FOR FUN: It's A Wonderful Life- Extended Cut

Well I was hoping to finish this in time for Christmas, but it didn't turn out that way and what originally started out as an idea that I thought I could animate in about a half a day, evolved into an enormous endless slog.  Oh well I still love it anyway even if it was a giant waste of my time and I encourage everyone to share it even if Christmas is over.  After all there are a lot of important lessons to be learned in the animation.

Anyway here it is... my animated Christmas Card to all my friends an family.  An extended scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" as I imagine it should have been.

and as always... 

MERRY CHRISTMAS MOVIE HOUSE!

SAILOR MOON: First Shot

So recently I joined on as part of a "for fun" project called Moon Animate: Make-Up... or at least that's what I think it's called...

...anyway the idea is that a bunch of artists each take a separate shot from an episode of Sailor Moon and animate it however they feel like.  Then at the end the person running it is going to combine them all and post it on the web, basically just because it's funny.  I'm no giant fan of Sailor Moon.  For me growing up it was that show I had to watch before Dragonball Z came on, yet I did watch it and the project sounded fun.  Tonight I finished my first shot.  Not so sure I'll do another though I may if they will let me and if I think I have the time. 

Anyway here is the shot I was given:

And the shot I animated:

I think it came out pretty good and it was fun to hand animate too.  The only problem is that I'm obsessive and couldn't start once I started.  Yet I've been steadily getting sicker all day and am currently feeling terrible.  Still I had to finish headache or no headache.

TRICK: Test #4

So I wasn't happy with the look of the last test.  It came out too sloppy and not in a good way.  So I rethought the process of how to paint and animate my upcoming project and I've had much better success which makes me happy.

So here it is.  I wanted it painted in a way so that you can see the brush strokes hopefully making the animation may feel like a tangible thing.  It's pretty good I think.  The painting was time consuming but rewarding and adds a lot so I don't mind the added time.  I'm considering making the outlines with pen and ink to add to the feeling of it being hand drawn.  Right now it's from the computer and a little stale but then again if I hand draw it it may be too stiff.  Similarly I am gonna try a version where I photoshop the image so it's all painted within the lines.  I wanna do that because while it's charming to see the mistakes here in the test, in an entire animation it may end up looking just plain crappy and unintentional.  It's hard to say right now and that's the type of thing I can change later using after effect if I don't like it. 

Anyway without further ado check out the new test and tell me if you like it:

Also you may notice I removed the tail.  He's in a devil costume so I thought he should have a lifeless tail dragging behind him, but in the first walk cycle I felt like it looked lame.  Like he was floating on it.  Of course there was no BG in that test so that might have been part of it.  But whatever this is also just to see what I think of him without it and truthfully I like it better.  It also kind of looked like a dick before and I don't need that in a kids animation... I'm not trying to be Disney.

TRICK: Test #3 FAIL!

Dang, this one just didn't work out.

I have a very specific concept for the look of this animation (i.e. how to color it in), but unfortunately this isn't it.  However this test is far from a failure.  It helped me realize what works and what doesn't.  So I will be testing it all again, probably starting tomorrow (I've got too much freelance) and I am more excited to get to work on the next one than I was on this one .  That is because I'm fairly sure I am about to get the results I want!  I have an idea of how to do it differently and it should fix the problem.  So stay tuned for that.  Until then have fun looking at this not-colored-in-between-the-overly-pixilated-lines crap:

PS I will say this:  it looks even worse via youtube.  Anyway never give up and never surrender.  I will get the results I desire!

HERMAN BLUE: New ASIFA Showing

Hey everyone in Atlanta, Herman Blue will be part of the ASIFA-Atlanta Best Animated Shorts of 2013 this coming Saturday Dec. 7th at 3:15pm, and even though I am in Boston I'd really appreciate anyone out there showing up and giving support (mainly I'm just interested in what the crowd reaction will be like).  So yeah go check out the next showing and give your support to ASIFA Atlanta because they've been really cool to me... plus I guess you'll get to see some other peoples stuff or whatever.

Other than that I'm just plugging along on some freelance and trying to make as much progress on my next project as possible.  I'm overhauling the goblins and making them more distinctive from the devils right now adding loin cloths and stink lines (well maybe not stink lines).  And I finished the first draft of the script.  If anyone wants to see it... tough dooky.  I'm gonna try to storyboard it soon and see how it plays out then make a new pass at the script, adding or subtracting what I need.  Not sure it's the best process but it's what works for me.  I guess I like repetitive motions which is why I masturbate so much.

Okay too much information.  Here's a funny picture to distract you from what I just wrote.