It has begun

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!

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!!!

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA TOMORROW!!!

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

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

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

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


Late Nights & Robot Rights

Wish I had my own

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

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

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

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

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

So 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.

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!

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