Sublo and Tangy Mustard - Nightclub Trailer

 Here's the trailer for Sublo and Tangy Mustard season 3 episode 3, "Nightclub”! This is the biggest one yet, it's like eleven minutes or something. The episode will come out this Saturday April 22 and I'm doing a youtube premiere that day at 12pm (noon) EST/ 9am PST if you want to come watch it live!

 

 

Subscribers to my Patreon can also watch a scene from the episode right now at www.patreon.com/aaronlong so check that out if you really can't wait for a little taste!

Sublo and Tangy Mustard watercolour animation

 I was in Toronto recently. Great visit full of fun hangs with friends although never enough time to see all the people I want to! My cousin Ryan Long (who plays Sublo) was in town at the same time, so he and my friend Kevin Doan (Tangy Mustard) finally got to hang out in person for the first time. Historic night! Here's the three of us.

While I was in town I did some watercolours in my sketchbook, and ended up trying some simple loose animation experiments with them. They came out really janky because I didn't plan anything, I just drew a bunch of heads next to each other on the page and figured the flickering watercolour textures might be visually interesting.

I love Crapston Villas

I'm in love with Crapston Villas, Sarah Ann Kennedy's extremely grimy stop-motion comedy series from the mid-90s. It's hard to believe a show this chaotic and nasty was ever allowed to exist, but I'm so glad it does. It's loud and abrasive but also honest and hilarious. I only discovered it last week, but it's now one of my favourite shows ever. I burned through the two series of 10x10 episodes quickly, despite knowing it would end on an unresolved cliffhanger (maybe the only fitting way to end a soap opera satire) and I'm currently experiencing post-Crapston withdrawals.

The visceral, tactile nature of stop-motion is perfect for this show. It amplifies how upsetting everything is.

The pacing feels so unique & unencumbered by TV comedy conventions/expectations. There aren't always hard punchlines or buttons, it's more about bathing you in the squalid atmosphere and a constant barrage of funny weirdness.

The show makes great use of real-world imagery like magazine covers and t-shirts.

I'm impressed by the casual female nudity throughout the series, bare breasts are never a big deal or even acknowledged. Somehow even two decades later on Tuca & Bertie, we were still fighting for that.

Crapston breaks all the rules of TV animation and feels like a vital shock to the system, even all these years later. It's currently all on youtube (and on 4 on Demand if you're in the UK) so go check it out. It's definitely and aggressively not for everyone, by design, but I think even if you don't enjoy it yourself you can appreciate how special it is that something so weird, specific and unique was created.

Metal Gear Solid with Henry Shipes

A while ago I watched the documentary "Vernon, Florida" and became obsessed with the turkey hunter Henry Shipes, who keeps mentioning his buddy Snake. I thought it might be good to try cutting him into Metal Gear Solid cutscenes.