THE INFLUENCE

Day 10 of stalling till I can get the trailer up.

Thought I'd post my "INFLUENCE MAP"

For those who don't know what that is, it's a fancy term for a "bunch of pictures of other people's work."

  

These are the artists who have inspired me the most over the years. Let us count down

10.) Dave Kupczyk - Try saying that 5 times fast. He's really the most recent member of the club. Watching his work on "Wolverine And The X-men", helped me really start to think differently about the details of the human body and how to translate them into lines.

9.) Sean Galloway - An accomplished character artist with a unique cartooning style. Gets that in reality people don't stand firm like marble statues. Also taught me to be loose with cloth and muscle structure.

8.) Bleedman - I still don't know this person's name; simply the pseudonym: "Bleedman". Well the name certainly doesn't pertain to the colors. I'm really not much of an anime person myself, but as for Bleedman's coloring... It's BEAUTIFUL!

7.) Brian Konietzko - The award winnings show: "Avatar: The Last Air Bender", not to be confuse with the worst movie ever: "The Last Air Bender", (Geez, M. Night Shyamalan, stick to what you're good at.), was a wonderful blend of western an eastern animation techniques that created original unique looking characters who's entire identity identity could be wrapped up in a single glance, due in part to the character design of Brian Konietzko. I once read a helpful article on character design. It said that with a good design you should generally be able to tell who the character is even if they were bald, naked, or a silhouette. Good advice and Konietzko's work is a perfect example of this.

6.) Jeff Matsuda - Jeff Matsuda is like Bartholomew Cubins. You never know what he's gonna pull out of his hat next. every project is COMPLETELY different from the last. Still watching "The Batman" gave me some wonderful insight to drawing and animation that I managed to infuse into my own style. 

5.) Kazuyuki Hoshino - Try saying that 5 times... oh right we've already been down that road. While I'm sure there are several others to be acknowledged here, Hoshino is the most ntable name I could find in reffrence to "SONIC TEAM". The people who made Sonic popular again... Well before Sega drove it into the ground with endless storybook adaptations and anime style game gimmicks. But let's not talk about that. I just love the artwork.

4.) Derrick Wyatt - Character designer for "Ben 10", "Transformers Animated", and the famous "Teen Titans". Just love this guys work. Big heads, big feet, scrawny bodies; this guy gets cartoons. Who needs a perfect bunch of runway models when you can be fun and quirky?

3.) Jim Davis - Garfield creator. Since the beginning, this guy has been in my style arsenal. Never have I seen a comic strip with so much visual depth. Heck it's hard to find a realistic  life drawing that looks this 3 dimensional. Great work. Helped me really think about depth and perspective. Hilarious comic too.

2.) Glenn Keane - Son of Bill Keane. And the greatest thing to happen to Disney since animation, since the Pencil, since... well, Disney. All I know is Glen Kean is the most amazing cartoonist I've ever seen. He knows the human body inside and out and yet can draw characters with such great stylizing and exaggeration, yet it still looks convincingly 3D. He has this way of drawing eyes that have so much life in them. As I like to say: "They are more real than real eyes". 

 

1.) Walt Disney - "The angels sang out... in immaculate chorus... and down from the heavens... descended Walt Disney..." Wait that doesn't rhyme, oops wrong poem. Yeah, I think Walt Disney should be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. No wait, better yet, There should be a Saint Disney Day. Yeah, we should all stay up at night wondering when Saint Disney will drop down the chimney and leave us autographed concept sketches under out Disney Tree. Should we go out and sing Walter Carols?

Ok, I wont' go into the details. Everyone knows who Disney is and to go into it would be to flood the pages of this blog post. I won't torture you with a wealth of information that only I care about.... I'll wait until the next post to do that. :)

THE TEST

Animation TestsAlso known as day 5 of stalling until I can get the trailer up.

Splash

Waterfall

Dolphin

THE LANDSCAPE

Day 2 of stalling until I can get the trailer up.

Some finished backdrops and scenery to be used in the project.

Stay TOONED!

THE PROCESS

OK, so I'll have to start stalling for time.

Here's the evolution of a landscape

from Original plans to final piece.

Pencil Sketch

CGI Model

2D Illustration.

Stay TOONED!

THE TRAILER

Sorry folks, trailer will be delayed due to tech issues.

:(

Stay TOONED!

THE STYLE

Some inspiration for the River Landscape

This is not my work. All copyrights belong to the Walt Disney Company.

This is the type of scenery I wish to create.

Hopefully mine will be as good. Disney does such beautiful backgrounds.

 

 

 

Stay TOONED!

THE HOLD

        I've technically been working on this project for about 7 years now. I just wasn't always in full swing.

When I first came up with the story idea, I really had no clue what it could be used for. A video game? A movie? I knew It was to be in the style of an animated film but I couldn't make a movie... or could I?

At first I decided I'd like to make a really well done home made animated movie. I'd recently discovered that I had a knack for animation. I figured I'd get my family and friends to work with me on it, we'd work our butts off, and in two years time, produce a full length feature film that was so impressive that despite being an "amature" work, would be welcomed into the theaters as a minor league prodigy, like the Blair Witch Project or Facing the Giants.

Little did I realize how much harder it would be not only to produce the animation but to get anyone to actually commit. It's hard to do a group project when you're the only one in the group.
So we scrapped that idea. The one good thing that did come from it though? I managed to get a full script finished in about 6 months. And 46,000 revisions later here I am.

Next I decided I'd do a graphic novel. The comic world is where I intend to break into anyway, might as well start with a one time piece that I can finish at my leisure without having to produce another issue every single month. I managed to get out a few pages before slackeritis kicked in.

Oh and life. Life kicked in as well.

There was another problem: Music. How was I going to make a comic-book into a musicle? I juggled several ideas for a while, including lyrical pages, included CD's and web videos. Then it came to me. we live in a world of apps; smart phones, tables, i-pods, kindles, the internet is going more and more mobile everyday and it is these devices that have the ability to incorporate multimedia AND interactivity.

Finally I decided on the current format. A digital blend of video and static media, with interactive elements here and there. And while we're on the subject of flipping tradition on it's head, why not rearrange the visual format as well?

Instead of the classic comic-book format with multiple panels, reading classically from left to right and top to bottom...

... why not see each panel as one big beautiful image with nice detail and size enough to view?

After all, unlimited digital space means unlimited pages.

At 960 x 540 (which just so happens to be the same dimensions of a piece of 35 mm film), the audience should be able to flip not only from one major image to another but from one micro-detail in the scene, to the next. So in essence, you sit there and watch a movie by continually clicking the next button.

I'll post an example of this at a later time.

And music? Just as easy to simply animate the entire scene and post a video. this could work for fight scenes, montages, any time the details are to extensive to communicate through a series of panels. Just let the view the scene as a whole and then get back to the comic portion. Easy, interesting, and completely void of obstacles. You get the best of both worlds.

OK, so there were a FEW obstacles.

Now I had opened up a hole new can of problems for myself; Nothing that couldn't be fixed easily enough, but it would take some time.

Problem #1 - Animation Software

I needed a software not only to do the animation but that could handle code. If I'm going to make this interactive, I need to make more than just a picture or video. I'm essentially creating a game with controls. Which leads to the next obstacle.

Problem #2 - A Programmer.

I new nothing about programming. Maybe a little bit of html, but that's not going to help me add a start button to a video or a flickering fire to a series of still images. I knew I'd need to hire/partner up with a professional app designer at some point though for now I could just start working on the imagery.

Problem #3 - Music
I am not a musician. I play the piano every so often using skills that I learned in intermediate piano classes abut 10 years ago. I'll say it again. I AM NOT A MUSICIAN. My brother on the other-hand is. And may I say an EXCELLENT one.
http://www.shepgibsonmusic.com/
The problem would be getting him on board. (Shep doesn't exactly like creating music with other peoples perimeters.)

Problem #4 - The Script
I needed to make sure that my story was perfect. There were still things here and there that I didn't like about it. It was going to be hard working out the bugs and I couldn't well start on anything until I knew I wouldn't want to change it half way through.

So before this post becomes a doctoral thesis and the production history of the project, resemblant to Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler, I'll sum up what has happened in the last year.

         My best friend Logan Schell is a English and Lit Teacher. I had him review and critique my work. After fighting him over most of this suggestions, I ended up going with about 95% of them. I ended up making changes to about a third of the script. I held a reading with some friends and family and got their input as well. After everything I've come to a good clean 76 pages with maybe a few tweaks to polish off but the story is solid.
I finally managed to shamelessly guilt my brother into working with me. His expert composing skills will be a great asset to the overall quality of the work.
I've taken a course in digital animation and learned exactly what software I need and how to use it AND that the coding is not actually that hard. I may still hire a proffessional when it comes to making an app but I think I can manage most of the content by myself now. And after saving up enough money, I've finaly managed to buy Adobe Flash.

Now the road is clear and I can move on; "FULL STEAM AHEAD!"

Stay TOONED!