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 So here's a regular outdated post.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wow, it's been a month since I last updated. Well, I've been working my ass off and I've got the pictures to prove it. Any photographic evidence you see otherwise is a blatant Stalinist forgery.
We're in the belly of the beast right now, three projects going on at once, so first things first. The pick up shots for the new nerdy ass short, codenamed: IIUM/KUS, are done and should be cleaned and colored by tomorrow. So hopefully a shit load of After Effects work will get that thing to picture lock either this week or next week.
Next up at bat is the music video I'm animating for the Ben Weasel song "Got My Number" off his new album "These Ones Are Bitter". If you like Screeching Weasel and/or pop punk tunes go here and download it.
These are some of the more interesting storyboards from the animatic.
Can you figure out what music video is about? Get out your special Ben Levin decoder rings and mail in your theories to :
"The Astounding Confounding Storyboard Mystery & Great American Anal Portrait Contest" c/o The American Family Association PO Box Drawer 2440 Tupelo, MS 38803
Finally, my partner in crime, Matt, and I finished storyboarding a short we're working on with improviser/comedienne extraordinaire Jackie Clarke. We've learned from our sins with IIUM/KUS and are making animatics for everything now. It's really crucial to storyboard AND make an animatic because it helps to see how long to hold each shot, how angles pair up, and if you've got everything running smoothly with your dialogue track- blah blah blah.
Thus we've started this system of buying stacks of blank index cards to storyboard on. The theory being that we can in turn use these cards as rough layouts for the actual animation and that the smaller size of the drawings will help us cut down on pencil mileage. Plus it's nice to hold a fat stack of smudgy cards strapped together with rubber bands and feel like you actually did something with your life.
Here's what the stacks for the Ben Weasel short and the Jackie Clarke short look like:
And in an effort to make this post ridiculously long- my old short, "She She She She's A Bombshell", got a mention on this podcast GeekNights. Check it out:
So, we got a rough cut of the new animated short- code named IIUM/KUS. And with the rough cut I now realize we need roughly 10-12 completely new shots among other little fixes. But it's looking good. And it might be funny. I can't tell. Being with the same script and jokes for over 4 months is like saying "spaghetti time" over and over again. Eventually, the words lose all meaning and you never want to see a Sopranos episode again.
In the meanwhile, two other projects are in the works. Here's a rough storyboard from a music video I'm going to be animating for Mr. Ben Weasel's new upcoming solo album.
She's holding a cell phone. Yeah, that's right. I'm storyboarding and making animatics for my shorts from now on. Leave me alone.
Oh man, so I had all these awesome blog posts planned, but shit got crazy and you know what they say- the best laid plans blah blah blah don't play Sun City.
So, almost all of the shots are in After Effects and everything is starting to come together. Here's what it's looking like so far.
Most of the shots aren't as fancy as these, I was just trying to impress people. The majority look more like third image. Man, I'm really kicking myself for not making an animatic. The shots are individually looking ok, but will they piece together well? Probably not.
Oh man, did my computer just make a goat noise? Dude, I gotta get out of here, it's 2 AM.
So a while back I had this contest asking all of my fans to submit a color scheme for the characters in my new short- the winner would actually have their scheme used for the final animation!
I only received one submission. I blame poor advertising, which consisted of a sticky note I put on a stray dog- hoping he would you know, wander around a lot. Nevertheless, that single submission was great, though I could have done without the mockery.
Anyways so I started coloring in the characters, ran it through a bunch of filters and stuff in After Effects and this is what I got!
JK. These are the swatches I made in Photoshop to help me color, but it would be kinda cool if they looked like this. Probably would have made the past 4 months easier. . .
If there's one thing that still baffles me, it's color schemes. I allotted 3 weeks for coloring this short, but I feel like this whole week is just going to be me trying to figure out the color scheme. It's weird because you sorta have this picture in your head, but when you slop it down in photoshop, it's just looks like weird.
Oh well, in the meantime, here's a cleaner version of a cover for the next "Shut Up and Do It" comp, though I must make a correction, this is not set in stone, it's possible another persons design might be used. Potato Blights & Robot Rights?
Ok, it doesn't look like much stacked on my floor like that, but those folders contain the 865 drawings I just finished scanning that make up the new animated short, codenamed: IIUM/KUS.
Hmmm, 865 still doesn't seem like that much. Considering the months and months of drawing. Well maybe if I put it in giga terms:
Scanned at a index-finger-blistering range of 300 to 900 DPI, those graphite-laden motherfuckers take up approximately 18.75 GIGABYTES of memory. If this were 1993, you'd need a motherboard melting stack of 15,625 5¼ " floppy disks to hold all of that data. How do you like them animated apples?
Matt's already half way done cleaning the photoshop files, and coloring should begin by Monday. Man, we've been working non stop on this bastard. I need an intern.
Anyways, I promise to deliver it soon. Until then, more updates, and in COLOR. For now, here's this rough sketch I did for the next "Shut Up and Do It" compilation. It's 4 punk kids putting together a puzzle of America.
It will look good whatever. Check out the first comp, it's sweet New York and New Jersey pop punk bands. You can download it for free here: http://www.myspace.com/shutupndoit
Yep. We're back. Or I'm back. And principal animation is done! We're still waiting on the second unit in Chicago to finish some backgrounds and establishing shots at Wrigley Field, but we're on our way. So to celebrate, here's a little test Matt and I did, messing with anime speed lines:
Production on the new short, code named: IIUM/KUS, will be on hold for the next 8 days, while Team Ben & Matt work on 15 seconds of animation for a certain live action television pilot being made for a certain Adult Swim. BRB
Fear not populace, there are 1 5/7th shots left to animate before post production begins on the new short, code named: IIUM/KUS. In the meantime, here's a rough design for a steampunk bike-powered tank:
Looks a little front heavy I guess, but whatever. Nobody's going to be driving it outside of the Red Bull Fluntag™. Unless of course, certain higher ups at the Pentagon receive a certain military proposal. DHL don't fail me now!
Well, that's all I got for now. So until I turn on my scanner again, here's more quasi-Japanese parodies.
And remember, next time there'll be more fan service. . . I guess for Darrell or something. I think he's my fan.
It's been a hard working 3 day weekend leaving us with 3, count 'em, 3 shots left to animate before we go into post production for the new short- IIUM/KUS. Post production seems like an odd way to put it, I'm sure there's a better animation term. What I mean is before we have to scan in all of the shots, create a color scheme, color all the shots, composite them, edit down the audio, build and polish the entire soundtrack, and you know, decide it all sucks and wasn't worth it.
But there's still a bit of time before we realize it all sucks because the last 2 shots are going to be tough. In fact, the last shot is sorta like 8 seperate shots rolled into one, but whatever.
In the meantime here's a a rough design for one of the characters in the last shot. This robot fellow is half an homage to Robo from Chrono Trigger, and half stolen ideas from Appleseed.
Pencil test time. I've been working on this shot for my upcoming short (code named: IIUM/KUS) for the past couple nights. Here's a rough test of a fellow getting hit with a staff. Not a bo-staff. I don't play like that. Either you call it a staff or a bow, no "bo-staffs" around me. Donatello has a bo, Gandalf has a staff, and I guess Robin Hood had a quarter staff. . . Look, that's just the way it is in my book. Saying bo-staff is like the equivalent of saying Japanimation.
Ok well it's probably not, I just googled it, and "bo staff" did show up on an online store called Karate Depot. But Wikipedia has an entry for BO'S not bo staffs. So yeah anyways, here's the shitty pencil test.
Cartoon violence is hard man. That amazing Warner Bros. crew did this shit the best. It is truly an art form, and after finally giving a go at it, I realize how awesome those animators were and how shitty I am.
