Tonight's Odd Turns

I don't know about you but I often start off looking at something or engaged in one activity and then wind up so far off the track having run across amazing stuff I never knew existed.

Tonight is one of those nights.

Don't drink milk when you read the next question because I don't want to be responsible for you wheezing milk out of your nose:

Have you ever heard of "Scud the Disposable Assassin"?

It's a comic created by Rob Schrab about a vending machine assassin. That's right, you plunk in your quarter and you get a robot assassin who takes care of the job and then explodes. Hence, disposable assassin.

I started out on YouTube for some reason searching out some old fan film favorites of mine while I was talking to my brother on the cell phone. I was talking to him about Grayson and Batman: Dead End before I started my usual generic "animation" search.

I ran across a "4 Minute Film School" episode hosted by Rob Schrab! I had seen some of this guy's animation of (well, basically junk) puppets. Real Robot Chicken kind of stuff or fast Saturday Afternoon Cartoon stuff where they use puppets against a green screen. It was informative and fun but when I hunted down Rob Schrab and Scud the Disposable Assassin, I found Pat Grubb's animation tests of his 3D animated Scud test renders. I originally thought they were professional animation tests!

Pat Grubb aka Neuropolis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iik7zo4UgfA

This kid just finished animation school and was looking for work. While being bored and waiting for the 3D money to roll in, he decided to make a 3D version of his favorite comic character, Scud. He sent some renders to Rob Schrab and Schrab supposedly LOVED them and he said he wanted to see Scud animated.

Pat found out about the Scud the Disposable Assassin short film contest and has decided to enter the contest. This thing (contest) started at the beginning of May and has to be finished by the end of July. He (Grubb) has modeled two of the three characters he is going to need and is well along the way to finishing the third.

The very short animation test has a MARVELOUS sound track that I had to hunt down. It turns out to be "The Pretender" by Foo Fighters. This is one of those songs that when I hear it, I wonder aloud, "Why did no one tell me about this song?" So, I bought it off of iTunes immediately.

Then I listed to Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" for a bit and wound up typing this while watching "Burn Notice".

This day has been just all over the place.