A Lunar Adventure

Lunar Update: Student Edition

Moonbot working with local schools

Last Friday Caddo Middle Magnet eighth graders Nick Hobbs, Ben Smith, and Cameron Smith paid a visit to Moonbot Studios to get a better understanding of what it’s like to work in the animation industry. We hope the students enjoyed their visit and look forward to receiving demo reels from them in the future.

SCVAF

Photos courtesy SCVAF

Moonbot animator Beavan Blocker was excited to be the opening speaker of the 2012 SCVAF Awards Banquet in Luling, Louisiana. The Saellite Center Video and Animation Festival was established to “help foster an appreciation for the video & animation fields and allow high school students to network with professionals in these fields.”

Morris Lessmore-inspired Poetry

Ms. Mary M Miller, third grade teacher at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, says: ” Our students were so inspired by your film and are excited to share some of their poetry.”

With Ms. Miller’s permission, we are excited to be able to share the beautiful poems penned by these talented 3rd graders.

A Circle Story
(Inspired by Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore)
Tumbling, Turning, Twisting storm
Blows you away from your home
The colors change from bright to dull
The happiness has disappeared in the storm
Flying person passes you being flown by books
Give you one and flies to a library
There you spend the rest of your life
Returning happiness to your town
Then you start flying, flown by books
Give a child a book, your life’s story
Then it starts again.

Read more after the break:

Wonderful Flying Books
Flap-Flap as the books fly,
Giving life to each person
Each book is important,
    With such precious life.
When it’s the end of life, he has a
    Circle to move on and on.
We are friends to book to care for.
And it’s going around and around.
And when it’s your turn to take care books,
At the end say…
     The End

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Flying books are everywhere
Turn your heart to happiness
Read together you’ll feel good
Books will be everywhere
Books never end, it goes on.
Make your book that never ends
Books have feelings
Whisper to books
It will be very fun

I wish you Could Fly
I wish a real book could fly like a bird
I wish a book could fly like a sweet hum
I wish a book could fly like a hug from mama
I wish you could fly
I wish you could fly

Hope
All lost and lonely
No sign of hope
Only birds flying in the sky
No! Wait! That’s not a bird
But a book coming down for me to read
The world wasn’t gray or blue
Cause there is hope always
Hope….
Cause hope is all the time always and forever in you

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
You whirling tornado, you took all that was mine.
   You took all the color that looks beautiful. You
       took away the words from my life. You
          took my old life and gave me new.
             But don’t take it away, I like it
                  more. All of my new
                     friend are with
                          Me and
                             You.

No Title
Music can express feelings
You don’t need words to tell a story
When the world changes,
It’s time to change your life too.
But can you live a life,
That doesn’t make sense?
A little world of big surprises
What else would one wish for?
Things change.
Something you don’t want to happen,
Can become a good thing.
Enjoy life
While you can.

So Much Depends Upon!
(Inspired by The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore)

So much depends upon a book
Happy and sad
To repair a hole of sadness
In someone’s life

So much depends upon Mr. Morris
Eager and smart
To fix an old ripping book.So much depends upon a girl
Pretty, smart and eager
To take Morris’ place

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
He was writing a book on a normal day till…..
A giant storm blew in, his book fell….
The storm was over, color was gone his book had no words….
In comes a miracle, a flying book leads the way to a place color roams….
He finds his empty book
Writes, writes, writes……

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Once there was a man
Who was kind
With a really satisfying mind
He wrote books from dawn to dusk
One day there was a storm
He was blown away to another world
But then it all changed
He found a house filled with books,
Books and more books.
And he stayed there till he was old
With his breath shaky and cold
But will he died and reformed
When he wrote THE END

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Mr. Morris Lessmore is an amazing person.
He got into a storm because of a single book.
Because he liked books so, he put himself in danger.
He got the book but the words all messed and gone.
What do you think what happened next?
Amazing things happened.
He discovered flying books.
Then his life changed. He got happier than ever.
I like him!
I want to be like him!

Monday March 5th marked the second time in history that a Ticker Tape Parade was held in downtown Shreveport, Louisiana. The three block long procession down Texas Street included William Joyce’s alma mater C.E. Byrd high school’s marching band, convertibles carrying Bill and son Jack, Brandon, Lampton, and Trish, and the Moonbot float filled with BOTS tossing Moonbot Moonpies and streamers into the crowd.

We would like to thank the sponsors who put together this wonderful event for the studio and the people of Shreveport: the City of Shreveport, Caddo Parish, SPAR, SRAC , DDA, Robinson Film Center, Shreveport-Bossier Film Office, Biomedical Research Foundation of NWLA, Shreveport-Bossier Convention & Tourism Bureau, Blade Studios, CRM Studios, Williams Creative Group, C.E. Byrd Marching Band, and Centenary College.

Moonbot Studios Day: 02.24.2012

Sketch Tuesday 02.21.2012

Adam Volker

Christina Ellis

Nolan Baker

Oscars® News

LPB “visits with the Moonbots”

Earlier this week, Cartoon Brew spoke with “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” Co-Directors William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. The resulting article is one of a series of interviews with this year’s Academy Award® nominated animated short Directors.

CBS Sunday Morning will feature Moonbot Studios in their February 26th broadcast. Find your local airtime here.

ShortsHD is screening the Oscar-nominated documentary, live action, and animated short films in theaters across the US, Canada, and Europe. Find a particpating venue nearest you.

Morris makes The Must List in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands tomorrow (Feb 17). EW also covered a certain “photobomb” meme making internet rounds at about this time last week.

Kicking off the Academy Award Nominee adventure in LA.

Follow @MorrisLessmore on Twitter for special photo-updates from the Directors as they embark upon various special events leading up to Oscars night on Sunday Feb 26th.

Sketch Tuesday 02.14.2012

Joe Bluhm

Nolan Baker (original: Vanesa del Rey)

Moonbot reacts to being nominated for an Oscar!

Who is “The Numberlys” audience?

The simple answer is Numberlys is for children. We intended it as a fable about the formation of the alphabet, but as with our favorite fabulists, we had a little more on our mind. Our instincts were that even the youngest children would follow our narrative if we made the world, the characters, and the story simple and compelling.

We’re all parents and in our experience we’ve found that children enjoy (even need) a narrative that challenges them. We tested Numberlys with children three and up and have heard from parents with children as young as two that they follow and enjoy the App. In fact they demand to play the App repeatedly when finished. We were prepared to simplify the App but research confirmed that our hopes were correct and our instincts not lunatic.

As with Morris we designed the App so that children, parents, siblings, grandparents – whole families –could enjoy it together. On the surface Numberlys is about making the Alphabet. We assume that most of our audience has already mastered or nearly mastered the ABCs. But we crafted the alphabet section to make the audience feel that they are almost complicit in its creation. That they are helping the Numberlys succeed. The alliterative text that introduces the letters gives them just enough of a hint that they tend to excitedly shout out, “I bet I know what the next letter is gonna be!” We chose a mix of vocabulary that they would already know with words we thought they would like to know or should know or words that are just fun to say; to introduce them to the richness and possibilities of language.

To us, interactivity isn’t just what’s on the screen, but should also lead to the most ancient form of interactivity: talking to others. “What is jujitsu mom? What is a knickerbocker grandpa?”

We made the gameplay of the letters purposely easy. Silly. Whimsical. Daft. To us, this section was less about gaming prowess and more about emotionally involving the audience as they help the Numberlys succeed.

Children feel empowered by knowing more than the Numberlys and guiding them. They relish Numberly Number 1’s attempts to repeatedly name the wrong letter “Z”. When he correctly names “Z” they feel relieved and happy for the little guy. After all, most of them are very nearly at his intellectual level.

So we made a story App about the invention of the ABCs. We weren’t really trying to teach the ABCs. We wanted children to experience the power of language. We wanted to teach them about courage and determination without them knowing it. We wanted them to experience these ideas on an emotional level, in their bones.

We think the future of Apps as a story telling medium is just beginning. The future holds amazing possibilities and we are trying to be thoughtfully adventurous in discovering what those possibilities can be.

And we think kids can handle more than we realized.

Thanks for asking and listening.
Bill Joyce
Brandon Oldenburg
Lampton Enochs

NUMBERLYS IS OUT!

The Numberlys presents a fanciful depiction of the origins of the alphabet and is the newest interactive epic from Moonbot Studios, the creators of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. The Numberlys is a story App celebration of the early fantasy epics King Kong, Metropolis and Flash Gordon with a dollop of the Marx Brothers, a splash of the Fleischer Studios technicolor Superman and a little bit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

The Numberlys is huge in scope. It’s an adventure! A mystery! A game! And a story!

It’s a new way to entertain, learn and rediscover our storytelling “golden age”.

The official Morris Lessmore Dress-up Contest has begun! Create a costume based upon Morris or any other character from the short film. To enter, send photos of you or your child in-character to contests@moonbotstudios.com We are accepting entries between now and January 30th, 2012. The winner will receive a Morris Lessmore movie poster autographed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg.