Friday 23 March 2007

ALL ABOUT MARSIPAN

We can finally announce that there IS life on Mars and MARSIPAN can prove it!

MARSIPAN is a comic animation series and website about finding life on Mars and the efforts we make to find new forms of life and to pioneer in the name of some great ideal or for something to steal. NASA spends billions on Mars exploration but can only show you barren rocky terrain. Every month Marsipan’s space probes will arrive on Mars and beam back exclusive footage for a fraction of the price.

MARSIPAN is also the home of the British Mars Exploration Programme, a whole new concept in space exploration bringing to you monthly episodes of the two following animation series:

MISSIONS


In this series of adventures, our probes land on Mars every month and come across all variety of life forms on Mars mostly leading to the probes’ destruction. As the race for exploring and colonising Mars is hotting up, Marsipan's pioneering probes encounter not just suspicious looking Martians but also competing forces from Planet Earth; little and big green men, Elvis, George Bush, space tourists and space terrorists.
Format: 2 to 3 minutes, stop motion animation with AfterEffects

PUBCASTS



The Pubcast - a revolutionary new digital platform.
Ingredients: one pub, one professor and a few pints.
Professor Pillock Colander, founder and leader of the British Mars Exploration Programme shares his wisdom directly from his office in the Green Man Tavern over a few pints of bitter of course.
Format: 1 to 2 minutes, 2D animation

EXPLORE MISSION CONTROL
Take a look around the room and meet Marsipan’s team of leading scientists behind the fight to keep Britain at the highest echelon of space travel. Marsipan explores Mars like nobody else! The scientists in the British Mars Centre spend endless tea breaks discussing the best way to land a probe in a Martian crater and many a pub crawl had ended with a revolutionary design scribbled on a beer mat.
Regular updates of fly-on-the-wall observations.
Format: 1 to 2 minutes, 2D animation

NEWSLETTER & BLOG
Every Tuesday, subscribers receive breaking news and in depth analysis from the heart and soul of Marsipan. Professor Colander, Marsipan’s own resident Patrick Moore, will reveal space secrets in his 'Ask the Professor' challenge and Flight Director Barnaby Bottomley will demonstrate how scientists can be great artists too.....

Flight Director’s Poem of the Week
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Here's terza rima verse on outer space,
(A favourite of Dante's and of mine)
I think that Mars is my most favourite place.

Just thinking of it tingulates my spine,
I love its barren wastes and reddish rocks.
Unbreathable, its atmosphere is fine.

I love its sand, its mountains and its flocks
Of Martian geese, who honk at Martian voles.
A wormhole means it's also where lost socks
Can go to find their final resting holes.
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SHOP
Martiandise is available through Spreadshirt. You can buy exclusive Marsipan designs: T-shirts, Hoodies, Jackets, bags, mugs and other gifts.

DVDs and downloads,
Coming soon!

LEGAL
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0License.
Creative Commons License

All other rights belong to the producer Earthly Delights Films.
Each video can be embedded into individuals websites by copying and pasting the code in the 'Share' section by each Mission and Pubcast video.

We would be very grateful if you do respect this license and do not upload to sites that make money without rewarding creators. We have self financed this project and all Marsipan videos are free to view!

IMAGES AND EPISODE LINKS

MISSIONS

MISSION 01: BAGEL EXPRESS
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?mission=1170271443

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MISSION 02: PRETZEL EXPRESS
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?mission=1170271124

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MISSION 03: SCAVENGER EXPRESS
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?mission=1170270775
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PUBCAST 01: COLANDER ON CHILDHOOD
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?pubcast=1170272254

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PUBCAST 02: COLANDER ON SPACE STUDIES
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?pubcast=1170272003

PUBCAST 03: COLANDER ON MARS THROUGH THE CENTURIES
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?pubcast=1170271745

PUBCAST 04: COLANDER KARAOKE
LINK: http://www.marsipan.co.uk/index2.php?pubcast=1172660102



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Thursday 22 March 2007

MARSIPAN TEAM

NIKOLAY MOUSTAKOV: director, writer and creator

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After studying in fine arts and illustration, Nikolay graduated from the National Theatre and Film Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1996 with an MA in Directing for animation. His graduation film ODYSSEUS AND THE SACRED BULL was screened in a student selection in Annecy. His short film FLIGHT participated in many international festivals where it was selected in the final competition, including: Anima Mundi (Rio de Janeiro), Cork, Espinho and Barcelona Independent Film Festval.

Since 1997 Nikolay has worked in London on a wide variety of animation projects as director, storyboard artist and designer, to creating programme idents for the BBC and C4. Last year Nikolay directed children’s series SERGEANT STRIPES for the BBC that has been sold worldwide.

Together with producer and co-creator Liz Rosenthal, Nikolay set up Earthly Delights Films in 2002. They have been developing a slate of animation and live action projects. MARSIPAN is their first online project. MARISPAN’s first short film premiered in competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2006.

LIZ ROSENTHAL: producer, writer and creator

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Liz is founder of Earthly Delights Films, a production company that develops independent media projects. She is one of the producers of feature film The Trouble With Men and Women that was released in the US last summer through The Independent Film Channel. Marsipan is her first online animation project.

She was the Programme Director of Digimart’s Global Digital Distribution Summit, in MontrĂ©al in 2005 and 2006, an event that brought together for the first time ever leading filmmakers, innovators and digital pioneers from around the world, who are building new distribution models.
She has also programmed and organised events on new film business models for Skillset, Berlin Talent Campus, London, Edinburgh and Rotterdam Film Festivals.

An early advocate of digital filmmaking, distribution and new film business models, she is frequently invited to speak at international conferences, film festivals and film training events. She has lectured at The Media Business School in Ronda, EAVE, Screen International Conferences, BAFTA, The National Film and Television School, The ICA and The National Film Theatre in London, and is a regular speaker at conferences and international film festivals.

Liz formerly set up and ran the UK office for Next Wave Films (a Santa Monica based company of the Independent Film Channel US) from 1998 to 2002. Next Wave Films was a pioneer in the production, finance and sales of ultra low budget features and digital filmmaking. The company helped exceptionally talented filmmakers, from the US and abroad, launch their careers. Their award winning films include Christopher Nolan's Following (Winner: Tiger Award, Rotterdam ’99, Silver Hitchcock, Dinard ’99), Joe Carnahan's Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane, Kate Davis' Southern Comfort (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance ’01), David and Laurie Shapiro's Keep The River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale (Special Jury Award, Amsterdam ’00), Amir Bar-Lev's Fighter (Best Documentary, Karlovy Vary ’00), Josh Aronson's Sound and Fury (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance ’00, Academy Award nomination ’01).

NATHANIEL TAPLEY: writer and voices of professor Colander, Mission Control Room Staff and writer of Marsipan newsletter

BRIAN KELLY: sound designer
TOM RUSSELL: music
LYNNE PRITCHARD: flash animator, modelmaker
TONY CLARK: modelmaker
NILS KLOTH: effects animator
ANDY BISHOP: space CGI
JAMES INNES: modelmaker
RAW NERVE: web design