Animation and Video Life

Probably one of my most well known animation series, The Bikini Proposal , takes an absurd proposition for the US war in Iraq and runs with it. Occasionally I've been accused of being sexist for this series but in response to that I would say you're missing the point. The simple fact is, statistically, fewer women in bikinis have been killed in a war zone than those wearing military uniform therefore, logically, a women in a bikini is better protected. It's not about getting women out of their clothes it's about increasing their safety in a war zone! The entire five part series is shown below as a Revver Video rather than GoAnimate's usual embed format (simply to save space). If you would like to see each individual episode in its original format then I've provided the links below the video. The Bikini Proposal: Episodes 1 - 5 Links to the Original Episodes on GoAnimate: The Bikini Proposal The Bikini Backlash The Kitten Offensive The Nude Dog Defensive Mission ...

It was that time of the year... well Christmas 2008 was fast approaching anyway. I hadn't tried GoAnimate's Christmas themed characters so I thought now was probably a good time. At the same time I discovered classic GoAnimate character, Joyce, looked really cool with a humongous axe from the new Monsters theme. She clearly has a dark side with her green styled fashion sense. Rather than create a typical Christmas animation with everyone all happy and smiling I liked the idea of an 'anti-Christmas' theme where Joyce plays the part of an unhappy customer... with a literal axe to grind! This is one of my favorites so far because it's funny and a little off balance. You're never quite sure how it's going to end. Santa's already smashed the door in so he could be quite dangerous, yet Joyce is deadly serious brandishing that axe. In one early version I toyed with the idea of actually turning it into a bit of a blood bath but decided, not only would it be too ...

GoAnimate introduced their first new theme since the site launched (I think - first new theme since I joined anyway) which was Underdog a US cartoon series that began in the 1960's. UnderDOG NOT UnderFROG is my first animation using these characters which star a little dog known only as Shoe Shine boy who has a Super Powered alter ego called Underdog. Underdog NOT UnderFROG Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! The story is fairly straight forward, I know, but I wanted to try the theme out and try to take advantage of being one of the first people to complete an animation with the new theme. Which can really help to get your work seen on GoAnimate as people are always curious to see a new theme in action. Underdog, as well as most of the supporting characters apparently used to always speak in rhyme in the original TV series. In my animation you'll notice this isn't the case except in two specific speech balloons that include actual rhyming dia...

Popular GoAnimate animator, Cartoon King , invited people to continue his original story of the War of Kings . See his animation below. War Of Kings Trailer - by Cartoon King Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com Cartoon King has his own unique style that is more about getting his ideas down quickly and less about creating really polished and professional looking cartoons. It works great for him and I'm sure it means he's always working on something fresh. However I'm kind of the opposite of that so, when I took up the challenge I thought Cartoon King's original story line could use some editing to make things a little easier to follow. To my mind the original tells the story in reverse so in my version I switched things around into a more sequential chain of events. The New King of Cartoons - by TET Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com Cartoon King had his 'King' character in a kind of 'alternate re...

I was playing around with the political characters on GoAnimate when I hit upon the idea that it would be very easy to turn each character into a puppet. This led to Great Campaign Moments being created. A short idea that I thought I might turn into a series but never did. Great Campaign Moments Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com There is so much humor that can be derived just from making one political character speak their opponents party line like they mean it. Puppets is one way to achieve that but there are so many others. What if Barack Obama started a clone army of John McCains all chanting "Yes we can!" There's an animation I would've liked to have seen.

Batman is a guilty pleasure for me. He's a character I love (but not in an icky kind of way). Which is why Batman is a recurring theme in many of my animations. A Batty Halloween Accident is a good example. The scene is set with Frankie and his bride going out to celebrate Halloween with a night on the town. Unfortunately their driver is distracted by Frankie's beautiful bride and before you know it they've accidentally run over Batman... A Batty Halloween Accident Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com Obviously this animation was created during the 2008, USA Presidential elections. The idea of John McCain as Batman just seemed funny to me since on some of his platforms they were trying to bill him as a hero. At the same time anyone who wasn't a Republican supporter was concerned about the idea of Sarah Palin being one step removed from running the USA. Most didn't think she had the brains or the credibility to even stand in for John in ...

GoAnimate was launched during the 2008, USA Presidential Election year. Consequently (and with good fore sight) they created a lot of political characters of election candidates and White House Staff. Oddly though many of the characters were designed for political fist fights. When I made Fight! I hadn't seen anyone animate the characters as was intended - with them hitting each other - and I just wanted to see what that could look like. I tried to make the environment play out like a video game, kind of like Street Fighter , whose characters are now available on GoAnimate but weren't when I made this. GoAnimate.com Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com Strangely enough Barack Obama was not created with any fight moves hence he opts for a dance off instead. It's all just for a bit of fun!

Have you ever watched a movie on DVD with the directors commentary? If that's the kind of thing you enjoy then Making General Hospital is for you. There's no sound except for my narration describing how the animation was created. The narration idea came about because, as I explain in the animation, I was having a lot of problems with GoAnimate's Audio time line in their studio editor. Two days later I was still having problems so I just threw my hands up in the air, recorded the voice track and left it at that. As a result you get some nice insights into how I develop my animations, proving once and for all that I don't use story boards. I really do make things up as I go along. The actual storyline of Making General Hospital features some nice ideas that I wished I could have developed further. In particular combining GoAnimate's Monster theme backgrounds and characters with its Doctors and Hospital backgrounds and characters. There's a lot of untapped comedy ...

One Night in Paris is a short animation to showcase the blinking cat head that I created myself. The head is based on the cat face that appears in my artwork series Dangerous Career Cats . There's nothing particularly impressive about this animation. It is, at best, mildly funny. I never had any plans for my cat head it was just something I created as a way of learning the free animation software called Pencil Animator . Which is the only free software I've found so far that can create animated shockwave files. At the time of this post you still can't create your own characters for GoAnimate (the same as GoAnimate's own characters) however you can create animated heads for use with existing character bodies. Note that Pencil Animator is only suitable for creating animated props/heads for GoAnimate. It wasn't able to save files correctly for complete GoAnimate characters. I do know the site is working on creating your own characters - having been able to test this fe...