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the first 3rd of the cartoon is a very different style from that of the "Agent" portion. To be more specific I used the modern style, popular in the 50's and 60's. Something i hated as a kid, but love now. why the 2 different methods? My grandpa is fond of telling stories about when he was a boy he'd spend all Saturday afternoon at the movies. not because he was theater hopping (i don't think that was even an option back then) but because before the feature film you'd get a string of news reels, cartoons, 3 stooges shorts, cliff hangers, etc. so that's kinda what i'm referencing. that, and the variety helps to keep me from getting bored. ANYWAY, the main character of the opener is supposed to be an everyman... an average Joe, if you will.
as you can see, it took me a few tries to get Joe just right. his design was particularly important, because i used his basic elements to create all the other characters of the opener.
now we need to get Joe digital! I've always drawn my animated elements in Flash, but I've been told by pro's that it's preferable to use Illustrator then import to Flash, because Flash's brush tool stinks. so i thought i'd test the theory. 
If you enlarge the image you'll see the Illustrator version IS better that the Flash version (the one in the middle)! i was a little despondent with the results, because it's a pain in the rear to keep bouncing between applications, AND i'm not entirely convinced that the quality difference was enough to warrant the time and work it would take. so i worked for quite a while to optimize the settings on my drawing tablet and those in Flash. Thankfully the work paid off. as you can see, the optimized Flash version of Joe on the far right is close enough to the Illustrator version (at least for me) to allow me to just draw everything right in Flash. YAY!All's left now is to animate!
[click on the box below]
until next time!
OK, I'm done with the backgrounds and have begun on character design. Unfortunately i just started last night, so i haven't amassed enough material worthy of a post yet. Instead, here's ANOTHER BACKGROUND!There wasn't a storyboard frame for this one, as it's part of a montage and i didn't feel like drawing it all out at the time (shame on me). so if there are no objections we'll skip straight to the perspective guide. 
While caught up in the magic world of vanishing points i didn't stop to think about what a pain in the @$$ it is to animate a 3/4 view walk cycle, which is exactly what i've set up here. CURSES! It's going to be part of a quick montage of The Agent walking through the "twilight trails" trailer park. Which was until recently a real place, btw. 
yessss... gloomy... run down..... i love it! the kind of place i'd go to shoot photos, were it not full of creeps and meth labs. Speaking of gloomy, Arthur C. Clarke died recently and as a nod to the old fella HAL makes a cameo in the cartoon. Not that i particularly liked 2001 (i still can't watch it without falling asleep) but it's become an icon of sci-fi cinema and literature. The IDEA behind the movie is great... an AI going crazy and killing everyone because of secretive orders from on-high? Awesome. the execution, however, was a snooze-fest. NOW Charlton Heston died last Saturday to boot! On a day i chose to watch Omega Man, oddly enough. Heston made several movies that i like so i was a little more moved by his passing than that of Clarke's. I think it fitting that i give Chuck some kind of nod in the 'toon as well. I'll think on it.seacrest out!
Hopefully you're not getting bored of these yet, cuz here's another!in this scene we find ourselves in orbit. wait... you go from a trailer park in the desert to 'up the gravity well' in the same cartoon? you'll have to trust me that it makes sense. OK, in orbit... as you can clearly see below (maybe not so clearly) is a satellite weapon pointed towards the earth. i wanted the space around the earth to be choked with satellites... spy, media, military, etc., so that's what all those little boxes are supposed to be. the name on the satellite in the storyboard is T.H.O.R., but this changes a few times before I finish, because I couldn't decide what clever reference to use. first I wanted to use norse mythology, hammer of the gods kinda stuff (totalitarian governments tend to like that sort of thing). I was even contemplating calling it "Project Rainbow Bridge" (??). BUT the video game "Gears of War" has a satellite weapon called the "hammer of dawn" or some such, and I'm already including a rather lengthy G.O.W. parody in the 'toon, so i decided against all things hammer related.
So then comes the perspective guide...
count it for me... ONE... TWO... AHH, THREE POINT PERSPECTIVE!! My first try at anything beyond 2, so kinda a big deal for me. actually a little confusing at first trying to determine which vanishing point to use. although now that i've mastered it, i think i'll skip straight to 7 point next time. now the almost finished product...
I say almost because this screen grab still has the satellite sporting the name "HARPY III". Sadly, HARPY wasn't pulling it's weight so the name of the space weapon was changed yet again. but first a little about HARPY... I vaguely remembered hearing about a space gun program called HARP, so it seemed a natural reference to make. something for the conspiracy crowd. unfortunately after a little research i discovered that HARP was a big gun on the earth used to shoot satellites into orbit. wrong kind of space gun. so now the satellite bares the name CROSSBOW, which is of course a reference to the excellent movie, Real Genius. you're probably wondering why the earth has 'region 1' and 'region 4' on it. well i had originally divided up the globe by European Union, North American Union, Pan Asian Union, etc. (once again for the conspiracy crowd). but i decided it'd be funnier and more in step with the CO.ST if i divided up it by DVD region codes. WE'RE REGION 1! WE'RE REGION 1!
Stay tuned!
Here's a scene where our hero, The Agent, happens upon the abode of the cartoon's villain.
First, the story board:
i tend to draw pretty light (lighter than what my scanner can pick up without showing what's on the reverse side of the page, anyway), so it's hard to see that there's a trailer in front of The Agent in the middle of that mess. You might also notice the heap of a car over to the right. no, that won't do at all.Next comes the 2 point perspective guide:
MAN! Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't have done better himself! (just kiddin' FLW) This is the first time i've taken the effort to add any serious perspective to my cartoons, and i think it's made a difference for the better. and if not, well it was fun! hopefully it won't make animating too much of a pain. I draw 'em on three 8.5x11" sheets of paper taped together lengthwise, so i have room to kick the vanishing points out as far as i need. then i scan it in and come up with...The finished background:
i know what you're thinking. you're doing a Flash cartoon... this clearly wasn't done in Flash. you're right! it's Painter! My friend John Worsley introduced me to Painter 9 before my Join the GOONS cartoon, and there was no looking back. besides the fact that it sets my cartoons apart from straight Flash projects, I just really like the way it looks. That wasn't what you were thinking? OK, it must be that in the story board there were 2 palm trees and an awning on the trailer... where'd they go?! well, you might have also noticed the '69 Cadillac Coup de Ville. Those things don't come cheap! in order to afford the Caddie, we have to sacrifice on other things... like one of the palm trees and the fancy awning. these are the decisions that keep us directors up at night.
that's it for now. More to follow soon!
(name that quote!)
well... the idea for my toons generally start with a little sketch or blurb on a post-it note or scrap of paper, but since i didn't scan any of that stuff, here's a picture of my neighbor's dog instead:
if i decide later that the idea is worth fleshing out i'll start researching. for example, on this particular cartoon i must have read about a dozen articles on welfare, its origins, myths associated with it, arguments for and against, and its corporate incarnations. for what i'm doing here i really over-killed it, but i wanted to make sure my bases were covered.
after much reading and highlighting i make an outline with the basic structure of the cartoon with lots of notes. here's 1 page of the outline:
there's more but my wife says no one can read it, so i didn't bother to scan 'em (she underestimates the legibility of my awesome handwriting). After the outline, i type out the script. nothing real exciting there. normally i'd have the help of my buddy Dustin with this part (cuz he's a writer and can be pretty funny), but he wasn't available so this one was solamente wes.
Then comes the embarrassingly bad storyboards! here's a couple pages:
seriously, i almost didn't put them on here. but i figured it'd be neat to see that from the crapfest storyboards:
comes the lesser crapfest background paintings:
and that's really as far as i've gotten. i'm a little more than half way done with the BG paintings. i'll post some later and try to have something interesting to say about 'em as well.
until next time!
wes
Making a cartoon is a lengthy and involved process. ESPECIALLY if you're doing the lion's share of the work by yourself. When i get going i don't have the time or even desire to work on other projects, so I tend to fall off the face of the planet for the duration of production.
In order to let people know I haven't totally given up on the CO.ST (and that I'm not slacking!) I decided to start this blog to give progress updates on the current cartoon so that hopefully folks will stay interested (and to keep me from slacking).
So stay tuned for storyboards, background paintings, audio clips, screenshots, and other various signs of progress!
