Screen Novelties' Spook A Nanny!

Halloween is creeping up! Help us usher in our favorite holiday by joining us at the Cinefamily on October 5th. We'll be co-hosting with our pal, Jerry Beck to screen some of of our favorite spooky cartoons and mash-ups!

Grab tickets now 'cause they're almost sold out...!

Here's the link.

And here's the trailer...

McFinished

"Bebe" is our latest collaboration with Leo Burnett & Duck Studios. Bebe is a cute, little girl who wishes for everything. But what she gets is even better... a party with her friends and family!

We wanted to create Bebe's world with all sorts of colorful fabrics and bouncy animals....take a look!

McDonald's - "Bebe" from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

Screen Novelties gets MAD

Keep your senses peeled for the all new MAD Magazine series on Cartoon Network. We took on some of the stop motion skits for the kind folks over at Warner Bros. Crazy fun!

Special kudos go out to our own Kelly Mazurowski & Max Winston for taking the directing reins... whoopee!

Harryhausen's 90th - Seamus & Mark speak!

Seamus & Mark were guest speakers at Ray Harryhausen's 90th Birthday celebration. It all took place at the British Film Institute in London. We were truly humbled to have shared the stage with big shots like Phil Tippett, Randy Cook and Peter Jackson along with Peter Lord, David Sproxton and Nick Park. Everyone's favorite, John Landis hosted the lively event.

Read all about it.

Some Shade-y Stuff

Take a gander at these spots we just completed for Ray-Ban's "Never Hide" films. We worked with the gang at Tomorrow's Brightest Minds to realize all the eye-popping goodness...

Ray-Ban - Flower Head from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

Cartoon Head - Ray-Ban from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

Yelling Head - Ray-Ban from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

The Kiss - Ray-Ban from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

Ice Cream Head - Ray-Ban from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

SpongeBob Title Sequence!

We had the joyful task of re-imagining SpongeBob's main title for his "Truth or Square" Special. It's our style through and through...combining all sorts of fun stuff. We even got to spend a few days animating on the beach. Also look out for some footage shot on Super-8 mixed in there... gotta dig it!

SpongBob Theme in Stop Motion from Screen Novelties on Vimeo.

"The Spooning" Nominated for Annie Award

The Corn Pops commercial we did with Acne Film and Leo Burnett has been nominated for an Annie Award. Thanks to everyone who helped out and congratulations to the other nominees!

http://www.annieawards.org/consideration.html

Be on the Lookout!

We can't believe it's been 10 years since SpongeBob Squarepants floated his way into animation history. To celebrate, Nickelodeon will be airing a one-hour special jam-packed with fun and frivolity. And Screen Novelties has been given the honor of re-imagining the opening title. Can't show much right now but tune-in to Nickelodeon on November 6th at 8pm and check it out.

Here's a little more info...

Flintstones in Stop Motion.

We did this stop motion sequence a few years ago for Cartoon Network's hand-drawn feature "Flintstones: On the Rocks". It was a dream assignment. Directors Chris Savino and Dave Smith were harkening back to the Ed Benedict era designs and wanted us to try to capture the Hanna-Barbera limited animation style with puppets. Can't get much cooler than that. We broke into our huge barrel of old View-master reels for design reference as well. There have been a number of requests that we post this.... Thanks to everyone for your kind words.
Click on the image to watch.

Mad Monster Party? Zowie!

Imagine our excitement when our friends Rick Goldschmidt and Sparkhill asked us to contribute to the new DVD release of "Mad Monster Party?". Wow! There's a whole new set of bonus features including a mini "making of" documentary, an interview with composer Maury Laws and we give a brief "how to" on stop motion. The best part for us was conducting the interview with our hero, Arthur Rankin!

Seamus, Mark & Chris with the legendary Arthur Rankin

Seamus interviews Rankin/Bass storyboard artist extraordinaire, Don Duga.

Pick up your copy today!

Quack

We've recently signed with Duck Studios for commercial representation. They do a ton of great work and we're thrilled to join their flock.

Gotta Have Our Pops!

Our Kellogg’s Corn Pops commercial has hit the airwaves. This one has it all-- a steamy shower scene, a scantily clad Poppette, and zombies. That’s right, zombies!!! Thanks to our friends at Leo Burnett and Acne Film for involving us in this scary, if somewhat corny, project.

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Monster Safari Feature!

Well this is Cool...
Our two-picture partnership with the legendary Jim Henson Company is gaining steam: and the first project will be Monster Safari!
It's amazing to be working with Henson, and our combined enthusiasm for this little film can't help but lead to a zinger.
As if it couldn't get any better, Craig Zobel and Matt Chapman (of Homestar Runner fame) will be coming on board as writers.
Thank you to everyone who has helped get the project this far, we'll post more updates as things move ahead.

Click HERE for a bunch of stills.

For a higher res movie please click HERE.

Links:
Hollywood Reporter
Muppet Newsflash
Cartoon Brew
Behind the Scenes Photos

Mysterious Mose

Here's a short we did a few years back. We thought it would be fun to combine some of our favorite things, stop motion, puppetry and silhouette animation. Check out Mysterious Mose...

Congrats Max!

It was just announced that our very own Max Winston has been nominated for a Student Academy Award. "I Live in the Woods" is a unique little film that's worthy of the nomination. Congratulations, Max!

Thank you Peter

Peter Dennis (right) and Keone Young posing with their stop motion counterparts

Mr. Peter Dennis, a great friend of Screen Novelties, recently moved on from this plane of existence. He was a talented and accomplished actor of stage and screen, appearing in such films as "Shrek" and "Sideways". Peter took great pride in serving as the official narrator for the "Winnie the Pooh" books.

We consider ourselves lucky to have had Peter provide the voice and personality of Basil Pennyfarthing for Monster Safari...Thanks for everything Peter, we'll never forget you.

For more information on Peter, please click here.

ANNIE NOMS ARE IN!!

And we are honored with a Best Commercial Nomination for our work on "Rotofugi: The Collectors". We're pleased as punch that the fine folks at ASIFA Hollywood thought this spot was good enough to be recognized. Thanks!

Graveyard Jamboree @ Cinefamily!

We're proud to announce that fan favorite, "Graveyard Jamboree with Mysterious Mose" will be part of Jerry Beck's "Animated Spooktacular" over at Cinefamily's Silent Movie Theatre. The event takes place this Tuesday, Oct. 21st at 8pm.
Be on the look-out if you decide to attend, there just might be a special guest or two making a rare appearance....

Emmy Nomination!

Congrats go out to our own Mark Caballero for receiving the honor of an Emmy Nomination for his work on "Robot Chicken: Star Wars".
Mark served as the director of animation and had a great time helping out.

The Electric Company returns!

And we're happy to let you all know that Screen Novelties will be contributing to this on-going series slated for 2009. We're big fans of the original series, so you can imagine our excitement when we were asked to work on the show. We can't say much right now but keep your eyes peeled...we'll be posting photos of our progress soon!

Screen Noveltes at the NAB

Screen Novelties co-founder Seamus Walsh was a panel speaker at this year's NAB convention in Las Vegas. The subject of the panel was "Character Animation: CG Technologies Meet Classic Techniques". He shared the stage with Don Hahn, Ken Duncan, Kenn McDonald, Michelle Papandrew & David Barclay.

ALL done.

Method finished post on an "ALL" detergent spot for BBI NY. RSA Films directors H5 came up with the concept which takes us into the fibers of a dress to witness the blossoming of fabric fields and flowers. It's a combination of pixelation and stop-motion. The human pixelation was shot in Mexico City and then it was a jump back to Screen Novelties to produce the animation.

Here's Paula slaving away on set.

Seamus & Jeff prepping a shot.

Flapjack & Chowder!

Cartoon Network just announced their 2008 line up of animated goodness. Among the slated list of cartoons are "Chowder" & "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack". We're honored to be involved with both series by contributing a lot of fun stop motion segments. Kudos go to creators Thurop VanOrman (Flapjack) and C.H. Greenblatt (Chowder) for creating uber-cool cartoons!

The Big Game

We're proud to announce that the tags we did for CareerBuilder.com aired during this year's SuperBowl! (Giants - 17, Patriots - 14)

Here's a clip in case you're some kind of commie and didn't watch the game:

CareerBuilder.com Spots

Happy New Year everybody!
Just finished a long day of shooting end tags for a series of CareerBuilder.com commercials.
We shot these for our friends at Wieden+Kennedy, whom we've worked with in the past on the Nike spot we directed - "Minotaur".
December was crunch time - fabricating several identical miniature office park buildings to be crushed by the CareerBuilder logo. Thanks go out to our great crew for whipping these miniatures out in record time!
HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY + SMASHING THINGS = JOLLY GOOD FUN.
Can't post any really specific pictures yet, but the spots should begin airing later this month.
Here's a picture from the shoot... all this fuss over a little model?

Yeti wish all of earth Happy Holidays!

And we at Screen Novelties wish you a Peaceful and Fun New Year.

Santa Puppet

Seems like the right time of year to post this photo of the Santa Claus puppet from our drinking and driving PSA for the Texas Dep't. of Transportation.
Anyway, we loved how he came out... dig that hat!

NPR on Rudolph Restoration

Have a listen to our resident puppet fabrication expert, Robin Walsh, being interviewed on NPR's "All Things Considered" about the restoration of the original puppets from the Rankin/Bass production of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

Click HERE to Listen.
See photos from the restoration - HERE.

There's a lot of coverage of the about it this year, here are a couple of links:

NY Times

MSNBC

Chowder Clip

Here's our clip from the "Thrice-Cream Man" episode... a nightmare sequence after Chowder eats too much Thrice Cream!

...And a behind-the-scenes still of one of the setups. Click for larger view.

Chowder Arrives Soon!

For months we've been secretly whittling away at a bunch of cool little sequences for the new Cartoon Network show "CHOWDER". It's the best thing to come out of CN in a long time, and we're proud to be a part of it. Creator C.H. Greenblatt and Art Director Dan Krall have been awesome to work with and our sensibilities all seem to coming from the same place, so it's been great.

We were flattered when the fine folks in Atlanta asked us to get involved with the official launch of the show and shoot the promo spots. It was a lot of hard work in a short amount of time to meet the airdate, but they came out pretty cool. The show premieres November 2nd - it will not disappoint!

Rotofugi :60 Spot

We've just completed a :60 commercial for Rotofugi, a hip purveyor of vinyl toys in Chicago. RSA and the fellows at Country Club Chicago brought the idea to us and we loved it - candid interviews with vinyl toys showing off their collections of humans. We got to work with some of the biggies in vinyl toys: Gloomy Bear, Qee, Friends With You - you get the picture.


Some work in progress photos...

Josh Jennings animating FLCL Canti Robots

Mark Harassing Brian and Alex on the Malfi set

Monster Safari Short Completed - UPDATE!!!

Hello Adventurers!
Our short film - Monster Safari - is in the can.

Charmingly inept cryptozoologists, Basil and Pang, are on the hunt for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and all your favorite beasts of lore. But complicating matters is Buckminster - the world's most insane big-game hunter - who's looking for the ultimate trophies for his wall.

To celebrate the completion of the short, here's a clip and a gallery of photos from the production. When we get word of an airdate from Nickelodeon, we'll post it here.
Thanks for stopping by to check it out!
-The Screen Novelties Gang

Photo Gallery:
Click thumbnails for a larger view

Basil & Pang explore the Mummy's Tomb...

The Yeti Stomps about...

Pang, Basil, and Lucy...

Mark animating in the Museum

Joe Schmidt tackles Basil & Pang's Biplane with gusto

Typical thrashed state of the studio...
but with cool Himalaya exterior setup!

Seamus accosting the Yeti

Chris in the Monster Hunting Headquarters

Ancient hieroglyphs

Tobacco PSA Nominated!

Our little PSA for the state of Mississippi's "Reject All Tobacco" campaign has been nominated for the International Animated Film Society's "Annie" awards. Cool!
Thank you ASIFA-Hollywood! Please check out the great work they're doing with the Animation Archive.
We would also like to congratulate our pals Josh Jennings, Sihanouk Mariona and Eileen Kohlhepp for their Annie noms for induvidual acheivment in character animation. A pat on back also goes out to the great Dan Krall for production Design on Camp Lazlo.
Check out "Candy Factory" below...

NY Times

The NY Times today ran an article about our restoration of the Rankin/Bass puppets!
Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/arts/television/23rudo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Rankin/Bass Puppet Restoration

Rudolph and Santa?!
Imagine the looks on our faces when the original puppets from the 1964 Rankin/Bass production of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" showed up on our doorstep!
Specifically, the current owner/discoverer of said puppets, Kevin Kreiss, contacted us a few months ago to see what we could do about the puppets' deteriorated state (thanks Rick Goldschmidt for the recommend). Kevin brought them by and we assessed the situation...
The puppets were in bad shape, having been used as Christmas decorations/playthings for the last 30-odd years in the home of a former Rankin/Bass employee. Santa's legs were both broken, as was Rudolph's neck(!). Rudolph's nose bulb was torn out and the cavity had been stuffed with red candle wax. All of the lead armature wires inside the puppets were corroding and half of Santa's mustache was missing. We even heard tales of a photo of Rudolph sticking his head out of a bowl of Christmas candy. There was a lot of cleanup and restoration to be done.

Luckily, a top member of our puppet crew, Robin Walsh, has a lot of experience with puppet restoration, having worked for several years at the Center for Puppetry Arts. While there she worked with everything from antique Indonesian shadow puppets to Italian rod marionettes, so she set up a plan and spearheaded the operation.

The whole process took several weeks, and great care was taken to preserve the integrity of the puppets. We made new pieces only to replace missing parts, leaving everything in it's original form as much as possible. Careful cleansing of the fur and clothing got out years worth of cigarette smoke, candy stains and dust.

We are very proud to have been a part of preserving these icons of stop-motion (and American pop-culture) history.


This month, the puppets will be on display at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta.

After that, check Time and Space Toys.com for news of future appearances.

Now, if only a Bumble puppet would turn up!!