THE SIMPSONS NEWS

This year’s SIMPSONS Christmas episode will have an act where there will be Simpsons “Muppets”. The show is directed by Bob Anderson and Matt Schofield. I’ve recently seen a rough cut of that act and it’s a lot of fun.  Very MUPPET SHOW-ish. Guest star and all.

Also, it’s the second to last SIMPSONS episode that I did story reel work for. I’m very excited to see the finished product.

ART

(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)

Alright FINALLY got the animation test done.  I thought I’d make it a trailer of sorts for the illustrated film. Here it is, (I’ll write my thought about it all below):

Before I give my personal thoughts on how it all turned out, let me explain what I did to finish the thing.  First, I added a few lighter tones to some of the drawings, just to balance it out a bit. I don’t love the way all the drawings turned out but they were good enough for my purposes.  Once I got the artwork done, it was just a matter of timing out the panels so the that they were presented in the way I wanted. Then I used the Storyboard Pro tools to move the Sorcerers into position so that they would slide in. I did the same with the Viper and the Winged Apes.  I typed in the speed I wanted them to come in and the amount of easing out I wanted both  of them to have.  I made sure when timing out the Winged Apes to have them stop moving a little bit after the Viper, just for visual interest.  The entire time I did all this, I kept making movies to test out my timing. I must have made about 10 versions.

Once I got the timing the way I wanted, I looked at the final version and realized that it desperately needed sound. I have a very close family friend (almost a cousin but not really) whom I grew up with. He has a band called KATERPILLAR. I just recently became aware of it (last time I saw Rod he didn’t mention it) and I thought their music was, not only awesome, but perfect for my cartoon.  I didn’t think he’d mind me using it so I put one of their songs in.  It worked perfectly.  I didn’t even need to time the drawings to the music, it synced up all by itself. I’ll have to e-mail Rod and tell him, I’m using his music.

Okay, so what do I think about it all? Well, let me begin with the way it turned out and the process of making it itself. As far as the way it turned out goes, I think it’s “meh” at the beginning and good in the end.  Next time, I’ll put some antics and overshoots in. I think it needs them in the first part in order to more clearly show the changes of expression. Not so much in the end though.  The camera move hides the need for any antic and overshoots. That, and I think the timing worked out well with the sliding characters.

The process on the other hand, needs work.  It takes FAR too long to do.  I don’t think I’m a good enough painter to be trying to semi-paint all of it. It takes an awful lot of time and in the end, it doesn’t really look as good as I’d like.  I want to be done with this project sooner than later. Finding a faster way to make the process work will need to be a priority. I’ll have to rethink what I want the end product to look like. I mean, it took me almost a month and a half just to do 13 seconds and most of the time was taken with words on the screen. Not good. I’m pretty sure this Illustrated Film I’m doing is going to be a few minutes long. I don’t want to spend all year on it. I have WAY to many other ideas I want to get to and I’m dying to work on them too.

Having said that, what’s next on my project? Well, next is me trying to get my energy for the project going again.  This test really took the fun out of it and I need to get my energy back for it.  My favorite part of doing a personal project is breaking down the story and coming up with story beats.  It’s possible that, that will give me back the enthusiasm for the project again. So next time, I’ll be writing about story. It’s possible that story is what I like more than the drawing. It really pumps me up.

So now, that you’ve heard my take on everything, what do you think? I’d like to hear your opinions and suggestions.

MUSIC/VIDEOS

Speaking of KATERPILLAR. If you’re interested in their music, CLICK HERE to go to their site. Here’s one of their music videos as well as one of my favorite song of theirs. Enjoy:

My good friend Rod is the lead singer.

VIDEOS

AWESOME! Another trailer for the HBO version of George R. R. Martin’s THE GAME OF THRONES.

If you like fantasy and haven’t read these books, you owe it to yourself to do so.  They are a LOT  of fun. BUT be forewarned, these books are being made into HBO shows for a reason. They are definitely rated R books. One the things I really enjoy about the books though, is the way that the story doesn’t follow the tired Noble Heroes versus The Dark Lord fantasy cliche.

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