This guy is unstoppable. In a good way.

You can see the brilliantly made ‘Sweet Nothingness’ here:

Sweet Nothingness from Phil Rice on Vimeo.

It was an honour that Phil chose to use ZenCub3d to do this project in, he made full use of the little quirky charm that the ZenCub3d characters have, the facial animations were so brilliantly constructed that they essentially carrying the whole story with no dialogue. Amazing.

We were nominated for the same category last year, for our parking warden animation, but it was no where as nicely put together as ‘Sweet Nothingness’.

Once again, big congratulations on the win, you deserver every bit of it mate.

As you’re no doubt aware if you’ve been following this blog, voovees.com is currently a public site where everyone can make some basic dialogue changes to pre-made animations, and while ZenCub3d’s technology doesn’t currently have an active role in this, other than as the engine of choice to make these animations off site, that will change.

Voovees Phase 2 Coming Soon, Baby!

The current voovees.com is regarded as our ‘phase 1′ on our development vision, and with ‘phase 2′ looming on the horizon, we are granting users to a very limited, very exclusive close-beta sign up. First come, first serve.

While I won’t go into the details, I can tell you right now that ‘phase 1′ and ‘phase 2′ are VASTLY different.
Placing is very limited, so be in quick.

Sign yourself up at:
http://voovees.com/phase2signup/

When the private beta period starts, all of you that signed up with be notified how to get your beta user accounts.
After the private beta stage started, new user accounts will be obtained by invitation only, so it’s better to sign up now if you get the chance.

Once again, the sign up link is at:
http://voovees.com/phase2signup/

Current ZenCub3d and/or voovees.com phase 1 users do not automatically get entry into the closed beta, so it’s essential to sign up.

EDIT: due to popular demands, we’ve doubled our initial allocation from 300 to 600, and they are still going fast, so be in quick.

We’ll tally up the votes and soon make an announcement on the winners.

Our frequent users ‘redoptick‘ is probably the user that made the most number of pickup-lines (professional pickup artist?), who even made a 4 part series within those entries. Ah, always entertaining.

We have over 70 entries so far, and among ourselves we’ve had several laughed-out-loud moments in the office just looking at them.

Click on top right link to view all parodies for that story

You can now access to all the parodies made for a particular story by clicking on the top right link from the frontpage, just in time for you to decide who want to vote for huh?

We invite everyone to go see all the pick-up line entries, and vote on whether you like them or not, even if you are not making pick-up lines yourself; if you did make an entry, invite your friends to come on and vote.

Go for it before the time runs out!

Voovees.com Pick-Up Line Competition

It was more intended to be a local competition that we’re running here in the always sunny Christchurch, New Zealand, the main cash prize being $100 in New Zealand currency, but since there are no rules against international entries, I don’t see why people around the world shouldn’t share their, perhaps local flavors of pick-ups, as I’m sure, guys failing to impress beautiful girls in public are truly experiences shared across the globe (well, perhaps less so in some socially-restrictive parts of the world, but you know what I mean). If you’d win as an international entry, well then, maybe you’d like some NZ currency for the next time you visit NZ, or we can PayPal you to equivalent value in your nominated currency (roughly US$74).

We already have some really funny entries up on the site, so what are you waiting for?

Voovees.com presents: Twilight 48Hour Parody Competition #1

I hearby announce the first ever Voovees.com Twilight 48Hour Parody Competition begins!

Over the next 48 hours, all the parodies that you, the registered user, make of the Twilight Parody vol.1 and vol.2, will be eligible for prizes!

The single parody, out of all the parodies made from both scenes, with the highest view count, will get to choose from a range of prizes. Also, the entry with the highest overall rating, will also get to choose from a range of prizes. Even if you just register to enter by making one remix, you still might get the chance to win the limited 5 lucky draw prizes. For the details about the prizes and rules, see competition rules.

The clock is ticking away even as you read this, so get to it! Start making twilight parodies!

Also, please help us spread this contest, you can get blog / tweet / shout at the top of your roof, get as many of your friends to enter! It’s something fun to do anyway. You can get the banner from this link, and link to the competition rules page where the big count down clock is, post them everywhere!

voovees.com, where you as a user can replace existing dialogues from various animations, and add your own twists to it.

Following the philosophy among tech startups that, “Release Early, Release Often“, “if you‘re not embarrassed by the first release of your product, you‘ve released too late “, we want to put something out there as soon as the gist of where we plan to go is glimpsing through, even if that means the idea of letting people have the chance to exercise their criticisms on virtually everything makes the hair in the back of our necks stand up.

Even at this early stage, and even if just among ourselves, we are having lots of fun making parodies and spoofs with it. We hope to see yours own customized parodies and spoofs published up there too.

The site will be periodically updated with new animations that you can remix, and we certainly are making small incremental changes to make using the site more fun and entertaining. Your suggestions and constructive criticisms will only help us in creating a better site for you.

On a slightly different note, over the last few months of “stealth mode” development, I’ve been asked many times what the fate of ZenCub3d would be, that many people misses the quirky small animation engine. Amidst rumor and speculations thus far, I can confirm to you guys right now, that the core technology behind ZenCub3d is being repurposed for the next phase of what voovees.com will become.

Not too bad. Up against some stiff competitions though.

Don’t think we have the money to attend this festival though, otherwise it will be really cool to go to Portugal.

Over the last few weeks there’s an excitement in the air, and much of that is due to the imminent global launch of the iPhone 3G. Not much else needs be said about this device really so I won’t do an intro here, even my mum know about it.

What most people in the rest of the world might not realise though, New Zealanders are the first in the world to get the OPPORTUNITY to get their hands on one of these things, with the international date line drawn on our immediate right and everything. Yeah, we’re like that kid in class whose first name and last name all starts with ‘A’, and gets called by the teacher first, all the time, every time.

I write “OPPORTUNITY” in caps in the previous paragraph for a pretty simple reason. It was almost a certainty that most people I know (that have spare cash) will get an iPhone, knowing that it only costs NZ$199 + a 2 year contract. At this point all the people fingering their wallet are only looking for that NZ$199. But that is not to be. The 2 year contract ties the user to pay NZ$250 per month, so that’s $6000 over the 2 year period. You win again, Universe. From the “now-let-me-get-my-cheque-book” to the puppy-watery-eyes-staring-through-the-shop-window-at-the-price-tag, the certainty now becomes a mere option. A bank-breaking luxury option at that.

This is the worst deal IN THE WORLD for consumers that wants to get their hands on an iPhone, accroding to John Campbell when he’s grilling the marketing guy from Vodafone. But then again, this can change if they starts selling iPhones in Zimbabwe.

All and all, this is pretty bad PR for Vodafone NZ I must say, the kind that someone will get fired from. Multiple someones.

I know at least I would rather buy a few MacBooks than an iPhone now; I guess this is one way to boost MacBook sales…

Very much looking forward to someone come in and save us from this monopoly. Maybe the original monopoly, NZ Telecom?!

We won Best Animation for “Bite Sized Love” (see it in our earlier post) for the 48Hours Furious Filmmaking Challenge (I suspect it’s the regional award), so if you’re in New Zealand you might be able to see it on TV next Thursday evening (8.30pm, June 27th, C4), if it gets the national Best Animation award. Fingers crossed.

Well, at least my interview with them might come up, but don’t expect too much, sleep deprivation may have an impact on my ability to speak properly in front of the camera.

On the other front, BitFilm voting is able to end in a few days, so this is the last chance to vote for our nominated Parking Warden entry, so Let’s get Voting!!