Captain Bullshit - The First two Scenes

It took a while before I posted them, but here are two of the scenes from Captain Bullshit. They premiered at the graduation expo, and now they're here for everyone to see :). They are not FINAL final yet, but pretty darn close to it. Of course, they ain't full quality here since Blogspot can't handle that kind of awesome :P. Also, I have started the work on the pilot again, and hope to finish it by december. Good luck with that...  Enjoy!

Sort of an Update

Hey all! Wow, it's been more then a month since my last update... WHAT HAPPENED? Well, I'll tell you all about it.

First off, I graduated! Believe it or not, but I didn't just graduate instantly. My teachers were kind of curious if I really DID know my character, Captain Bullshit, very well. My thesis was on characters, and they missed Captain Bullshit's 'Psychological Profile'. So then, I had to write a supplement. I ended up giving them eight extra pages to read. After that.... They pretty much let me graduate :D.

Sadly, there were some complications after that. I won't go into details, but I had quite a big medical setback after that, which took the wind out of my sails for a good two weeks. Two weeks which were already very busy weeks to begin with. Not only was Captain Bullshit introduced to the general public, but much more exciting (to me) was that I got to be best man at my best friend's (she's a girl) wedding. It was an exciting day for all of us, but I was honoured that I was allowed to be part of it from so close up.

After that, I started moving stuff from my room in Hilversum, which is kind of useless to me now. It simply costs too much, and I don't have a job around there. I do have a job at my parent's restaurant for now, so that's raking up the cash. It also takes quite a chunck of time out of my schedule which I could use to animate or find an animation job, but... Well, those things will come in time. 

To treat myself in these stressful days, I finally bought a Playstation 3, the new slimline model. I've gotten Metal Gear Solid 4, Street Fighter 4, and will have Batman: Arkham Asylum for my birthday, which is tomorrow! 26 years already... I'm growing OLD. So that's relieving some stress, as long as I don't get my ass kicked in Street Fighter.

And finally, I received my diploma last weekend. The paper is in my hands, school is done with... So now... Real life starts! Expect some Captain Bullshit clips up here real soon :).

Momma Bullshit

Well, it seems like me 'taking it easy' yesterday is going to pay off. Yesterday evening, I managed to do a colored image of Captain Bullshit's mother, Momma Bullshit. Today, I have spent time working on the same shot, too. I think it will be ready for animation in about two hours from now. Seeing as it is mostly lipsync animation, it won't be all that hard to get it moving once I start with it, and that scene is roughly 20 seconds, so that's very nice :). Without further ado, the picture (don't mind the background).

Momma Bullshit actually came out better-looking then I originally intended :). My first thought was to have a really old lady be his mom, but I found that, when combined with her voice, a slightly younger mother would also work, and be fun in the process. Besides, there's an old lady in the animation later on, so who wants to look at two really old ladies, right? Well, maybe the audience of 'Golden Girls' would...

I also came across a picture I drew only two weeks ago for one of the first scenes. It clearly demonstrates what is a problem to many animators who use 'traditional' tools, namely that they have to get 'a grip' on their character. This being one of the first fully worked-out pictures I've drawn, it now looks a lot less good then the ones in later scenes (compare it to the Captain Bullshit above, if you will). Luckily, I think this is the only picture that seems to have that problem. Guess I'll have to redo it a bit, then. Perhaps I can just do some touch-ups to make it look more in style again *sigh*. 

On a bright note, I received a lot of backgrounds from the Artrix yesterday. This means I have most, if not all backgrounds for the animation sequence I've prepared for the exam committee and the exposition. So that'll look real good once it's finished. 

So, with tuesday coming ominously close now, I guess I should get back to work. See ya!

One of 'those' days

Do any other animators ever have one of those days where they feel they can't really produce anything that day? Well, I do. Right now, I feel like I really have to force myself to work, moreso then usual. It's not really pleasant, cause you get relatively little work done on those days, and the work tends to be less good in quality.

Perhaps it was because of yesterday evening. Some of my parent's friends came over to barbeque. That ain't a big problem, but they always have kids with them (teenagers). On those nights, it's kind of my 'duty' to go do stuff with the kids and play videogames and stuff, which meant that yesterday evening I couldn't do anything for my project, which was a shame, really.

Oh well. I'll just try and do some relaxing stuff first, and then try to tackle some animation work. The show must go on!

Storyboard Comparisons

A bit of a lack of posts lately, but that's because I'm actually making headway :). I have a lot of cool animation done by now, but I want to save it for the exposition on september 11th. After that, I'll be sure to post it on the blog here, too.

Meanwhile, I thought it would be nice to take a look at how the thing went from rough storyboard to animation. First picture is the earliest storyboard, the second is the storyboard in style, and the final one is how it looks in the animation. Pretty cool, I think. Enjoy!

You can also see the difference between the style in the beginning and later on here, if you look carefully. Captain Bullshit was designed to have a cape at first (which was too much of a hassle in the end), and Earl was entirely different. I also played with the idea of Earl having a long nose, but that didn't really work for the frontal shot you see here. So this is what it is now :).

FINALLY! Animating!

This marks the first day I truly felt like I was 'animating'. Now don't think I've been sitting on my bum so far. I animate in Anime Studio Pro, which basically is a computerized cut-out animation program. It's very easy, and goes really fast, but the preparation (the puppets to use) take a lot of time. Fortunately, the bulk of the work I'll be tackling for the school deadline is done.

I'll be honest. I had some doubt as to weither or not my models would work. Especially the lipsyncing was causing me nightmares. Fortunately, it worked GREAT! Better then I had even hoped :). Sure, it's a little gimmicky, and there have been better attempts at lipsyncing (darn you, Disney!), but I'm happy with it for now. I really laughed my butt of when I saw the results. My poor computer wasn't laughing, however. It seems that working in Full HD is a step too challenging for it. It lets me animate in Full HD, and export it too, but playing it... That's a different story alltogether.

I'll go back to work now, and finish another scene. When that's done, I'm positive that I can put out that particular scene before the deadline. So long!

A hard day's work

Well, the photoshopping for today has finished. I always do my 'main animation work' from 10 am. to 5 pm. Then, I have dinner at 6, and afterwards I'll do some clean-up on the storyboard, say from 7 'till 10. Good news is that the storyboard drawings are nearly all finished, which means I'll be able to wrap that up soon and then show you guys some of that. I don't want to spoil too much yet though, part of it is the whole thing being a suprise during the project market, september 9th (more on that later). So here's the results of a hard day's work:

Yayz! It's a pair of shoes! Plus, a crappy background (I can't draw them if my life depends on it... Though this was a rushjob and hardly a final background :p. Even I can do way better then that). Is that all?! No. This took me thirty minutes. The rest of the day I spent working on a very complicated, animation-heavy scene. It's ready now, but I'm keeping it to myself so you can be surprised by that later :). Look forward to it!