I've done a lot of drawing today, which is unusual because unfortunely I don't draw a whole lot like I used to. I drew these lot this morning looking through the newspaper. Points for anyone who can guess any of them, although I don’t even know the names of two of them, and they mostly don't look a whole lot like them. Anyway, I might try and do this every morning after me breakfast or something. That would be nice.
Also, here's some Looney Tunes fan art. I had a sudden urge to draw this a little while ago and finally got around to finishing it at college today. I inked it in blue for some reason, but I like how it looked so I scanned it in colour rather than greyscale. Why has Daffy got two heads? Who cares? The idea of this picture was to try and make it look sort of like the kind of frame you would find in a Bob Clampett cartoon: Off model and all over the place. I plan to maybe add colour to this and post it on Deviant Art soon, but it'll have to wait as I have a Afro Lady storyboard and animatic to get done in just over a week. I'll post more Afro Lady stuff here soon, though!
Movie I desperatly want to see of the moment: Chibi Maruko Chan Movie 2. I have only seen musical pieces from the film, and even ripped the tracks so I can play them on my MP3 player. The animation in the clips is stunning, and you can see said clips here. Mind you, anything Maasaki Yuasa does work on instantly turns to gold.
As I've mentioned before, I intend to re-design the Tea N Crumpets website in the near-ish future. As nice as the current design looked back when I first made it, it's starting to get a little old now, and my style has changed a little since. A lot of the current animation is rather stiff, and some of the character designs aren’t 100% to my taste anymore, although I will be keeping most of them as they are they will be re-animated for Version 2. here are some doodles I've done recently of some brainstorming and character re-designing. You know the drill: Click on 'em for bigger views.
This page lot was drawn a little while ago now, and I defiantly will not be using that logo style. I do like the little font I made up however, might have to re-download me a font creating program and make that. The "Yaa! Eef!" characters were designed over a year ago, but now I might consider using them for something.
This 2nd page was made just before dinner today, basically a load of the old characters in more deformed styles and some new ones too. I'm defiantly liking the complete redesign of RabRab (The rabbit type thing with the "MOO" hammer). I really don't like his original design much anymore thanks to complications with how the arms hold the hammer. Simplifying the shape and face (removing that rubbish grin he had) and removing the arms seems to have helped a lot. Not sure what to call those two new characters (The multi-eyed box thing and the spiky thing with the black eye) yet. Gimmie comments on what you lot think!
The animation should of been online 2 days ago, but it has been absolute torture trying to get this thing online. My first pick, YouTube, decided that it will only upload the film incredibly compressed, to the point where you can barely see it. So I signed up to another embed-video upload site, Daily Motion, which also uploaded it really compressed, not as bad as YouTube, but still too compressed to enjoy. I also had a go at converting it into flash, and the SWF file ended up being bigger than the WMV, for some reason. I've also uploaded the film to Google Video, but the verifying with that site takes forever so hopefully when it does go up it won't be like YouTube's and DailyMotion's, and then I will, as I originally intended, embed it into this blog. Still, this has been driving me up the wall. I hate computers.
But, I have managed to upload it somewhere, where it HAS worked and worked well, but it's not a site you can embed with. So while this isn't how I wanted to present it, here it is after two days of internet insanity, uploaded to putfile.com. Click on the image below to watch it there.
So there it is, at long ruddy last. When Google Video finally decide to upload it there, I'll see how it looks and if it's alright I'll edit this post and embed it here. This is the last time I decide to use a video stream website to debut my animations, however. Also, I might be posting some more details on someof the animation in the film at some point soon, although I do have some more coursework to get sorted within the next 4 weeks. This animation, however, is in the can. Expect to see a big update on Tea N Crumpets of it soon-ish.
EDIT: The Google Video file tunred out to be too compressed as well, and most people can't seem to view the putfile upload. Why does the internet hate Traffk so?
EDIT2: Ok, so it's not perfect, but for the people who can't view the putfile video, here's a stream from dailyMotion. It's still haevely compressed, but noy as bad as YouTube's. Try to enjoy it >_>. That, or you can wait till I upload a flash video of it at Tea N Crumpets.
Ok, so your all gonna have to wait for Traffik, even though it's been ready since last night, because YouTube doesn't want to upload it without it becoming so compressed you can barely make it out. While you wait, check out these blogs I've added to the links on the side that I've been reading recently.
Identifying Animators and Their Scenes is a treasure trove of classical animation clips, which also contains great info on who animated what in said short films. Thad K really knows what his talking about when it comes to classical animation, and his woken me up to something I previously wouldn't have noticed until now: Bob Clampett cartoons are some of the greatest ever put to film. I've been hooked to this blog ever since Cartoon Brew linked to it, and the clips not only inspired me to pick up the 2nd volume of Looney Tunes Golden Collection at last (the fact that HMV was selling it for £17 probably also had something to do with it), but also inspired how I animated the characters in Traffik (As I'll show you when I finally get the film online) Here's a short clip he posted a little while back, that's I've watched about 100 times over now:
Speaking of golden era animation, Classic Cartoons also features a lot of Bob Clampett and others, only instead of clips 'Duck Dodgers' (as he calls himself) posts images of the best scenes frame by frame. Being able to see these animations as seperate frames like this is not only very handy in seeing how they may of been pulled off, but shows just how every cel of these films were art in themselves. Plus, there are some truly brilliant shots in there like these:
Great stuff.
Anyway, lastly we have DUCK WALK. This blog hasn't been going long, but already there's some brilliant stuff there. Set up b the guy who created the utterly bizarre and utterly superb flash website CastleBERDskillz (which you really have to see to believe, although currenly it seems to be down. Darn.), it offers some stunning artwork as well as images from the all those awesome old rubber-hose dance cartoons. They really don't make them like this anymore, but are a real inspiration. below is one of my favorite sketcheshe has posted there. Words cannot describe how much I love this:
In other news, I can't belive I totally forgot to plug my other blog, Sega Freaks, here. With it I'm bascilly rumblging up any old Sega related stuff can find from Childhood memories to old merchindise and magazine scans. If anyone's interested, I'm also looking for admin staff for it, so I'll have more than just me updating it.
Yep, I'm into the final stages of making this animation, which is around 85% complete and should hopefully be ready to release tonight. I'm also going to make this the first of my animations which shall debut here at the blog, via a YouTube upload. Usually I link to Deviantart from here, but this time I'll do the oppersite. I spent days working on colouring in every frame, which was not only taking forever but didn't exactly look very good, until I decided to try something else using the layer styles in Photoshop, which not only looks 10 tens better, but can be done in a couple of clicks. Here are some screen shots of the almost finished film. Watch this space, it's on it's way!
EDIT: The film's ready, but YoiTube won't upload it it. "Internal errors". Raaggh.
Around this time in 1906, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, considered by many as the first known full animation recorded on film, was screened to the unsuspected public. Created by Stuart J. Blackton, a British guy who moved to America, the film was animated on a blackboard. For those who have never seen it, I've found it on YouTube, where it was submitted by 'GodsHand'.
So Happy birthday animation, the greatest art form ever invented. By the way, I'm well aware that this is only roughly when the film debuted, plus many reckon that there were films before this that count as the first animtion, but this is the most well known eariest one, plus I posted this today because they were talking about it on the telly, which reminded me.
I've done a lot of drawing today, which is unusual because unfortunely I don't draw a whole lot like I used to. I drew these lot this morning looking through the newspaper. Points for anyone who can guess any of them, although I don’t even know the names of two of them, and they mostly don't look a whole lot like them. Anyway, I might try and do this every morning after me breakfast or something. That would be nice.
Also, here's some Looney Tunes fan art. I had a sudden urge to draw this a little while ago and finally got around to finishing it at college today. I inked it in blue for some reason, but I like how it looked so I scanned it in colour rather than greyscale. Why has Daffy got two heads? Who cares? The idea of this picture was to try and make it look sort of like the kind of frame you would find in a Bob Clampett cartoon: Off model and all over the place. I plan to maybe add colour to this and post it on Deviant Art soon, but it'll have to wait as I have a Afro Lady storyboard and animatic to get done in just over a week. I'll post more Afro Lady stuff here soon, though!
