Kill The Captains: the art & production blog of Ben Levin

For Tax Reasons Goes To Genericon!

2011-01-20T19:52:00.003-05:00

February 11th-13th, Matt and I (aka For Tax Reasons) will be all up in Troy, New York for GENERICON XXIV! 48 straight hours of sci-fi, anime, and gaming (of the video, table and live action varieties). Of course, like any self-respecting convention, there will be PANELS PANELS PANELS!

We’ll be running two of the previously exclaimed panels. A how-to animate panel- where Matt and I will discuss producing independent shorts, the creative process and showcasing work. As well as a screening and Q&A panel- where we’ll take on all the scathing questions and criticisms the viewing public has been too afraid to voice over the internet. And as a special surprise† we’ll be screening our never released Ronin Dojo Community College DX cartoon!

Go to genericon.union.rpi.edu for more details. We’ll be chilling there all weekend, and should have a table up. So if you’re in the NY area, come around and hang out.

†no longer a surprise, specialty withstanding

Chach Rules!

2011-01-13T02:24:00.003-05:00

This past weekend I hauled my butt back to DC for the Max Levine Ensemble's 10 Year Anniversary Show. It was, without a doubt, one of the best shows I've been too.

I started playing in a band right around the time TMLE started up; the Konami Code for anyone interested (we were once mentioned in Game Pro at the height of our "success"). We dabbled in the same DC/MD/VA punk-ska-anything scene, and knew each other from hanging out at the Corner Kick- this indoor soccer place where our friends from DC Ska / Rude In DC would put on these awesome shows with local bands. At any rate, fairly early on my journeys as a teenage songwriter it became evident that TMLE were operating on a much different level than I was. Their first songs right off the bat were so insightful and nuanced, yet still fun and catchy at the same time. Whenever I heard a new song from them, I would say something like "Oh yeah, I've thought about that too" or "So you don't have to slam a slogan over someone's head to make a statement". Plus, on top of all the punk rock, they had a sense of humor. So seeing them live was always a rad time.

I'm rambling. Point being, I was impressed with them when they started and I'm still impressed with them today, and super glad they've been going 10 years strong. It was so fun to see everyone come together for the show, see all the old faces and friends, and feel all the super posi vibes. And of course, it was great to hear them play Pizza Guy again.

That's the second longest Monkey Island post I've ever seen!

2011-01-04T23:50:00.014-05:00

Over the holiday break, I had the chance to get reacquainted with an old friend. Not one of my high school chums, I see them fairly often. I'm talking about graphic adventure games.

The story starts when I got an iPhone! (<-- Read in Oprah voice) First app I purchased proper- THE SECRET OF MOTHERFUCKING MONKEY ISLAND!
It is so awesome to have that game in my hands. I'm not too hot on the Special Edition graphics (though it's fun listening to the new voice overs), but with a simple two finger swipe you're back in original game mode. Only complaint, I think the music from the forests on Mêlée Island™ weren't included. That was one of my hauntingly favorite synth reggae tracks.

After all the excitement of having an app everyone else played months ago, I got sick and was stuck in bed with a fever. I found myself rocking even more graphic adventure games. Legend of Kyrandia 2 and Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game and Tales of Monkey Island. I love the writing, acting and graphics in both of Telltale's ventures. Tales is an especially welcome sight for sore eyes. Between the third and fourth iteration of the Monkey Island series, the graphics had moved from this, with Curse of Monkey Island:

To this, with Escape from Monkey Island:

I was sad too, Guybrush. Personally, nothing tops my nostalgic love for the EGA graphics in the first two Monkey Island games, or the way the box art captured my imagination (I know at least one guy feels the same). But we can't live in the past, and I really dig what Telltale is doing.

So I was moved to do a little Monkey Island tribute. Click HERE to see the original.

to every kid who ever got picked last in art class

2010-10-12T00:33:00.004-05:00

I got some new Ronin Dojo Community College DX artwork finished up. Hum some Pokemon music and watch this one evolve. Dum dum dum dum. . .

Did some experimenting with a lot of elements in these. I really wanted the characters to pop off their surroundings, but I didn't want to paint everything by hand. Since I had drawn the characters and the background on separate layers in Photoshop, I decided I would just make the background lines lighter.

When coloring, I selected each background object using the magic wand, expanded the selection at least 3 or 4 pixels into the line, and filled it with the paint bucket on it's own layer. This really bit deep into my line, and made each layer essentially over lap one another.

I stacked the layers in the order they actually be on each other. Then I dropped the line layer down to 30% opacity. This left the line slightly gray, and because I had 'over filled' each object, no uncolored white space showed through.

I also added in shadows and highlights with a textured brush, and made a layer with the blending mode set to "overlay" and lightly brushed some flat areas to give them a faux, painted feel. Again, an attempt to make the characters stand out from the background.

For a final touch, I tried putting a slight airbrushed vignette around the edges. To help keep the focus. Just brushed some black on a layer with the blending mode set to "overlay".

I'm still experimenting with diff ways to color and paint backgrounds, if anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'd really like to try some with no lines at all, but that might involve just straight up painting in Photoshop. That is not my forté. Also, these three drawings will have text on them, if you're wondering why there's so much extra space on the top and bottom.

Side note: messy rooms are a pain to draw. Lots of details, lots of colors to pick out. But it pays to push yourself extra mile, otherwise it just feels empty and flat. If you can't push yourself to do it, just find someone to yell at you about it. I had Ms. Jordie Bellaire on my case this time around.

I need to get better with my background details I think, more photo reference or something. There is an awesome example of a fully fleshed out, messy room over at Meaghan Carters blog. Great specifics. It's the little things. . .

Rough Drawings from a Person Who Does What Is Roughly Considered Drawing

2010-08-26T22:31:00.012-05:00

Here are some rough pieces of Ronin Dojo Community College DX artwork I've been working on. Thought I'd share them with the interwebs.

These first couple might be used for posters. I was attempting to work in some interesting angles; trying to emulate the classic epic, anime ensemble pose. I had to keep pushing myself to make the gestures feel kinetic and alive. Still don't think I pushed it far enough.

More fun with perspective and faking a fish eye lens type effect. In this one, you can see an unmasked version of David, the mysterious third nerd from IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR.

A more standard use of perspective with this one. Unlike photography and live action, cartoons don't have that inherent sense of depth. You have to go out of your way to build up that sense of space and reality. If someone had battered me over the head with the rules of perspective starting when I was like five- maybe I'd have mastered it by now.

While working on these, I was paging through Rad Sechrist's blog, along with the Art Center blog he contributes to. Lot of great tips and inspiration up there. Definitely check it out if you're an animator, illustrator or if you like ducks in steam punk looking suits.

I'll try to be a little Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance here, and say that it's a good thing that I'm 27 and still learning about drawing and animation. Embarrassing, but good.

Going Digital Saves You The Pain of Trashing Stuff

2010-08-12T19:41:00.011-05:00

Phew, it feels good to be back on the ol' internet. For a couple months I was on a little work hiatus. As in a hiatus from being on the internet because of work. Not to be confused with a hiatus from working, or the 1954 B-Movie Hiatus From The Black Lagoon.

So now that I have nothing going, what better to do than blog.

I took a little break and went back home to Maryland. My parents requested I clear out some of the mess I've accumulated in the basement storage room, or they'd call whoever cleans up the houses on Hoarders. During my digging and crying, I ran across a couple boxes worth of animation.

This represents only a fraction of For Tax Reasons' work. I think some of IM IN UR MANGER is in there, the heads from the G.O.P. P.S.A.'s, and part of my Got My Number music video.

It's almost as tall as Marley! And would be even taller if Matt and I didn't cut so many corners when we animate. Of course, if we didn't cut any corners, we'd probably only have two shorts online.

I kept a few of the drawings, but threw most of them into the recycling bin. They're all scanned and saved on various hard drives; pretty pointless to keep around. Even if I became ridiculously famous in some bizarre twist of fate, nobody would ever want the majority of these drawings. Since Matt and I work with so many layers and libraries, they're mostly bodies without heads and random arms:

The only way someone would EVER want those drawings is if I become a crazy eccentric billionaire- and after I die Sotheby's auctions off my state and includes them in some 2 for 1 deal with a real live genetically engineered Centaur. Only then would somebody MAYBE want those drawings. Fancy auctions do 2 for 1 deals, right?

As you can see, I work hard to validate my decisions to toss anything.

Last post with a weather theme

2010-03-17T00:40:00.011-05:00

My lasts two posts referenced the snow, and this one again is about the weather. I know, very mundane. But I was super pysched about it getting a tiny bit warm in New York. So I drew this.

Initially, I couldn't decide which warm weather outfit to put her in- so I made outfits for each season. I was pretty much playing dress up with my drawings. Whatever, I'm comfortable with that. I may break up each figure and make a separate season surrounding for them. I dunno.

Everyone in New York gets excited when it's a tad bit warmer. We're so brutally demoralized by walking in the winter, that any warmth feels like the Keys or something. Ok, enough weather talk.

In other news, I've almost finished updating the Ronin Dojo Community College DX heads. Last up, Mark. If you can't tell the difference between the old and the new- JUST LOOK AT HOW CROOKED THOSE EYES ARE. Man, so glad I have guides in Photoshop.

I also gave a little update to the For Tax Reasons website banner and logo. Following the nice pixel art tutorial on Derek Yu's site. I took our old logo:

And made this!
Whoops, that ear should be self-lined. Whatever, this won't probably stay as is for long. I am totally losing my hair, so eventually this will have to be updated to reflect Bald Ben. Comparing the two logos you can see I receded my hair line a little bit to keep it true to life.

Anyways, thanks to Derek Yu. That tutorial is super helpful. Also, thanks to Andrew WK. I just came back from his NYC show, and oh man it was awesome! I partied so hard I got diarrhea. Shwarma is not the thing to eat before you're gonna go jump up and down for an hour. I can't stop telling people about this.

Snow Stopping Me Part II: Bad Boy. Can't Stop. Snown't Stop.

2010-02-26T02:27:00.008-05:00

Last time I updated, it was totally snowing. And now I'm updating again- and it's totally snowing again! What are the odds of that. . . in the month of February.

Well, it's fitting because this post is kind of a sequel to the last post. I'm still fixing up the head library for Ronin Dojo Community College DX. Right now I'm on Barry. Watch him evolve:

Eh the skull was kinda just for fun. I don't know why I drew everyone with such flat pointy heads, and hair stuck straight to them. It just goes to show how much your skills can progress even within a few years. Or if you want to see it half empty- it just goes to show that you never know how much you suck until it's too late.

And in continuing with the sequel-ity of this update. Here are the t-shirt designs I finished for the band The Heat Machine.

And here's the other one I posted the other week that the band didn't end up using.

I hope they turn out good on the shirts.

I was gonna draw another snowy girl drawing, but I already did a lot of drawing today and I'm all drawed out. So next time, another girly drawing.

There Snow Stopping Me From Updating

2010-02-11T02:19:00.008-05:00

Yeah, that was the best snow pun I could come up with. It's snowing all across the Mid Atlantic and Upper Atlantic of these United States, so I'll start off with a little drawing I whipped up in honor of all the snow days.

Kinda boring I know. Not as fun as Ian's snow sketch.

Now for the news. Mr. Matt Burnett (the other half of For Tax Reasons) and I had a fun radio interview last Friday. We called in to the Popmedia Primecast, to have a chat with Dom and Dusty. The show was originally broadcast on KANE Radio AM 1240 but you can listen to the whole episode in mp3 format here. We kinda rambled a lot, so if you get bored with hearing our voices, check out the other episodes they've got posted. There are some sweet guests talking about fun nerdy pop culture stuff.

In other For Tax Reasons news, I've started updating all the head files for the Ronin Dojo Community College DX characters.
They were originally drawn on paper and scanned in. So I'm redrawing them straight into the Photoshop using my Cintiq. Making them hi res enough for HD, and doing some slight redesigns along the way. And by that I mean, fixing my shitty drawings.

I've also been working on some sketches for this band The Heat Machine. They're an awesome ska band from Nebraska, or NebraSKA as I say. I definitely urge any third wave fans to go to their myspace and check 'em out. One of my favorite new bands out there for sure. Or at least, new to me. They just released a "No Coast Dance Party" on Asbestos Records. BUY IT. It is good.

Not sure which of these we're gonna use, but I thought I'd post the roughs here anyways.

That's all for nows, I'll post the final stuff when it's done.

New Sites!

2010-01-28T16:05:00.006-05:00

So after spending a couple weeks wrapped in code, I've finished redesigning the websites for both For Tax Reasons and Ben Levin Dot Net. They're a bit easier to maneuver and link around, and no more ancient iframes.

I also drew some new banner artwork for my site. I call it A Circle Pit Landscape. Here it is in stages- as I like to present things.

Also, the Teenage Bottlerocket video is up on Youtube. Now you can watch it in sharp HD quality. Thanks goodness, I didn't sit around for months drawing in 5806 x 4158 pixel Photoshop canvas' for so everyone could watch a small chunky compressed version. I sat around for months drawing in 5806 x 4158 pixel Photoshop canvas' for so everyone could watch a sharply compressed version. Oh yeah. So sharp you could cut Gouda on it. Go ahead and put a hunk up to your screen and (as Bravo says) watch what happens.

New Stuff For 2010!

2010-01-18T01:38:00.014-05:00

Finally, some new stuff coming out. Firstly, you might have noticed I've got a new blog header. Thank goodness, that other one was old and had not aged well. If you want to see a bigger version, you can check it out on my Flickr photostream.

In a year, I'll probably be sick of this header too. Maybe even a couple months. Hell, I may not like this drawing tomorrow. Man, you know what? This drawing is crappy. I'm scrapping the blog altogether.

Ah, I can't do that. Not while you were halfway through reading this post. Or if you're a bot, skipping straight to the bottom so you can make nonsensical comments about iPhones. So time for the second bit of news.

I finished my Teenage Bottlerocket music video for the song "Bigger Than Kiss"!

It's premiering today on Myspace in the videos section right up there with Three Six Mafia and JD from Le Tigre. What a motley crew.

Really glad to have it done and out for the public to see. Hope people like it. If not, well screw you, I drew it all by myself.

If you still haven't bought the new album, They Came From The Shadows, I highly suggest you do. Got onto a lot of Top of 2009 lists on Punknews.org, and if bearded Lawrence Arms fans like it, it's gotta be good.

I believe that's the last of the leftover projects from 2009, so I'm ready to tackle 2010. Matt and I have some new For Tax Reasons projects planned, most importantly a new Ronin Dojo Community College DX series. So stay tuned to your internet tubes.

Evolution of a Shot

2009-12-07T00:44:00.009-05:00

I'm nearing the 7th inning stretch with the Teenage Bottlerocket music video. Thought I'd share some drawings and show the magical metamorphosis of a shot.

We start with the larvae, a detailed storyboard.

It's amazing how much information I can convey, with several deft strokes of the digital brush. Next, the shot wraps itself in a cocoon of sketchy blue lines and enters it's pupa or "rough" stage.

Finally, after hours of pupation*, a clean drawing emerges and thrusts it's gloriously detailed wings to the world.

In the coming days, the shots will fill itself with a rich palette of hues and tones. But these moments of glory are fleeting, for the lifespan of a typical shot of animation in this music video is merely a second. Such is the nature of animation.

Thanks for reading this far, and for letting me stretch that metaphor paper thin. As a show of gratitude, some extra drawings.

* First time ever using that word.†

† Look at me, I'm David Foster Wallace-ing the shit out of this post.¶
¶ I mean that in the nicest way possible. ®
® I'm sorry.

Exposure Therapy

2009-11-23T03:00:00.013-05:00

Crowd shots and walk cycles. Two of my least favorite things to animate, and coincidentally, the two shots which have been plaguing me for the past week. They're both for the Teenage Bottlerocket video I'm working on, and I finally finished cleaning them up, and they look pretty coool- so check 'em out.

First out the gait (wamp wamp) is the walk cycle. This was a little tough because it was a 2 point perspective walk. Here's the initial rough test. Matt helped me look it over and figure it out. I didn't approach it with the best geometric planning, but eventually I came out with this.

Here's a quicktime version for better viewing.

Next up is the crowd shot. Oy vey, this took a while to do, but to see it in motion is pretty satisfying.

Surprisingly, it doesn't take too many drawings to create a convincing loop of a jump. The two characters jumping in the back are only 4 drawings. The girl in the front has a little hop and some extra follow-through, so she's 7 drawings.

What it looks like with all the layers on at once

The head nod of the girl with glasses took a little bit to figure out. In the end, it was also only 4 drawings of her moving her head up and down in an even motion. At first, I had her jerking her head up and down, to try and emphasize her nodding to a beat. It looked too much like her boyfriend with the glasses was ramming her from behind, so had to scrap and rework it. I think the final product with looks fairly non-sexual, so I'm happy with it. But the seed has been planted, so maybe now that's all you can see in it.

That's all folks, for now. Sweet dreams until I finish another interesting shot.

Some Sneaky Peekies

2009-10-04T00:20:00.012-05:00

Lot's of work going on right now, mostly on stuff that cannot be posted on the internet. However, what I DO have to offer is a sneak peek at the video I'm working on for Teenage Bottlerocket.

It's for the song "Bigger Than Kiss" off their Fat Wreck Chords debut "They Came From The Shadows". Which you should go buy right now.

The album is awesome. All of the songs are rad pop punk jams- there's some love songs, some sci-fi songs, some fast angry shit thrown in there too- it's sweet. I don't know why I'm not writing music reviews for a living. Anyways, if you don't believe my 90's surfer-bro critique, check out the video for the track "Skate Or Die".

My video should be coming out in late November, but I'll have more updates before then, hopefully some tests and colored-in stuff. Until then, catch ya later most excellent blog dudes.

How To Color (if you're me)

2009-09-03T21:31:00.021-05:00

This is a tutorial on How to Color with Adobe Photoshop- or rather how I color with Adobe Photoshop. It is by no means the only method for coloring, or even the best method. It's just how I was taught to color way back in 2002, when computers were still powered by coal and Adobe's primary sales were in huts made out of clay.

I'm going to start with this drawing I made a while back, when I was first tooling around on the Cintiq.
I titled it The Questioner, because it sort of looks like she's pondering something. Though when I look at it now, it seems more like the Virgin Mary getting ready for bed. Anyways, here's the final line art I'll be working with. I added a little question mark thingy in the corner to create some half assed composition.

The rookie Photoshop user would just choose the Paint Bucket tool, and start filling things in. That's not gonna work. I mean it'll work, but it's going to look like this.

Unless you're drawing pixel by pixel, your lines will always have these gray pixels that make up the curves and angles. The paint bucket does not know to fill in those pixels. The result is this ghosting effect; little white outlines around the details.

The proper way to color is by using the Magic Wand tool, layers and blending modes.

Step 1. Use The Magic Wand To Select An Area

Select the Magic Wand tool. Set your Tolerance to 100%, with Anti-Aliasing and Contiguous checked. Then select the area you'd like to color. You can see in this picture I'm trying to select her hair, but because of some incomplete lines it didn't work. I went back and filled in the gap.

You'll have to run some tedious checks for these holes during the coloring process. This is why you don't often see cartoons with sketchy, dashed lines.

Step 2: EXPAND!

Go to Select>Modify>Expand and expand your selection area by 2 pixels. This is usually enough to bite into your line, over top of those gray pixels, but not enough to bleed outside of the line.

Step 3: Create a New Layer

Create a New Layer (duh) and here's the key part- set the layer's blending mode to Multiply. When it's in Multiply mode, the layer becomes translucent, like a transparency sheet that your 8th grade math teacher would use with a projector. It's hard to explain, but play around with it, you'll see how it works.

Step 4: PAINT BUCKET THAT SHIT
NOW you can use that Paint Bucket tool. Fill the area, deselect and VOILA! Color. The multiply mode allows the black line to show through, while allowing the color to cover up all those white and gray pixels.
You might have to go in and fill in some tiny areas that the wand missed, but otherwise it's done! No ghost lines AND the color is on a separate layer. So you can always go back and tweak or do a hue shift without affecting the rest of the drawing.

Bonus Stage: Make An Action

You can record an action so that most of these steps will be automated. Making coloring even faster.

Make a selection with your Magic Wand tool, then go to your Action Tab, select New Action, and do the following steps.

Expand Selection by 2 pixels
Create New Layer
Set Layer to Multiply

Then stop recording. All that's left is to hit the G to choose your Paint Bucket, and fill. Now coloring will be a cinch.

If you're not familiar with Blending Modes, I'd really encourage you to experiment with them. You can do some cool shit.

For example, I made a layer of blue covering just the body of the girl. I tried out the Color Burn Mode, and it gave me this cool look. Next, I tried out Hard Light mode, brought the opacity down to 39%, and it looked like she was standing in the dark. So I erased some of the blue away, and created this lighting effect like she's looking at some glowing, creepy thing. Like a glowing baby Jesus. I dunno, use your imagination.

As I said, this is just the way I color drawings, not the ONLY way. It's a method I was taught based on working with scanned pencil drawings, which usually have a lot of white gaps and holes you have to tackle. Anyways, hope that helps somebody out there. Thanks for scrolling through all of this madness.

Obligatory Post About Promoting One's Boyfriend

2009-08-16T23:22:00.011-05:00

The 11th annual sweaty, 72-hour improv fest that is the Del Close Marathon has finally come to an end. My face and feet hurt from all that respective smiling and standing. Big ups to all the performers, especially Ronin Dojo voices Tim Martin and Emily Tarver. Speaking of which-

Here's a video that was posted a lil' bit ago starring Mr. Tim Martin (Seth/Hank Henderson). It's called the Octopus Job; written by Joe Wengert, directed by my favorite improv teddy bear Will Hines, and also starring John Gemberling- whom Matt and I did a little animation for on "Fat Guy Stuck In The Internet". Naaaaaame droppppiiiiinngggggahhhhh. Sorry, I like to pretend I'm part of the scene.

And while we're on the subject of other peoples videos, For Tax Reasons will be taking part in a free animation screening this Wednesday in NYC called Midsummer Night Toons.

It will feature some sweet animated shorts and several episodes of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. Check out the above trailer, and come out to watch. Here's the info.

Wednesday, August 19th 2009

M1-5 Bar/Longue
52 Walker St. (b/w Church + Broadway)
9:00-9:30

Aaaand finally, I finished the poster for Carlapalooza.

It's a punk benefit for the National MS Society, September 25th-27th in NYC. Lots of sweet bands playing for a good cause.

Ok, I'm going to go rehydrate. Tomorrow, the drawing marathon begins.

A Hastily Thrown Together, Vaguely Themed Post

2009-08-07T00:29:00.015-05:00

"Geology is a study of pressure and time. That's all it really takes, pressure and time. . . that and a goddamn big poster. . ."-- Red, The Shawshank Redemption

So here's a quick post about a couple things I've been working on. This is a rough version of the poster for Carlapalooza 2009. It's a punk show Mr. Chadd Derkins puts on to benefit MS. I drew the poster for the 2007 show and Chadd was nice enough to ask me back.

So for this year I decided to run with the battle theme again. Check it out. Looking a the old poster, I felt like it was a bit flat. I decided this year I should make the angle a bit more dynamic- throw in some perspective. It should be my official motto for 2009- "throw in some perspective". That or "fruit on the bottom". I don't know, I've been eating a lot of yogurt lately.

The project I've been steadily chipping away at is the Teenage Bottlerocket video. (this is my attempt to stick with this post's theme.)

One thing I've learned, while making this video, is it's hard to draw hands holding drumsticks. I don't know why, but it's always looks weird when I do it. I think it's the thumb placement.

It's double-y frustrating when you have trouble drawing hands. Not only are you failing at something so essential and basic, but you have the perfect reference right in front of you and you still can't figure out where a knuckle should go. Baffling.

Something I DO need photo reference for are the dreaded crowd shots.
It's always tough to come up with a bunch of random characters and poses. I usually have to look up some photos from shows and just pick out people from the crowd. Otherwise, I end with these really lame, unimaginative people cluttering up the scene.

Thank goodness for the internet and Flickr though. Because I mean, seriously, how often do you look at a man's crowd shots.

Hardly Art, Hardly Garbage

2009-08-03T01:49:00.007-05:00

After wrecking my way through 4 silk screens- I now present TWO NEW RONIN DOJO COMMUNITY COLLEGE T-SHIRTS!

The first one is a sweet baby blue number, which you can see Mr. Tom Callow rockin' in the picture above. I don't know if anything else could make that shirt look as cool, outside of a dragon or something.
The second is a yellow and black on white number, in a very punk rock fashion aka I line all this shit up by hand, so it's got a fun DIY feel to it.
I don't have a cool picture of someone in this shirt, but feel free to order one and take some picture of yourself in it that challenges the epic-ness of flames and a staff.

Both are hand printed onto American Apparel fine jersey tees. Available in the For Tax Reasons merch section in about every damn size that exists INCLUDING the lady sizes- or "girly" sizes as they're called in the industry. Seems more polite to call them lady sizes though.

We're hoping to have some more non-clothing merchandise up soon, but until then go check them out, buy one, and take funny pictures of yourself in it. It'll be sweet.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

2009-07-23T22:51:00.013-05:00

Still getting over the post-Otakon euphoria/withdrawal. I never went to sleep-away camp when I was young...er, but I assume this is the feeling you get when you leave camp. You're back to reality, your same old routine, and don't get to hang around all your camp friends all day who are dressed up like Street Fighter characters. That's what happens at sleep away camp right? I mean, I went to day camp. I just assumed when you went away for more than one night, dressing up was a pre-requisite.

Anyways, several news updates. Firstly, Matt and I have some made some massive For Tax Reasons plans for the upcoming months. We're hoping to release some merch to fill out our very small selection. Planning to have some posters and a new t-shirt design.

We WOULD have had the new shirts for Otakon- BUT I've been struuuuggling with silk screening lately. Everything that could possibly go wrong in the making of these new shirts has gone wrong. I've gone through 4 screens now. But I'm not giving up! I have put TOO much money into this operation and have too many blank American Apparel shirts that aren't my size.

Anyways, we should have new shirts coming up soon.

Secondly, I finally joined the Twitter machine. So if you want to see the random thoughts I have as I sit around animating, follow me: twitter.com/ben_levin

Finally, I'm back to work on the music video for Teenage Bottlerocket. We've switched things up and I'm now doing a video for their upcoming full-length debut release on Fat Wreck Chords "They Came From The Shadows". It'll be dropping September 15th, which means, I cannot reveal details of the super secret new song that's in the video. But I will give you a peek at the storyboards I just finished today. Check it out.

I know, right. Total album spoiler. Ok I'm out, my back hurts.

Holy Plug Suit Gatchaman! It's the final episode of RDCCDX: DPODW!

2009-07-17T23:39:00.004-05:00

Whew, we just got back from day one of Otakon (day two if you count standing in the pre reg line Thursday night) and it was awesome!

Our panel "Let's Talk Animation! with For Tax Reasons" went off without a hitch, and surprisingly there were more than 10 people in attendance. In fact, the whole room was filled with fans. And they actually wanted to watch each episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. We were just thinking we'd premiere the last episode as we'd promised, but they asked for it.

So now that the otaku's have seen it, we're throwing it out to the internet. So here it is- the final RDCCDX: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga, it's Episode 4: "End of the Road".

Thanks to the Otakon Staff, Panel Ops, and the A/V crew for helping us out and twiddling with the sound each time I annoyingly asked. Thanks to Alan from Otaku Generation and Scott for helping us with the Otakon stuff. Thanks to all the people who came out to the panel and laughed and asked questions. Thanks to Tim Martin to providing hilarious voice acting, Matt Mayer for making some sweet 3-D titles and helping us with compositing, Darrell for coloring and taking photos during the panel and Zack for video taping the panel and giving us his advice.

The Shape of Punk To Come

2009-07-09T01:04:00.006-05:00

This is a little promo I cut for the For Tax Reasons panel at Otakon, where we'll be discussing DIY animation and screening the final episode in the Digital Pirates of Dark Water story arc. If you're going to be at Otakon here are the panel details.

Let's Talk Animation! with For Tax Reasons
Friday, July 17th @ 1:15 PM
Baltimore Convention Center, Panel 2

As you can see, it's almost a week until Otakon, and we've got roughly 30 or so shots left to finish the cartoon. The countdown is on. If we bust our asses, we can do it. I've been testing out some background colors, here's a rough assemblage of what it's going to look like.

The shot isn't that big, but that's what the whole Photoshop file looks like. Anyways, back to work. I hope people show up for this panel. Not that I mind talking to an empty room, but you know, it always helps you seem not crazy.

RDCCDX: Digital PIrates of Dark Water: Episode 3.5: You Are (Not) Loved

2009-07-03T09:58:00.007-05:00

Here it is, the second to last installment in the Ronin Dojo Community College DX: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. It's Episode 3.5: You Are (Not) Loved.

This is the first of the RDCCDX cartoons produced with our new digital workflow AKA draw directly into the computer on Cintiqs. However it wasn't completely digital. We were still using our old head library, which had originally been drawn in pencil on paper, scanned, and then vectorized* in Illustrator. The sharpness of the vectorized lines in the head drawings help match them with the body and background lines drawn with the Cintiq, but they're not as smooth, you can still see a lot of bumps in them.

If you haven't read my blog before, Matt and I created a library of head positions, mouths and eyes for each character, which we reuse over and over so save drawing time. And even though we had used these head libraries only several months ago, opening them up for this project was a like opening a time capsule. All of the characters looked slightly off model to me, which is a bit strange because there is no official model sheet we have. The heads looked too long, and their features were spread far apart. It's strange how character designs evolve as you slowly progress as an artist, and just evolve with the repetition of drawing them over and over and getting to know them better.

Shit, looking back on the other episodes I can see the progress Matt and I have made, and I'm a little startled. I would change a lot of things. In Episode 2.5, Jerry's head is should be much bigger, his body look too adult for him. And the backgrounds and perspective are so flat on everything. Oh well, what's done is done. I'm not going to pull some Lucas bullshit and redo them. Only out of laziness though. However if anyone wants to give us tons of money, I'll pull some Anno bullshit and redo them in crazy awesome looking movie form.

*if you're confused about what I'm saying when I refer to the vectorizing pencil lines process, read this.

We clamour onward and repeat ourselves

2009-06-29T21:58:00.009-05:00

We recorded the audio for the Ronin Dojo Community College DX: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga Episode 3.5 today. There's Tim pouring over the script, intensely- because he's a genius. You can also see my thigh and my forearm in there too- they are also intense.

Interestingly enough, this episode takes place in a car with characters- sort of like in my short She She She She's A Bombshell. Once again, I reprise my role as the annoying dude in the back seat. As you can see in this detailed storyboard, that's my character, Mark, sitting in the back seat. Bombshell was 7 minutes long and took almost a year to make- this episode is 1 minute 40 seconds and we're hoping to make finish it in like three days. The difference is, this time we have the luxory of a head library, Cintiqs, and two sets of hands on the job. It will be an interesting comparison.

So with a freshly cut animatic under our belts we're hoping to have this baby out by Thursday. Should be possible, we just have to stick to our schedules and not do too many extraneous things like oh I dunno, write blog posts.

I better go.

FOR TAX REASONS IS GOING TO OTAKON!

2009-06-26T00:58:00.007-05:00

Yep, you read it correctly in the blog post title. July 17th - July 19th, Matt and I will be hitting up Otakon 2009! This time, we won't merely be spectators ready to plant their asses in folding chairs for 80+ hours of anime. Nope, this year we'll be hosting a panel!

It's going to be called "Let's Talk Animation! with For Tax Reasons". We'll be there taking questions and discussing DIY animation; how we do it, how you can do it and how it destroys lives. And to top it all off, we'll be screening the final episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. Which we have yet to animate. . . yeah we're cutting it kind of close.

So yeah, I gotta get back to drawing the backgrounds for Episode 3.5, which will be coming out next week. And as soon as we get the exact panel times I'll post them. So if you're going to be at the convention, come to the panel and say hi, or shout derrogatory remarks at us from behind a Trigun cross or something. I dunno, I need to have more recent anime references by July.

How We Animate: Part II: The Software & The Method

2009-05-12T00:40:00.012-05:00

Exactly three months ago, I had written a long ass blog post, which I never got to post, about the For Tax Reasons animation process. How we went from paper to digital with out the aid of Cintiq's. But then we ended up buying Cintiqs, and our process was turned on it's heads.

Anyways, so I'm going to post about our old method, because this is the internet- and the internet is for sharing information, and maybe this can help somebody out who wants to work on paper but still produce a sharp and clean animation.

So, with out further ado, the man with a million voices- "How We Animate" Part II. The process of taking animation on paper and putting it into a computer.

HOW WE ANIMATE(D): PART II: THE SOFTWARE & THE METHOD

Teh Warez

These are the programs you'll need.

Adobe Photoshop, for scanning, cleaning and coloring
Adobe Bridge/Adobe Illustrator, for cleaning (you're going to need at least version CS2 so you can use the Livetrace tool)
Adobe After Effects, for sequencing and compositing everything together
Final Cut Pro, for editing together each shot

So this software is kind of expensive, but I found this one website which has some really good discounts on it. So go and check that out if interested in trying out this method.

Step 1: Scanning
So first things first, Windex your scanner real good and tape a peg bar to it. This is how you're going to keep all of your drawings registered to one another. Remember, you're going to have to keep that peg bar taped in the same place, and use the same scanning marquee until you finish scanning a shot. So if you need to use your peg bar for something else, like stirring some lentil soup your making- go do that first, and then tape down your peg bar.

Do a preview scan and select the area which encompasses the entire shot and maybe a little more. It sucks to scan 80 drawings and then realize the last one is outside of your scaning area. Settings-wise. I suggest scanning everything at at least 300 DPI. It helps keep the detail for the Livetracing step later on, and if you ever decide to zoom in with a camera move things won't look shitty. If there are any level adjustments you can do no the scanner to improve your image go ahead and set them now, but most of your adjusting will be done post scanning.

So this is a good chance to introduce ACTIONS. Actions in Photoshop are going to be a huge help through this entire process. Open your Actions window, and click on the little menu thingy on the upper right hand corner to make a new action. Name your action, and then run through these scanning steps. Photoshop will record your each menu item you choose and everything, and later on, when you "play" the action, it will do everything automatically. Actions are big help for the whole process. So here's the scanning action:

a. File > Import > (Your Scanner Name) TWAIN

You'll be routed into your scanners own interface, hit Scan. After it imports the image you'll be back in Photoshop.

b. Image > Rotate Canvas > 90º Clockwise or Counter Clockwise depending what side of the scanner you're using.

c. Double click on the Layer to change it from a locked Background to Layer 0.

d. Then hit ⌘ Shift U to Desaturate the layer- or- Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.

I do this because I don't need any of the color information, and it just takes up more memory.

e. Save your file. Now, to make a Save command appear in an action, you should go to your Actions menu, and select Insert Menu Item. Then choose File > Save.

For you newbies: Save it as a Photoshop file, not a JPEG, which would compress it and not allow for layers.

Now stop recording by hitting that little square stop button, and you've got your Scan action.

Here's what one of our scans looks like:

Step 2: Leveling(sp?)

So, you've got all your drawings scanned. Preferably in folder labeled Scans, in a sub folder labeled by shot number. I like to keep my raw scans around, just in case I screw something up. Now it's time to make those Scans look a little sharper by leveling them. Duplicate the Scans folder, and rename the copied folder "Clean".

It's time to use the Level tool in Photoshop. ( ⌘ L - or - Image > Adjustments > Levels)
Drag the Black and White input arrows back and forth, and try to get the white of the paper to be white and the line to be as black as possible with out crunching the image like this:

Click on the image for the full effect.

When you think you've got a decent level which will work for the drawings- make a Level Action with those settings.

Now you can go to File > Automate > Batch and you can Batch level a whole folder of Photoshop files using the Action you just made.

Step 3: Cleaning

This is where things get a little crazy. We're gonna use Bridge and Illustrator to vectorize the lines of your drawing. This is to get rid of the gray half pixels and make your lines more defined and solid black. This will really come in handy when you're at the coloring stage. When you're lines are sharp and solid black, you don't have to waste time zooming in and coloring over white specks by hand. I made a confusing post about this before, but I'll explain it again here.

Open up one of your leveled Photoshop files in Illustrator. Select the layer with the image on it, go to Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options.

Click the "Preview" button so that you can watch how Illustrator traces your image as you change the settings. These are two of the settings I use.

This for a more rounded approximation, but smoother line.
And this for a closer match to your pencil line, but rougher.

You might have to tweak these settings to fit how you're drawings look. It's not perfect, but it really helps the quality of your final image, at the sacrifice of some details. Like these little Flash looking lines the computer makes.
Once you've figured out a setting which works with your scans. Open up Bridge. Select your Clean folder. Go to Tools > Illustrator > Livetrace

Select your Preset, Basic RGB and Choose your Destination.

And BOOM Bridge will Livetrace the whole folder for you. See, not that hard.

Step 4: Almost Coloring

Now you've got a Clean folder full of AI (Illustrator) and PSD (Photoshop) files. Copy those AI files into a new folder called "COLOR". You're going to bring these Illustrator files BACK into Photoshop to color them.

Open up Photoshop and import the .ai files. Make sure you're importing at atleast 300 DPI, and using the Media Box, not the Bounding Box as your selection area. I dunno, Illustrator is weird with it's boxes. Sometimes you also have to rotate your page set ups in Illustrator too if things are like coming in tall ways and they should be wide ways. You'll figure it out.

Save, these new PSD's. These are what you're going to color and stuff. But coloring of course is another post, because this one is all ready way too long.

THE END FOR NOW

So, that was our process for getting a scanned drawing to have a clean sharp line for easy and quasi-professional looking color. This was our work around for both: not having the skillset for drawing directly into the computer using Wacom tablets, and not having the advantage of the more expensive Cintiq, where you can draw directly onto the screen. In some upcoming posts I'll talk about how we color, and how it's been working on Cintiqs. Until then, I'm gonna shut the fuck up cuz this is way too much writing.

Previously on X-Men...

2009-05-07T00:49:00.003-05:00

The latest post I had drafted out for this blog was about my process from paper to cleaning and coloring digitally. Then things got kind of crazy. And now it's like two months later, and everything is upside down. I've left my job, am working freelance from home, and own a Cintiq. What happened?

Well, it has nothing to do with X-Men, I can tell you that much. I just bought the series on DVD and like to walk around saying "Previously on X-Men" in my best Cyclops voice. Anyways, Matt and I got hired on to do a couple of projects so we've been working on that stuff. But Jebus willing, we'll be turning out RDCCDX 3.5 in the next month or so. I don't know how, but we will. And I'll be posting weekly on this blog.

I hope our YouTube fans don't hate us too much. Oy vey.

How It Goes

2009-03-04T01:49:00.021-05:00

So I took a trip to Boston this past weekend, if you can't tell by the HUGE DROPKICK MURPHYS MURAL that I'm standing in front of. I was also in Allston, and was hoping to see somebody from Big D in the Kids Table wandering around. But I just heard rave music instead. That's all I know about Boston the music scene I guess. Dropkick and Big D and that everybody there was or is in a hardcore band. I gotta find that city where everyone was or is in a ska band. When I do, I shall look upon that city and I shall whisper it's name into the dusty wind- Skaheaven. Or I guess it would be Skeaven. I don't know. But yeah, Boston is a pretty sweet place.

Anyways, like I had written before, the people at the Boston Underground Film Festival had been kind enough to invite me up to screen some of my materials with animator Patrick Smith. It was lots of fun, always interesting to see people react to all the For Tax Reasons material in real life. So I have to give a big thanks to Anna and everyone at BUFF and Amy and everyone involved with Space 242 for showing my stuff and putting me up. I hope they'll have me back someday.

So, we've been getting some pretty good reactions to the new short which is real nice considering the stress we had put ourselves through to get it done and uploaded. In fact, just uploading it was a like 6 hour ordeal. We had been rushing through the whole process, trying to get it done early that week; didn't have the time to go over each shot with a fine toothed comb. The result- a whole lot of rendering, realizing we had missed something, and then going back to rerender. I give you the actual gchat conversation between Matt and I the day we were trying to upload the short to Youtube.
What you see is me rendering out the final shots from After Effects, putting them into Final Cut, exporting the full short from Final Cut to a Quicktime, compressing that Quicktime for upload to Youtube- THEN realizing I had missed something and going back to After Effects. And of course complaining to Matt about it the whole time.

This went on past 8pm. As you can see, at some point around 5:50 pm I had thought this whole thing was pretty amusing and started taking screen caps of the conversation, but the novelty quickly faded away. Even after we had settled on a render, we were having trouble with Youtube because the several uploads that we had cancelled had mucked up the system, preventing our final upload from fully processing.

But whatever, we got it up there eventually and people really latched on to it, which was great. I mean, as far as the content was concerned, we thought it was pretty good. And as I've said before, Tim Martin and Emily Tarver, who provided the voices for Hank Henderson and Agent Wilkins, both did an awesome job. Their reads and improvisations is what made this short funny.

Visually however, we thought we had fallen short. We had spent so much time with Episode 2.5 crafting these backgrounds and trying to really utilize the great perspective possibilities of a parking garage. But when we moved forward to Episode 3, we had arrogantly decided "Oh, this is simple, it all takes place in a small room, no problem". The boards we really rough, and I ended up just eyeballing most of the background drawing. The result was some wonky shots that had to be reworked into these very boring, straight laced shots. Some garbled perspective. And a general disappointment with our lives and what we had become as human beings.

The room was small, but the scene was supposed to be dramatic and intense. We could have made the angles more interesting, and given more depth to this thing which would have better serviced the dialogue and voice acting. But you know, the good thing about making mistakes is that you learn from them. And we've learned, twice over, that you have to make decent storyboards, and pay attention to composition and perspective.

Hopefully we will impress ourselves with the next short. I don't know why I wrote all this, I just wanted to post that gchat conversation. Anyways, because this was a long rant, I leave you with a drawing I made of a girl trying to get her jeans off her foot.

This Is My Life (And It's Ending One Minute At A Time)

2009-02-25T09:57:00.008-05:00

FINALLY. Episode 3 of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga is DONE!

In this installment, the Fed's have Mark and Barry in a corner with enough evidence to put them away for however long they put you away for pirating a shit load of movies. But a special guest inadvertently comes to their rescue. Nobody puts Barry in a corner!

This one had a lot of trouble behind the scenes. The past three days have had Matt and I up until 5 and 6 in the morning, trying to rush this thing together. I'll post more on that later, but for right now I have to thank the peoples who made this cartoon more awesome than we could.

Big thanks to Tim Martin and Emily Tarver for doing the voices of Hank Henderson and Agent Wilkins. They both have been real good sports about recording in our shanty town style bedroom studio, and always help us come with good lines on the fly. That porcelain city bit- all Tim.

Thanks to Darrell for offering his help in scanning and cleaning all of our shitty drawings. It's one of the lesser glorious tasks in animation but his help made all the difference.

And thanks to Dan for helping us pull some SFX and Andrew Kudlick and Jonah Beram- we're going to keep reusing the animation you made for us- FOOOREVER.

And to repeat my previous post, Matt and I will be in Boston this Friday and Saturday for a screening the Boston Underground Film Festival is putting on. It's called "New York Spawned A Monster" and it features the animation of famed indie animator Patrick Smith and- me. There's a screening from 6pm-8pm at Space 242, and a Q&A at noon on Saturday at the same place. It's free but you have to RSVP. So come on down, or up, depending on where you live.

Ok, done hocking shit. Here's the Indiana Cat poster Matt put togther. Click on it to get a huge version for your desktop.

Dress In All Black So Please Call Me Chris Gaines

2009-02-20T16:52:00.006-05:00

So, Matt and I have been real busy with a bunch of work. I've been constructing a new tutorial post on our cleaning process, but thought I'd just make a quick post here to tell everybody two important things.

1. Episode Numero Tres of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga, coming out this Monday, February 23rd. We're working our asses off on it as we speak. Should be good. We got an old favorite making a reappearance. Old being the operative hint in that sentence. So make sure you check it out. And if you haven't seen any of the Digital Pirates Saga, check out this Youtube playlist.

2. Next Friday, February 27th, I'm going to be in Boston screening some of my animation. The awesome peoples at the Boston Underground Film Festival have invited me to show an exorbitant amount of my work alongside indie animator, Pat Smith. The event will be from 6pm-8pm at:

Space 242
242 E. Berkeley Street, 2nd Floor
Boston, MA 02118

So if you're in the Boston area, and want to see some For Tax Reasons animation in a setting other than on your work computer while wearing headphones, then come on down. I'll be there just standing around, wondering why I don't have new shoes yet. My current shoes are completely ripped up the side. If I do get new shoes by next week, then I'll be wondering if anyone notices that my No Sweat chucks are practically glow in the dark because they don't have any dirt on them. Yeah that thought conversation's not gonna last long.

There may be a artist talk on Saturday, with Pat Smith, myself and For Tax Reasons Matt, but I'm still waiting for details on that. But whatever. You get the deal. More info on Monday. Bostonians, come on down- we can talk about Big D and the Kids Table.

Anyways, and now here's shitty drawing I just did.

I've Got A Black Hole In My Mind

2009-02-08T04:06:00.005-05:00

I've been working on a music video for the awesome pop punk band, Teenage Bottlerocket, and things are starting to come together. I scanned in some of my work to do a little lip sync test. Check it out.

While making the Ben Weasel music video, I discovered that animating the lip sync for a person singing requires a more than my standard set of 10 mouths I use for speech. Talking is relatively fast, so I can get away with popping between mouth shapes with little notice of the change. However the drawn out movements of singing require a few inbetween's here and there to make everything look smooth. So I draw one AH mouth and then a slightly smaller AH mouth to cushion the mouth movements. Several varying sizes of OO mouths, and so on and so forth.

It's not perfect, but it works ok, and I need to cut all the corners I can when I'm making this thing on my own.

Anyways, here's a head pencil test I did of Ray nodding his head along to the music. There's no music in the clip so you can just imagine him nodding along to anything. Maybe a song, maybe a school presentation you're working on about the Marshall Plan or something. I don't know, go nuts.

How We Animate: Part I: The Equipment

2009-02-02T16:29:00.024-05:00

My inbox and the For Tax Reasons inbox have received a lot of emails asking about how we do our animation. "A lot" being a relative term. We've gotten more spammy notices about Comicon than questions about animation in our For Tax Reasons account. But whatever. I thought I'd do several posts about How We Animate. I decided not to say "How To Animate", because I think that's a bit too forceful if not completely arrogant. There are a lot of ways to animate, we're always looking to streamline and perfect our process- so the For Tax Reasons method is neither preferred nor perfect. It's just what we get away with. So if you can accept that into your heart- then we can begin.

The Equipment

Drawing Utensils. For the initial drawings, I use Col-Erase erasable colored pencils. They allow you to rough out out drawings and discern between multiple layers, and then roughly clean up with a black line over top. I sometimes use 2 HB Mirado Black Warrior pencils for the clean up, but lately I've been experimenting with these Rapidomatic mechanical pencils. They help me keep a thinner and more consistent line.

Peg bar. In order to keep each drawing "registered" with one another, or in the same place, you're going to need specially punched paper that fits to a specially molded peg bar. These can be hard to come by in a brick and mortar art store. In NYC, I get mine from the the New York Central Art Supply, but you can find them online. Just do some searches. I use the plastic Acme peg bars.

Hole punch. These things can be fucking expensive. Most of these items, aside from the computer stuff, you can get for decent prices. But animation hole punches are such a niche product, so they always seem to be high priced. CartoonSupples.com/Lightfoot Ltd. has one for $599. There might be some cheaper ones out there, maybe on eBay. I'm lucky enough to be borrowing one from a co-worker.

The upside to having your own hole punch is you don't have to wait for a ream of punched paper to ship. And when you're pretty lax on stocking supplies like myself, it really helps to have a puncher at your side.

Paper. So if you don't feel like shelling out 600 bones for a punch, you'll have to buy pre-punched paper. (I could make a link again to Cartoonsupplies/Lightfood but I'm not sure if they have the best prices for punched paper).

If you're going the hole puncher route- any 81/2x 11 copy paper will do. I usually buy recycled, even though it sometimes has a rougher grain and some more flecks in it. It's worth it, planet wise, since I've resisted the jump to the paperless animation route- mostly due my lack of skill on a Wacom tablet and the expense of Cintiqs.

Lightbox. You might be able to find Light Tracers and Porta-Trace's at some art stores around town since people can use them for photography and making stencils and stuff. If you search for these things on Amazon, they come up in weird categories like Home Improvement or Home & Garden. Strange.

I've got a Porta-Trace light box with two lights in it. It's great for seeing through 3 or more drawings, and I like not having a pegbar molded to the drawing surface. It gives you more free space and flexiblity. However, there are some great swivel light boxes that allow you to spin around your drawings; simulating a full on animation desk. Those are great for cleaning up. It's easiest for me to draw downward strokes, so having that option of spinning the drawing around so that I making the same general hand movements is great. It's a personal preference in the end.

If you're good with crafts and DIY building, you can make an animation desk with wood, a sheet of plastic and some flourescent lights. Works just the same. And you'll be much cooler or doing it on your own.

Camera & Tripod. To do pencil tests, you're going to need a tripod and any video camera that can send a feed to your computer. I use an old camera hooks up to my computer via firewire, and run the pencil tests using the demo of a program called FrameThief. I talk a a little bit about pencil tests in this blog post.

Scanner. Stores like Best Buy and the dying Circuit City barely have a selection of scanners that aren't those bigger print/fax/scan in one deals. It's kind of sad how electronic stores have turned into giant cell phone kiosks and TV dealers. Anyways, don't buy H.P. scanners. I'm sure they're just as high quality as any other scanner, but their scanning interface sucks.

Even if you're using Photoshop, you have to capture a scan via the scanners own interface. Since you're scanning hundreds of drawings, that have to line up with one another, you're going to want your scan marquee and settings to be the same each time- so you can just keep hitting SCAN. With the H.P. interface, the scan settings reset each time. If you want to save your scan settings, you have to make a little scan profile and load it each time you scan. It's just an extra, annoying step, and you've already got enough clicking to do.

I use an Epson Perfection. It's Advanced User interface allows for a good amount of tweaking, it saves the most recently used scan marquee and doesn't create some blown out auto setting each time you preview a new scan.

Microphone. If you're going to record dialogue for your shorts, you might want to invest in a semi decent microphone. I went down to Guitar Center and bought this AT4040 Cardioid Condensor mic at the advice of some sound engineers at my work. It's been working well for me, but I'm sure there's a myriad of models that'd do just fine.

MBox2 Mini. This piece of hardware allows you to record and edit in Pro Tools LE. It's the cheapest and smallest of their systems, but does in no way lack in quality. If you really need to, you could probably record using some shareware programs, like ones for podcasting, to capture and roughyl edit audio. I know that Final Cut has a Voice Over tool you could probably use to the same end. However Pro Tools is premiere audio program, and I make everyone do a billion takes and like to throw fancy ass compressors on my tracks to sweeten them up like sugar- so it's good for me.

Computer. Sorry Luddites, you're gonna need to borrow or buy one to do what we do, and it should probably be a Mac. I come from a Mac Family. Even though we started with a Commodore 64 (moving next to an archaic orange text on black screen laptop, then an Emerson IBM Compatible) we eventually made the switch to Apple and never looked back.

It was part of an entire childhood and adolescence as the secondary option underdog. I was a Jew, who owned a Sega Genesis and had Mac computers. How much more of an outcast can you get? My people suffered for years. I was persecuted in C++ class. The PC kids wrote "SMACK THE MAC" in binary on the white board. It was traumatic, but I made it through. And now I can stand proud and tall without fear of ridicule for my Apple Heritage. Complain about coffee shop hipsters all you want- we have survived.

Books. Ok, the last but most important part. If you're going to make animation like we do, you're going to need to LEARN TO ANIMATE. I can't go into detail on how to do that, I'm not smart enough. But if you want to learn, check out these books:

The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams
Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair

Or Animation Meat, as Smo pointed out to me. Other blogs and forums have some notes and practice stuff posted on them, all from much more reputable sources than myself. So search those out too.

Ok so that's part one. Sorry it was so long. The next step will be about scanning, cleaning and coloring your work. So look out for it soon. And sorry for all the unintentional product endorsements. If anyone asks, I told you to steal everything.

Everything but the peg bars.

Episode 2.5!

2009-01-26T10:27:00.003-05:00

Check it out folks, it's RDCCDX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga- Episode 2.5: "Parking Garage Diplomacy".

Oy vey, this was supposed to be a short little mini episode we could easily churn out, but it turned into some Deep Throat-CSM-Work-a-Thon for Matt and I. But hey, we said we'd release it Monday. I hope somebody noticed that, because we really were working hard to stick to that deadline.

EDIT: Ok, now I got a second to breathe. A big thanks goes out to Tim Martin and Emily Tarver who did the voices as well as collaborated with us and Zack Scheer to make this little ditty. Episode 2.5 was a fun one to work on because it was fresh and new. All of the "full" episodes were written & recorded months ago, so the material feels a bit stale and old to Matt and myself. But for this one, we got to bring everyone into the room together to record and throw around ideas. It was a fun change of pace. We also got to experiment in the drawing department with some lighting and perspective. Even though it nearly drove me insane, I'm please with how the backgrounds turned out. Seriously, I felt like I spent an entire day trying to draw one background. I'll post them later on, I'm too tired right now. I'm going to go eat a banana.

Everything I ever wanted to know about perspective drawing I learned in junior year of college and then forgot

2009-01-23T14:33:00.021-05:00

Before I begin this post I must state that I am in no way an expert or even at perspective drawing. But after a marathon session of drawing, and then complaining to Matt while he was trying to watch wrestling, we both finally remembered some of the basics that the incomparable Matt Sheridan taught us in college. I thought I would share my meager knowledge today.

So, this is how you figure out proportions of equidistant crap in perspective. I'm talking about like, if you're drawing a row of doors down a hallway or telephone poles disappearing into the desert horizon. That's the classic example they use in drawing classes- for some reason. I'm down with it; something romantic about the American Southwest indeed. Anyways, for my purposes I'm drawing cement poles in a parking garage, since that's where the next mini episode of RDCCDX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga takes place. I had to figure out where to place all these poles in a manner that looked like they were equally space apart yet getting smaller in the distance. Here's how I did it, and how you can do it- in 6 easy steps.

Step 1: get yourself a vanishing point. Most art stores carry them- some places online sell them in bulk. Don't worry about brand, they're all the same. So you get some vanishing points. If you're doing one point perspective, put down, one- if you're doing two point perspective- you put down two. Since I'm a simpleton- I did one point perspective. So here goes my dot.
Phew. Ok. Step 2: lay out your horizon line (the line in red there) and then make two lines for the angle of the stuff your drawing. In my case, these purple lines marked where I wanted the tops and bottoms of the cement poles to go.
Step three- draw some vertical lines. I drew where I wanted two of the cement poles to go.
Ok, so at this point I was like "Man, I think these poles are spaced too far apart, I need to draw a pole in between these two- but HOW?". Conventional widsom says, just find the halfway point between the two verticals. Well, conventional wisdom is wrong- cuz you're in the twisted world of perspective- up is down, black is white, god is dead and geometric algorithims rule with an iron fist. So what do you do? Step 4: Draw an X between the two verticals.
The center of that X is the halfway point between those two verticals. Amazing! But shit, I wanted to draw some more poles. You know like, ones going far into the distance, how do I figure out where thos are? I have nothing to make an X between- WHY IS LIFE SO CRUEL!?

Step 5: Draw a line from your vanishing point- through the center of your X. In my case it was pretty close to the horizon line, so I'll just use that again.

Step 6: Draw a diagonal from the top of one of your verticals through where the center line meets the next diagonal. Where that line touches the bottom diagonal- is where your next pole would go. It sounds complicated, but it's not- I'm just really bad at explaining things. LOOK AT DRAWING!
You can keep doing variations of this X/diagonal method to figure out where things should go. For this drawing I kinda winged some of it, but the used that whole technique as a basis for laying it all down.
Man, that took a while. And I got 5 more to go. Woo and a hoo. The next RDCCDX mini episode is coming out this Monday. Be ready and keep watching the medicine cabinets- KEEP WATCHING THE MEDICINE CABINETS!

Back to (the) drawing boards

2009-01-14T02:27:00.009-05:00

Matt and I started drawing boards for Episode 2.5 and Episode 3 of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. 2.5 proved to be particularly difficult, as it takes place in a parking garage. It's a great location, with all sorts of cinematic possibilities-angles and perspective and repeating patterns vanishing into the distance and all sorts of other things which are hard for me to draw.

In these cases, photo reference is key- and the internet is the lazy animator's god. There was a beautiful spread of photos of vast, empty parking garages on Flickr. But even with an array of moody photos at our fingertips, it was still hard to turn the space around in our heads and fit things to what we wanted. If this weren't for a minute long piece, we'd probably have to haul our asses out to a Home Depot or something.

In other news, I've started experimenting with brushes and inking. I've been kinda frustrated lately, wondering why my drawings never look smooth and sweet like everybody elses. And I guess reading Bone was the last straw.

I went out and bought some small water color brushes, india ink and a pad of vellum. Not sure if these are the right tools or not, I was just kinda winging it on some advice my friend Kudlick had given me. So, here's a new Ronin Dojo t-shirt design I've been working on, which I inked with a mix of brushes and Micron pens.

I was mixing the brushes and pen out of necessity, my hand isn't steady enough to make thin details with a brush. However when I found Youtube vids of Jeff Smith and Jim Lee doing it too, I realized it was kosher and felt a bit better about myself. I really have no concept of how professional people go about things, cut me some slack.

Anyways, now I'm gonna go paint with some smashed berries.

Back to the back- with a tat!

2009-01-05T10:15:00.018-05:00

I'm starting 2009 with a first. This is the first ever tattoo of something I've drawn.
That's the right leg of my buddy Darrell, freshly inked with a tattoo I designed for him this past summer. It's a tribute to our friend Dan Hess, and the ska shows that he and Michelle Chin used to put on at this indoor soccer place called the Corner Kick.

Originally, shows were held on the Corner Kick's indoor field, but majority of the shows were put on at the upstairs bar area. This meant that someone had to go downstairs to check that empty, darkened field and locker room every once in a while. Thus, Make-Out Patrol. Dan would take some of us down with flashlights to make the rounds to make sure no kids were screwing around or making babies.
Those shows at the Corner Kick were lots of fun. They were all ages, and you could see local bands goofing around and playing ska, reggae, punk, rockabilly, and rock. Sometimes there would be some sweet out of town bands coming through, but you knew there would always be Dan and Alex's band The Ratchet Boys playing, with Dan making all sorts of ridiculous jokes and throwing donuts at you.

Dan and Michelle and Rude In DC productions enabled an entire local music scene to exist. They put on these shows, ran dcska.com, made t shirts for bands- they brought the scene together by giving local bands a place to play and everyone a place to dance and have fun and get a Krispy Kreme in the face. Seeing that Michelle and Dan could make things like this happen on their own was definitely a big inspiration to me.
Dan passed away in 2007, he'll always be missed and never forgotten. Especially, now that Darrell's got a tribute to him emblazoned on his calf. That thing is not coming off in the shower. I went with him when he got the tattoo, there was blood.

Here's a link to a big image of the design.

Episode 2 Is Out!

2008-12-21T18:20:00.004-05:00

Ah screw it, I know I said Monday, but we're releasing it now. We don't feel like waiting until midnight. Here it is, Episode 2 of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga!

A big thanks to Dan Malloy for doing sound design and mixing everything down, and to Emily Tarver who was the voice for Agent Wilkins.

Digital Rights & Robot Rights

Monday. Monday! MONDAY!

2008-12-19T13:43:00.007-05:00

This Monday, December 22nd For Tax Reasons will be releasing Episode 2 of the Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga! YEAH! All right! Self-promotion!

If you haven't already, check out Episode 1, and Episode 1.5 so that you can understand the super complex tale we're weaving. Man, Episode 2 is gonna be so complicated and convoluted that we'll have to release a two-hour feature length version, just so people can wrap their brains around this 2 minute and 30 second cartoon. That's how good Episode 2 will be. Confusingly good. Anyways, yeah, check it out. Monday.

Jersey Nights & Robot Rights

Some Updates From the Front

2008-12-15T22:04:00.000-05:00

Matt and I have been clickin' away at the second episode of RDCCDX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. I finished all of the drawing up this weekend, and we scanned, cleaned and roughly composited everything in one day. If we get lip syncing, coloring and sound done this week, we should be posting the episode by next Monday.

So here's a glimpse of a couple of the characters appearing in the new episode. Here's the cleaned and colored head rotation of Agent Wilkins, who I previously posted about.

It's kinda scary when they're rotating and yelling. And here's another dude's head, I think this one turned out pretty good- nice stretchy mouth moves.

I bet that guy is from Chicago and buddies with Carl Winslow.

More updates coming soon.

"It's a rare condition in this day and age to read any robot rights on the newspaper page."

Pencil Tests

2008-12-08T16:30:00.011-05:00

So, I'm half way through animating the second episode of "Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga", and I thought I'd do a little update and post some pencil tests.

For those of you not in the know, pencil tests are when you shoot your key frames and roughs to test out timing or see how the movement is looking. For example, here's a rough pencil test where the character drops a spool of DVD-Rs and vomits.

Back in the olden days, like the late 1800's when animation was confined to giant daguerreotype flip-books of Confederate soldiers rotting on battlefields, they couldn't do pencil tests. But with today's technology, it's easy.

If you have a shitty video camera and a Mac, you can use a program called Framethief. It allows you to grab single frames from the camera feed and then play them back. The trial version is all you'll need if you're just doing pencil tests. If you're doing some stop motion stuff, you might need to get the full version so you can insert frames and stuff.

In college, we used these devices called Lunchboxes to do pencil tests, but they're really expensive and require a camera and monitor so you might as well not bother. I just mentioned them because the name is funny.

So for the new episode, I was working on this shot where a character walks while rolling up his shirt sleeve and grabs Barry. Generally, I try to keep my characters standing in one spot whenever possible so that I can save time on animating walks and runs and such. If a character must run or walk- I usually pawn the shot off to Matt. This practice has built up a phobia in my mind of animating any sort of foot movement, and as a result my characters move like they have their feet nailed to the ground. So when I got to this shot of a dude walking around and doing stuff, I got scared. This is how I coped.

First I video taped my self walking around and being angry, to see what exactly the movement would look like. I won't post these pictures because I look gross and ugly in them. So let's just pretend this is what those looked like.

Next I broke down the movement into key frames and shot a pencil test.

Then I did my inbetweens to fill out the motion.

I also brought the PICT sequence into After Effects to futz around with timing, and I put a camera move on the shot. I find that camera pans and the like can help smooth out limited animation.

And there you have it. I overcame my phobia, and it only took hours upon hours of work.

Ambrotypes & Robot Rights

241

2008-11-26T13:31:00.003-05:00

Check it out, I got TWO pieces of news.

As I mentioned before, Matt and I were guests on the Otaku Generation podcast. Episode #181 is now up, so go listen to our incoherent ramblings. Big thanks to Alan, Bryce and Jefferson for having us on.

Ok, and second piece news, we animated a little mini RDCCDX episode to tie everyone over until Episode 2 of "Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga" comes out. Take a look:

Turkey Rights & Robot Rights

2008-11-20T18:11:00.001-05:00

Here are some rough character designs I drew on the train.

Matt and I are still working hard on Episode 2 of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga, but nothing new to show yet. However if you're looking for a For Tax Reasons fix, we'll be guesting on the Otaku Generation podcast this coming Monday. I believe the episodes go up every Wednesday, so be on the look out for it on the 26th. We'll also be posting a mini RDCCDX short as well.

Hold Tight & Robot Rights

And I could write you the perfect song, and you could sing along...

2008-11-19T13:13:00.007-05:00

The final Ergs! shows were this weekend and I trekked out to Asbury Park, New Jersey to see them. Both shows were amazing and sad and awesome and full hilarious pop/punk culture references. What other band would quote both the Simpsons and two different live NOFX records? NO OTHER BAND, that's who.

I'm going to miss them and their sweet, sweet melodies. They were definitely one of the best punk bands of today.

Everything falls apart (and robot rights)

Lost In Space

2008-11-12T00:00:00.007-05:00

I just roughed out head rotation for Agent Wilkins, a new character in the RDCCDX universe, voiced by Emily Tarver. Usually, I wouldn't make a full set of heads for a secondary character, but she's featured in the next two episodes of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga, so she's getting the full treatment. We spare no expense here at the For Tax Reasons Spa, Resort & Drawatorium.

For those of you who don't often read my blog, I'll be pairing these with sets of mouths and eyes to be used for whenever she's on screen, yapping away.

And as if I didn't spend enough quality sedentary time at a scribbling around with pencils, I've started working on a music video for the awesome pop punk outfit Teenage Bottlerocket. I'm pretty psyched about it, I've been a fan of TBR since I saw them in Mrs. Jones' basement back in Silver Spring, MD. If you like solid catchy pop punk tune-age, check them out. By the way, that flyer above is old so don't go to the Cake Shop in 8 months and expect that line up.

This is a design idea for a girl in the video. Though to be honest, I hadn't drawn a girl in a while so I used it as an excuse to take a break from making shitty storyboards. She supposed to be a nurse, I drew her in scrubs because I didn't want to use that tired old sexy nurse Halloween outfit version that's in everything. If I did that, I might as well draw a doctor with one of those weird pizza cutter thing strapped to his head. It's time to update our cartoon archetypes people!

She's a Dove, She's A Fucking- Robot Rights

It has begun

2008-11-10T09:48:00.010-05:00

Production has begun on episode two of "Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga", and if you can decipher this shitty chicken scratch of storyboard frame, you already know it's going to be ape-shit crazy.

We boarded everything out yesterday and made the animatic like every good little animator should before they run head first into the mind numbing tedium of making a cartoon. However this time around I've been trying something new with the way I set up each shot. I've been drawing the ceiling.

Even though Matt and I were pleased with how the first episode of RDCCXD:TDPODWS came out, I didn't feel like I got a good sense of the space that existed outside of each shot. At first I reasoned that I had made the whole thing, so it was hard for me to step back and take it all in as an audience member. However the real reason was our failure to include solid establishing shots, shots that included high or low angles, and set ups that explored the space.

If you look at the short you'll notice that up until the Seth and Mark confrontation, pretty much everything is set up as if the camera was facing the store front, and most of the shots were just close ups or push ins of that basic set up. This was mostly done to save time.

But during the argument between Mark and Jerry we could have included shots where we saw the sidewalk and stores that were behind Jerry instead of the flat windows that he was standing next to. This might have given a better sense of where the store was and how the strip mall was laid out.

We also could have included slight high and low angles to our shots. Showing off the architecture behind the characters helps give a sense that they are near a three dimensional structure, or in a cubed room- not up against a flat wall.

This is what I've been trying to do with the set ups of episode 2. I've been drawing in the ceiling, and the angles of the room. My hope is this will give the audience a better sense of the space while still allowing me to use the library of heads that aren't drawn from low angles or high angles, which would include more of the bottom of the chin or top of the head respectively.

I'm still learning a lot about setting up shots and all of this crap, but from watching how other animators do their thang, I think this whole ceiling concept is something I should look into. I hate drawing backgrounds, they're really hard, and the less of them I have to do the better. But if I can make changes that would make our characters look like they're actually somewhere and not on a two dimensional stage that would be good.

Stalactites & Robot Rights

DO IT BARACKAPELLA!

2008-11-05T13:03:00.004-05:00

After Barack's speech, I went home and started working on this to celebrate.

We had to finish the trilogy. More on all this later.

VOTE!!!

2008-11-03T21:32:00.002-05:00

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA TOMORROW!!!

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

2008-10-29T22:30:00.005-05:00

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

Wish I had my own

2008-10-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

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 we 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

G.O.P.

2008-10-24T21:31:00.004-05:00

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

HOLY CRAP A NEW SHORT!

2008-10-16T17:39:00.005-05:00

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

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

2008-10-09T14:54:00.003-05:00

-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

Blankcore

2008-10-08T17:08:00.005-05:00

Something random I've been working on. Not sure if I like the colors yet.

I feel like it would be a good poster for some weird transgendered queercore pop punk band. Or just a regular punk band. Any takers?

She's All Right & Robot Rights

The Five Stages of Animation

2008-10-01T08:59:00.002-05:00

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

Learnding

2008-09-24T10:57:00.009-05:00

Unfortunately, animation is a learning process. It's not like riding a roller coaster or eating a sandwich. But maybe it's kind of like eating a sandwich while riding a roller coaster. You always think you know how to do it, but some unseen problem comes up and the next thing you know your tomatoes are flying everywhere.

This time around, the bump that has sent my tomatoes flying is line thickness. If that's clear enough.

As I've mentioned before, Matt and I are using this system of head files, we create sets of heads for each character with movable and interchangeable mouths, eyes and eyebrows. It saves us the time of redrawing heads and mouths for each new shot, and for future shorts.

When we drew these heads, we drew them pretty big so that they could be used for close up shots and not look chunky. And for the close up's and medium shots, things have worked out pretty well.

The problem is, when they're used for wide shots, the facial details look noticeably thinner than the rest of the shot, exaggerating the pasted on quality that we're trying to hide.

In addition to that, some of the bodies were drawn really small. So when put against each other, they look vastly different, and messy.

I've tried to close the line thickness gap by adding a 5-9 pixel stroke outline to the heads, but that doesn't always cut it . The sad truth is, even though the computer allows you to paste any separate drawn elements together, if they were drawn on vastly different scales it's going to show.

In the future, we have to make sure that we're drawing these bodies as big as possible so that the line quality and thickness matches with the size of the heads, and that we're cleaning up these drawings with a finer line. If doing that doesn't fix the problem, I might consider duplicating the head files and making one set specifically for medium/wide shots by putting a stroke on the facial details of each component.

For now though, I'm going back and re-cleaning several of the shots. It seems ridiculous this late in the game, being that we're one night of work away from being picture locked. But hey, you can't spell "animator" without "anal".

Sphincter Tight & Robot Rights

Do you smell what Barack is cooking?

2008-09-12T09:22:00.000-05:00

BARACK!

Because seriously, is there anybody else you'd really vote for? Assuming of course you're not writing in Chuck Yeager or any other famous test pilot. Boy, did I waste my vote with that in '04. More on the election stuff later though.

On another note- the new RDCCDX short is nearing nearerness to completion.

The major obstacles left- lip syncing to the dialogue track of Tim, Matt and myself cramming as many words as we could into 3 minutes, and then sound design. I might be jumping into Garageband to make a bit of music for this one like I did for the fight scene in IM IN UR MANGER. Not sure yet.

Check out Matt's blog to see a couple more stills of how it's looking. In the meantime, I finished up the piece of animation for Steve Borth.

I know it's short, but it's got color, so that's gotta count for something.

Women's Rights & Robot Rights

For The Approval Of The Midnight Society

2008-09-10T01:15:00.010-05:00

I present the Tale of More Headless Animation:

As you can see, I've been throwing in backgrounds and light effects and pulling this thing together. I figure by next week we should have the lip synced heads composited into all of the shots. Almost done.

A tip for anyone using After Effects to composite their animation- throwing a light or two in can give your shots that little extra something. For those not familiar with After Effects, it gives you the ability to put little spotlights into your compositions (shots). The "lights" are supposed to be used with 3-D environments, not the Pixar kind of expansive grassy field environments, but rather any composition that has elements utilizing Z space- the third dimension. Oooohweeoooh.

The way I use them is similar to angling a light onto a piece of paper. I'm just shooting light across 2-D planes to accentuate characters, simulate natural lighting, or just give the whole shot a slight gradient. Take the running shot for example.
The characters are supposed to be running around a strip mall at night. So I threw in a couple lights and angled one of them from above to make the scene being lit by the overhead shopping mall lights.
I gave them a slight green tint, to emulate fluorescence, and made sure to feather out the edges so that they weren't too noticeable. It adds a sense of depth somehow and looks ok, I don't know.

I remember really wanting to mess around more with lights after seeing a lot of Gorillaz videos, especially Feel Good Inc with all of it's dark red washes. I really wish I could animate that well or produce something that smoooooth.

For those just starting out in After Effects, try using both an Ambient light, to give yourself a base amount of light, with Spotlights to high light the characters or scene. You can mix the intensities of each depending on the look you're going for.

Sinful Lights & Robot Rights

For Batter Or For Worse -and- Backgrounds

2008-09-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

The Cake Farmers of America commissioned me to draw this. I thought they were joking when they said they'd give me lots of dough to do it, but guess what showed up in the mail the other day? Yep, a can of frosting.

Anyways, here's some backgrounds for the upcoming Ronin Dojo Community College DX mini saga.

Backgrounds are real tough for me, I've never been good at building stuff and somehow that translates to drawing buildings. I don't know, but if you want to see a real master of design and layout and color- check out this blog entry on 101 Dalmations. This guy has a few interesting posts about the color and layout of the Disney/PETA classic, and man, it's the real deal stuff.

Cellulite & Robot Rights

I Have No Head! (tastes great!) I Have No Head! (less filling!)

2008-09-03T23:10:00.008-05:00

This is my favorite part of the animation process. When I throw all the colored Photoshop files into an After Effects Comp at once, and it looks all crazy.
This is how the episode is looking right now. We've got all our shots laid out, but are still adjusting things and waiting to put in the backgrounds and lip synced heads. So until all of that is finished- it's just a bunch o' headless people standing around.
But this is what all of the tedious pre-production helped us accomplish. Now that we have head libraries for each character, animating and coloring the actual shots goes a lot smoother. Like with the shot above, all I had to draw was Mark's shoulders and neck. And for the running shot featured at the top of the post, I didn't have to redraw the head over and over, which helps a lot when you have to color little facial details.

If this shot were fully animated, I would have had to drawn each frame of the run with different mouth positions to match up with the sound track. But with this head system, I can just slug on a profile head from Mark's library, and turn off and on mouth layers in After Effects to make him talk. And if the timing or dialogue changes, I don't have to redo any drawings. Plus, I can now reuse the run cycle in another episode even though Mark might be saying something completely different.

This isn't a new idea, cartoons use short cuts like this all the time. If a character is standing and talking, they'll just draw the body and hold that frame while they animate the head or arms. Some TV shows which are animated within the United States use extensive character libraries in programs like Flash or After Effects to cut down on actual drawing time and save money. This can produce mixed results of course, but I think shows like South Park are a pretty good example of what can be done.

Anyways, I'm not saying animation should be made cheaper and quicker, but when you're just two dudes in Queens trying to animate a cartoon- you take short cuts. Sort of. How many months have we been working on this?

10 Yard Fight & Robot Rights

Side Projects Are Never Fully Animated

2008-08-26T13:33:00.014-05:00

In between scanning and coloring and cleaning the new RDCCDX episode, I've been working on a little bit of animation for Steve Borth. If you're a ska maniac like me, you'll know him from Link 80, RX Bandits and more recently Satori. He's got a new musical project, Recall Reality, and he asked me for a piece of animation to go along with some other visuals he's pulling together.

So this is a rough sample of the bit; Steve threading a reel to reel and pressing play. It's still missing two backgrounds, the tape the hands are pulling, color and love- but you get the drift.

Since threading a reel to reel is a lot of tiny hand movements, I tried to conserve drawings by doing a lot of movement in After Effects. It kind of gives it that computer-y Flash look, but it I think it works for what it is. The story of my life. It will look cooler once it's all colored and fancy.

Story Of My Life & Robot Rights

Recapitation

2008-08-21T15:41:00.022-05:00

We're almost done scanning! The first episode of the new RDCCDX mini saga is on it's way.

It's funny, the actual animation of the episode only took a couple days of scanning, all of those head libraries were the real brunt of it. Those head libraries are supposed to be our short cuts of course, so that we wouldn't have redraw a head and set of mouths for each shot.
That's 11 heads, the profile head is just flipped. Each applicable head is paired with a set of 9 eyebrows and 8 eyes. Half of those are paired with 10 up-turned mouths, 8 down-turned mouths and 3 quiet mouths. I flip the mouth sets for the half of the heads facing the other way.
I sort of explained before, but I thought I'd give it visuals. Here's a sneak peek at how some of the cleaned up drawings fit together in a rough After Effects project.

I probably could have saved myself time by reflecting/flipping/reversing the right set of heads into a left set of heads, but some characters aren't completely symmetrical- mostly in the hair department. Also, anytime I flip a drawing around it always looks slightly off. I must tend to lean my lines to one side or something.

I don't know, some things just look different in a mirror reflection. Ever flip a picture of Stephen Colbert? Stupid question, everyone has. Doesn't Colbert look a lot different when his little ear is on the other side?
We're through the looking glass here people.

You know, because it's a mirror reflection.

The Rand Corporation inconjunction with the Saucer People. . .Under the supervision of the Reverse Vampires & Robot Rights

She's got bangs! And she knows how to use them!

2008-08-13T13:31:00.008-05:00

I fixed up and inked up this possible t-shirt design I was working on. It's a ska t-shirt design. I want it to say "i still like ska" on it, because I feel like that's something people want other people to know- that they still like ska.

I tried to draw this semi-90's rude couple, but I can't decide which hair style to go with. In topical Olympic style, here are the three that would get some sort of medal.

1. long hair with head band:
2. long bangs:
3. short bangs:
For some reason, most girls prefer the design with the short bangs. I can't decide yet so I might end up using multiple designs.

I tried out shading them with dots since I'd like to silk screen it myself and I can only do one color. It took me a while to figure out how to do this, but it's pretty simple:

Make a circle of color on a really small canvas and then go to Edit>Define Pattern. And you can make a pattern to use with the paint bucket tool. I would make little white circles over a black background, they weren't as harsh as black circles on white. Since I was working in 400 DPI, my dot canvas' were ranging from 11x11 pixels - 25x25 pixels- anything below 8 was looking like like gray.

Anyways, I'm worried all these details might be too small for my silk screening skills. I don't know. I might try to just do a print them on paper or something. Anyways, here are the other runner ups:

Step right up folks-I got glasses or no glasses, long bangs with no little side thingies, I even have ones where the guy is in a hoodie with or without sunglasses.
Man, all this gray is making me tired.

Shanghai(r) Knights & Robot Rights

Vectorman -or- Bitmaps versus Vectors and a crap load of writing

2008-08-11T14:08:00.029-05:00

I can't remember if it was Vectorman or X-Men 2: Clone Wars that I rented from Blockbuster on the day in 6th grade when I fell on my face, busted my upper lip area open and had to get stitches. It's actually a funny story which why I'm going to be talking about vectorizing bitmap images.

With two shots left for the new Ronin Dojo Community College DX episode- we're entering Scanning Week. It's kind of like Shark Week, but with twice as many dead Australians. In an effort to save myself some clean up time, I've been fooling around with vectorizing my images to make the clean up and coloring process easier.

Normally, I'd start with scanning a cleaned drawing into Photoshop :
It always comes out gray and with strange colors and specks, so I have to de-saturate the drawing and tweak the levels of black and white (Image>Adjustments>Levels):
I've created an action to do this all one fell swoop so it's really not a difficult process. But there's still problems, inevitable lines that didn't get connected and such.
But since I don't have time to ink any of my drawings, there's always little white specks left in and around the pencil lines and black pencil smudges within the drawing.
This image is better than most, but my cleaned drawings tend to have thick lines which contain even more miscellaneous white and gray pixels. Because of this, when I select and erase the area surrounding the character so that I can composite it against a background in After Effects, I get this ghosting effect. Even when the magic wand tolerance is set to 100. (For those unfamiliar with Photoshop, the magic wand is a valid tool not just me trying to make a nerd joke)
If you click on this frame you'll see, close up, that there are white lines and specks around David. I used the Matte Choke tool in After Effects to contract the Alpha Channel so it bites into the line slightly- but it still had those gray and white pixels. Sure this doesn't look like a big deal, and it probably isn't even visible on YouTube, but all this extra clean up takes up a lot of time, especially if it's just going to look "ok" at full resolution.

So I thought I'd try out Toon Boom, which Jules suggested to me in the raging comments section of an earlier post. I don't know much about Toon Boom, but I do know that it can vectorize your drawings when you scan them or import them into the program. If you want to know about vector images scroll down to the bottom of this post- I'll explain it there. For everyone else- onto my date with the Toon Boom Studio Trial Version.
I didn't really delve into the instructions, I skipped right to third base and tried to vectorize a drawing. It actually worked pretty well, and I didn't even have to clean anything. But the limited vector settings left my lines looking kinda wobbly.

And I kind of missed my smooth round lines, even though they had pixel junk around it. If anyone is more familiar with Toon Boom, maybe they could give me some tips on working it. I know that Toon Boom Digital probably works way better, but I can't drop 3 g's on it.

Anyways, I remembered that Illustrator CS2 has that livetrace option that vectorizes images, so I tried that out. You can really tweak the settings so it actually turned out pretty good.
Though close up there were still some funky artifacts from trying to vectorize the smaller details like the pupils. But it sure fixed up my white spots.
I'm pretty sure that you can run a script in Illustrator to batch live trace a bunch of images at once, so I may try to do that. Not sure, but this line looks pretty clean, and decent enough for something I didn't draw in the computer. If anyone has any tips or thoughts on using Toon Boom or Illustrator for this, let me know. I'm gonna stop writing now. Here's a screen grab of my Livetrace settings in case anybody wants to know.

Lite Brites & Robot Rights

What's our vector, Victor?

Vector images- oy vey how am I going to put this-I guess you could think of them in terms of a Lite Brite.

You make an picture on a Lite Brite by putting a single green peg in one hole, and a single red peg in another hole and so forth. That's how a computer stores bitmap images- images like jpeg's or digital photos or what have you. It displays that awesome Jonas Brothers screen saver by making pixel 1 red and pixel 2 green and pixel 3 a dreamy dreamy blue- until you have the Jonas Brothers looking all deep and faux indie.

Now if you turned that screen saver into a vector image, it's like you said to the Lite Brite "Fuck all these pegs! I want everything from peg hole 2 to peg hole 58 to be red!" In a really rudimentary way- it's like instructions for the computer on how to make the image using coordinates rather than being a map of the image.

If you tried to scale up a bit map image real big, it would start getting all weird and pixelated and blurry because the computer doesn't know where to put the new "pegs". It's like "Damn it man, we had a system but now I got all these extra peg holes and I don't know what to put in them! Is this supposed to be a ballerina or Mickey Mouse!?" But with vector images- when everything is written in these instructions going from one peg to another, the computer can scale up the image as big as you want, because it just scales up the coordinates.

Of course the downside of this is that you're Jonas Brothers screen saver is going look like a still from A Scanner Darkly.
The "coordinates" contain less information so the picture looks like everything is rounded off into patches of color and line.

That's why bitmaps are for photos and paintings and vector images are usually for logo artwork or advertising stuff you want to put on the side of a huge building. But if you use them right- they can work well for cartoons because the lines are so clean and easy to color. The trade off is that you'll have to either draw the pictures using a program like Illustrator or Flash, or you have to vectorize the a hand drawn image, which depending on the program and drawing, can produce odd results. If you go back and read the rest of the post you can see why.

PS- I don't know much about how computers actually work, so nobody cite this on wikipedia.

Triple Track!

2008-08-06T00:29:00.007-05:00

The Photoshop painting isn't my usual style but I think it looks ok. I made the original in 600 DPI in case I ever wanted to print a poster of it or something.

Also, here's a sketch of a ska t-shirt design I've been working on.
I tried to make the girl's hair like Elyse Rogers' from the Dance Hall Crashers, but right now it looks too rmessy. I'm still searching for a hairdo a little shorter/tucked back and maybe more 90's-ish. If anyone has some sweet 90's ska pics link them my way.

Man, do you realize just how many Dance Hall Crashers videos there are? A lot. For a band that, as far as I can recall, on MTV much past maybe Skaturday, they sure pulled together some bank to make awesome super saturated 90's videos- and then this one. I guess it was because they were on MCA or something.

Point is, DHC are/is sweet, and I'm glad they have a bunch of videos. Oh and Adrian Tomine, one of my favorite comic book artists, did the cover for their live album:

Definitely one of my favorites.

Cat Fight(s) & Robot Rights

And not to my surprise he really liked it rough

2008-08-05T11:30:00.005-05:00

There are only three shots left to animate for the new episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX. If Matt and I can keep to this schedule, we should have it finished by September. In the meantime, check out this rough shot I finished yesterday. (You might have to hit play twice for it to work right)

It's not the best hit in the world, but it does show off some basic animation principles or techniques or whatever you want to call them. Let's take a closer look:

The 2nd frame is a good example of things that look ridiculous in still frames but work in well in animation.

First we've got Seth's head squashing together to really give some force to the hit. Squash is one half of the classic animation duo Stretch & Squash; the first thing you learn in animation classes in your rigorous hazing process of animating a bouncing ball while holding a cup of Dannon yogurt- with no hands.

There's also a smear frame in there as Mark whips away the video game case. Smears are awesome. They emulate the blurring that occurs in live action film and help move the eye along with action. If I had drawn Mark going from his position in frame 1 directly to his position in frame 3, it might have been a little jerky because it's such a big jump. Smearing his action, blending three in-between positions, helps make the jump seem more fluid, without adding more drawings.

Frames 3-5 have two instances of secondary motion going on.

In frame 3, Mark's shirt sleeve and hair lag behind due to the quick movement. As Mark's body stops moving in frame 4, the sleeve and hair continue moving forward due to their detached momentum. By frame 5, the effects of gravity and Klautenberg's Second Law of Follicular Inertia bring the sleeves and hair respectively to their resting position. Marks arms also fall down a bit- settling into the squat.

I know I'm not an awesome animator, and have no qualifications to be talking like I'm Richard Williams or some shit, I just thought I'd entertain any onlookers who aren't familiar with the animation process. If you do want to learn more about this stuff from a pro- get Richard Williams book The Animator's Survival Kit. It's got pretty much everything you'd learn in animation classes.

Arabian Knights & Robot Rights

Numb3rs

2008-07-29T14:39:00.017-05:00

The head libraries for the upcoming episode of Ronin Dojo Community College are finally finished. Let me explain what your looking at besides a crappy cell phone picture. These folders contain the head libraries for 3 main characters and 1 smaller head library for a side character- who coincidentally has a smaller head than all of the main characters. Each main character has: 10 heads (which make up a full rotation), 4 sets of mouths, 7 sets of eyebrows, and 7 sets of eyes. It seems kinda confusing but I'll make a diagram of how it all plays out once I scan everything in.

Anyways, now we're onto the actual animating sorta. We have 18 shots to animate for this episode. Matt has already started on some of the tougher moves. You can check out a rough pencil test on his blog. Meanwhile, I still have a few tedious hurtles to jump over before I get to the tedious hurtles of creating the illusion of movement. Firstly, I had to draw this crowd shot.

I also have to work on the main background which, like crowd shots, can be tough for me. I really envy people who can draw and paint backgrounds, it's hard to do without making them seem clunky or flat. But whatever, I get by on my good looks and by tracing postcards for backgrounds. I don't think anyone noticed, but the backgrounds for IM IN UR MANGER- all traced postcards from Carson City, Nevada.

Think about it.

Boogie Nights & Robot Rights

For Darrell- NOW IN COLOR

2008-07-25T11:23:00.009-05:00

I'm pysched Darrell liked it, maybe he'll like it more- in COLORAMA VISION™!
These are the colors I used.

I tried putting warm colors against cool colors to make Wolfsbane stand out. But since the subject's colors were lukewarm and my background was lukecool it might have just made whole thing luke bad. If you get what I mean.

Colored-In Tights & Robot Rights

For Darrell

2008-07-24T17:09:00.003-05:00

Wolfsbane. The closest I'll get to furry artwork. I'm gonna color this one in.

Hairy Tights & Robot Rights

You wanna see a magic trick? -or- A José Canseco Bat? Tell me you didn't pay money for this.

2008-07-22T18:04:00.001-05:00

These are some sketches I did while waiting in line to see The Dark Knight. There was quite a variety of people who arrived early to get themselves a proper seat for ginormous IMAX screening. I wish I could have drawn more of them.

The Dark Knight is definitely the best comic book/super hero movie aside from maybe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but they're practically in different genres so I won't put them up against each other. Man, I could go on for hours about how awesome TMNT is. Anyways, despite all of Dark Knight's completely solid awesomeness- I still can't bring myself to draw some Batman fan art drawrings. I grew up drawing Wile E. Coyote and copying Jim Lee panels from X-Men- specifically a lot of Psylocke and Beast. I only have a few Batman comic books in my small collection- so I feel like it would be dishonest to jump on the Batman fan art wagon right now. So I'm gonna draw a Psylocke.

Yeah Betsy Braddock!

Meanwhile... I still suck at color theory.
I'm trying to work out a color schematic for the next RDCCDX short. It takes place outside a strip mall store front at night. So I tried to give a slightly green flourescence vibe to the lighted areas, but I dunno something still isn't striking me right. The only thing I know about color is that I've had good luck working with a limited range of colors- it seems to keep things cohesive.

Dark Knights & Robot Rights

What was that?!

2008-07-18T18:24:00.008-05:00

Here's a little fake PS3 game art I'm working on for the new Ronin Dojo Community College mini saga.

I know- the reference is really obscure. The joke will come into full effect once you see the first episode, which should be done in late August. . . I hope. Anyone want to volunteer to scan and color once we get this thing rolling?

Marlboro Lights & Robot Rights

Syballance, syballance...

2008-07-16T01:36:00.006-05:00

I made a quick little pencil test of a finished set of upturned mouths. I haphazardly threw them in, trying not to put too many vowels in a row. It kind of looks like he's saying "Pohsheyflaffp"- the standard phrase that animators have been using to test cheap mouth movements for years.

There's a weird line separating each mouth from the face. We like to draw full chin movements for our mouth sets, it's gives the characters a little more life. Since Photoshop needs a closed off area in order to quickly fill in the chin with color, we have to draw that wavy top line to enclose the chin- it's later erased or masked out in After Effects. Typically when you're drawing for animation, you try to close all of your lines so that the coloring process goes easier. Though when you don't have time to ink- it never seems to. At least for us, because we're not that smart, and I don't press hard enough when cleaning up or something.

Testing Mics & Robot Rights

On The Mouth

2008-07-09T15:41:00.007-05:00

All of the dialogue has been recorded and edited for the new Ronin Dojo Community College four part mini saga. So, it is with a shitty animatic under our belts, that we charge forth into animation. Which for me means making some heads. Since the shorts Matt and I make are so dialogue intensive, and we are too lazy to deal with exposure sheets, we make heads for main characters, that can be re-used for any shots with basic angles.

A head set for a character usually contains a front, 3/4 and maybe profile head drawing, and some inbetween heads to smooth out the turns between each angle. For each of the main heads we do a set of eyebrows, eyes and mouths. When we put the whole thing into After Effects, each eyebrow, eye and mouth can be turned off an on or moved around in sync with the dialogue.

This is roughly what our mouth sets are going to be I think. 10 main upturned mouths, 3 quiet mouths and 8 down-turned mouths. For those not versed in animation, you don't make mouths for each letter but for sounds really. So number 1 on my chart is an M,P,B mouth, number 2 is works for T,D,N and a range of consonants. 3 is AH, 4 is EE, 5 is OOH etc.

Mouths 9 and 10 are redundant, they're just louder versions of mouths 5 and 3. We've found that when you're lip syncing lots of quick talking that has a lot of "AHs" going on, it's good to have a variety to switch it up so your character doesn't just look like a quacking duck.

After Effects lip syncing is something you gotta develop a feel for; some tips for any beginners are that sometimes you want to turn on mouths a frame or so before the sound hits, and try not to have a bunch of mouths on for only one frame in a row, it looks way too fast.

When we were doing IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR we made mouth and expression sets on a shot to shot basis. Afterwards, we realized that most of our angles were just head on or 3/4 and we could have been reusing those mouths and eyes if we were smart. So this is us trying to be smart- supposedly. Though depending on the distance of the camera, we have to add stroke layers to the heads in Photoshop to match the thickness of the pencil lines for the rest of the shots, but that's another story I guess. Man I hate how blogger thinks dialogue should be spelled dialog. I like the ue damn it.

Kissing Pipes & Robot Rights

Vacation Sketches

2008-07-08T15:37:00.010-05:00

Here are some sketches I did while I was on my vacation. You can find more in my flickr set.

"elderly couple at JFK outside Balducci's-she didn't look that angry"

Some random faces at JFK

"German woman + Greek Man watching Turkey vs. Germany in the Euro Cup while aboard the ferry boat to Naxos. The Greek man suprisingly was from Rockville, MD"

I had kind of turned my chair around to draw the people all glued to the TV. It was hard to capture the poses of the German family since they kept moving around with the suspense of the game, but that old Greek dude was like a statue- rooting for anything but Turkey.

"if Athen and Zeus were ska"

Poster idea I sketched out

Turkish Delights & Robot Rights

Federal Agents Mad Cuz I'm Flagrant

2008-06-12T15:12:00.006-05:00

A new Ronin Dojo Community College DX mini saga is now in production. We're almost finished recording. Scanning storyboards for animatics and what not. In the mean time, here are some designs for some FBI agents.

I'll post more goofiness as it comes in.

Super NinTENdo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke man I couldn't picture robot rights

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

2008-05-29T15:38:00.006-05:00

Usually it takes me forever to make fliers (flyers?) but this one I rattled off pretty quickly. These bands aren't ska but I can't resist drawing a dude in a black suit, shades and a pork pie hat. . . cadillac. . .yeah, the boy's a time bomb!

That's sorta how the song goes.

Tim Armstrong & Robot Rights Wrongs

Artist's Alley

2008-05-28T17:21:00.010-05:00

Here's some Ronin Dojo Community College DX Artwork I've been futzing with.

More to come.

EDIT: Also, Matt has a new blog, or rather A blog: http://frankensteinsninja.wordpress.com/

BUMBLE BEE IS ROBOT RIGHTS!

RDHSDX Fan Sites

2008-04-14T17:06:00.006-05:00

So this is already on the For Tax Reasons website, but I'll repeat it here anyways. Me and Matt were searching around the internet randomly for "Ronin Dojo High School DX"- the manga/anime from the 90's which our short IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR is based upon- and we found these old geocities fan sites from like 1997. Check it out, theres:

Michael Hubert's Ronin Dojo High School DX Fan Site

and then

r0nind0j0pr1me's Ultimate Ronin Dojo High School DX Fan Site

It's weird. It's like they both are fighting with each other. I dunno, you'll have to read it yourselves.

www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/301/fan_sites & Robot Rights

Whatever it takes!

2008-04-01T16:52:00.006-05:00

So, I've been too busy to plan out an April Fools joke. So here's a regular outdated post. The other day one of my shorts, IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR, was featured on the front page of YouTube.

A big thanks to Channel Frederator for selecting it. And to the lovely Jess Park for taking that screenshot. IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR got like 300,000 more views, so that means like 300,000 more people got to hear Jess Park's heavenly Korean voice because she has the first line in the short. I mean they at least heard that before they clicked to another page or decided to write some hate comments about how we were going to hell. Oh well.

In other news, a mysterious YouTube user made a SWEET AMV out of our animations and a song from on of my favorite bands- the Max Levine Ensemble!

And oh yeah. Degrassi is sweet. Marco and Paige were at my work today.

CRAIG'S SECRET FIGHT & ROBOT RIGHTS

Pop Punk, Who'd Have Thunk

2008-03-21T17:06:00.004-05:00

Say whaat- two posts in as many days! That's crazy. So, here it is. In a glorious tribute to my inability to multi-task, here's the long awaited (by me) release of the music video I did for Ben Weasel's "Got My Number". Check it out.

It was definitely a challenge. I worked on it all the while I was working all the IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR related cartoons and the project I did for Jackie Clarke. It's very static and has some very limited animation, which works on some levels, but with music videos where so much of the editing relies on hitting on or moving with beats, the static-ness leaves much to desire. Plus I've realized that drawing small is good for saving pencil mileage, but if you're going to really zoom in on these, they need to be bigger and cleaner. I really wish I could have inked all these drawings, but alas I just didn't have the time.

I might post about my cleaning and coloring process in photoshop for this video, I tried some interesting things. I really enjoy the Vampirella design I made, I want to do a t shirt or poster of her. And the zombie kissing shot is also really fun.

Femme Fang Bites & Robot Rights

MC Tom Callow

2008-03-20T09:10:00.012-05:00

Tom Callow's making the headlines on BoingBoing.net today. AKA there's a new short starring everybody's favorite nerds (aside from those three extras in Saved by the Bell) in an exclusive for Boing Boing TV. The highlight is clearly Tim Martin's performance as Barry's Dad. He's great and improvised a lot of those lines. And if you watch past the Michael Bay appearance, you get to see a dark look into the soul of making animation in Queens.

Also I made an IN UR MANGER t-shirt design:
I'm going to start silk screening it onto t-shirts, so if you want to buy one, check out the merch section of the For Tax Reasons site.

Super Smash Masonites & Robot Rights

EDIT: The preview pic for that embedded video was AE bot in front of the tom callow poster, but they changed it at some point. Just to explain why I'm talkin' bout Callow.

It truly is a Global Village

2008-02-20T13:03:00.012-05:00

It's my birthday today, and what could be a better surprise than an awesome nerdy video homage to something I animated. Matt showed me this response video to one of our IN UR MANGER vlogs. In the vlog, we had mentioned the concept of nerds LARPing as the Justice League at an Easter egg hunt- and they did it!

So awesome, especially the peeps bit.

Infinite Crisis & Robot Rights's

solidarity

2008-02-15T16:56:00.004-05:00

I was abstaining from blogging to show my solidarity with the WGA, but the strike is finally over so I felt obligated to go online and make that joke for billionth time.

I finished some artwork for dcska.com. I'm not exactly sure where or when it will be used, I think it's gonna at least go on some post cards or something. Hrm, how come this jpeg looks a bit washed out. Anyone?

And I'm almost done coloring the Ben Weasel video. This is a still I exported from After Effects. It took me a while to get the color scheme down on this one, I'm still such an amateur at color theory, so I'm still not totally satisfied. I'll get it right one of these days- or die trying.

Writer's Strikes & Robot Rights

oh snap

2007-12-22T18:55:00.000-05:00

Not another one :(

Doing It Twice & Robot Rights

got a face like charles bronson, straight outta green bay wisconsin

2007-12-22T12:21:00.001-05:00

We made it to Boing Boing. So sweet. http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/21/nativity-scene-larp.html

Thanks to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid for posting about us and then Xeni for throwing it up on Boing Boing. Am I a nerd for being psyched about Xeni Jardin making a blog post of something I did?

Also, there have been several Scott's who have been posting about us on their blogs. I wonder if there's any correlation between being a Scott and posting things on the internet or being a Scott and enjoying anime and D&D jokes. I'm gonna go make a flow chart and try to wrap my head around this.

Being Scottish, It's Shite & Robot Rights

Did Laura let you leave the house like that?

2007-12-18T00:49:00.000-05:00

Man, the internet just keeps on amazing me. First that sneezing panda video and now my new short, IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR, surpasses the 100,000 views mark on the ol' YouTube. And For Tax Reasons is also ranked #8 Most Subscribed Directors for this week. I think we owe this revived surge to the web comic VG Cats who linked us up recently. Thanks a lot Scott Ramsoomair.

Man, next time I introduce myself at a party I'll have to mention my YouTube accolades. That's GOTTA get me some respect. Now I just have to get invited to some parties. What use are sweaters if you never get invited to holiday parties? No use, that's what. And my Scholastic 101 Bug Jokes are going completely unused. Hey, why are spiders so good at baseball? Anyone, anyone?

In other news, I finished a black and white cut of the Ben Weasel music video for "Got My Number". Here's some stills:

It's not going to stay black and white, but I like the sharp contrast between the two. I might keep some of those hard black backgrounds and shadows and such in there. I dunno, I want to go for a Jaime Hernandez type thing.

Here's one of the shots. I think it's the one with the most drawings in it. Meh.

Until next time.

Internet Spikes & Robot Rights

CALL MARGE RE: HORROR

2007-12-13T19:42:00.001-05:00

Oh man. Some angry dude posted a video response to my new short IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR. I hate to say it, but I think he's right. . . about everything.

Man, criticism is rough. I'm gonna go eat my feelings.

Sensible Bites & Robot Rights

KTHX/EPIC POST

2007-12-06T09:35:00.002-05:00

Just want to say thanks to everyone who helped me and Matt in making IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR, to EVERYONE who linked it around and to the blogs/sites who posted about us. Particularly Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew and Scott Green at Ain't It Cool News, but also my pals, Raven Baker at Soft Graffiti and the illustrious Will Hines. And whoever threw it up on Fark, Milk & Cookies, and I Am Bored.

After less than a week we had more YouTube views than my previous short "She She She She's A Bombshell" which had been up for over a year, and as of this post we're up to 38,896 views.

So thanks everyone!

So right now there's an epic thread debate on our YouTube comments section about whether or not a Lawful Evil Paladin can exist. If you have the means, I do suggest you join it.

Otherwise we've been getting some good feedback on it- from all corners of the web. Here's what folks are saying:

"I was expecting a lolcat."

"Meh. No reason for that to be over six minutes."

"Heed this warning, God is not mocked. Causing others to stumble bears a wicked price. You should not poke fun at the Nativity. It's not funny at all"

" I don't know, call me a purist, but I don't think this anime was as good as the manga."

" I particularly like the shield that lets baby jesus zap people with lightening bolts :) Je-Zeus!"

and one of my favs

"Dude, Jesus would have owned face with a 20 AC shield. I mean, he already passively takes half damage and always makes his saving rolls."

Call me crazy, but I have a feeling some of the magi are going to make their own voices heard on the subject.

Epic Thread Fights & Robot Rights

PS- the pics I posted here are huge because I promised Tom I'd give him a desktop sized image a while back.

HOLY SHIT, MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON

2007-11-26T18:33:00.000-05:00

I never thought this day would come, so I won't mince words.

THE SHORT IS DONE.

IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR is now out. . . on the INTERNET!

And justin time for the Holiday season, what a perfect coincidence. A horribly tedious coincidence that took a year of my life. Me and Matt started an "animation studio" to house this sacrilegious creation, called For Tax Reasons.

Check out the site at www.fortaxreasons.com. There you can download better versions of the short.

More news to come, I promise.

Robot Rights & Robot Rights

We Lost The Entwives

2007-09-11T17:44:00.001-05:00

This is a little peek into the pyschosis of animation. Though I'm sure anyone can relate to this kinda stuff. I start flipping through shots I finished weeks ago for this music video and just started redrawing a lot of the key frames.

This is the result of several factors.

1. I find that my drawings age over a period of time. I'll look at drawings from my old short and cringe at some of them. I can see where the proportions are all off and where features look squashed in one shot and stretched in another. Sometimes it just takes a day or an hour or two, you just need those fresh eyes I guess, but looking at the drawings upside down, through the back with a lightbox or in a mirror helps see the asymmetry.

2. If you do one off projects, like music videos or shorts, and are unprepared like me and don't have loads of time already spent with drawing the characters, you might find you don't have the character designs down pat when you start jumping into the animating stage. I've found that only until the end of things do I finally know my characters, and the first shots I did I need some fixing.

3. I really rushed through the animation on IIUM/KUS, which you will soon be able to see, and I really want this video to have some solid designs, especially since the character is stationary in a lot of parts.

The great Matt Sheridan said two things, though he might have been quoting other people. At any rate- at some point he said it takes like 100 drawings to get your character down, maybe it was 500 though. . . and that we all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. Thanks to Christen for reminding me about that last one. I dunno, THINK ABOUT IT.

Somebody remind me to talk about drawing ladies next time. Anyways, back to animating.

Makin' it Nice & Robot Rights

The Slackers: A Documentary On Sale Online

2007-09-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

Huzzah! My film, The Slackers: A Documentary is now for sale online at Interpunk.com.

Apparently it's the ranked number 1 in DVD sales for the past three weeks. Nice.

To grab a copy if you haven't already, click HERE.

Caustic Christ & Robot Rights