Daily Doodle #66

So I hear there's gonna be a new NiGHTS game after all these years. I'm very excited, but also just a little worried on how well Sega will pull off a follow up, what with recent not too great games. Get the Outrun 2 guys (AM2) on the case!

Portfolio Front Page

This is what I have spent the last few days working on (rather than, say, my coursework. I need to get my priorities straight) for the front page of my in-construction portfolio. Drawn on A2 snow white card. Click to enlarge, please.

Daily Doodle #65

3 days went by with me forgetting to even draw one of these, let alone doing any bloody coursework. Bah!

Daily Doodle #64

Dam you children's television! In case your wondering, Shaun the Sheep is a new series by Aardman starring that sheep from Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave. In the two weeks it's been running I've actually remembered to watch it...twice. Maybe they'll do a marathon at some point, to which I'll probably get sick of the theme tune. SHEEP.

The Howdooyoodoo in Chalk

Chalk on black cartridge paper. Considering it only took about 10-15minutes, I like how it turned out. It has that fluffy rough look I was after. That font's going in the film, too.

Daily Doodle #63

I haven't done any tablet based "Daily Doodles" since I left for Anaheim in December. Shame on you! I mean me! Not you, you haven't done anything! Now I'm talking to myself!

Ahem, anyway, I'm gonna try and start spitting these things out as often as possible again, as the last thing I do before I pop to bed (so these will mostly be showing up at midnight or one in the morning). This one was just some footballer in the Newspaper, because there wasn't any grotesque celebs in it today for once. They're fun to draw though, so you'll probably end up seeing lots of Jade Goody's and Jordan's here. That or I'll just make some shit up. Hey, the Fuji's and the Labbox came from doing these things, so you never know.

P.S: remind me to change the music in that radio blog thing in the corner some time. This is a reminder for myself. Rarapatarsh.

More Milton Knight Goodness on YouTube!

You lot already know just how much I dig this guy's work, but here's another update e-mailed to me just today. Knight provided YouTuber Dan Variano with some amazing content of his, including the original pilot animation for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (remember how it turned up in one of the episodes, as shown previously? This is the original copy in much, much better quality, and how it was originally made to sell the idea), and scenes from the first episode of said cartoon (before the editing and sound process, with just voice acting in there).

What really caught me by surprise was hearing that additional animation in that pilot episode was done by Ed Love, a legend who had been in the industry since the 1930's at Disney, working on milestones films such as Flowers and Trees and Fantasia, then later working for Tex Avery, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera. Wow! The raw talent of these animators shines through in the animation, which can be seen how it was meant to be at last (I've embedded it below):



It's a real shame the entire series didn't have even half of the amazing skill and fun seen in this pilot footage. The out-sourced animators tried sometimes, but were often quite lazy and didn't come close to the vision seen above. Hopefully Shout Factory can obtain this footage for the Adventures of Sonic DVD they have planned.

Not only is there footage from the Sonic cartoon, but also some episodes of The Twisted tales of Felix the Cat, another series from the early 1990's that Milton Knight often directed, storyboarded and animated for. I only vaguely remember this series as a kid, when it was aired on the satellite on the same channel as the Sonic cartoon, but I'm loving what I see now of it: the series had Felix's great surreal humor fully intact, even if they did give him a voice, as there's plenty of great 1930's style gags and lots of great animation throughout. I hope this series gets a DVD release one day, as it's easily up there with Ralph Bakshi's New Adventures of Mighty Mouse. I've embedded one of the Felix clips below:



If you wanna see the rest, (the Albert ad Einstein safety commercial animation is particularly great) get going to Dan Variano's YouTube account already! This is early 1990's cartooning at it's best!

Work in progress: a lot.

Along with that GagaWing demo I'm pretty much at a road block with at the moment (anyone got any advice on making counters work well in action script? For example: So they stop when reduced to zero, rather than climbing back up the numbers again?), I also have three animations to produce by may, as you can see on that little In Development section I added to the side there. In short: I have a lot on my plate. But I'm not one who likes to hide away too much, so...

What time is it? ADVENTURE SNEAK PREVIEW TIME!

The Howdooyoodoo

Based on a poem by John Agard about a giant plant creature who lives in England. I'm setting it in London and the Howdooyoodoo itself is a sort of Mr.men/Totoro mash-up covered in moss with a rather spiffy top hat and cane. The technique is not decided yet, and there isn't a script as such, so I have along way to go with this. Concept art below:

Rab Rab

An Tea N Crumpets idea that has now evolved into a short film. Will use a combination of 2D characters on a 3D backdrop. You've seen doodles of this one before. Currently storyboarding this, and hope to start animating it very soon. It might even be ready in a few weeks if things go to plan!

And yes, unfortunately Rock Paper Scissors is on the shelf until I get time to work on it again, which should hopefully be when I break up from this semester and have completed these projects. I also have an essay to sort out...eep!

The Ink Unit

Did I ever mention I love black and white sound cartoons from the 20s/30s? Here's a tribute.
Clockwise from middle left:

Felix the Cat (1919, Otto Messmer.)

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (1927, Walt Disney's character until he lost the rights to Universal, which they only last year got back. This drawing of him is based on the Walter Lantz era Oswald.)

Mickey Mouse (1928, Walt Disney.)

Flip the Frog (1930, Ub Iwerks.)

Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1928, Warner Brothers first cartoon character.)

Foxy (1931, Warner Brothers. Almost too Mickey Mouse like in appearance.)

Bimbo (1930, Max Fleischer. Ended up becoming Betty Boop's sidekick.)

Don Dog (1930, Van Beuren. Only in three films before he was transformed into a human character called Jerry.)

Most of these characters are not on your TV screen anymore, all because they have no colour! The only way to really see them now is through bootleg DVD's like those by Jerry beck and from websites like Duck Dodger's Classic Cartoons!

GagaWing back on track again

When I said I was going to attempt to program GagaWing, my constantly on-and-off scrolling shooter project, in Flash, I wasn't joking. I started working on it Monday, and I've gotten further than I ever did trying to program the game as a Dreamcast home brew game. I've never really bought up this projecton this blog before, but it's been something I've been wanting to make for about 4 years now (I started planning it in 2003). Manga-Gaga may be dead as a webcomic, but the characters will return for this tribute to classic gaming. I'm starting off with a demo as part of a Uni project, then I hope to continue working on it over the summer. Here's a screen shot of what I have so far..

I've never really done any game programming in Flash before, and I've thrown myself straight into the deep end of the pool, so I've been grabbing tutorials and source files galore and seeing where I can go from there. So far I have movement using the arrow keys, shooting with the Ctrl key and a scrolling background, as well as a title screen that for some reason won't skip to the next scene when I press enter unless the SWF is sitting in Flash MX itself.

I've also found out that a website has put out a download for Flash that will let you program a game to also work using the Nintendo Wii remote's range of buttons. This means I could go into the action script, tinker about a little, and the game would work on not only a PC keyboard but also via the Wii's 'net browser on a TV with it's game controller! I have a long why to go yet, though. Keep your eyes peeled, as I have a lot of new stuff soon going into development, including a brand new animation. Unfortunately, this means 'Rock Paper Scissors' is on hold for a while, back I'll attempt to get back into that after this semester also.