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00:00:00 [Music]
00:00:06 Hello, this is Albert Burney on May 23rd, 2022
00:00:14 in Baltimore, Maryland recording this commentary track for Tux and Fanny.
00:00:23 I've got some colors here and ends with the pink and the purple color before we go onto the cloud
00:00:32 here. This little opening here was not part of the original episodes that I was making,
00:00:40 but when I was starting to put them together and realizing that it was going to be a feature film,
00:00:49 I thought it would be nice to have a little prologue here to see the deer that they encounter
00:00:57 dead in the film, but to see it just for a moment, kind of looks at us and blinks and
00:01:02 we get our title card. Well, first the deer's gone and then we get our title card.
00:01:09 And you also see the acorn is up in the tree there as well. So then this is the first true
00:01:18 episode. When I made this, it was, I think, June of 2018. And at the time we were cat sitting
00:01:33 and the cat that we were cat sitting had fleas. And it just, that just literally was the same
00:01:41 week I started to draw them and animate them. And I often think what would have happened if
00:01:48 we were not cat sitting? What would the first episode have been? And then would that have
00:01:53 changed the entire kind of thrust of the story if it hadn't been about this stray cat and fleas?
00:02:04 And then I did this first episode and didn't really know what would happen next, but I thought,
00:02:13 well, it'd be nice to kind of continue this story. So they've got the cat and they're
00:02:19 scratching their flea bites. And I guess this is kind of the beginning of showing the two of them
00:02:32 that they're always facing these problems and they're figuring out how to overcome them.
00:02:42 I don't know why I thought peanut butter. I think it's, I think I remember hearing as a kid,
00:02:47 like if you got gum stuck in your hair, maybe you could put peanut butter on it or maybe it's
00:02:54 toothpaste. I don't know. It just seemed like a strange thing that maybe they would do.
00:02:58 And then third episode here, it's like, okay, well, they're covered in peanut butter now.
00:03:07 But then it's kind of a little side story about the dandelion. And
00:03:11 I think at this point I kind of realized like, oh, I could,
00:03:17 I can have these little side stories or just little moments when
00:03:23 they slow down and they admire the natural world around them.
00:03:28 And didn't think about this at the time, but the day will come when we must float away and seek
00:03:34 our destiny and not too far, maybe 10 or 15 episodes in the future, tux will be indeed floating away
00:03:42 in the sky. So I thought this was a nice, it wasn't planned, but it became a nice little
00:03:48 foreshadowing. And I think that's kind of the end of the story.
00:03:53 And then here's episode four and, you know, Fanny's still covered in the dandelion seeds
00:04:00 and they're both still covered in the peanut butter. And this episode, I was, I think,
00:04:07 you know, still figuring out who they were, what their personalities were like.
00:04:14 And it seemed to me that, you know, I was kind of like, oh, I'm going to have to
00:04:20 do this. And it seemed to me that Fanny would do the maybe sensible thing of using a hose,
00:04:28 but tux was going to try to feed this colony of ants, unaware that maybe
00:04:37 these would be the type of ants that could eat away their flesh.
00:04:42 And I think it's also, it's a big moment because I could have stopped the whole thing there. Okay,
00:04:50 tux is dead. Tux is a skeleton now. But I thought, no, you know what, let's just keep on going. Like,
00:04:56 nothing really changed. Their flesh was eaten, but they're just a skeleton and
00:05:02 still figuring out the rules. But it's like, okay, well, if they can do that, then, you know,
00:05:07 anything can happen in this world. It was very freeing to know that to lose your flesh
00:05:12 and all your organs and blood and everything would not be the end.
00:05:17 And you'd still have to figure out how to get the big TV, the big soccer game to work on the TV.
00:05:23 And again, I think this was just inspired, like as a kid with our old TV,
00:05:29 sometimes if you touch the antenna, the reception would come in clear. And if you let go, it would,
00:05:36 you know, it wouldn't go full static, but you would kind of lose the sharpness. So
00:05:39 just thought it'd be so funny if it's the longest episode in history and Fanny just
00:05:46 loving this game and Tux is just sitting up there touching the antenna. Oh dear.
00:05:52 And let's see where we go from here. Oh yeah. So it's like another little side
00:06:00 story moment. They've watched the game now. They're just going to go outside and
00:06:07 enjoy this fine day. Butterflies and the shadow of the tree. Also, I think this,
00:06:18 realizing that, okay, their peanut butter has been eaten. Let's start worrying about like where
00:06:26 they're going to find food. I don't know where Tux was keeping that gum. There's no pockets or
00:06:38 they're just holding that gum waiting.
00:06:49 Tux and Fanny are, I got those names from the cat and dog that I had as a kid, my family had.
00:06:58 Tux was a cat that the classic kind of tuxedo cat, black with a little bit of white, like a white
00:07:04 bow tie. So we named him Tux. And then Fanny was our dog, which my sister and I had just,
00:07:15 I wish I knew what movie, but we had seen a kid's movie where a character was named Fanny.
00:07:19 And we just thought it was the funniest thing. I think we were probably about
00:07:23 five and seven. I was maybe seven. And we just couldn't stop laughing that a character's name
00:07:28 was Fanny. And so a day or two later when we were going to the pound to adopt a dog
00:07:32 and my mom asked us what we're going to name it. We just thought, well, Fanny, that's a name.
00:07:37 That's not, that's not a joke. That's a real name because we saw it in a movie. So
00:07:42 our dog was named Fanny for many years. So we had Tux and Fanny. And then when I was in college,
00:07:49 I made a comic about two characters named Tux and Fanny. So that was 2003 maybe. And then,
00:07:57 you know, for years I thought it'd be fun to do some sort of animation with these two friends.
00:08:02 And finally in 2018, figured out how to do it.
00:08:06 This is, this was a fun moment to imagine their bedroom and maybe their bedtime routine
00:08:18 that Tux is often playing this music box to help Fanny fall asleep. And again, Fanny's kind of
00:08:27 scared by these shadows and Tux is trying to soothe them and say, well, maybe those hands are
00:08:33 going to bring us food, which those hands are caused by the wind outside, you know, blowing
00:08:38 the tree and then the wind that's blowing the trees out there also blowing down the apples.
00:08:44 So on our next episode, as the hunger is getting too strong to bear, they, they notice, oh, look,
00:08:55 we've got some apples, which will not directly lead them to food, but indirectly by, by providing
00:09:01 the worms that we're about to call out of these apples. And at this point, I'm still just kind of
00:09:09 figuring it out. Not really planning too far ahead. I'm maybe writing one or two episodes at a time.
00:09:15 I'll try to remember when the story kind of started to emerge more and maybe about halfway
00:09:24 through, I started to plan further and further ahead until I was five or 10 episodes ahead.
00:09:29 And then I finally, I figured out the ending where it would get to. And that kind of helped
00:09:33 me work backwards from there. So here they are finally getting some food. Poor Fanny can eat
00:09:41 again. And I love Fanny's little bloated belly here from eating all those fish.
00:09:52 And then we have our introduction of, I guess at this point, the fourth character, if you,
00:09:57 if you count the cat, now we've got the chicken. And again, I was thinking I was just,
00:10:04 I didn't want them to always be hungry. You know, I didn't want their whole series to just be them
00:10:09 looking for food. So I thought, how can I kind of make it so that they always have some sort of food
00:10:15 source? I thought, well, we've got tux as a skeleton. What if a chicken sits down in there
00:10:22 and now they have an endless supply of eggs?
00:10:25 And then I don't, then, then the story can go in new directions. We don't always have to be
00:10:33 worrying about them finding food. And so I think now this is episode 11,
00:10:39 which is kind of a turning point as well, because they've got food, but I also didn't want to always
00:10:46 be drawing the skeleton. It was kind of difficult to draw the skeleton every time, the rib cage and
00:10:52 I was like, I'd much rather just draw this pink blob again. So it was like how to get them skin.
00:10:58 And so Fanny knits the skin suit. There we go. Of course, leaving the, the hole so they can still
00:11:10 get the eggs. So now we know we've got food, we've got the skin. It's a very touching moment. Tux is
00:11:16 very happy and moved. And now of course, tux can play again because they've got this skin and
00:11:25 it's a win-win for everybody. Everyone's happy. And the cat's still back there. And again,
00:11:30 I thought this would be like, if this was a short film, episode 11, that could be the end of it.
00:11:35 You know, it's like, they go on this little adventure, lose the skin, get the skin, get food,
00:11:39 wrap it on up. So it's like, that's kind of the end of that first little story arc.
00:11:44 And now it's like, well, where are we going to go from there? And so that original, the comic that
00:11:52 I mentioned, the Tox and Fanny comic, this was based on one of those. So I went back to those
00:11:58 comics and looked at them and most of them were kind of bad or just forgettable. But this, this
00:12:04 one was an original comic, which I think you can find in the Blu-ray booklet. If you want to see
00:12:11 what the comic looked like and what they looked like when I drew them in 2003. But, you know,
00:12:18 it's still kind of like a one-off episode. We just, we get Fanny's birthday and Tux gives them
00:12:24 a present that they'll never be able to open. I realized it would have been nice if maybe when
00:12:30 their house burned down, if it burned the present, you finally saw what was in it. But didn't realize
00:12:35 that till later. So, oh, well, we'll never know what was in there, if anything. And again, it's
00:12:42 like, that was just a one-off. So now it's like, what are we going to do today? Because I was like,
00:12:46 what am I going to animate them doing today? And I think at the time I had just bought a,
00:12:51 this great keyboard at a thrift store that made animal noises. Like every
00:12:56 key was a different animal noise. And you, or you could set the different key, the different
00:13:01 animal noises to be like, you know, all the different keys. So there was a duck feature
00:13:06 and the duck quack was just so perfect that I started just playing around and came up with
00:13:11 this little song. And then it was like, okay, well, how do I make this, turn the song into the movie?
00:13:15 So it became this. I just love them, you know, going down to the pond and they're
00:13:30 treated to this little song and they're just dancing. Okay. So then we do that one little
00:13:36 one-off story. And now I go back to the original comics I had drawn, and this was another story.
00:13:42 So I'm still trying to figure out what's going on here. I guess this is episode maybe 14 by now.
00:13:48 This was based on one of the comics from 2003. Again, I think it's in the book, the Blu-ray book.
00:13:57 In the comic, they're playing Nintendo instead of cards, but I think I didn't know how I was
00:14:03 going to animate them playing Nintendo. I figured it out a couple more episodes in,
00:14:07 but for this one, I thought the cards would be, would be okay.
00:14:24 So now they both have their little spiders catching their tears.
00:14:27 Okay. All right. So then here, here's another big episode. I think just in like the overall
00:14:36 development of the story, just going for a walk, finding a dead deer that's just been
00:14:44 killed by an arrow, which a lot of people pointed out. They're, they're freaked out by knowing that
00:14:48 there's another person in this world that would fire an arrow. And sometimes I think I'm want to
00:14:52 answer where the arrow came from, but other times I like that it just, there's a hunter, there's a
00:14:58 hunter out there in their world that maybe we'll never see, or maybe we'll see many episodes down
00:15:03 the road in the next film or the film after that one. I don't know. But you know, I think
00:15:09 this, this dead deer is just an opportunity for them to kind of ask the big questions of what
00:15:17 maybe comes next. And we don't know, but we're just going to find out someday starting to,
00:15:23 maybe some of the existential questions are starting to creep in a little bit into their world.
00:15:29 This was just a gag episode, I guess. Maybe the only time they've ever gotten mail, you know,
00:15:38 in these early episodes, I'm still figuring out like, okay, well, they can get mail. And
00:15:41 maybe at this point I thought you'd even see the mailman someday, but
00:15:46 that as the series goes on, I think they kind of, it kind of moves away from that world a little bit.
00:15:51 But this was a hundred percent inspired when I was in fourth grade and I got glasses and I remember
00:15:56 walking outside and seeing like pollen floating in the air. I had never seen before.
00:16:01 Poor Tux.
00:16:10 Fan is just like, I'd rather be blind than see the world as it really is.
00:16:15 I think maybe seeing that comic where the spiders were drinking the tears where they're playing
00:16:27 Nintendo, I thought, well, maybe they should be playing Nintendo, playing some video games. So
00:16:31 like this idea of a game where you just go along pushing penguins off of a pedestal.
00:16:37 And then we get Tux walking in the background with a light bulb in a box and
00:16:41 Fanny gets to this penguin, it's too tall, I can't push it. So game over. Pretty silly stuff, but
00:16:49 I think it all was leading to this next little gag here. We've got Tux on a chair,
00:16:54 changing the light bulb and the kind of like the classic Charlie Chaplin, where you see
00:17:02 someone as something else. Fanny sees Tux there as this penguin and of course
00:17:08 pushes Tux off because she's been used to playing penguin pusher. And now
00:17:14 Tux has this broken arm in a sling, which I didn't know where it was headed, but I knew,
00:17:23 okay, we'll just keep drawing it. And in a couple episodes, maybe we'll figure out where that
00:17:29 sling or broken arm is going to go to, but kind of just another little moment for Tux to develop
00:17:34 this personality of deep thinking or, you know, sitting around a fire and being moved to
00:17:42 talk about what the embers are and what fire is and just these deep thoughts.
00:17:52 Tux really can't help themselves. They just share these ideas and then this kind of sets
00:17:59 up the classic, you know, Tux has said something and then Fanny just comes back with, "I like to
00:18:05 poke it with a stick." It's kind of their personalities in a nutshell, maybe. And you
00:18:12 hear the owl in the background there in that episode, which will be in a couple episodes
00:18:17 later, but I like to put little clues sometimes before. I think I knew at some point, maybe that
00:18:23 they would find an owl. So I was starting to put hints, but then I'm thinking, okay,
00:18:28 they've been together now and I'm kind of running out of ideas. So maybe the answer is for them to
00:18:36 be separated. So how can that happen? Well, okay. So it's a windy day and, you know, Tux has this
00:18:43 sling, but it doesn't hurt that much anymore. So they're going to take it off. And as they take it
00:18:48 off, the wind fills the sling like a sail and they go parasailing up into the sky.
00:18:57 You know, pretty silly stuff, but it separates them, which I was like, I can work with that.
00:19:06 That can get me some story. This might be one of the first episodes where there's no talking. I
00:19:11 just figured let's slow down here for a second, show what Tux is doing up there,
00:19:19 just kind of floating and then any chance to get some geese.
00:19:24 I always loved Tux's little feet down there kind of dangling.
00:19:33 And this kind of like knowing look between different animals here, both on their journeys,
00:19:41 both, you know, Tux finding a friend up in the sky before drifting off.
00:19:47 I think at one point I considered maybe Tux makes it to the sun and there's some kind of
00:19:54 episodes in the sun because if Tux's skin has already been burned off, they can maybe go walking
00:19:59 on the sun. But was it meant to be maybe a future episode, they'll journey up to the sun. So now
00:20:04 here's Fanny at home and very lonely. It's not the same. So it's like, ah, okay, well, I'll make a
00:20:13 new Tux. And I'm like, okay, I'll make a new Tux. And I'm like, okay, I'll make a new Tux.
00:20:18 Very lonely. It's not the same. So it's like, ah, okay, well, I'll make a new Tux.
00:20:23 And I think here we have maybe the first time that mixing different styles. So instead of the
00:20:32 pixelated 8-bit style, we've got an actual clay Tux that I made out of some Sculpey.
00:20:39 And Fanny even adds a little hole there, trying to make it accurate.
00:20:46 For eyes, I think they're these little like fluff balls I had that I just put some Sharpie
00:20:50 marker on and glued them in. And then Sasha knocks it over and Fanny's sad in that moment,
00:20:58 but they're going to try to have a good day the next day. Here we go.
00:21:01 Still kind of fooling themselves that they, everything's normal.
00:21:06 My buddy Tux is here. Let's have some fun. So now we're going to do some of the things we've
00:21:13 already done. The blowing the dandelions, which we saw in an earlier moment. It was kind of fun
00:21:19 to revisit all these moments, but now with this clay Tux. So now they're back at the duck pond.
00:21:25 Tux just standing there playing some soccer like the very beginning. And of course that doesn't
00:21:35 work. Fanny even tucks Tux into the bed. And that's the tongue twister, tucks Tux into the bed.
00:21:44 And in this moment we get a sad little, we see Fanny really is sad and misses their friend.
00:21:57 And just to show, I think that that's the same music you hear in the floating episode. So it's
00:22:05 kind of like Tux is up there somewhere and Fanny's going to keep trying. Something's not right,
00:22:11 but maybe it's because you're just so still. So I need to figure out a way to make you move.
00:22:19 It's a problem solving. Go get the record player and place Tux on it. I love making these little
00:22:29 pictures. There's a rabbit back there throughout their house, like imagining what they would have
00:22:34 framed in their house. So there's a little bunny. You only see that one time, but
00:22:37 and this time Fanny's playing for Tux, whereas Tux played earlier for Fanny, but
00:22:47 you know, comes to see that it's just not the same and this is,
00:22:51 it's not going to work and Tux, Clay Tux just keeps on spinning.
00:22:58 And again, trying to figure out where to go with the story, I figured, okay,
00:23:07 let's get him back by the fire. And then wouldn't that be interesting if Clay Tux just melts away.
00:23:13 So I cast this clay figure and then I made a wax version of it. So this is still the clay version.
00:23:20 And actually Fanny's kind of getting a little deep here. Maybe last time by the fire, Fanny was just
00:23:25 sticking the fire with a stick, but now kind of speaking more like Tux, thinking about how our
00:23:32 bodies are just slowly melting like candles. We're just getting older. And then now we've moved over
00:23:39 to the wax Tux, which is so close to the fire that it just melts away.
00:23:43 Which was fun to make. You know, I had this wax figure and then I got a heat gun and I was just
00:23:52 recording it in actual wax figure I made melting away.
00:23:56 And at this point I figured, okay, let's try to figure out how they're going to get back together.
00:24:02 So Fanny is maybe going to sing or play a song, send it out into the world, hoping that Tux can
00:24:10 maybe hear it and it will guide them home. So we've got the bird, yellow bird taking off from
00:24:15 the antenna and we're just going to kind of follow. There's a bee and the bee gets eaten by a frog.
00:24:27 I've got a snail. So hopefully you think, okay, this snail's going to get eaten by the snake,
00:24:32 but nope, fish comes and takes the snail. We've got an acorn with a squirrel. There's the acorn
00:24:39 again, which will come back later. And there's our maybe yellow bird from the beginning.
00:24:43 So now we're back following the bird. And that brings us to Tux, who can hear Fanny's song.
00:24:55 Still up there floating. At this point, probably been floating for many days.
00:24:58 Okay, so now we're going to follow Tux's story here for a bit. So
00:25:05 lands in this giant nest. I think this was probably inspired by Nielsen's "The Point,"
00:25:12 which was a favorite record and cassette tape listened to a lot on a lot of drives.
00:25:18 But at one point, Oblio and Arrow land in a big nest, a pterodactyl nest. So we've got this giant
00:25:26 owl that's coming in and what's going to happen? But there's our chicken. So I thought it was time
00:25:31 to bring our chicken back or just remind people that there's a chicken living in Tux's chest. So
00:25:36 not only is this chicken providing food, but saved Tux's life in that moment.
00:25:45 But so Tux is on solid ground now, but still needs to find their way back to Fanny.
00:25:51 To climb down the tree and how am I going to find my way home?
00:25:58 They smell something.
00:26:03 And of course, come upon the deer we saw earlier. And now there's been maggots eating away. So it's
00:26:15 the deer's become kind of a way to show time passing. Also just to show Tux that they're
00:26:20 not so far away. An insatiable lust for rotting flesh. And I like this idea of the chicken
00:26:32 providing food for Tux. So Tux is going to take care of the chicken. And we get a little
00:26:42 end moment here. Death is not the end. You know, even in death, there are maggots which provide
00:26:48 life. But of course, with Tux gone, Fanny is starving. They've lost the endless egg
00:26:57 supply. So they go walking.
00:27:01 And there's a mushroom which we saw an episode or two ago and the apples are all gone now.
00:27:10 And I, you know, I thought it'd be fun to do the classic kind of tripping psychedelic episode.
00:27:21 And they both kind of come to these mushrooms, these magic mushrooms separately, but they,
00:27:29 when they reunite, I thought it'd be fun to have them both tripping their little brains out. So
00:27:37 here their pupils enlarge. We get their first split screen. It starts to break down. And this
00:27:42 was just a fun, I just wanted to get silly and try some new things. So kind of anything goes here.
00:27:51 Multiple versions of themselves.
00:27:57 Tux can feel bones. That's from when I, one time, had a really strong fever and I could feel my
00:28:06 bones. I've never forgotten that. So that's that moment. And Tux still kind of getting
00:28:13 these out there ideas. And
00:28:15 this is, I think I filmed myself as a blade of grass. That's my face.
00:28:26 Just speaking some nonsense. And they kind of are feeling great and having this wonderful
00:28:34 trip, feeling connected, everything. And then they puke and back to reality. But
00:28:38 at least they found each other. And I always love this. They like go to hug and then cuts the wire
00:28:44 and they're just standing in their puke, but it's still a sweet moment because they're reunited.
00:28:49 All right. So that, you know, that kind of concludes that storyline. They're back together.
00:28:54 And I thought, okay, well, where do we go from here? Well, Tux is really happy to be home.
00:28:59 And we just show a little bit more of their routine. So, you know, maybe Tux is the one
00:29:04 that rises before Fanny and gets the coffee going. That's my actual coffee grinder. Just like that.
00:29:11 And, you know, as they're getting ready for breakfast, let's get a little fly for the chicken.
00:29:18 Water goes off. This is not too different from my routine.
00:29:28 Although I think in this scenario, I might be Fanny in bed, but I want to be Tux someday, maybe.
00:29:37 Push the coffee down, get the eggs and you get to go see the sunrise and
00:29:42 it's nice to have you back, Tux.
00:29:47 All right. So then where do you go from there? Let's see. I think from here, I just started
00:29:55 writing episodes and figuring out as I went. So this idea, if you've got two different things
00:30:03 you want to watch on TV at the same time, what do you do? Well, it seems like in their world,
00:30:07 they would maybe just try to watch both at the same time. Like this idea of flipping back and forth
00:30:14 between a soccer match, which we know they already love,
00:30:22 and a documentary about the universe, which I might also be going back and forth between these two.
00:30:29 I like the idea of the players are running as they go faster and faster. The star becomes the head
00:30:35 and the planet becomes the soccer ball. But of course, all that flipping back, that's going to
00:30:41 pop your TV, break it. But then we end up getting best of both worlds anyway. They're underneath the
00:30:50 stars and the cosmos and they get to play soccer instead of watching it. So a comet goes by.
00:30:55 And I think now I'm just like, okay, well, they're outside now and the TV's smoking.
00:31:02 Let's just do a continuation and maybe go into a little bit more of the backstory, the myth of
00:31:07 this world. Where did Tux and Fanny come from? Well, according to the legend,
00:31:14 this creation myth, you've got this turtle, Julian, who eats the petals from the sacred
00:31:22 crocus flowers. So they got that. And then this was all just, I just made all this up because I
00:31:32 think I had a little miniature glockenspiel and I had a little toy turtle and I was just looking at
00:31:37 them. And that's usually where ideas come from, just things I'm seeing or thinking about.
00:31:43 [Foreign language]
00:31:48 This is kind of sweet that, to imagine that Tux has somehow
00:31:52 hidden this glockenspiel over here, knowing that they were going to tell Fanny this story.
00:31:56 So this was another little interlude here, this little inchworm along the tree branch that wasn't
00:32:05 a part of the original episodes. But as, like I said, as I was putting them all together,
00:32:09 sometimes I thought there needed to be little dividers between certain episodes if they didn't
00:32:14 necessarily fit together. So this is another just one-off episode. This I think was inspired,
00:32:26 at the time I was just painting a skeleton with its flesh stripping off. And I thought,
00:32:33 wouldn't it be funny if Tux teaches Fanny to paint or just says, "Just do what you see or
00:32:40 what you feel and where your inspiration takes you." And Tux's painting is a simple frog with
00:32:45 a hat. And then, what did you do, Fanny, expecting some really simple first painting? And
00:32:50 Fanny flips it over and it's this rendering of Tux's flesh being eaten by the ants.
00:33:01 So that was just a coincidence, I mean, or inspired by the fact that I was actually
00:33:05 painting this painting and I kind of worked it into their story. Which,
00:33:11 you know, you have the freedom to do whatever you want in these. And then
00:33:18 this begins our next kind of storyline, the computer.
00:33:21 I think, you know, you can probably tell that I love
00:33:28 old computers and old video games by all these pixels, but I thought it'd be fun to
00:33:33 just see them kind of going into the computer world a little bit. And
00:33:40 just kind of worlds within worlds within worlds. So Fanny's playing Victoria in this game,
00:33:52 and then Victoria clicks on their computer and they play as a Gleb. And
00:33:59 ended up making these playable if you play the Tux and Fanny video game
00:34:06 available on Nintendo Switch and Xbox and computer.
00:34:10 The same kind, I just reuse the same kind of gag of the computer games within games,
00:34:19 worlds within worlds. And then Fanny says, I wish I lived inside a computer and that's
00:34:23 be careful what you wish for. I think this episode is when I realized, okay,
00:34:28 this will start the next little storyline where Fanny will be sucked in. And again,
00:34:34 Tux is just taking care of the chicken, feeding it and letting it drink. And so
00:34:38 lightning strikes the house, Fanny gets sucked in, because of course, that's what happens when
00:34:45 you're playing the computer in lightning strikes. And maybe it's a little bit too soon to separate
00:34:53 them again. But I feel like even though they're separated, they're still kind of together here,
00:35:00 because Tux can see them here, this little purple, giant arrow mouse next to them.
00:35:09 All right, yeah, this is this is logical. What are you going to do here? I think I would probably
00:35:14 try that you eject them and maybe expect them to kind of come out the disk drive or something. But
00:35:19 instead, they just go deeper and deeper into the computer. And again, this was, I think, just
00:35:24 me wanting to experiment and try some new animation styles.
00:35:28 So we've got these, this computer episode, which was a lot of fun to make.
00:35:35 Imagining what it was be like to be lost inside
00:35:41 a computer. So there's Fanny just kind of figuring out what's going on. And
00:35:45 we've got the introduction to a new character.
00:35:49 You are in the deep mainframe. It's like, I don't know really what
00:35:56 can be or is inside computers, but deep mainframe sounded good. And then
00:36:01 this character, Magnet Superior sounded kind of like, yeah, maybe there'd be this giant rotating
00:36:09 magnet inside that somehow wants to trap Fanny, touch me Fanny and erase all pain.
00:36:18 And then Fanny does that and we go into it and then, oh, OK.
00:36:24 Maybe it worked. Maybe there's no more pain. You touched my Magnet Superior.
00:36:31 And this was kind of the fun, classic horror trope of you think like it's all
00:36:38 better. You think everything's over, but then
00:36:40 little by little things seem a little bit off. So we've got
00:36:44 all of a sudden there's a TV back and there's two TVs and it looks like there's a
00:36:49 mushroom cloud on the news and there's a weightlifter. And then this one's been beheaded
00:36:53 and it's just all feels off. And then Fanny notices Tux is just staring off, not really moving.
00:37:04 Hoping that it's just a dream. But then, of course, the chicken
00:37:08 comes out and it's an endless neck and Tux has a modem and then Sasha's upside down and then
00:37:13 we're glitching out and we cut back and Fanny is indeed stuck inside the Magnet Superior.
00:37:22 All hope is lost. Meanwhile, Tux in reality is still here trying to get Fanny out.
00:37:31 And he has an idea. OK, so Tux is thinking on their feet here. If electricity,
00:37:38 if the lightning struck the house and that's what happened. So maybe if lightning strikes again,
00:37:44 that will free Fanny. Seems like it could work. So you get the coat hanger. I always thought it
00:37:52 was funny that they have coat hangers, but they don't have any clothes. So it's like,
00:37:56 what are these coat hangers for? I guess just having them around.
00:38:00 So we get the lightning strike in there, of course, is Fanny. So over the course of a couple
00:38:05 of episodes now, their TV has been destroyed and their computer. And I think maybe it was a way of
00:38:09 getting rid of these distractions that maybe I could always fall back on.
00:38:17 The kind of simple solutions like, OK, I just show them watching TV or on a computer,
00:38:23 but when they're busted, it would maybe make me think a little bit outside the box of where to go
00:38:28 in their stories. So I think I was out of ideas here. And I went back to the comics. This was a
00:38:35 third idea that came from a comic where they're eating a turkey and the growth hormones in the
00:38:43 turkey make Fanny's body mutate and grow. And I don't know, looking back on it, this maybe was
00:38:53 my least favorite of the old comic ideas that I adapted. But I guess it's OK.
00:39:00 I just felt looking back on it, I'm like, too many bad things were happening to Fanny here.
00:39:05 They get trapped in the computer, then they mutate. But that doesn't last too long and it
00:39:11 gets us back to the acorn. So I think maybe it's OK. But this is a kind of a big jump here. You go
00:39:17 from Thanksgiving right to Christmas. And that's all based right on the comic. So now
00:39:25 doing some crossword. Those are all real words.
00:39:31 People always ask me why they speak in Russian. And it's really no other reason other than that.
00:39:39 I went to Moscow in 2017 for a film festival for a previous film I made called Silvio that I made
00:39:48 with Kentucker Audley. And we were in Moscow and just had a great time and we're learning,
00:39:56 teaching ourselves some Russian words. And then when I got back, I just kind of wanted to hear
00:40:00 more and keep learning. So that coincided with starting this. So that's it. If I had
00:40:08 gone to France or anywhere else, they would be speaking,
00:40:11 you know, another language, speaking French instead of Russian.
00:40:15 There's the answer to crossword guppy. And this is just that same keyboard I had that the duck
00:40:22 sound is on. There's also a cat sound. So let's have a cat keyboard. There's the computer and
00:40:27 the TV in the front there. This shot's not in the original episode. That's just a little moment in
00:40:42 between. This moment too, I think just cleaning Sasha. So it's like, I felt like we needed some
00:40:50 more Sasha moments now. So they've, they've got to see this cat, the cat had fleas. We see it around
00:40:56 a little bit here and there. They turn into a piano, but I was like, well, what's Sasha,
00:41:01 what's going on in Sasha's mind, you know? And they're just kind of thinking about what Sasha
00:41:06 could be daydreaming about sitting in the sunbeams. I just thought it'd be really funny if
00:41:14 Sasha was actually dreaming that they were kind of in charge or Tux and Fanny were their pets and
00:41:25 they were, Sasha was the mother to these little special babies. So just another,
00:41:33 another moment to get silly. Mother loves all special babies. Sure.
00:41:40 Well, ear twitch. Sasha living a good life. All right. At this point, okay. This is the first
00:41:50 time I should be show Fanny's maybe even though they're back from being in the computer there a
00:41:54 little bit, a little bit messed up here. They got some lingering effects, a little PTSD, maybe
00:42:02 seeing the head. And now I'm like, we got to get rid of, I really didn't want to draw this extra
00:42:08 mutant Fanny anymore. So we, the cloud looks like a dolphin. This episode packs in a lot. We got
00:42:14 the deer is now just the bones. There's a dolphin cloud in the sky
00:42:21 where the brain used to be. There's an acorn
00:42:23 and Fanny takes acorn out and it magically transforms them back. Look, Fanny,
00:42:33 her body's back to normal. So we're figuring out maybe this is a magic acorn. And then we see the
00:42:43 dolphin cloud that Tux saw earlier. So packing a lot in that 60 seconds. So they're still outside
00:42:48 now. We still got the skull and I just thought it'd be fun to do a bird watching episode.
00:42:54 Some of these birds are real and some are made up peaceful. You know,
00:43:00 I think that was Brian, you know, Smokey Bellow named after a friend's band.
00:43:05 I think you could probably just look up some of these names to figure out which ones are real.
00:43:12 Fred Tremendous.
00:43:18 Rowdy Resnick named after a friend, Alan Resnick.
00:43:24 And now the birds, of course, are talking about how there's a strange animal watching
00:43:30 them. I'll teach them a lesson.
00:43:37 One elegant and dignified bird. And then here's the gag up. It poops on Tux.
00:43:43 Who doesn't love a poop joke? But then this was important because
00:43:48 Tux is going to clean off in the river and it's getting a little bit colder, Fanny says. And
00:43:56 Tux, being Tux, just says, I don't worry, I'll be fine. Thunks her head into the river.
00:44:04 Got a little thumb piano song playing here. Holding their breath underwater.
00:44:11 Just to show that it's cold, we got a little snowflake.
00:44:20 I always like the idea that birds and fish are cousins. Why not? So Tux comes up.
00:44:33 Fanny, very sensible, let's get you home before you catch a cold. Don't worry about me, Fanny. But
00:44:37 of course, hard cut to Tux with a temperature and coughing. And now
00:44:46 so cold with a fever on the sofa.
00:44:57 And this was all just to get, I had these, found these two cars
00:45:00 pink, or I think I painted them pink and purple, but I really wanted to do a stop motion car
00:45:07 episode. So I was like, okay, maybe that's going to happen when Tux has got a fever dream. Whenever
00:45:15 I was a kid and I would have fevers, I'd always have the strangest dreams and visions. So,
00:45:19 and then we've got Fanny getting them some water. And the second instance now where they see the
00:45:27 magnet superior, not again. So, you know, at this point, I feel like the stories are starting to
00:45:36 develop a little bit more. We've got a reoccurring motifs and images. So now
00:45:41 we're going to have Tux's fever dream here. This was just some fake synthetic fur with a,
00:45:50 I think, black background, velvet background or something. And
00:45:54 just doing some stop motion with my Canon T3i using some, the Dragonframe software on the computer.
00:46:02 Didn't really plan it out too much other than that. I just knew that these two cars would race
00:46:08 and then eventually make it to the deer skull and that, okay, this fur is the deer. So
00:46:14 it's like the cars are racing along on top of the deer and then get to the deer skull and see an
00:46:22 acorn that would then bloom into these plants. So this kind of gives Tux the idea that we need to
00:46:31 put some soil in the skull and plant the acorn in the skull, which then sets off
00:46:37 a major, the rest of the movie really. And this was just a deer skull that my mom had found
00:46:48 and had kept. And, you know, most everything in this movie are things that were either laying
00:46:53 around or had access to. So Tux comes to, tells Fanny about the vision.
00:47:18 Fanny being a good friend just goes along with it. Sure, I'll get some dirt.
00:47:22 No questions asked. We've got a continuation of some of the snow falling from a couple episodes
00:47:26 ago. And they break off the antlers because they don't need those if it's going to be like a pot
00:47:33 for this acorn. So now,
00:47:37 now we've got this little tree that will be growing.
00:47:44 And I think when I originally animated this, it was winter now and it was getting colder and
00:47:51 oh, third instance of Magnet Superior. Now it's Sasha's head. And
00:47:59 Fanny kind of sharing a little bit of how they're feeling, wondering if,
00:48:05 do you ever think that maybe this is all a dream? And then it's interrupted by the sound of a
00:48:12 tree falling.
00:48:14 As the snow falls.
00:48:22 Really is one of the nicest sounds when you hear snow falling and hitting the ground on a quiet
00:48:33 evening. And now it comes around to Fanny's original question. Yeah, maybe this is a dream,
00:48:41 but at least we're together in the same dream. As the snow continues to fall and
00:48:51 blanket the land. And I think at this point, I just wanted to change the landscape a little bit. So
00:48:59 we've got next day, the snow. And what do you do? You grab a sled with your friend, get out there.
00:49:07 But I like this idea of they each want to do something different.
00:49:12 Tox is like, please can we go sledding? Fanny's like, okay.
00:49:17 But little do they know that they'll be making snowmen soon enough.
00:49:27 I think I saw the Pee Wee Herman Christmas special around this time. And Pee Wee goes for a
00:49:39 big sled that it's like this animated background. I think I just ripped that or stole that idea from
00:49:45 that. And of course there's, there's this snowman that Fanny wanted to build. And they kind of
00:49:52 realized this. So we're back home now and just a one-off episode about getting kind of into
00:50:05 Tox's world a little bit more of these deep thoughts. Starting by Fanny just saying, you
00:50:12 know, I love it when that little tiny marshmallows melt and Tox takes that as an opportunity to
00:50:17 talk about our, how our bodies are like these marshmallows just slowly breaking down and
00:50:25 fighting bountly against their blazing destiny. Oh dear.
00:50:44 And it's like, well, what can Fanny really say to that other than just take a
00:50:47 little sip? Maybe thinking now, gosh, okay. Kind of a bummer of a thought, but
00:50:55 I think fire, they always come back to fire, sit around the fire, talking about how it's hypnotic
00:51:05 to watch the flames dancing and fire is going to come back later. We've got the introduction of the
00:51:13 mouse here, which we'll see soon. This is, I think I wanted this to have a fun episode where
00:51:34 they were working together to get some firewood and Tox trying to chop it and just not,
00:51:41 not being strong enough or, you know, kind of being cocky and blaming it on the dull axe.
00:51:48 You know, it's another character trait maybe is coming through here where it's like Tox is
00:51:54 the thinker and maybe Fanny's a little bit more focused on things of the body or of,
00:52:03 you know, practical tasks. Maybe, maybe they're not stronger. Maybe they just know the correct
00:52:10 way to chop wood, where to hit it just right and Tox is chopping daydreaming.
00:52:16 So now we're back to the mouse that we saw.
00:52:20 This is a thought, this is an idea inspired by an idea I've had a lot where it's like,
00:52:28 sometimes if things are babies, we will look after them and treat them.
00:52:36 Like, you know, we'll take care of them. Whereas if it's an adult version of that thing,
00:52:41 we want to kill it, you know. So it's like the adult mouse, they want to get rid of, kill it,
00:52:47 kill it. And then they find a little baby and it's like, oh, we have to, we have to make it,
00:52:51 we have to keep it alive and feed it. You know, it's like, it's interesting.
00:52:57 And then Fanny just calls them right out on it. How come you want to kill the other mouse? And
00:53:04 this one you want to, and Tox, I think that's the best answer I could probably say too.
00:53:09 It's just small and there's, it can be tough out there for little things.
00:53:14 Sasha had taken that body away, maybe to go enjoy it in the corner by themselves.
00:53:20 All right, so now we're just checking in on everything. We've got the
00:53:27 acorn, we've got the baby mouse, everything's getting their food in the water. And then
00:53:34 Tox just strolls up with the old Q-tip in the air. I mean, this is another one just inspired by,
00:53:40 if I'm going to, I know you're not supposed to, but if I'm going to put a Q-tip in there,
00:53:44 it's the best time after a shower. And it does feel good to put it in deep. So it's just,
00:53:51 I would never do this, but what would happen if you go all the way? And maybe this was also
00:53:57 inspired as a kid, I think someone said, if you go deep enough, you'll touch your brain.
00:54:02 I always remembered that. So what happens, you have this kind of,
00:54:05 this little moment is cut away.
00:54:10 And that was animated, I think, based on a Homer Simpson spinning
00:54:18 in episode. I took those frames and use them as reference. Here's another little interlude
00:54:26 that wasn't in the episodes, but just showing kind of the snow is melting and you got a little
00:54:32 bunny eating. But I think this is our Fanny's fourth and final moment, seeing
00:54:40 the Magnet Superior and finally opening up to Tox, kind of sharing what's been happening to them.
00:54:50 And I think this was just, I really wanted to do an episode that was kind of like one long shot,
00:54:54 you know, but like a slow zoom out. I love long shots in movies when
00:55:00 the camera will slowly zoom out. So I was like, could we do this with,
00:55:04 could we do this with Fanny, Tox is sitting there and, you know,
00:55:12 and I just played the piano kind of along to this episode.
00:55:23 It's like, all right, Fanny, you just got to talk about your problems and that,
00:55:27 share it with a friend and that can help. And then the snow will go away and spring will come again.
00:55:32 So I thought that would maybe be the end of Magnet Superior for a bit.
00:55:36 And then we've got this acorn, the magic acorn starting to pop up.
00:55:44 And then this is going to be our changeover. I, you know, I've been doing this pixel animation
00:55:51 for a while now and I was thinking, let's change the style up a little bit. So
00:55:56 found these little wooden, I think they were like little characters that are for a manger or
00:56:03 something, but I painted them purple and pink and made these little sets. And my friend, Phil helped
00:56:09 animate here.
00:56:20 Everything changed over, got the little baby mouse
00:56:24 and let's go to where it all began. So the first episode, they're out playing soccer and
00:56:30 of course they walk right by the fire that they had going. And that was silly. And then of course
00:56:37 you see Sasha following them and then the door is ajar. So Sasha gets out at this point. We
00:56:41 haven't really established that once they bring Sasha in, Sasha goes out. So checking in on our
00:56:50 broken computer and TV.
00:56:51 That's my green sweatshirt back there as the hill. It was just a nice color. And now,
00:57:00 you know, now that we're going to do some stop motion episodes, I figured let's take them
00:57:04 somewhere new. So let's introduce that right up past their house. There's this,
00:57:08 there's this big, scary forest, the dark forest as it's called.
00:57:16 Just imagining them exploring a new place, looking for their, their cat.
00:57:21 So now,
00:57:32 you know, I was starting to think about how I could wrap up parts of the story.
00:57:42 And it seemed like if there was one chicken earlier in the story, that there must be other
00:57:46 chickens somewhere else. So maybe it's, it's time to, you know, I think it's nice that they've had
00:57:51 this chicken in there, but at some point, I don't know if that's the best life for a chicken to be
00:57:55 living inside. Tux's rib cage. So it seemed like this was a good opportunity to return the chicken
00:58:05 to its friends. And I like how the chickens all stop and turn and they just let, let the other
00:58:10 chicken in and they're right back to business here, getting their little grubs. But, you know,
00:58:15 Tux has a moment here,
00:58:17 thanking the chicken for all the food and the saving their life in the giant nest.
00:58:26 [Russian]
00:58:45 Their journey continues. We've got a frog.
00:58:49 It looks like the frog you painted, but it's just missing that hat.
00:58:54 And so the hat appears and then they're both like, whoa, what's going on?
00:59:05 Is this some kind of trip or then it switches? I think I was, I don't know what I was going for
00:59:12 here, but I just wanted the dark forest to feel like a place where things were a little bit off
00:59:16 and anything could happen based on what we're going to be seeing in a couple moments. But,
00:59:21 you know, a frog can have a hat. And this episode was just 100% because I was at a thrift store and
00:59:32 I found two little bears. One was on all fours on the ground and one was standing up and I,
00:59:38 I painted them and thought, wow, this could be part of the stop motion world where you've got
00:59:44 the bear on all fours and then it just stands up to, you know, kind of get this
00:59:48 beehive down to get some honey. So there's a second bear.
00:59:52 I'm a big believer in you find things and then you can work them into the story. So
00:59:59 also just knowing that every couple episodes or five or 10 episodes or so, it's nice to have an
01:00:05 episode with no talking, just a little quiet moment in the woods, kind of seeing this beautiful moment.
01:00:14 So they're going deeper into the dark forest. And then we've got the flies, these bugs that are
01:00:21 in the sunbeam. And this is, this is based on the fact that I, I'd kept this fly for many years,
01:00:28 wanting to use it in a film. And I just had this fly and I was always using it. There's another
01:00:38 film I made called Buzzer where the fly shows up and that, that texture is a purple binder I had,
01:00:43 but it looked exactly like I would imagine Fanny's skin would look like if you
01:00:47 got really close to it. I loved it. It was just this thin purple binder.
01:00:52 And there's the fly filmed with my T3I.
01:00:58 I think that was the first time I ever referred to them as T3I.
01:01:07 I referred to them as humans and somebody said, Oh, so that's what they are. And I realized,
01:01:10 Oh, geez, I hope I didn't mess things up. I hope it's okay that they're humans,
01:01:16 but I think it's okay. I mean, they're humans to me or just some kind of creature. But
01:01:23 this was a statue that I found in an old, uh, hunting shack, abandoned hunting shack.
01:01:31 I was just laying in the ground and I grabbed it. And in that very same shack was this little
01:01:36 plastic deer that had, uh, busted. And I glued that back together. It was fun to create this
01:01:44 kind of, um, this poet that they loved who wrote a book called Summer Feathers, which if you played
01:01:51 the Tuxin Fanny video game, the Summer Feathers book of poetry is on their bookshelf. So you can
01:01:56 actually read that. There's a lot of, uh, little treats in the Tuxin Fanny video game that if you
01:02:04 have watched the movie, you'll recognize. So this deer comes out with a tree growing out of it,
01:02:13 which is, you know, Oh, what does that remind us of? Well, we got this deer skull with the tree
01:02:17 growing out of it, but something's off with this deer. It looks, it's staring at them and they're
01:02:23 staring at it, kind of not sure what's going to happen. And I can just sense that something's off
01:02:29 the deer's eye starts glowing red. And all of a sudden it's just this freak out moment. They're
01:02:39 black and white. They're upside down. They're hovering snakes and reptiles appear. And they
01:02:46 know that they just need to get out of there because something's wrong. And they run back
01:02:51 to their house and lo and behold, it's burning. I found that little house at a thrift store.
01:03:01 This is a, these are some pieces of green wood that I painted. And then those are some clay
01:03:15 bricks I made. At this point, I think I kind of figured out the rest of the story. I thought,
01:03:22 okay, they've got this tree growing out of a deer skull. They've lost their house. They're
01:03:30 going to go on some sort of journey to plant this tree. And what better place to plant a tree
01:03:42 than at the ocean. But at this point, I think I was like, all right, I'm kind of done this.
01:03:49 I'm getting tired of the stop motion. Now the pixel animation actually seems kind of nice. So
01:03:54 I'd love to get them back. I didn't want to, I didn't want to animate them as stop motion for
01:03:59 the rest of the movie. It was a fun little side quest. So things are back to normal.
01:04:11 A lot of this music, I would just, I would make the episode and then go back in and do the sound
01:04:17 effects and music and really wouldn't spend too long on it. I'd kind of just,
01:04:22 I have a little MIDI keyboard on my computer and I'd play along and, okay, I need about 40 seconds
01:04:29 or 45 seconds and just make a piece about that length. And it's very, there was not really much
01:04:35 thought into it. It was usually, took me about five minutes to mess around. And sometimes I would
01:04:40 slow it down or speed it up, but then I'd put it in and it would usually would work out.
01:04:49 And, you know, the only thing that the two things that didn't burn were their piano and the
01:04:59 tree and the deer skull. So that's all they've got. They take everything that they have and
01:05:10 kind of introducing this idea that they're also going to keep looking for Sasha.
01:05:15 As they, and it's strange not to have a home, but then this idea that wherever they are is
01:05:24 their home and they're together. So wherever they are together, that'll be their home for a bit.
01:05:29 I've got the little fly, things about the fly through. There it is.
01:05:34 We'll call back to a couple of episodes before.
01:05:37 You know, I just love the idea of using a piano as a boat and you're still playing it. And,
01:05:46 you know, this piano has been there since the beginning, since episode 11.
01:05:51 So we know that Tux likes to play it and Fanny likes to dance.
01:05:55 All the piano is just that you hear is just a piano that I have in my house that
01:06:03 was my dad's old piano. It's just kind of a small, I think it's called an apartment piano. It's like
01:06:08 only 80 keys or something, but it's, I really love the sound of it. A friend once said it's
01:06:15 out of tune, but it's all out of tune together. So it still sounds okay. So
01:06:18 that's the piano you hear throughout.
01:06:21 Even though we just got back to the pixel animation, I thought, let's just do a one-off
01:06:30 watercolor episode. So drew all these and had some friends come over and
01:06:38 we just painted, painted for a few hours to fill it all in.
01:06:42 I think this is the first musical cue that I did with a friend, Christian Best,
01:06:50 went over to his house one day and we just fool around with synthesizers for like an hour or so
01:06:57 and recorded a bunch of little moments. And it was very helpful moving forward,
01:07:01 knowing the kind of where the story was going to have, I don't know, six or seven
01:07:05 pieces of music that I could listen to and kind of be inspired by to write parts of the story.
01:07:12 So now we're back.
01:07:25 It's like whenever they're kind of getting relaxed, I feel like something always happens. So
01:07:30 they're just enjoying this lazy river and then there's some rocks up ahead and
01:07:34 about to have a wreck.
01:07:37 Many of these episodes, I would run them by, I would animate them and then show them to my
01:07:47 girlfriend, Marnie. And she would usually either say, yep, that's great. Or be like, ah, this
01:07:53 isn't quite reading. So like for this episode, for example, I forget exactly what, but she helped me
01:08:02 kind of figure out what was going to happen in this part of the story. I showed her to her and
01:08:10 she was like confused. And then I was like, oh, okay, I need to make this clearer, these couple
01:08:14 moments. I love this idea of like the piano's down there, but, and these fish all gather because
01:08:20 I've never seen a piano before. And one brave fish goes forward and hits it. And, you know,
01:08:26 because it's just said, or Fanny, I forget, just said, poor piano's all alone, but really
01:08:32 it's not alone at all. Goddamn fish.
01:08:38 All right. And, you know, at this point, even like the one-off episodes, it's like,
01:08:49 it still feels like it's part of the story because we've got the tree
01:08:52 and we've got the river and we know that they're on this little journey. So again, here's the
01:08:59 classic kind of Tux and Fanny where Fanny's like, oh, this is a great stone. I'm going to skip it
01:09:04 in Tux's. No, no, no, no, no. That's too round. Tux's could be kind of a know-it-all sometimes
01:09:08 and think they know everything and go into these, these kind of philosophical thoughts and deep
01:09:16 ideas about things and thinking that this one will be better because of this blah, blah, blah.
01:09:25 And then they go to skip it and it just sinks. And then of course, Fanny,
01:09:29 I think has a world record skip here. This also made it into the video game. You can skip stones.
01:09:35 And then, you know, Fanny just gives the classic little like smile.
01:09:46 And they're continuing on. They've just been walking for days.
01:09:48 And I think I just, well, I love to tube. I love tubing on rivers. So I thought that'd be great
01:09:57 to get them tubing. But also if they're just floating, that's a lot easier to animate than
01:10:02 like walking, even though they don't, I don't really do too many, too much animation for the
01:10:08 walking, but I just thought the floating would be simple and that'd be nice to get them out
01:10:13 on the river again. And that's brings it back to their, talks his dream about the cars. We've got
01:10:20 this abandoned car. So that's where they, that's where they find their, their tubes
01:10:27 from the car tires. Buoyant as a bubble.
01:10:40 Next stop, the ocean.
01:10:41 And this, he said, love as a kid, seeing dragonflies flying around, kind of connected.
01:10:51 It was always blew my mind. So that's where that comes from. And then kind of tying up a couple
01:10:57 things here in this episode, you got the geese. So there's the geese that Tuck saw earlier when
01:11:03 they were floating. Just a little callbacks, maybe even smiling, thinking like, oh, there's my
01:11:08 friends. This shot stolen from Night of the Hunter, a great film where the kids are floating
01:11:13 in the river and you've got some spiderweb in the foreground. And of course we got our little Sasha
01:11:20 wrapping up Sasha's story. So Sasha has gotten out, found another cat and they have
01:11:26 had some kittens. And I just love this kind of knowing look. Sasha's gives a little nod and
01:11:35 Tuck's nods, gives it back, kind of a goodbye.
01:11:38 Hopefully that's satisfying to people that we see where Tuck's or where Sasha ended up.
01:11:48 I always like this
01:11:55 kind of eeriness of this blue light and the going to buy a graveyard and
01:12:03 all these fireflies. And then Fanny says, I've never seen so many.
01:12:08 Each one burns for a moment and then darkness. And they're either talking about the fireflies or the
01:12:14 people in the graves. And it could be up to you to interpret that.
01:12:19 And this idea of tying together so we don't drift apart in the night. I think that's
01:12:26 that's a nice idea in life, you know, just getting close to the people you like so that you
01:12:32 it's a little bit safer to float down the river together. And then again, we're going to have
01:12:40 ourselves a little fever dream here. Not a fever dream, but just a regular dream. But
01:12:44 I just keep experimenting with styles. So I've got two friends, my friends, Tyler and
01:12:52 Corey dressed up there. And I'm filming with my T3i. We've paper maché these masks for them to wear.
01:13:00 And just film this out in my favorite field.
01:13:02 And there's a little call back to the chicken in the dream and then
01:13:10 they're wandering and
01:13:13 they find Julian, the great turtle in the sky who plays the glockenspiel that
01:13:23 births them. So they're dancing to the great Julian turtle spirit. And then
01:13:30 talk starts to burn away. I think, you know, seeing as how this is Fanny's dream, it's like
01:13:37 an anxiety dream of losing their friend, which is, you know, what happened earlier in the movie. And
01:13:43 now we switch over to this kind of like rudimentary 3D. I don't know really how to
01:13:48 animate in 3D, but I went on some websites and used some programs. And I think I,
01:13:54 I forget how I did this, but it was some app on your phone where you could like scan
01:14:00 objects and they would turn into a 3D thing and you could move it around. And
01:14:03 I really liked how kind of messed up it is. And it's like breaking down. We've got our computer
01:14:09 and TV, which aren't broken anymore. And just this, there's the car from Tux's fever dream.
01:14:18 But Fanny at this point is kind of just missing home, maybe a little bit missing the comfort
01:14:22 of, of their bed and having these kind of different Tuxes that they're encountering.
01:14:29 I think with all these dreams, it was just about trying to,
01:14:34 what would be going on in their heads at these different moments.
01:14:39 This next one, the third and final dream, or it's all one dream, but the third and final
01:14:48 style. These are just little paintings I did on the, that I put into larger paintings by
01:14:56 brilliant Baltimore artists, Sheh Zhang Chou.
01:15:00 She had painted all of them and I, I saw them and just thought, oh, these would be amazing.
01:15:13 And she let me borrow them and photograph them. And I inserted my little rudimentary watercolor
01:15:22 Tux and Fanny's into them. But it's these three episodes, I think were called like turtle vision.
01:15:27 So you, you got Julian and all three of them, Fanny kind of grappling again, where they come from
01:15:38 and then dipping into the water at the end of the stream and then waking up in reality
01:15:44 with their head in the river, just like in the dream all wet.
01:15:51 So it's morning now, they've drifted together through the night. Fanny had these dreams,
01:15:59 sharing the dreams with Tux.
01:16:03 A little crab walking by, why not?
01:16:11 And Tux kind of saying, yeah, sounds like a nice dream, which is, you know,
01:16:23 sometimes when people, your friends tell you to dreams, you can't really do much, but
01:16:26 yeah, that's a cool one. You know, it's never as vivid as the dream was for the person.
01:16:32 But lo and behold, come to find out they've made it to the ocean.
01:16:37 Oh my gosh. So we know the story is getting close here,
01:16:43 close to the end. And this is inspired by just being a kid and going body surfing
01:16:53 and feeling so small with these giant waves would pick you up.
01:16:59 And when you would finally catch the perfect wave and make it all the way into the beach,
01:17:03 you know, it felt like you were just like flying.
01:17:07 So we get that.
01:17:12 They get washed up here. You know, I wanted them to at least enjoy the
01:17:19 beach a little bit before they planted the tree and find a little hermit crab.
01:17:25 And then, you know, this idea that I don't think that this moment could get any better,
01:17:28 but then we know that they love playing soccer together. That's where the story began.
01:17:32 So love the idea of mirroring the beginning. They find a coconut and they kick it back and forth. And
01:17:38 I think I even use the original drawings of them from that first one.
01:17:42 And this is one of those things I heard also as a kid about the ocean.
01:17:49 There's more for every grain of sand. There's like a whole universe maybe out there. Just,
01:17:54 I don't know. Probably should look that up. But I guess if the universe was on forever,
01:17:58 then it's true. But basically just a fun idea to have them kind of grappling with this idea that
01:18:06 there could be multiple versions of them, this multiverse, which is all
01:18:12 so big now in stories. But I just wanted to open it up to people, friends and people I didn't know,
01:18:19 ask them to make their version of this same image of Tux and Fanny and just see what would come in.
01:18:26 And just blown away by all the different styles and
01:18:30 funny different looks. And then I, you know, I kept thinking, "Oh, I wish I had a little
01:18:36 more time to think about this." And then I, you know, I grouped some of the similar ones together,
01:18:43 black and white ones, or... Yeah, that's all that is.
01:18:52 Just peering into the alternate Tux and Fanny timelines.
01:19:02 And I think you can hear my dog snoring in the background here now.
01:19:05 If you heard that, that's my dog.
01:19:13 She's sleeping behind me. She had a big day running outside with her friends.
01:19:21 All right, so we're finally getting to the end here. They're climbing this little cliff
01:19:28 to get to this nice green area. Seems like a perfect spot to plant their tree.
01:19:36 The soil is dark and rich, perfect for your hungry roots.
01:19:42 So they take the tree out of the skull, put it in the soil.
01:19:51 And now we've come up to our final episode, the end of the movie,
01:20:06 which I believe was episode 79, got us here to the end. And
01:20:18 maybe halfway through the story, I kind of came up with this idea that they're going to
01:20:22 plant the tree and then we're going to cut ahead to show the tree bigger many years later.
01:20:28 We've got the introduction of this little bug crawling on the rock, which will set us up for
01:20:36 season two, which as of recording this, I'm currently animating. And that begins with Fanny
01:20:43 with a bug bite. And then of course, we've got a dolphin, which kind of mirrors the beginning
01:20:56 where it said, "Look Fanny, a cat." And then Fanny says, "Wow." And this time it says, "Oh,
01:21:00 look, it's a dolphin." And then Fanny says, "Wow." And just kind of watching it and a tender moment,
01:21:06 holding hands together. And we cut ahead and that's the same little synthesizer song
01:21:16 that starts the film. And then also I think we hear it one other time, maybe during the
01:21:20 Sasha daydream. So there it is. Thank you for listening. If you have indeed listened to this,
01:21:30 thank you for that. And I hope this wasn't too boring for you. I can't remember what I talked
01:21:38 about. I just kind of rambled for the past 80 minutes, 82 minutes. Thanks for watching Tux
01:21:45 and Fanny. Be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. And I hope that you all find a friend
01:21:55 like Fanny or Tux out there. I think I made up digital sound and three camera lenses. I just
01:22:06 thought it would be fun to have a couple extra things. Well, that's the end. Bye-bye.