The World Spins Madly On

The year has gotten off to an interesting start. Not quite sure how to describe 2012 to date, but I find it best at the moment to keep my head down and keep working. That being said, animation production is not exciting work. More often than not, it's just me working away on my laptop, checking scenes off my list as I complete them. There will not be much in the way of updates for awhile, as I am indeed animating away.

In the mean time, have some official "Really Bad Movie" trailer!

I don't really get around to updating this blog as much as I should, and find it much easier to throw up some production art here and there on Facebook. So if you want to see more goodies more often, come on over and like my "Really Bad Movie!" Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Really-Bad-Movie-The-Animated-Short/202523216457233

And Then There Were Five

Yeah lack of posting again, so shoot me. I've been busy trying to get the latest "Really Bad Movie" into animation ready shape. Final animatic edit, done! Main character Flash libraries as of tonight, done! I still have 6 to 7 other secondary characters to do, and hands for every character. Got my hands full that is for sure. (pun intended)

Anyway! Enough yapping! Onto what you're really here for:

Pretty snazzy, right? They all came out great this attempt. I've sure learned a hell of a lot about building libraries in Flash over the last year. These are fully workable Flash puppets, ready for some animating! Now to blast through the last of the busy work and get to the fun stuff!

I Tried, and Now It's Bah! Humbug!

It officially set in last night. The holidays have severely slowed my progress on the latest installment of Really Bad Movie. It was at that moment I sunk back into my loathing for the holiday season. Till then I was doing great. Listening to the obligatory Christmas tunes, downing some egg nog when the chance presented, and shopping like a trophy wife with sugar daddy's credit card.

In the past I had been spoiled with numerous 1 day, all cast included recording sessions. This time around I've had to work within everyone's schedules, not to mention the holidays and set multiple sessions. I am VERY thankful for the wonderful Chris Kooreman at Beat Royalty who has already given up his studio space twice so that I may have cast members come in when time permits. So far the cast has performed with perfection and I look forward to getting the rest of the gang in to do their thing in early 2011. To that note I also have a theme song in the works and it's coming out great! Much thanks to my composer Ryan Brawders on that front! Next year is gonna be a lot of fun and I look forward to sharing my progress with you all.

Merry Christmas, Happy belated Hanukkah, Funky Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year to everyone.

Shaking Off the Rust

It's been a few weeks since I've updated, I know. At least this time my disappearance has been for pre-production reasons. Since finishing the first pass animatic about 3 weeks ago, I've been taking some time to A) Try out, develop and continue honing some new techniques, and B) shake off the rust that's accumulated over the last couple years in which I have been damn near close to inactive.

This is what I consider the fun time, all out trial and error. I touched upon it in my last post with that 10 second video of the scary, disembodied head of Professor Waxington: Now I get to use what I learned from those series of tests and apply them to actual character animation. This is all on a practice level of course, as I have not gotten my cast together to record just yet. (Though I was fortunate enough to have one of my cast members offer their services by way of crappy quality recording session on my MacBook Pro. Thank you Carlos!) Nor have I gotten my crew together to start animating. Before I can do either I have to figure out exactly what I want this show to look like. What to do, what not to do, and how to do it, will be much easier to explain to those involved once I get a clear understanding of what it is that I want this to be.

The video clip below has been how I've spent the day. It's not without it's issues, I know. (And yes the background I used is from the show "Archer". I in no way intend to use it beyond this test footage, nor do I claim to have had anything to do with it's creation.) All in all it's a very solid first attempt, and man does it have me excited to try out more things!

Again, it's not a finished piece, it's just a test. A very sexy test if you ask me!

Slight of Hand, Foot in Mouth

I'd be lying if I said the initial rough animatic editing process is moving along right on schedule. Fact of the matter is it's starting to drag on longer than I had hoped. I guess it's the way it goes when you've got a small handful of gags and one-liners to rework. Don't get me wrong, this is a solid project. Though like any project, some of my jokes just did not work in front of an audience. With rewrites and their corresponding storyboards behind me, I can at least say progress has been made in the last month. For the time being it's about as tight as it's gonna be till I can get my cast in the studio. It's been a bit of an internal up hill battle, and fatigue is setting in. I am very anxious to get onto the next step, but alas once the final dialogue track is recorded I will have a whole other edit to get though. The one edit I quite frankly hate the most. The final timing edit, and all the math and frame counting that applies.

As with all my posts I try to provide some eye candy. Though I don't have much by way of entertaining tidbits of production work to show quite yet, I have been playing with some new techniques in Flash.

Above you will see the quite stylish head of Really Bad Movie's very own Professor James Waxington. (Though his design may change in the months to come, lets just use this as a teaching example.) Subtle head turn not that exciting you say? Well you're right, BUT! This simple head turn will do wonders for the previously VERY limited animation I once used while pushing out past incarnations of this project. See, when doing limited animation, subtle usually translate to uncreative suit and money bozos as "time consuming" and therefor, expensive. Not so much here though! Notice the head never actually changes shape, but still gives the illusion of movement. That is because there are 4 moving parts that force your eye to think that the character is ever so slightly turning his head. In reality, it's only one drawing. Therein lies the magic of the whole thing. 1 drawing broken into multiple parts, moving together to give the illusion of full and subtle movement. I know it's not much, but damn it has me excited to get onto animation!