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.
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.
I'm in the 2:00 to 4:30 block in case anyone in DC metro area is interested. I think I'm going to have to talk about stuff. I'll bring my presentation on Atlantis just in case. People need to know the truth.
Check it out. It took like 6 South Park Episodes to color once I had the scheme down.
Some of the stuff might change slightly (the text will be handwritten) but for the most part this is it. I really wish I knew color theory better. It takes me a while to figure what looks good together and create a pallet to work from.
If I was speeding down a two-lane desert highway in a dust caked beat up 1964 Chevy, swerving over cracked asphalt and armadillo carcasses being tailed by a fleet of state troopers, SWAT police, and militant right-wing religious freaks all screaming for my blood- Rocket from the Crypt would have to be the soundtrack.
Something from Group Sounds in particular.
And as a sweat stained police officer takes a megaphone out the window and starts telling me to stop, that I'm completely surrounded and not even headed towards the border- that in fact I'm headed in the opposite direction of the border, and begins to go into the logistics of why criminals usually head FOR the border- I would give the questionable suitcase in the passengers side seat a pat, pound my foot on the accelerator and turn up "This Bad Check Is Gonna Stick".
But none of this would ever happen because I'm pretty sure 1964 Chevy's don't even have tape decks.
Anyways, onto the animation, I'm still working on like 8 things at once, but they're all coming along. Super secret project code named IIUM/KUS is nearing picture lock as we speak. I might throw up a quicktime of some of the colored and gussied up footage if Matt thinks it's ok. In the meantime, here's a color test for the Ben Weasel music video I'm also working on.
I'm still working with the palette, I'm really trying to envoke that watching TV in the dark vibe because that's what she's doing. I don't know if it's blue enough- I don't know something isn't hitting me in the gut the way it should. Anyone have any thoughts?
A lot of the shots in this video involve this girl sitting still and watching events unfold on the television set, so I'm able to throw a shadow on her no problem. I'm hoping that I can keep up a nice shadow for the moving shots in front of the TV set as well.
And on completely stationary front- here's a poster I'm working on for a sweet two day show coming up in October. It's a birthday show/benefit and with a bunch of sweet bands like the Ergs and The Max Levine Ensemble. I still have to color it and add in all the info and what not because, you know, people should know that kinda stuff about shows.
Anyways, to make up for the lack of animation, here's a little pencil test from some animating I'm doing at my job. I just made up this little character and did an 8 drawing run cycle on 4's. It's a bit clunky but it was fun to draw something completely different from what I've been working on.
This is a frame from one of the shots I've been working on this week for IIUM/KUS. Probably the most effects heavy shot of the whole short. I've said it before, but the whole short doesn't look like this, I don't want to do any false advertising. Well, really I just don't want anyone to be disappointed, and be like ". . .oh, I thought this was going to look different when it was moving and stuff. . . stop IMing me all these links."
This whole week I've been fixing and rendering out what are hopefully the final shots for the short. I'm sure I messed something up though.
We decided to make the short HD or make it IN HD- how would you phrase that? The reasoning was that it would look nice if it were ever projected for a festival or something. But I don't know if this short would really interest festival programmers, I think it's better suited for an internet audience who's avoiding doing work/homework/socializing at all costs. I wonder if there are laurels for that I could put on a poster.
Anyways, being primarily viewed on the internet (and this is assuming people don't gouge their eyes out in the first 30 seconds) means that the majority of viewers are going to watch this short mildly compressed at half it's resolution. This on top of the hard drive space and render time makes you start to question things. Why we tried to meddle with HD in the first place!? Who were we to play god!? You at least need to go to grad school for that type of thing.
This is the result of several factors.
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.
Apparently it's the ranked number 1 in DVD sales for the past three weeks. Nice.
For more info check out: www.myspace.com/carlapalooza
Anyways, being primarily viewed on the internet (and this is assuming people don't gouge their eyes out in the first 30 seconds) means that the majority of viewers are going to watch this short mildly compressed at half it's resolution. This on top of the hard drive space and render time makes you start to question things. Why we tried to meddle with HD in the first place!? Who were we to play god!? You at least need to go to grad school for that type of thing.