Walk Cycles A-Go-Go! [pt.2]

As promised, i return to you with the front and back walk cycles. for these scenes i need a bit of a slower walk... a ramble if you will. unfortunately that means i had to draw more frames than the side view (about 25 each!). on the other hand, the motion is a lot smoother. hmm.... more work = better quality? it can't be!!
anyway, here's the goods...

First the front:



then the back.:



to see them in action click on the above images.

Most cartoons you see operate only in 2 dimensions. I mean the characters only move left or right, and very rarely towards or away from the viewer. Now i know why... because it's a big pain in the ass animating perspective and foreshortening and all that business. but afterwards i thought," this front/back stuff doesn't suck enough. I'm going to animate 3/4 perspective!" oh, the folly of youth.

more on that next time!

Walk Cycles A-Go-Go! [pt.1]

Like i said before, i spent a large chunk of my vacation working on the cartoon. when i story-boarded this sucker i wrote in a montage of The Agent strolling into town, all spaghetti western style. Unfortunately that meant i needed lots of walk cycles. what's a walk cycle, you ask? click below and see! (no porn, i promise)



I had to draw The Agent 16 times to make this cycle. ok, there was some copying and pasting involved, but it was still a lot of work. especially when you consider i'm a SLOW drawer. If you remember the past episodes of The Agent, you might notice he's a little less sloppy and clunky. if you don't remember, refresh your memory. his previous incarnation had its charm, but i thought i'd try cleaning him up a bit. i particularly like the way the movement of the glasses came out. good job wes!

Tune in next week when i show you the front and back cycles... how exciting!

Back is the Incredible...

OK, the blogging break got extended quite a bit longer than anticipated. after i finished the work for the previously mentioned shows i had to fill the majority of my spare time with home improvement projects and helping my mom [not] move. I'm out of the woods now, and i spent a large chunk of my "vacation" last week cranking away on the ol' cartoon. i gotta tell ya, this is a big improvement from the last episode of The Agent, as far as animation goes. I think the writing's better too, but the improvement is not quite as obvious as that of the animation and design. I'm going to push for more out of my voice talent as well, so start practicing Dustin! ;) The down side is that it's taking me a bit longer than anticipated to get done. what can i say... quality takes time.

In the meantime, I'm resuming the blog posts! so tune in for some [hopefully] interesting progress reports and what-not. I'll have an official post complete with pictures and stuff soon.

until then!

ps: today's 9/11... the day we mourn the death of Liberty in the United States. light a candle. or pray. or burn some incense. or just remember.

On youTube!

I FINALLY found a way to get my animations on youtube! you'd think that Macromedia or Adobe would have that covered... nope. not if you're a Mac person, like myself. On PC, you just export to .avi then presto! but on mac your only option is to export to .mov. the rub is that Quicktime hasn't updated their Flash support since Flash 5! I have 8, and they're currently on 9 (CS3)!

Anyway, i found a demo for a screen capture program that did the trick. not the best way, i know... but beggars can't be choosers.

Now that Welfare Queens is in the bag, i need to take a break from animating to work on a couple of pieces for upcoming shows. Unfortunately that means you won't be hearing much from me here on this blog for the next couple-3 weeks. I WILL, however, continue to post my regular tirades at www.companystate.com.

Hope to see you there!

(half) DONE!

THE NEW CARTOON IS DONE!!!

ok, it's not COMPLETELY done, but the intro got so long that i decided to make it into it's own feature. so i present to you WELFARE QUEENS!

after watching (its only 2-3 minutes) do me a favor and vote on it. look for this:



and click whichever number you feel is appropriate. You DO NOT have to be a Newgrounds member to vote. I'm not asking you to falsely pump up my ranking... i just want to let people who are not familiar with the functionality of Newgrounds to be aware that the voting option is available to ALL.

"why vote?" you ask... well to put it simply, the higher a score i get, the more exposure and views the cartoon will get, and of course i want as many people as possible to see it. i'm pretty proud of this cartoon, and frankly feel it's my best to date. so i'm confident that it'll prompt you to give a good score. of course, if i'm wrong, then by all means vote appropriately.

Oh yeah, the voting must take place TODAY (Thursday) to be effective.

thanks!
wes

Inspiration

if you couldn't tell by my cartoon portfilio, i'm still pretty much a novice when it comes to animating. but, i try hard and every project turns out better than the last! A large part of the progress can be attributed to my research on several websites dedicated to the art of animation. I figured i'd share a couple-3 with you this week, since i haven't really accomplished much since last we spoke due to scheduling issues with my voice talent.


first we have Cold Hard Flash. a site dedicate to excellence in Flash based animation (which is what i use, so you might see why i find it interesting). a good place to go to see what the the top tier animators are up to, and for inspiration.


2nd we have the legendary John K's blog. if you aren't in the know, John K. created one of my favorite cartoons, Ren and Stimpy, as well as pioneered using Flash for cartoons. He's kind of a curmudgeon, and has a very narrow view of what animation should be, but his blog is full of valuable information for would-be animators none-the-less.


next we have Mark 2000. M2000 is a talented animator/designer who shares my passion for political commentary. He also started a series of VERY helpful tutorials sharing his expertise on the subject of Flash and design. hooray PNGs!


here's one i kind of stumbled upon. I'm a fan of Hellboy and really all things Mignola, so i followed the Hellboy Animated blog pretty closely. Unexpectedly, mixed in with the progress updates and interviews and what-not are in depth tips on scripting and storyboarding. helped me A LOT.

so hopefully this weekend i'll have the voice-over all recorded, and by next week i'll have something besides filler to show you! ;)

'til then!

SPLIT!

Hi all.

Somewhere along the way the intro to the cartoon grew to about 3 minutes, which is about how long i shoot for a whole piece to be (for load time and attention span reasons). instead of editing, i think i'm going to publish the whole project in 2 parts. the "intro" as part 1 and the actual Agent portion will be part 2... at least on Newgrounds. on Company State i'll probably put it all together as one.

Anyway... part 1 of the 'toon is just about done! all's left is audio pretty much, and i can't finish that until my main voice actor, and good friend, Dustin, can come over to record his lines. so if this thing gets delayed any more, the buck has now officially been passed!

good day.
(what?! no pictures?!)