(November 5) A simple six-week project turned out to be an award-winning five-minute animated film for the animation artist team at Momentum Animations, located in Melbourne Australia. In August, the team premiered Macca Strewth – The Total Legend, a 2D-looking film created with Martin Hash's Animation Master computer animation program.  After just one screening, the film became an instant hit, going on to win the "Audience Choice Award" and "Best Sound Award" at the Melbourne Australia Film Festival and "Audience Choice Award" at the Brisbane Animation Festival.

Macca Strewth is an original film by Momentum's director Dylan Crooke, which he wrote expressly for the film festival circuit. Its based on "fun humor" concerning an average bloke, who is also a super hero kind of guy (Total Legend).  After winning two straight festival awards, the animated short has found wide distribution on the Internet. The film follows the adventures of Australia's finest super hero, Macca, his daughter Ronnie and dog Rexona

Production of the film took a total of six weeks - two weeks for pre-production and four weeks for animation. Pre-production included writing the script, recording the voices, designing the characters and establishing the unique style of Macca Strewth. A small team of six animators created five minutes of footage in just over four weeks. To achieve the cartoon, hand drawn look, the team used Martin Hash's Animation Master 98. Using the Toon Render options in Animation Master 98 and taking a few small lighting shortcuts, the render times were kept under the five minute mark. This made it possible for the render farm to keep up with the large amount of animation output every day.

Momentum Animations has created a several shorts in the past and is pursuing a film deal for Skoda, another film that they created with Animation Master. Momentum's business is based primarily in the television commercial industry and the shorts are ways for the animators to get a chance expand their horizons. The popularity of Macca Strewth has resulted in a wide animation festival tour for the short. The mini-movie is downloadable by clicking here (note: this will take you to a different site).  While the mini-movie doesn't have a rating, MPAA guidelines would most likely give the animated short a PG-13 for language.

 

Click here for information on Animation Master 98

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