I've always had the idea for a digital comic about a hobo who is always trying to scheme for money and failing.. the problem with this is it doesn't relate well to Youtube. BUT, a digital comic is closer to animation than gaming or vlogging.. therefor I'll be getting better at animating more frequently.
I've also had trouble with designing the character. I'm just not confident of any of the hobo characters I've designed.
I could do some kind of interactive comic.. you choose what the character does.
This is from 2009. Hobo Hopkins finds a chicken mascot suit and a dildo in a dumpster.. he decides to become the vigilante super hero, THE GOLDEN COCK.
Most of the time I'm distracted by something called youtube. I seem to have ditched the idea of playing video games for now.. but I'm substituting that with watching videos of games I wouldve played. I watched a Fable 3 video from The Yogscast (BlueXephos) today. The whole video just revolved around Simon being glitched and stuck inside of a tree.. so, uh, heres what I pictured:
I'm going extremely slow with the animation progress.. BUT I HAVE A GOOD REASON! The reason I don't have a whole lot of animations this week.. is, uh.. I was fighting tornadoes. One tried to come to my city, and I flying karate kicked it in the gibblets.
A bit of wobbly fat walk cycle from the Animator's Survival Kit.
I ordered quite a few animation/drawing books recently too.
I was going to order The Illusion of Life, but I figured I already had the PDF, and the book was 42 dollars.. could afford to get another book if I didn't buy it. :(
I also ordered a cheap lightbox, some tracing paper, and some drawing pencils. I'm ready to get away from the computer a bit.
I want to do a ton more studies. Figure drawing, head studies, still lifes. I WILL DO THIS! I WILL!
Alright, it's almost 5am. Should I stay awake and work on some stuff? ...We'll see. We'll see!
April 21st? DOOMSDAY? DOOMSDAY SCHMOOMSDAY! I've survived TWO apocalypses now! Y2K COULDN'T TAKE ME OUT WITH FALLING PLANES EITHER!
Anyways.
I've been following along with the Animator's Survival Kit and the dvd's.
I'm feeling really stiff while drawing with Flash and my drawing tablet. As soon as I get my tax check, I'm going to order a cheap light table and some paper. Hopefully get away from the computer.
Breaking some joints. I'm quickly learning that I need to stop with my sketchy sketcherson style of drawing in Flash. I don't think it's going to work terribly well for animation. lol These actually require quite a few inbetweens.. some of which I had, but flash keeps crashing on certain undos. What gives, yo?
I think one thing I've really been fighting this week is distraction.. and by fighting, I mean it's beating the hell out of me and I'm getting tired of it. I'm not working on animating nearly as much as I should be, even though I am really excited when I think of having my own animations finished. So, I think I just need to take the time to shut off the internet each day and force myself to finish something.
Now if you don't mind.. I'm going to shrink some of these Double Bounce attempts down so no one can see just how horrible they actually are! A double bounce is when a character goes up twice in one step. Usually you only go up or down once.. I think.
This is from the chapter in the book where they start creating their own walk animations by adjusting certain things. Shoulders and hips oppose each other. Chest is arched out.. the legs have broken joints.
I've been attempting animation for a few weeks now. Something about thinking of animating a funny little 2 minute cartoon just gets me all excited. Seeing characters come to life as you animate them isn't bad either, and I haven't even gotten into the juicy bits of creating my own character, with his own little traits and quirks.
I got the Animator's Survival Kit book, and I've been reading it a lot. The videos have been quite useful too.
Started with the bouncing ball. Squash and stretch! Timing and spacing! Easing in, easing out? The ball bouncing off into the distance maybe should have slowed down, but I really really wanted it to bounce off into the distance!
It'll be nice to be able to animate silly little things I think of. Countless times I've been listening to a conversation when someone would say something completely normal, and I'd just burst out laughing. My verbal skills aren't up to par, so it was impossible to explain just exactly why I was laughing randomly. I'm not insane. This is how my mind works. You talk about bumping into your friend down the street, and I picture you actually bumping into some guy in a street and knocking him over.
Next I moved onto overlapping action, as suggested by some friends. I struggled with it a bit, and maybe it could be better. Practice practice practice!
Also, animation just seems like the best way to go about making some kind of living as an artist. Animation can help with game development, web cartoons, storyboarding/drawing comics. And it's about time I focus on just one thing, even though I feel everything I've worked on to now has strengthened a skill I needed to get to this point.
There was a point where I was working on another animation and I wasn't sure how to go about coloring it. Really put a damper on my mood, but in the meantime I attempted some sketches of flour sacks with emotion. Then I did this sack falling off a window sill.
Decided to work on some head turns and a running animation loop! Lots of Ren and Stimpy, and remembering how the dumb Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy ran with his back bending and his tongue waving in the wind. lol Plan to add a little bobbing at some point.
The last few days I've been watching the Animation Survival Kit dvds and taking notes. I'm up to the inventing walks section. This animation is basically one straight out of the book.
One day during all of these exercises, I randomly started sketching easter bunny poses.. and I decided to make a quick easter animation. lol Maybe a bit grotesque.. but this is how life works! Easter bunnies fart, eggs come out, chocolate is born.
I'm hoping I can make content like the video above for my youtube channel. Except longer, and better. A series of funny shorts, something consistent. One to two minutes long. It could be purely animation, or I could even do a live action Roger Rabbit style cartoon with my Canon T2i.
Up to this point I've just uploaded videos of me painting over the years, maybe a few "funny" videos with some friends, and a game or two.
If you want to subscribe, I'd appreciate it! I'm really going to try to get some interesting content up in the future.
I recently organized all of my videos into playlists because they were so scatterbrained, and while I was at it, I piled all of my favorite animations into a playlist too:
This could be just an excuse to watch all of these old and new cartoons without feeling like an overgrown child.. but I'm enjoying it so much so far.
What are your favorite cartoons? Ren and Stimpy, the George Liquor program, Adventure Time? If anyone actually reads this blog, or in the future when I look back at this to see how much I've progressed, what animations do you like? :o New, old, it doesn't matter!
