Craptastic

Not much posts lately, quite busy. Here's a little teaser.

'Nuff said.

Old Storyboard

Right now, everything considering my animation is finally starting to fall into place. I have managed to create a main character I understand, figured out how an episode should work, and I'm currently in the middle of creating a storyboard for the pilot episode I'm going to animate. With that said and in mind, I would like to start showing you some of the phases the story went through before I got that far.

What I'm going to show you now is actually the very first drawn-out version of a 'story' for the superhero. It was used for a pitch to get some money to afford voice actors (which was succesful, I got the money). This story is quite different from what it's right now, especially the way the main character works. In this story, the main character is basically a lazy-ass person who doesn't really WANT to do anything besides sitting on his ass and watching TV. In the end, this proved too hard to keep using as a motivation, so I re-tooled him in newer versions of the stories. But more on that later. Enjoy!

EPISODE: 'The Spectacular Sidekick' 

One day,  someone comes knocking on the Superhero's door.

His visitor is a young boy called 'the Sidekick', who is appointed to study superheroism under his wing by the government.

Because the superhero doesn't quite feel like doing 'super' things, he talks the Sidekick into cleaning his house, claiming it's 'for training purposes'.

The Sidekick gladly does exactly that, and the Superhero ignores the fact that the city is in terrible danger at that moment. He's not one to actually WORRY about the city.

The Sidekick, however, has too much energy in his body, and starts kung-fu-ing with the vacuum cleaner....

Destroying the superhero's appartment instead of cleaning it up.

The Superhero decides that it can't be helped: to make sure the Sidekick behaves himself, he has to fight crime so that the Sidekick will be happy. Thus, he defeats the monster threatening the city.

The monster, defeated, falls. Right on the Superhero's appartment. Everybody rejoices, save for the Superhero himself.

Though this story did essentialy work, you can also see the problem already. The superhero needs some kind of 'pressure' from outside to be goaded into any form of action. It would simply be too bothersome to keep this up if this animation would ever be serialized. There had to be SOME motivation from the main character as well. As fun as the idea of a superhero sitting on the couch was, it simply wouldn't be as effective on the long run. I did like the sidekick, though, and decided to keep him around for future storyboards.

Workspace Pictures

I thought it would be nice to give you guys an idea of my workspace, so I took some pictures today :). I share the room with four other animators (who were conveniently away when I took the pictures). Enjoy!

The door to my office... Prepare for the awesomeness behind!

Tadaam! My working office! My spot is in the back, on the left!

And there, we find my Imac (provided by school) A bit messy, like I like it. I can't seem to work in a tidy workspace!

The upper part of my wall.... early animation ideas..

..And the lower part. Mostly stuff for my Character Thesis.

The first story draft I made the past week. More on that soon!

My wall calender. The green things are important appointments! Mustn't miss those!

...And our bookcase, Filled with lots of cool books to read!

As an extra, my 'office' (or room) in Oostvoorne. Also a bit messy, as you can see!

And let's look at the wall there! Drawings I'm happy with! Hurray!

That's it, folks! More updates really soon, I hope to get some go-aheads for the story soon, and if I do, I will post those! See ya around!

Animation update!

Well, it's been a while... Crazy stuff going on here, but I finally found the time to give you another update on what I've been doing these past few weeks. Of course, I am still working on my thesis, and I can say it's going really well. Basically, I have no worries in that area whatsoever, and I'm quite confident I will be able to finish it in time, as well as making it an entertaining piece to read. 

That being said, let's look at the animation I'm maki

ng. It has gone through a lot of stages by now, so I want to give you some background into that. The idea for this animation came to me almost a year ago. I wanted to make an animated series about a superhero. Superheroes have always been a great interest of mine, I have a whole stash of comics (mostly spiderman) back at home. Since I knew quite a bit about the subject, I figured it would be nice to make fun o

ut of it :).

At first, I came up with the idea of having a superhero with a major burn-out. Someone who would basically NOT be interested in crime fighting, but rather just hangs around his lair, using his super-large monitor as a cinema screen instead of having it to observe the city and that kinda stuff. He would also have a sidekick, literally named 'the Sidekick'. That kid would be an irritating little boy with too much energy in his body, trying to get the superhero to work. I still really like the first idea, but quite soon, I ran into some problems with the concept. Basically, the main character (the superhero) had no motivation besides having none. Looking at other animated series, these characters hardly ever are used as main characters, and for a reason. They are incredibly hard to write for. You have to put them into a situation where they can't do anything but act, which is quite hard. So I made some changes.

My discision was that the superhero had to be kind of interested in his job. In the end, it turned out that he was most interested in the the adoration that being a superhero brought along. He is in it for the appreciation of the crowd. Unfortunately for the character, he has some inherent flaws that prevent him from reaching that goal. For instance, he is an impatient, arrogant bastard whose main drive is to achieve HIS goals, not those of other people. Still, he believes himself to be a good guy. He thinks he is a blessing to the city, and also acts like that. The fact that the other people complain about his actions, is dismissed by saying that the people are just being ignorant, and don't see the bigger picture.

Another element I am thinking of adding, is having the superhero being plain delusional. For instance, if a sweet old granny crossing the road is forcing him to wait, he will actually FORCE himself to see the granny as a supervillain, and attack her. You could also say he's just plain psychotic, which is good :D. As for the sidekick, I'm still thinking about keeping him, but perhaps as more of a 'voice of sanity'. More on that later.

Right now, I'm working on the storyboard/script for an episode that I want to animate. I'm hoping to be able to show you some more of that later on. So, see ya next time, hopefully with some MORE visuals.