AND CTHULHU ANSWERED ...

One of my goals is to try and do what is dubbed to as "Motion Comics." It is described as a cross between a comic book/strip and animation. Perhaps it should just be called an animatic. I have been working towards that goal. But this is not my first attempt. I did the above piece in 2007 which was in turn was based on the drawings from a comic of the same name that appeared on my Zen Doodle site. 

So for some of you this is a rerun. However ... given that to date this is my most successful post of ANYTHING I've ever done. Buried in obscurity and lost among the video mass that makes up YouTube, this little ditty has racked up 3,572 views. In the grand scheme of things ... not all that impressive. 

Still a personal record.

I have to admit this one holds a special place in my heart. You see this is based on the mythos created H.P. Lovecraft's tomes. In the summer of 1980, I became so sick that I became bed ridden. When I at last got enough strength to something other than sleep, I started reading a paperback collection of Lovecraft. My schedule was topsie turvie. So on late morning/early morning I staggered to the bathroom, book in hand. I noticed a nice ... echo. So I ... playfully read out loud a call to Cthulhu. The echo added an eerie quality and I smiled ... pleased with the effect. 

Then the toilet gurgled. 

I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Mine used this experience to write this story.    

BASS ACKWARDS

So the normal process ... as I understand it ... Is that you plan your site out, with all the frills and niceties, and then fill it with content. That is what I have done in the past. That is what was intended this time. 

But in the rush of getting things up and running .. well we all know what happened. So finally I am glad to announce that we have our header ready to display. And because I was not thrilled with the way it integrated with the blog background theme ... that is changed. 

I must like this design because I'm sure I have used it before on past blogs. 

So ... starting next post, this will be proudly displayed on the header.

Or at least til something better turns up ...

NOT ANOTHER ONE! TOON BOOM HARMONY IS NOT HARMONIOUS!!!

Again I say ... "NOT ANOTHER ONE!!!"

In a past post ... I talked about how Adobe was no longer selling their products but renting them out by the month. Now another company is following suit and is phasing out it's entry level program. It is replacing it with it's top line on a lease basis. Harmony is now being offered on a 3 tiered level. 

Harmony Essentials is $15 monthly when billed annually. It is described as an introductory edition for students and enthusiasts. Provides access to the power of Harmony at a low entry price. It is suitable for simplified cut-out and basic paperless animation styles. 

Harmony Advanced is $38 monthly when billed annually.
Advanced capabilities for freelancers, studios, and other creatives that are producing traditional, full paperless style animation. Includes simple cut-out animation capabilities.

Harmony Premium is $73 monthly when billed annually. It promises the complete professional edition for studios, small creative businesses, freelancers and schools working on the most demanding projects. Adds ability to create sophisticated cut-out rigs, very natural and realistic character movement plus unlimited special effects for any style of animation.

So respectively, they run $180/$456/$876 a year. Compare this with the Adobe CC suite which for maybe a dozen programs runs about $4 a piece. It's a shame because Toon Boom Studios is a great entry level program. However Harmony is just over priced. There are some people who use both TBS and Flash. With these rent as you go are going to cause some hard choices for users. Both have their proponents and look as if you could do nice work. I have a version of both programs and a little more experience in Flash. Perhaps a good project ... like I need another project ... would be to do a side by side comparison.  

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY ...

... It's your birthday too.

Ok ... so I'm dyslexic. 

However, today is my birthday. July 19th. But I guess if you are reading this after the 19th ... then it isn't my birthday. I did have an Aunt ... Auntie Donna ... and she believed in stretching out the natal day out as long as possible. According to her if you could get them to just run into the next one that would be the best of all possibilities. My personal best is three months ... three parties ... three cakes. 

I don't think there will be three cakes this year ... but I know my little Yoko will spoil me royal. This year as a present for me I did my very first Toon Boom animation. A personal goal ... and tho I made a compromise or two ... I view as a win because it got completed. Please view it and enjoy. I will put a few thoughts in it's construction afterwards so you can read about if you are such a mind. 

Please ... if you would be so kind ... as a birthday gift to me ... repost this on your time line. 

 Thanks!!!

Like I said, this is my very first success using Toon Boom.  The problem besides the initial  learning curve of the program and getting a feel for the tools, is the frustrating fact that one can not export your animation in a movie file format ... even though it is offered. One has to make the animation into an image sequence and then place it into another video editing program. If any of you intelligent individuals out there have a clue how to import the pictures from the image sequence, in order, to a time line please give me a clue. 

In total, I used 7 different programs to make this cartoon. That's almost one program per second. Toon Boom for the character and the animation. (I need to develop a steadier hand with the brush. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at the auto lip sync process. You draw eight different mouths and the computer reads the audio track and voila ... it's synced up.) Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop for the balloons. Audacity and Soundbooth for the audio. The scanner was used to import the original character sketch from my sketch book. And it was all put together in Hit Film. 

The piece was suppose to be a 4 day project but some how my time dwindled down to one. I had a few false starts and when push came to shove ... I had to make a couple compromises. The first was I wanted to do some more body movement. The second was that the original design had floppy ears.  Those would of called for full animation which became apparent of a lack of time. I also would of liked to of split the piece in two and done another set of mouths for the later sequence. 

Still ... for my first real attempt at Toon Boom ... this is ... satisfactory. More to come I promise.    

THE MORGUE

No ... I have not turned to such gruesome things ... like playing with corpses. But I know at least 2 classmates that did ... and they were ... girls!!! 

EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!

A morgue is a practice of research  ... a place of storage of that research. Years ago, as a kid, I began trying to learn everything I could about cartooning. Funny thing is I still am. One of the things I have learned is the importance is to gather different images of something that might make it some way into my art. A pattern ... an article of clothing ... a building. Yoko tells that is this is my favorite part of the process. And due to my nature ... I do tend to circle round and round ... constantly. reconsidering my options. She is watching me me now go through the process of creating a new project. I think Yoko is starting to get dizzy.  

This is an example of the joys of computers and the internet. In the old days, one kept an active eye for anything and everything. You would clip it, categorize it and place in a file drawer. Thus it got it's name ... from the drawers of the dead. I still have in what was once my father's desk everything I've collected since a youth. Today one has to as Yoko has taught me G.T.S.  You know ... Google That Shit. Now you only have to type in a search image, and choose images. The trick is to put in terms that can bring up different results. Sometimes you find just what you are looking for. Sometimes you find a surprise that can be nothing of interest or send you in a new direction. I have to say that as much as the promise of the internet offers, I am surprised that there is not an ever growing bounty ... the limited variety. I guess there is a bottom to every bowl. Some people file them away in a folder on their computer. Some hope they can find it again. I believe in the later as the internet and what is out there is always in a fluid state.

While I have been studying the lessons of animator, Richard Williams I was greatly surprised to learn that this was not a common practice.   Here is Williams speaking on the subject.

I must admit I cringe at his talk of cutting up books, but the method is true. And here again the computer proves a better tool. With a layered art program one can cobble together a character or whatever you are working on. Move them around ... re-size them ... You can even scan pages from books rather than cutting them up.

I'll sleep better knowing you aren't out there, destroying books.  

PATRICK McDONNELL IS MY HERO!!!

... He really is ...

McDonnell is the creator of the comic strip "Mutts." This gentle strip has a retro feel to it that I find very appealing. It seems to draw from the past in design and a love for comics and animals. I saw him interviewed in the documentary, "Stripped." (Which can be seen through Netflix)  This film deals with the symbiotic relationship of comics and newspapers and examines the options and opinions of cartoonists as their market shrinks. In his interview , Patrick McDonnell explains his work method ... drawing journals. At the time of filming, he was at number 101.

At present, I am working on number 10. It was Professor Hagenbuckle, who got me in the habit of keeping one. He assigned the class to keep a daily drawing journal. I took the assignment to heart. When they were turned in ... I did ten times the drawings. But my Mother was the one who actually started me on the path. 

I had shown an interest in art at an early age and I was blessed with nurturing parents. When I was about 13 we made a visit to the Ringling Art Museum in Sarasota, FL. There we saw a traveling exhibit of Duane Hanson, a sculptor that made sculpture using fiber glass. He painted them and even infused hair into their bodies. The later ones even had clothes and props. However his early works were nudes. They were quite realistic and very controversial for the time. So here my parents with their darling child turned the corner into a darkened room illuminated only by the spotlights on naked women. Mom was studying painting and Dad was very cultured ... still Mom watched intently on my reaction. I examined each piece ... walking through the room. As we exited, Mom asked what I thought. I said ... "Their feet are out of proportion." Mom smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.


As a reward, Mother gave me a spiral bound drawing journal, craypas (an oil pastel made by Crayola) and a Walter Foster art book on drawing nudes.  A few of my first nudes made it into that drawing journal. It was at a school dance that I sat listening to the music and drawing in my journal. A fellow classmate asked to see what I was doing. I let him look ... at the whole book. He rushed away and I went back to work. Within minutes my good friend, Phillip Karl came up to me and asked if I had pictures of naked ladies in that book. I started to explain that they were called nudes, when he flipped through and started pulling out selected pictures.  He explained that the earlier classmate had run to the Dean of Girls and told her I had a book with naked ladies in them. No sooner than he had made a getaway with the offending drawings than up came the Dean of Girls with the grinning classmate in tow. She grabbed my journal but without the evidence she then turned her anger on my fellow student, ready to deal justice to one who had given false testimony.

You know ... I never did get those drawings back. 

The nice thing about drawing journals are that they can be a vehicle of exploration and growth. Sometimes you let the pen take you where it wants to go ...not knowing what you are about to draw ... somethings focusing on a single point and somethings capturing a single fleeting moment in front of you. I am now working on a project ... using the journal to define a vision. Everyday at work, I gobble my lunch as fast as I can to use the rest of my break to draw. Something I had planned was validated in a conversation with my cousin Eric. So some of the drawings that I present here will be from the journal to share with you the thought process. This is a raw sheet of images that just seemed to come from the pen.

This one has been modified using Sketchbook Pro.

Behold the Zombie Chicken!

The Multiplane Camera

Me, being able to use a multiplane camera is in a way a fine example of the wonders of home computers. In real life, they are expensive, huge and takes advanced mathematics to operate. But so much has changed since I was in school. Then and there we waited our turn to get access to everything. Cameras ... the 16mm Bolex ... I think I held less than a dozen times in my last two years at USF. You signed up for hours at the editing bay. And you never saw what you shot until it was far too late. It amazes me that one can import film and sound and literally be done in a days time. That animation technically does not require a camera and that the availability of special effects are readily available. That a mutiplane camera is not only within this small box on my desk but is only a side function of the program being used blows my mind. It is amazing when you think of it.

No matter what Uncle Walt says Disney did not invent the multiplane camera. That honor most likely belongs to German animator, Lottie Reiniger. She is responsible for not only this, but for the first animated feature with "Prince Achmed" in 1926.  Her work was done with shadow puppets that moved frame by frame on a glass panel inserted in a kitchen table. A second plate fastened underneath was used for backgrounds. 

Her assistant, Berthold Bartosch branched out on his own pushing the multiplane process a bit further.

It was Ub Iwerks who brought the multiplane to Hollywood in 1933. He built his with spare parts from a Chevy. His unlike the physical ones of today but interestingly enough live the digital models, ran horizontal instead of vertical.

The Fleischer Brothers had their Stereopitcal or Setback Camera a year later in 1934. Their device consisted of a turn table with model backgrounds behind an animation press plate. 

Disney used the multiplane for the first time in "The Old Mill" in 1937 and later that year in "Snow White." The last movie to use the physical multiplane by Disney was "The Little Mermaid" in 1989. It has since been replaced by the CAPS digital system.   

  

The multiplane that Disney used was a giant. The one I am going to try and incorporate into my work is virtual. The calculations needed are done for me. Two disclaimers ... The first is that these aren't my artwork. My friend, Walt, turned on to the Cartoon Network mini series, "Over the Garden Wall." (This available on Amazon streaming and on YouTube.) I love the backgrounds and modified them to have something "pretty" use. The second is that this is a process and what is bellow is a few baby steps.