Dynomite! Dynomite!

I was inspired to try to create some pixel art after seeing this piece of fanart on the Black Dynamite Facebook feed. I originally wanted to do an idle animation, figuring that this pixel animation stuff is kinda primitive and couldn't be that hard. But after three hours of work, I realized that pixel art is no joke.

My goal was to make something that matched the Street Fighter Zero/Alpha style and had a Ryu sprite sheet from that game to use as reference. But it's really not that close. I'm not feeling the pose either, so I have a feeling that I'll be revisiting this at some point in the near future. 

Baby got back

Back study that turned into a painting exercise. Even after this, the human back remains an area of great wonder and mystery.

Painted in Sketchbook Pro.

Bunches of Punches

Here's an exercise that I did recently to evaluate Toon Boom Animate and practice some action stuff for whenever I get around to doing something with Kinniku Fighter.

2012 California International Animation Festival

I'm proud to announce that The Turtle and the Monkey was selected for the 2012 California International Animation Festival. The festival itself is actually a month-long event in which the selected films are shown on KAZV-TV in Modesto, California at various times throughout the month of June. The Turtle and the Monkey falls into the "General 1" block which includes films that the festival committee rated for ages 7+. This block of films will be shown on the following dates:

• Friday, June 01, 2012 - 1:00 PM
• Thursday, June 07, 2012 - 1:00 PM
• Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - 1:00 PM
• Monday, June 18, 2012 - 1:00 PM
• Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 1:00 PM

KAZV can be found in the Modesto, California area on Comcast Channel 195 and broadcast channel 14. Sadly, I live only 15-20 miles from Modesto and can't get this channel :-/

All films are eligible for an audience award, so please vote for The Turtle and the Monkey if you feel so inclined.  Voting is open until June 30, 2012.

League Champion!

I won my fantasy basketball league championship a couple of weeks ago in an intense finals matchup that pitted my team, the Dragon BallerZ, against a team that had gone undefeated up to that point. My team battled valiantly and eked out a win by a mere 5 fantasy points.

Anything is possible! ANYTHING IS POOOSSIIBLLLLLLLLE!!!

An illustration I made for my team at the start of the season. From left: Danny Granger, Eric Gordon, Joakim Noah, Russell Westbrook, and Al Horford. Strangely enough, like Tenshinhan, Horford was the first to "die". And like Kulilin, Eric Gordon went down and was revived multiple times.

Backgrounds for 'The Turtle and the Monkey'

My student film, 'The Turtle and the Monkey' is 'finished' and in the process of being entered into film festivals. There are still a few things that can use improvement, or that make me cringe while watching it with company. But at some point, you've just got to let your baby go, let it fly off into the sky and proudly see it soar or watch in horror as it crashes to the ground and gets eaten by a cat.

The production process was interesting in that it was backwards when compared to how an animated production would typically be handled. I went into animation without much of an idea about how the environments were going to look, because I couldn't paint or draw environments. I worked on the animation with a general idea of where the character would fit into a shot, but I had to take several basic painting classes to be able to actually do the backgrounds themselves. I feel that I still have a long way to go as a painter, but I don't think these turned out too badly.

Scene1

 

Scene 2

Scrolling background for a long right-to-left walking shot.

Not as long right-to-left walking shot

Scene 3

Scene 4

In the film, there is a cross-dissolve from the shot shown in the top pic to the one at the bottom

Scene 5

Distorted BG to accommodate for a pan from right-to-left.

Process

Corel Painter X was used for both layout and background painting. Because I learned to paint with actual paint, Painter's mixer felt way more natural to me than picking colors out of a swatch in Photoshop.

I started off by exporting a snapshot from Toon Boom Studio that I felt best represented the shot.

I then brought the image into Painter, reduced the characters' layer opacity, and drew the environment, as well as notes and framing information.

Then I painted the backgrounds, giving attention to layer hierarchy for when the artwork was imported into Toon Boom Studio. This was especially important for the shots that involved camera movement. Toon Boom Studio was used for all of the compositing because (1) I didn't know how to use After Effects at this point and (2) the ability to position and move elements in 3D space within Toon Boom is awesome.

Not that I recommend going about a project this way, but if you can't draw/paint environments worth a lick and you're willing to learn, at least you aren't completely dead in the water.

Didn't the first person to run a marathon die afterwards?

Here's a short cycle that I made to test a potential workflow using Flash for an upcoming project. All of the animation was done (slowly) on paper, then scanned and imported into Flash. Cleanup, ink & paint were all handled in Flash.

It's been a while since I last animated with the old paper and lightbox method, and the going was pretty rough. I kept looking around for some magic 'cmd+z' keys to whisk my mistakes away. And you never have to deal with greasy erasers on a wacom. I guess I'm just not old-school in this regard.

Based on the way that the video breaks up when exporting from Flash, I don't think it's the way to go. I've exported this video a number of times and the glitches always appear at some point.

*Update - the blank background of the original video bothered me enough to make me revisit this video and give it some groovy speedlines.