Andrew Kepple
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Andrew Kepple (born December 18, 1979), also known on the Internet as Too Much Spare Time or simply TmsT and sometimes King Sluggy, is an animator and cartoonist from New Zealand. He had his start as a webcomic artist, and after making some animated GIFs, started making cartoons from Macromedia Flash. He still creates some webcomics today, and is in his 2nd year of study at Freelance Animation School. His first Macromedia cartoon was called Bedtime Stories with Alan Rickman [1], made during the earliest weeks of his experience with Flash animating. Many of his works today can be seen on Newgrounds. Much of his works also achieved widespread success on Albino Blacksheep, especially animutations like French Erotic Film. He currently lives in Auckland.
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[edit] Kepple and Animutations
Kepple was a prominent figure in regards to animutations, a genre popularized by Neil Cicierega. Perhaps his best known animutation is French Erotic Film, which has nothing to do with French pornography, but played with Dutch music (Opblaaskrokodil by Ome Henk) done with mondegreened lyrics, thus the name. It later spun off to a trilogy where Colin Mochrie embarks on a quest to defeat the evil plastic Jesus. The other two episodes were Plan 9 from Underpants (to the tune of De Kabouterdans from Kabouter Plop) and Conquest of Animutopia (to the tune of Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis). One year later, Kepple released a tribute, French Erotic Birthday.
Kepple also made a tribute cartoon to animutation itself, called Hyakugojyuuichi Forever!!, played to the tune of Lemon Demon's Hyakugojyuuichi 2003. He was also involved in a few scenes from the Fingertips Collaboration. Semi-animutational projects like The Truth About Spongebob Squarepants, Dopefission and Stephen Hawking: The Musical Tribute are other examples of his animation style.
[edit] Lemon Demon Music Videos
Kepple often works alongside Lemon Demon and has animated music videos for several of his songs. These include I've Got Some Falling to Do, When Robots Attack, Geeks in Love, Fiberglass Monkey and most recently, Bad Idea
The videos have had reasonable success on Newgrounds, with the exception of I've Got Some Falling To Do, Hyakugojyuuici Forever and Bad Idea, all of which were never posted there. Falling is, however, listed on Albino Blacksheep as one of the favorite music videos. In its preloader, the text reads: "If this movie is on www.NewGrounds.com, then it has been stolen." This is because he never wanted that video on Newgrounds. This one-time boycott of Newgrounds was done as a small protest against the negative attitudes of many Newgrounds users towards animutations, in particular animutations made by people who are not very well known. The video of I've Got Some Falling To Do has often been stolen and uploaded by Newgrounds users, only to find it deleted by moderators a short time later. Bad Idea is exclusively on AlbinoBlackSheep due to sponsorship and Hyakugojyuuichi Forever was simply omitted upon creation to the then filesize limit of 5 MB. Kepple plans to release the video on Newgrounds for Hyakugojyuuichi's 6th anniversary in early 2007.
He is occasionally confused (especially on Newgrounds) with Shawn Vulliez, AKA AltF4, the creator of some other Lemon Demon music videos, most notably The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
[edit] Series Flashes
Although it is just a start, TmsT did indeed create a few series of his own. The first is the Up Skit Creek series, created in 2005. So far, there is Up Skit Creek and Up Skit Creek 2, the latter of which used voices from various people, much of them from the animutation community, especially Neil Cicierega. Up Skit Creek 3 is scheduled for release in December 2006.
Later, he released StrifeToons, a cartoon series based on the web comic called This Strife or more recently Strife Strips. It involves computer game characters from the era of shareware, such as Duke Nukem, the Space Marine from Doom, (named "Doom Marine" in this series), and Commander Keen, and their adventures in the city of Strifedale. There are three episodes, and one pseudoepisode, when Duke Nukem and Doom Marine received an email. Episode 3 was released on September 9. A live action movie based on a scene in episode one was made, titled "Duke Nukem The Movie", by BDTM, a fan of Kepple's work. It was made as a project in his college course and included many other scenes not seen in StrifeToons.
Newsbleat is a satirical news series made especially for Albino Blacksheep, and was released on August 2006. The host is, of course, named Albino Blacksheep. The first episode contained jokes of the dispute on Pluto, Michael Moore, Snakes on a Plane, and the Microsoft Zune. More episodes are to come.
[edit] Other Projects
- Frosty vs. Rudolf: Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer battle to the death over who is Santa's sidekick, until the one TRUE Christmas Mascot claims its victory.
- Ignatius vs. Dodgy: A conceptually similar cartoon to Frosty vs. Rudolf, it featured two university mascots battling each other around photographic backdrops of the University of Canterbury until their showdown is broken up by a well-known security guard at the university. Naturally, the only thing left to do then was to spontaneously break into a promotional song for the University of Canterbury Students' Association (UCSA), to the tune of the Village People's YMCA.
- I've Got Some Falling to Do: Redubbed: The music video for I've Got Some Falling to Do, only played to the tune of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Bohemian Polka, a high-tempo cover of the Bohemian Rhapsody.
- Legos 9-11. A two-part political satire, with each part from one scene of each of the first two Up Skit Creek episodes.
- Only Superhuman: God created man, but was not happy about it because they spent all their time killing each other. He tried plague, pestilence, and even a meteor to destroy Earth. Each time, mankind figured out a way to save itself from God's attempts at Doomsday. As the rivalry grew between God and His creations, mankind began to spend less time killing itself and learned to pull together and overcome the wrath of their Creator instead. The inevitable conclusion and moral of the story can be found in the animation itself, in a poignant yet cheeky reminder of humanity's relationship with deities.
- Zero Wing Rhapsody: This cartoon combines the All Your Base fad with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Perhaps the highest ranking TmsT animation on Newgrounds, and potentially the most views of any of his works as well.
