Wednesday, October 29, 2008

G.O.P. P.S.A. #2

Here it is, the second G.O.P. P.S.A.! This time Sarah Palin tries to teach kids how to be racist, and a very special guest drops by. Check it out!


I can't wait to see how people get confused by this one.

Remember to vote for Barack Obama on November 4th! I don't want to ever have to use those Palin head drawings again.


Late Nights & Robot Rights

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Wish I had my own

I just finished coloring the last drawings for a second G.O.P. P.S.A. Yep, we're doing another one- hopefully to be finished Wednesday night.

So I thought I'd explain what the hell is going on with these G.O.P. things, since my last entry was only like two sentences long- written just as Matt and I had finished rendering the short and were posting it all over the place.

Somewhere along this road to the White House, possibly at the corner of Campaign Rhetoric Avenue and Bat-shit Crazy Alaskan Lady Terrace, we realized this was going to be the most important election of our lives and we had to do or part to help save the country from exploding. So we decided to do the only thing we could do that would make a difference- draw a cartoon and put it on Youtube. Clearly, the best way to impact the world.

Now at the time, we were still knee deep in finishing the latest Ronin Dojo Community College DX episode, and we didn't really have a solid idea of what exactly we were going to animate. But we knew that whatever it was, it would probably involve the candidates- so I might as well just start drawing talking heads for use down the road.



Now, the tough part of doing a political cartoon turned out not to be the animation (because we barely did any) but the writing. We kept thinking of ideas for cartoons, only to find them to be played out by the next day.
Early on, Matt and I had a parody P.S.A. sketched out where McCain helps a kid avoid peer pressure by being a maverick. Of course by the time we were ready to start animating, the whole maverick thing was kinda old and irrelevant.

So w
e decided to ditch the whole G.I. Joe parody idea and just do something on the debates. After the second debate, we recorded the audio for a cartoon where McCain fields questions that were leftover from the town hall audience. Problem was we wrote, recorded and edited it in one night. What was hilarious at 1 am, turned out to just be a bunch of Transformer jokes when we listened to it the next day. Not exactly biting satire.

With only a few weeks left, we were like screw it, back to the G.I. Joe thing. What's McCain doing now? Calling everyone a socialist. Let's do it. We had the heads drawn, we pounded out the a 7 or so barely animated shots out in less than a week and threw it on line.

And here we are. It's not very funny, maybe a bit too subtle judging by the piles of Youtube comments asking if we know what socialism is, but whatever. We're doing another one. Fuck John McCain.

Now a tiny part of me did feel a little weird about posting the G.O.P. short because, Matt and I don't hate Republicans, and I'm sure all of the people who watch our videos aren't lefty-commie-abortionist-liberals like ourselves. We didn't want to alienate people. But on the other hand, the shit that has been going on is RIDICULOUS, how could we NOT do something like this?

As we should've expected, there were a lot of mixed responses to the video. Some good, some not so good. But when you get messages saying things like "you've lost a fan [you] democratic fags", you know you're doing the right thing.


My Very Own Flag & Robot Rights

Friday, October 24, 2008

G.O.P.

A big thanks to everyone who checked out the new Ronin Dojo cartoon, a huge thanks to Scott from VG Cats for posting about us again, and a large extra medium thanks for all the awesome comments- even that one that jokes about stalking us.

Anyways, some quick news. Matt and I whipped up another cartoon, just in time to be barely relevant. More on this later.



Remember to vote on November 4th, preferably for Barack Obama.

Fight For Your Rights & Robot Rights

Thursday, October 16, 2008

HOLY CRAP A NEW SHORT!

It's finally done! Check-check-check-check CHECK IT OUT!


It's the first episode in our four part "The Digital Pirates of Dark Water" saga, entitled, "Release Me!".

A big thanks go to Tim Martin for doing another amazing voice over job, to Andrew Kudlick and Jonah Beram for recording some awesome music, and to Dan Malloy for mixing this shit.

Oy vey, I'm going outside.


Riding Bikes & Robot Rights

Thursday, October 9, 2008

If I'm Ever Bored And Want To Write A Musical-


-I'll know what to write.

Once I figured out the colors I felt like I had to put a title on it.


Foot Lights & Robot Rights

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The Five Stages of Animation

We are PICTURE LOCKED on the new episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX! All we have left to do is make some music and sound effects and we are good to go. Though this could possibly be done by next week, we're not quite sure what the release date will be- but it will be soon.

Now, this milestone has made me think back to a theory I've had about animation process- which this short along with all my past endeavors have definitely validated. My theory is that going through the process of animating a film is kind of like going through the Five Stages of Grief.

First, there's denial. You're thinking, yeah this isn't so many shots I can totally animate this in like a- month. It will turn out great, I'm going to really do it right this time, it's going to look so much better than my last short.

So you start animating and soon enough you find yourself behind schedule, and you enter the second stage of animation- anger. You starting yelling things like "WHY IS IT SO HARD TO ANIMATE HANDS?! I can't believe I thought this would only take me one night to do?!" and "What happened with this run cycle, it looks like he's going backwards- I CAN'T DRAW?!"

This is when you enter the third stage of animation, bargaining. You go back rearrange your schedule in order to compensate for all the trouble you've been having, and you say to yourself "You know what, this doesn't look so bad, I'll just move it around in After Effects and it'll work." And in a Jon Lovitz voice you say "Yeah, that's the ticket", expecting you're roommate to laugh, but your roommate doesn't hear you so you say it even louder, "Yeah, THAT'S THE TICKET." Then you're roommate asks why the hell are you talking about tickets. So you take five minutes to explain how it was this bit he used to do on Saturday Night Live and then you're roommate says "Oh, yeah. . ." So you respond "Whatever, it was funny" and go back to animating.

After going through the gauntlet of actually animating, you enter the fourth stage, depression. You're scanning and coloring and things are starting to come together, but they look a lot messier than you had thought they would. So you start getting all sad and hopeless, thinking you'll never really get any better and suspecting that all those legendary animators like Chuck Jones were actually aliens or at least time travelers.

Finally, after everything is composited and colored, the sound is all done, and all of the shots are all cut together- you have finished an animated film. Thus, you enter the last stage of animation- acceptance. You're proud of yourself for finishing the short, and it's really cool to watch the drawings come together to create the illusion of movement. Sure it's not as good as you thought it would be, but you know only jerks are completely satisfied with their work. If you're serious about your "craft" or whatever, you'll be able to pick out your faults. But seriously, you should be doing more life drawing- this time you're for real about that. Whatever, that's for later though, you've finished the short and now it's time to go outside and see your friends again.



Seeing The Light & Robot Rights