Talk: Anthony Lucas / Jasper Morello

Anthony Lucas

• He's been jetlagged doing the Jasper Morello tour - Australia - London - Cupertino - Hollywood.
• He's never been able to watch the easter eggs on the DVD, but he found them today, so he started with those first.
• a short explanation of the ads: the 5 canoes is the logo for the tv station he was doing the work for. Some are rather hard to see, some are obvious. The hardest one to see is the trees.
• he passed around one of the figures he made -- mostly just toiletpaper and wire
• did a short demonstration of how he did the silouettes and noted some production problems with working with silouettes. used the old man from his feature that showed a Cannes as well as a decapitated horse.
• when asked about the metropolis in his ads, he remarked: "I don't really know what i did for that, multiple layers maybe.

  After the screening:
  



• Jasper Morello wouldn't have been possible without the Sydney Film Commission giving him 1 million Australian Dollars.


• Did Jasper Morello as a trilogy, since he grew up as a Star Wars kid (11 when it came out).


• because he's a star wars kid, he has a stop motion rig.


• his stop motion rig is a cooper gathering dust in his shed.


• sees computer animation as the wave of the future. while doing it the old fashioned way is more fun, cg is more practical.


• on design: he mentions seeing the lord of the rings art of books and seeing designs for like 10 different concepts for a suit of armor, and says that "there's no reason to do that much concept. At most, all he wants is two designs.


• he does the design work -- "design's the fun part, why would I let anyone else do the fun part?"


• he has the toy rights, but most of the commercialized rights to Jasper belong to someone else.


• said having a live action version of Jasper with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp would be akin to having a stake in his heart.


• said most of the airship designs wouldn't work on a toy, most things really aren't connected.


• He originally had a much longer title, involving 1276 and "Navigator of the 3rd Royal Cartographers", but people said it was already too long, and felt it took place in 1876. He has the website though, so he was able to put 1276 on the Gothia Gazette.


• although it does have the elizabethan feel to it, it doesn't take place in the 19th century, nor does it take place in england or australia. it takes place in 1276 in Gothia.

  On his earlier material:



• it took about a day to produce 1 second of stop motion.


• likes the fact that with computers, you can set it up to work overnight.


• had to deal with heated expansion of surfaces on his old stop motion and silouette work.


• People in Germany hated "Slim Pickings".


• Originally Snort in "Slim Pickings" was supposed to have a nose that looked like the plant.


• He thought "Holding Your Breath" was supposed to be about him and the writer while they were in the sea scouts, but instead he got something about a girl.


• used toy trains for "Holding Your Breath". "A toy train set costs $500. It's worth it."