Bacon Wrapped Avocado

Ok, so the “part one” back in June turned into a whole summer disappearing. We were hoping to have reached a milestone with our demo before the end of that month, but forgot to take into account the more frenetic pace of a short summer term of graduate school, travel, kids at home, etc. We did make an enormous amount of progress on our demo this summer though. We now have a rough draft of the complete animation for 11 characters, the food truck area is done, the house is decorated, users can enter nicknames and room names to hang out with their friends. Everyone has done an amazing job. I love our team!

We’re also re-vamping our “Flippity Flops” channel. We spent a lot of time thinking it over and we really want to consolidate our efforts under one theme. Soon we’ll put up more behind-the-scenes peeks at our motion capture and animation process, but they will have a different format and a different name. No worries though–we’ll definitely link to it from here so you can easily find it.

For the same reason, we’ll be replacing our iFilmFlops t-shirts with Bacon Wrapped Avocado shirts. We’ll post the new designs soon. Let us know if you’d like one or if you think one of our other characters should also get their own shirt. The Hand has one, soon BWAHAHA will too, but if you’d rather have the Corazons or Mum or ZBBBD, shoot us an email from the contact section at the bottom of the page. If we get enough response, we might make some available for purchase. (Right now you pretty much have to work for us to get one.)

Keep an eye peeled for updates! It’s getting exciting over here.

Yep, we’re hoping for more news in a couple of weeks 😀

Right now, we have our next short up on YouTube and TikTok. It’s a behind-the-scenes (BTS) view of the filming of  The Hand of Flopsville Animated Series, from the actors’ point of view.

OK, well, I suppose it’s not “really” BTS since it’s all animated, but it is a fun look at what filming with a zombie-made drone camera might be like.

Until next time–enjoy!

As we continue to make progress on our demo, we are also making more 2D shorts. The latest is the intro for the first movie starring our very own The Hand. You can find that on the carousel at the top of this page, or on YouTube or TikTok. You can find the live action version we filmed years ago HERE. There’s also a comicbook that we plan to digitize and make available. We’ve got some other 2D shorts planned, too, so keep an eye on our YouTube and TikTok channels for periodic updates.

This time, besides using Noitom Perception Neuron 3 for motion capture for the humans, we also used Manus Polygon and our Manus PrimeX gloves to capture The Hand. We used Reallusion iClone 8 and Unreal Engine 5.1 to put the animation together and Final Cut Pro to add the opening and closing graphics.

As for the demo, Jose has upgraded our server to handle multiple private rooms and our avatars have gained the ability to display usernames. Likewise Giovanni is enhancing our blueprints and interface to include a keyboard, so viewers can enter a room name and username. Our graphics are coming along as well: Meescha has created the Dark Alley Diner food truck for BWAHAHA (our Bacon Wrapped Avocado) and his pops. It’s well on its way to being finished and fitted out. Mum just arrived today to join BWAHAHA in running it–keep an eye out for him in an updated cast list soon! Also, Laurel is getting better at mixing mocap with standard animations in iClone and Unreal Engine, so moving characters around the scene is much easier.

Keep watching! There’s more to come!