LAST TIME, ON

Messing around with some more ideas for the TV show the kids are loudly watching. In the animatic it's basically just any "violent show for kids." I tried another one with more of a Looney Tunes flare and violence toward a cat cartoon. The rest of the film is more inspired by action cartoons though, so this might work more. It would be (very directly) like a mix of Hanna-Barbera (Space Ghost, Johnny Quest) and Dragonball Z, with a bit of Power Rangers sprinkled on top. In a way, it would be the reverse of what happens in the actual film. Also the really cheesy tsunami dragon in the show would come back as the very kickass tsunami fat cat.

Its Lightning Fills The Air

Did this to gauge how long the first phase of working in TV Paint might take. Still not sure about the textured line, but the furry lightning is adorable.

Cruel Regulators Smoking

WHY IS THIS CAT SO ANGRY? WHAT IS HE LOOKING AT IN THE DISTANCE?? WHAT ARE ALL THE COLORED SCRIBBLES ABOUT???

The Skies Are Blue When It's

Two random in-progress rough shots! Woah!

It's POW! And it's WHAM!

Because that is how cat tails work. This is currently and will remain my favorite shot of my thesis.

Octopus Has No Friends

Meant to just keyframe this, but instead went a little further...

Fram Rider Trollens Kung

More stuff!

GIANT MONSTER ALL-OUT ATTACK Part 3

Working toward the final monster designs, not there yet.

Ready Set

The first 3 model sheets, for the 3 main characters.

And You're Still the One

In the animatic stage, but not a good animatic yet, still very rough. But also, more random art of the film!

The characters are coming way more into focus now!

And the cat, who for right now is named Slim, is my new favorite.

Also more fighting.

And explosions.

The end.

CHILDREN: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Part 2

Last one was the sister's thunderstorm-titan form, so now comes the brother's Volcano-titan form.

Robyn's Version:

Jeremy's Version

Kyle's Version:


And the exciting battle!



The charts are not big enough to properly account for these levels of kickass.

CHILDREN: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Part 1

So at some point in developing my idea, the ending evolved from "kids scream and yell louder," to "kids scream and yell and also there's explosions," to "giant volcanic/thunderstorm cloud of fury with kids inside," to "kids go giant monster all-out attack." Originally, I saw this as them just becoming two giant fire monsters or something like the first concept monster there.



I didn't like it very much though. Also animating two giant fire monsters would get boring and tedious, in the bad way. Then I remembered how at some point before the summer I randomly described the fight as similar to a thunderstorm fighting a volcano; there's no winner, lots of destruction, and it doesn't entirely make sense. All good things. The sister already had her static-electricity stuff by this time, so the brother would be the volcano dude.



So my attempt at drawing the sister as a giant lightning monster was better, but not actually all that different from how I originally thought the titan would look. Also, it would suck to have to animate that in every way. So my brain wasn't working, but the wonderful Robyn's, fantastic Jeremy's, and tubular cousin Kyle's brians were. And they all made insanely badass titans.

The Sister, Thunderstorm-Titan form:

Robyn's Version:

Jeremy's Version:

Kyle's Version:


Basically equal massive amounts of extremely different kinds of badass.

There's five more pictures, but the blog won't let me add more to this post. Also I'm tired and sick, so I'll do it later.

I'm Sure He'd Kick an Ass or Two

Some more concept art. There's the sister using static-electricity powers of annihilation, and the cat being grumpy because he is a cat.





And these are the 'rough' model sheets for the brother and sister characters, which will absolutely and most likely dramatically change in the next couple months.

Just Break the Rule and You See the Truth

Two ideas for things that could be cool.




The first is giving the brother an insane super soaker filled with boogers or something. When I was that age I definitely would have enjoyed having that during any sibling fights. Even now I'd still enjoy it. Both kids having weapons from things that kids might normally have opens up how ridiculous the fight might get (booger-soaker isn't ridiculous enough yet, but it's a good stepping stone).

The second is the sister using a torchiere-esque floor lamp as a spear, which would possibly be a really cool scene. The coolness for me comes from the lamp being the only source of light in the scene, and that light source moving in addition to the characters. It definitely wouldn't be long, maybe like ten seconds at most, because making this work in motion will be a battle. The characters would also need to be in an environment where that lamp is the only light source. I see the main fight taking place in a living room with windows, so it needs to be dark outside, but I don't want it to be nighttime. I think a thunderstorm outside would work though, and that adds another element with which cool things could happen.

First one is a combination of acrylic paint, Neocolor II crayons, watercolor pencils and pens. The second one is all acrylic paint.

Right Between the Eyes

First character designs that I am okay with (picture is inked with crow-quill and quickly colored digitally). Because there's three characters, I want to try a basic shape them for them, the brother being a square, the sister a triangle or pentagon, and the cat a circle (and also very fat). The cat's the closest thing to a protagonist in this, and he will suffer the most as he's caught between the fighting siblings.

With the shape theme, I'm thinking the brother's fighting would be forceful and blunt like a hammer or mace, while the sister's would be sharp and piercing like a sword. I'm not sure about having them use real weapons like those, I want to have them use more ridiculous things to try and kill each other. The background is just a bunch of goofing off with Photoshop filters, but I think that's along the idea I want for the abstracted backgrounds. Some of the crazy backgrounds from Ren and Stimpy are also along the idea. It'll work out later.

And sketches of the characters:


I'm gonna wait til much later to worry about model sheets and turnarounds, I expect the designs will change a lot before it even gets close to production.

One to One, Two to Dance

Practicing animation fire, clouds, and lightning, as I want effects to be a big part of the film. Still need more practice with them, and animating these in the context of characters. In addition to these test animations I'm going to be doing a ton of concept art to nail down the visuals. Once I've figured out all the visuals that I want then I'll start on those thumbnails and storyboards and all that fun stuff.

Though this technically wasn't made as concept art for the film, this is roughly where I'd like it to build to:



So that's an airbrush painting, and it's the basic idea, some kind of crazy explosion of energy. Like a volcano wrestling a lightning storm. Also like these absurd Icelandic volcanoes.

Don't Leave Me Hanging On Like a Yoyo

MORE LINKS WHAT THE OH MY WOW

The first one!
The one immediately after the first!
The one not immediately after the first.

All those are compilations of key animation by this dude Hiroyuki Imaishi, who's things are also down there in one of those other posts. I've loved his style of animation for years I now realize, just without ever knowing it was this dude who was doing those things.

It's currently the end of the third week of this quarter, and time to start solidifying this concept. For a while I've been thinking of it in terms of what I'd want to show or do for this film, in terms of character animation, design, sound, story, etc. I was going with the character animation because that's easily the best thing to show, but I couldn't help but want to do and show more than just good character animation. So after a while of not getting anywhere with that thinking, I started deconstructing my thoughts and looked at it in different terms of: If I could only pick one aspect of a film that I had to spend a year working on, and absolutely nothing else, what would it be? I realized what I would really enjoy doing a few days ago, and today a workable story erupted in my mind during philosophy class.

So we'll see how this goes.

We've Yet To Crash

More inspirations...

There's only one place to go!

All the fights from Superjail are incredibly loose. And also insane.

GUITARS!

Specifically this episode of the show, as well as the director's other work, like Dead Leaves.

Like this.

Because blowing up the moon once isn't enough.

SKADOOSH

And because awesomeness and attractiveness are always important. The stylized, textured 2D also.

FASTER

There's not much fight scene, but there is a lot of awesome.

MOO

Both of the characters for mine are going to be human, so distinctive moves between them might be slightly harder to figure out, but probably not.

LASERS

It would be kinda cool if the fight somehow wound up over lava...

Watch the Way I Navigate

Right now I'm gathering sources of inspiration to figure out how this fight scene should go down. Some of what I've been looking at:

"Woah!"

Just finished watching through Afro Samurai. I've been wanting to do an aerial fight forever, and this part especially makes me want to do it even more.

"Yeah fighting!"

I liked the editing of the fights in Scott Pilgrim. From 3:30 to 4:00 in that video has really awesome editing. Even with the sound muted all of the energy of the scene still comes through. The focus form mine is supposed to be on the animation, but editing could also probably be used effectively.

"The touch!!"

80's music and robots are awesome.

"Ladadadadadada

Originally I wanted to do a musical, so I was looking at this. Even without the music, the back and forth is good, especially the bigger guns part near the end.

"AAAAAHHHH"

Haven't seen the whole movie yet, just a bunch of clips from it, but I appreciate its ludicrousness.

"SHOUTING LOUD WORDS

I also appreciate the cheesy awesomenss of this entire series. That video kicks into gear around the 0:50 mark.

"PUUUUNCH

I haven't actually watched this show, only heard about it, but this scene is cool.

Is Burning Red

So about that thesis. For months I was focused on doing this one idea I had thought up during this summer, involving a monster, growing up and a musical number. The idea was really well developed, and I entirely want to do it at some point, but not for next year. I realized at some point that it was reliant on the story and music, not specifically on the animation. For this film the animation should really be the most important focus, so I started trying to think of what I could animate well. While working on the big fight scene for Daedalum I realized I can animate fight scenes well and really enjoy doing it. Actually a large number of the things I've done in my now seven years of animating have been or involved some kind of fight scene. So for my thesis, I'm doing a fight scene. It's more developed than that, of course. It might seem underwhelming because this current idea can be described in five words or less (technically it could be in only two), but I want it to be based in emotion and animation.