"The Ninjews", my short, is finally done.
 

Alright gentlemen and ladies, it's here. Here is the link:

http://www.image-studio.com/movies/theninjews02.htm

Thanks to Paul Sedillo for hosting it on his site.

Josh, my fiancee and I both watched this. We started laughing when the animation started, and stopped when the theme music ended.
Awsome! Your hard work paid off.
I hope you submit it to something like Triggerstreet.com.

Two questions...
How many hours did you put into it?
How tall were the figures?

Congratulations, Josh--
 

Great concept, great story, great intro, great climax, great ending--

Great camera work (love the depth of field--how'd you do it?), great animation, great sound design, great compositing, great music. Thanks for sharing your work with us. Looking forward to whatever now moves to the top of your slate.

As Dylan mentioned in a prior post, good to see you actually use your equipment! (j/k)

Great stuff Josh! You should be proud of this body of work. I expect it will do well in the animated festivals that you submit it to. Thanks for sharing it with this forum.

Robert,

Depth of field was more a byproduct than an intention, but it worked to my advantage. These models were mostly in the 5-6 inch range of height, and I had to zoom in almost all the way to frame them the way I wanted, even with the camera about five feet from the set.

Josh! What a goyim nakhes! This is really a hoot. You've gotta get this into festivals and onto things like Triggerstreet.com. Let me know when you do and I'll run over and cast a vote for you.

HAHAH

I am still laughing... very nice and funny, reminded me of a short film a friend shot which was set at the 'shabbat' table where a giant leg of ham falls from the sky in the middle of dinner, and the avenging Rabbi must save the day.


John, i translated what you said (i speak yiddish) and it made me laugh almost as much as the flick.

Mazeltov Josh, I hope you learnt a lot from the exercise and can continue to pump out the good work, because you have a lot more patience than me to do such a huge task.

If possible i would love a higher quality copy, like a s-vcd version so i could show it to my family, i think they will find it very funny.

kermie

That RAWKS.
I am an orthodox Jew and found that short film to be irresistably hilarious.

I will now link this to all my friends.

Well done and hilarious. Humour even us genitals can understand!

Bryan, speak for yourself when you call us genitals ;)

Josh, good stuff man. I admire your patience. What sort of clay did you use. I tried with plasticene once and gave up really quickly ;)

How on earth..
 

did you create such an engaging work, and find time for anything else (like being in the to ten posters here)? Josh it's an awesome short, I can't stop watching it, like any good piece I get something more with every new viewing. I love the humor about hell, my kind of stuff. You must truly have the patience of a saint, you do believe in saints don't you? :)

I hope you get it submited to some festivals, it deserves to go in front of a larger audience.

Mark


p.s. who started the "genitals" thing?

Yes, it will be submitted to festivals. I shall try this "Triggerstreet.com" you speak of. The guy who mentioned genitals. . .that was a joke right?

Clay type used was called Van Aken. It's an oil based clay that never dries out or hardens.

That was alot of fun....hell with triggerstreet...what about SNL...they haven't had a good laugher like this since Mr. Bill.

Great job, Josh.

Barry

Do they take unsolicited submissions?

I miss spelled gentile, so shoot me ! We need a spell checker I guess.

What a way to misspell! I thought you were just being cute.

Josh,

These guys are on to something...why not try to get it on SNL? The e-mail address is SaturdayNightLive@nbc.com. Just give them the link to it and ask them if they'd be interested.

Then, after you're famous, you could come back from time to time to the forums and say hello to me and the other genitals.

"I miss spelled gentile"

I kind of prefer genital myself.

Wonderful clip. Very funny. Well executed.

How long did typical second take to shoot? Did you adjust the clay every frame, every third frame? Fascinating stuff.

Rick

Very good work! Was fun to watch, brilliant! and thanks for showing
it here...

Excellent job Josh!
 

I'll show this to my kids tonight and report back on their take on your short.

All I'll say here is, that you and I could have hung out as kids <;~)

This makes me wonder why I never filmed our army men shooting range in our closet (with a brick of BB's, a couple of Daisy air rifles, and my malicious brothers =).

Excellent Josh!
 

I'll show this to my kids tonight and report back on their take on your short.

All I'll say here is, that you and I could have hung out as kids <;~)

This makes me wonder why I never filmed our army men shooting range in our closet (with a brick of BB's, a couple of Daisy air rifles, and my malicious brothers).

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : What a way to misspell! I thought you were just being cute. -->>>
I was!
Should have turned the villain into pork rinds, could have sold them at DV Expo

I'm still chuckling.

See, but the whole point of "Kosher Power" is to "kosherize" that which is not kosher. . .pork rinds would be against that philosophy.

funny
 

Josh,
My 11 year old gave it a 4 out of 5 stars.

I almost cried I was laughing so hard when he said "but the white Ninjew doesnt have any pants" !

I love it......hehe

All part of my subliminal plan. . .

Cool animation, Josh, That was worth the wait! Now tell us how you did it in video.

Jay, what do you mean? I'd be happy to answer any questions.

I remember you were wrestling with how to do the animation on video since the camera can't shoot a frame at a time. How did you overcome that?

Ah yes, you are referring to THE SYSTEM. Well, what I did was put the camera in interval mode, and shot the least amount of time available, .5 seconds, for each "frame." I calculated that speeding up the footage shot this way by 750% (7.5x) would give me the equivalent of two frames of video per frame of animation, or 15 fps.

I took the un-sped footage into Vegas Video, and use the playback properties to speed it up 4x, and then an envelope to speed it up an additional 186% (I found that 4 X 1.85something gives you 7.5, but I couldn't get that precise, so I rounded up).


That's pretty much it.

Great piece of work, Josh!

I was laughing so hard, I missed half of the lines!

I will be watching it again!!!

To Dylan Couper, way back to your first post


I put in about an average of three hours a night every day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Took a week off after finishing the first scene, and a night or two here and there. Two months of shooting, I think.

I was wondering why you just didn't hook up the XL1s through
firewire to your editing system and just "captured" an image
from there whenever the puppets where in the next space. This
would have prevented you the need to change the playing speed
of the movies and all that? (just a thought)

Cause I didn't shoot this at my house. This was shot in my girlfriend's living room.

You must have a loving, tolerant girlfriend.

Of course. They had a room in their house they never use, so that was my studio.

Ah, I see.... Well, at least you had a studio! Sweet!

Update
 

Since Josh is a modest bloke, I wanted to pass along the fact that he was paid a high honor. His short film "The Ninjews" was selected by Spike and Mike for inclusion on their next DVD release. Spike and Mike's DVD's are a compellation of what they feel represents the best of animation for the given year. Their DVD's have included Oscar winners, so Josh is in rather fine company.

Way to go Josh!

Spike and Mike's web site: http://www.spikeandmike.com/

Not there anymore, is there a different link now?

<<<-- Originally posted by Akos Szemenyei : Not there anymore, is there a different link now? -->>>
I need to put the video back up online for Josh. Should be back by tomorrow.

Yeah, I didn't get to watch it either.... =/