Meet Blit Wizbok
Blit Wizbok is the official spokesperson for CyberQuest 2004. With our theme of the Mars Exploration as a metaphor for the research, acquisition of knowledge and achievement that occurs in CyberQuest, we felt that Blit was a perfect fit. Many people have asked about Blit, so we decided to provide a little background. He made his big splash in an animation called "Alien Song.," created by Victor Navone. You can view "Alien Song" and other movies featuring Blit at Victor Navone's website.
Excerpted from “The Making of Alien Song” by Victor Navone
http://www.hash.com/users/navone/HTML/MakingAlienSong.htm
Blit Wizbok was born early in the summer of 1998. His genesis was more from necessity than inspiration. I was teaching myself character animation in Animation: Master on my spare time, and I didn't want to use any of the stock characters included on the A:M CD. I set about whipping up a quick character that would have a minimal amount of detail but would still allow me the range of expressions I had in mind. Thus it is primarily for matters of economy that Blit has only one eye and three fingers per hand; that means less to animate! I'm a sci-fi fan so the first idea that popped into my head was a "funny green alien".
Since his modest inception, Blit has undergone many revisions, but he remains quite close to the original spontaneous design.
Blit's name was an afterthought. While in the middle of animating "Alien Song" I figured I had better come up with something to call him besides "my alien". I started jotting down lists of names that where phonetically interesting and had a cheesy, retro-sci-fi sound to them. I was in a game development meeting when I finally decided on "Blit Wizbok"; not coincidentally, "Blit" is actually a verb in computer graphics jargon. Incidentally, there has been some confusion over Blit's gender. Let me confirm that Blit is a "he", though he may have a penchant for the occasional drag routine.
In the meantime I am thrilled at the overwhelming response it has generated! I still receive dozens of emails a week from people of all ages, from all over the world, telling me how much they enjoyed it. Every once in a while it will turn up in an newspaper or on a TV show, though usually no one bothers to ask my permission. Blit and Alien Song have also garnered me many opportunities such as licensing deals, speaking engagements at seminars, and most importantly, a job at Pixar. One French reporter asked me if I distributed this movie on the web as some sort of calculated public relations ploy. I never intended this movie to travel beyond the small group of people I showed it to, much less to achieve such virus-like saturation over the internet. Even if I wanted to I could probably never achieve the same result again. I feel very fortunate that I have received all this attention for a piece that was a simple labor of love. I hope that my next animation will be as well received!
