campeones website 

Not a lot of time to discuss work methods (guess that will happen after the movie is done), but I am enjoying working Expression 3 (by Creaturehouse) to create some funky patterns and textures.  Even though the version I have is as buggy as hell (and crashes everytime I export a texture as a .swf), it is interesting coming up with strange textures that seem more like happy accidents, rather than something the program was designed to do - Eddie