If I ever meet a girl that has even heard of Shynola I would never let her go. It may be geek love, but that doesn't make it any less real, does it?

BTW fxxk the music video commissioners and aim straight for the musicians. We're living in a new age of independents, apparently.

Who's up for starting the Flowerbomb video and animation collective?

…yeah, that's what I was getting at with the wind (or the sun) blowing on the moon… a dandelion moon.

I was (to my shame) surprised to discover that Alex is a lady. A very creative lady. And a fan of Shynola. She's a flowerbomb. I think I love her.

It is really good to hear what people pick up on as being too slow/confusing/a bit dull vs what they really like. You al probably know what it's like when your head's too far into an animation…

- Alex

As regards the sun, I haven't really told that part of the story very well – the director's idea was that the seeds kind of form out the sunbeams, and I kind of misunderstood but didn't make the time to re-do it. Blowing them out of his mouth would be fun too, like a child blowing on a dandelion :-)

The three critics, mookie, durden and daredemo, are clearly failing to be excellent. Hows about a new rule that requires one to read the whole post AND understand it before making a comment.

Concept suggestions…

I would have the sun blow the seeds out of his mouth rather than just shake them off. Or maybe get the moon and wind involved. The wind blows at the moon which dissolves into seeds.

I'm not keen on the war plane poking its toungue out etc. The air base scene is a bit static and similar to the oil field scene so maybe have the war planes in the air on a mission and the seeds get sucked into the jets and more seeds or flowers then form vapour trails. And as the planes realease their bombs they disolve into more seeds which then fall onto the oil fields and turn the desert into a lush forest.

We're OK with people not liking our stuff! Frankly, I'd be worried if everyone did like it. Joe has a point that it would be nice if people treated each other online with the same consideration they would if they were face to face, but I suppose I've gotten somewhat hardened to the slings and arrows of online discourse over the years.

So if anyone wants to give criticism, please do. Whether or not we "officially" make it to the next round (and I really hope we do, so Martin can get a little cash for his efforts) we're going to keep working on the video so if you have critiques or suggestions about how to improve the story / what you don't like about it, we'd like to hear them.

The Radiohead contest was announced with barely a week for animators to get their work together before voting started, and then they opened voting early. So it was a case of do 30 seconds really properly developed and rendered, or show the entire story with blocky, basic figures. We went for the latter. As it was, Martin and I got almost no sleep for a week doing this thing.

I can't believe you just sided with daredemo :)

An animatic is a very rough outline of …….. Never mind :)