Animation and Video Life

Commedus GoAnimator Commedus is the Inaugural winner of my GoAnimate, Get Featured in TET's Blog contest . Commedus has had his account with GoAnimate since September of 2011 and in that time has had two staff picks and was awarded the much sought after position of Animator of the Month for May of 2012. Commedus was able to choose any of his animations to be featured and chose one that I hadn't seen until now and am sorry I missed when it was released back in June of 2012. Prop only videos have become something of their own genre on GoAnimate and Commedus, The Wizard's Love is a very beautiful example of what can be achieved. The Wizards Love by Commedus on GoAnimate Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate. Commedus writes about his animation... I have picked my animation, The Wizards Love, to represent my work because of all the things it means to me. I know many people may think my party videos, such as The Throne Room Party 1 and 2 and Dead Mans ...

Manga Studio EX4 is not an animation program. However it is a drawing, illustration and comic creation program that may be of use to the artists among you that want to draw with a professional, digital art package but don't need the photo processing power and cost of something like Photoshop. If you're coming into animation from a cartooning background, like me, then Manga Studio EX 4 may be right up your alley. Don't stress that it says 'Manga' on the cover, this software can be used to create almost any style of illustration, comic or graphic novel. See the illustration I did on the right as a case in point. What sets this apart from other art/illustration software is that I would describe it as a 'word processor' for graphic novelists/comic book writers. Not only can you create your art for every page of your book but the software will handle the page layout, right down to headers and footers, and it has special tools to make creating dynamic pane...

In the past I've featured various GoAnimators in this blog that just happened to catch my eye but, since this blog has become something of a resource for many members of GoAnimate, I thought it would be something of an ego boost to have their work featured here on a more regular basis. As such I've developed a competition for my GoAnimate family where by almost anyone with talent will have the opportunity to be featured right here in this blog. To announce the competition I created the animation below which features Lil' Peepz versions of myself and my dog, Oscar. (Note: If the video below isn't loading or playing click the link to view it directly on GoAnimate - currently having some issues with GoAnimate Players.) Competition - Get Featured in TET's Blog by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! The video won't mean a lot to non-GoAnimate members but if you are then watch for my Invitation to be Featured in TET...

Almost every comic book (or graphic novel) artist eventually comes across American cartoonist, Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work . pictured below. Note that the subtitle, provided by Wood's ex-assistant Larry Hama  (who is responsible for compiling this version of Woods Panels), reads: "Or some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around and talking for page after page!" This suggests clearly that these panels were intended to add life to conversational style scenes with very little action as a way of making the scene more visually interesting. Hence, generally you wouldn't apply these frames to action sequences - though I'm sure some would work. Although intended for cartoonist and comic book artists many, if not all, of the panels translate reasonably well to film and animation and could serve as a source of inspiration for giving your own films a more visua...

If you've ever watched a cartoon on television or at the movies you'll notice that most of the time you never see just one view of any scene. The camera position changes quite often depending on which character is talking or if the director wants to show the scene from a more interesting angle or just a different point of view. In doing this it creates the illusion that the characters are in a more complete environment much like live action film or video. With a bit of creativity you can create alternate views of GoAnimate's existing backgrounds using existing props and minimal custom prop creation. Take a look at these examples that I created for various animations. Enigma Sunshine's Bedroom Everything in Enigma's bedroom, from my Enigma Sunshine animation , is an existing GoAnimate prop except for the mobile phone on her desk. The room its self is the Comedy World theme's 'girls bedroom' with the addition of a desk and laptop computer. Di...

The more realistic Anime theme was introduced on GoAnimate back in June 2012. At the time I was very busy with creating business animations but I did take some time to try the theme out and started making The War Beyond . The War Beyond by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! The premise of a war starting without the two main characters really being aware of what's been happening in the wider world around them was inspired by the film Tomorrow, When the War Began . In that film the group of teenagers take a camping trip to a remote location only to come back to an invasion of their town that no one was aware was going to happen before they left. My version looks at the idea that teens are often so engrossed in their own world and circle of friends that they sometimes don't pay attention, or even just ignore, what their parents are doing as well as not knowing about news and current events affecting their community. The style of...

Over the course of my life I've owned a lot of books about how to draw cartoons but only one about how to draw and create animation. In case you're interested it is the Walter T. Foster published book How To Animate Film Cartoons  (No#190) by acclaimed animator, Preston Blair. So I thought it was time to buy another book, this time updated to the way animation is created today. Whilst a lot is still hand drawn, as shown in Preston's book, modern animation has embraced the digital age and gone far beyond hand drawing everything. Computers are a big part, and probably even the central tool, in any modern animators tool kit. I didn't have a lot of money to invest but I tried to go for a book that I thought would cover as much of the animation industry as possible. That's how I came to buy Andy Wyatt's book, The Complete Digital Animation Course: Principles, Practices and Techniques: A Practical Guide for Aspiring Animators . As an overview of the industry t...

3D animation (of the polygon and texture map kind not the 3D glasses kind) is something I've wanted to get into ever since I saw the cut scenes created for the original Tomb Raider game back in 1996. I've embeded the opening cut scene to the first level of the game below. It looks quite primitive now but back then it was very cinematic for a game cut scene. It was the closest thing I'd seen to the possibility of making movies with strong characters directly on a home computer. The problem was that I never could afford a computer powerful enough to run the software 3D animation programs require. The system I had at the time could just barely run the Tomb Raider game in low resolution mode. Seemingly, every time I was able to buy a more powerful system, 3D animation software had progressed and required a system more powerful to run it. Because of this I eventually gave up on 3D animation as something that was accessible to me. Fast forward to the September 2012 r...

USA Presidential election campaign speeches are so much more interesting and inspiring than the election campaign speeches given by Australian politicians. Personalities play a big part in deciding US elections (as does the Supreme Court for the cynical among you). I enjoy listening to campaign speeches in the US elections and Mitt Romney's speech at the 2012 Republican convention was a doozie. The video of his entire speech is embeded below but it was his closing comments from about 30 minutes into the speech onward that really caught my attention. Mitt talks about the threat in Iran and notes that Obama's diplomatic talks with Iran have achieved nothing. He reinforces the idea of a United America and highlights the many soldiers that have died fighting for the values and freedoms that America enjoys. Which got a big cheer. I wonder if anyone who'd actually lost someone in the Afghanistan or Iraq conflicts were cheering? Do those people feel any more free now for ...

Alvin the Owl is a character that I originally designed for a business client as one of a selection of owl choices. This version didn't make the cut but I liked him so much I decided to animate him anyway. Eventually I'll release him as a community character on GoAnimate. In creating Alvin I thought I'd show you how the character is constructed in Koolmoves. In particular how I made use of an embeded movie clip inside the main character movie clip to isolate the head animation from the rest of the body. The embeded video below is a tour of Alvin's Koolmoves file for his 'standing' and 'stand and talk to camera' actions. It doesn't explain how the character was made (see some of my previous Koolmoves tutorials for that). If you're at this level of creating characters you should be able to work out for yourself how to embed a movie clip within a movie clip. At the time of writing this blog post this is all that I've done in the wa...

I've been on an extended break from this blog (and pretty much everything I do in the way of creating my own new content) not by choice but because I've been very busy in my Animation Business . I'm certainly not complaining about that but, for me at least, there does come a point in creating animations for clients where all my energy has to go into getting the best result for my client - even if it means cutting back on everything else I do. Fortunately the work has eased up a little and I feel I can get back into, what I hope will be, regular weekly posts to this blog again. I thought I'd begin with a post about what's coming up that I would like to blog about as well as an update on projects I started but have yet to complete. Firstly, all the paid work has allowed me to purchase quite a few software packages that I'm sure readers of this blog would like me to review including: Serif DrawPlus X5 - Vector drawing and animation. Serif MoviePlus X6 - Vid...

According to Tom Fronczak of Animation Career Review this blog of mine is a Top 100 Animation Site that you need to know . In fact it comes in at number 88 . Given that Tom says he reviewed over 1000 sites to eventually reach his final 100 that makes my appearance just that little bit more special. Animation Career Review is a site that is geared towards promoting careers in animation and related fields and has the goal of being the number one resource for aspiring animators. As I spend much of my time giving hints and tips in this blog it's great to be recognized on a list that speaks to my own target audience. I must admit I didn't expect to find myself on the list. I actually saw the article shared on one of my animator friends Facebook pages and decided to post it to my own Facebook wall so I could refer back to it and see if it contained any really useful links. It was certainly a surprise to me (and my friend who hadn't spotted my name in there). For me it...

Bat Storm meets Pain . This past fortnight I announced that I had begun work on Episode 2 of Bat Storm by releasing two and a half trailers. I say a 'half trailer' because the third one I released was a re-creation of the second one using different software - more on that later. The truth is I actually started work on Bat Storm Episode 2 way back in the second half of 2011 (around September I think). Which is when I made the first few scenes of the first trailer I released last week. Bat Storm Ep2 Coming Soon by etourist on GoAnimate This airport scene was never part of Episode 2 - not even back then. It was just an idea I had which was triggered by the scene in Superman Returns where Superman catches a crashing plane. I had the thought what if Batman had been there in that scene? There's really nothing for him to do. You could suggest that he would use his 'smarts' to tell Superman to save the plane but really, does Superman need Batman to prompt h...

GoAnimate's new Anime Theme. This week drag'n'drop animation site, GoAnimate , launched its new Anime theme (sample image pictured above). The theme represents the most significantly different new style added to the site since the launch of their 2012 Election theme mid to late last year. (Note that I'm excluding the Business Friendly theme because that's only available to business users). Unlike the 2012 Election Theme the new Anime theme comes with it's own character creator and, in the future, it is planned that you'll be able to buy action packs too (just like the Lil' Peepz themed characters). As of writing this the Anime character creator is limited to just a few different facial, hair and head features and doesn't yet include outfits. Though you can buy ready made characters with different outfits which you can modify the head, hair and facial features of. The characters themselves are classic Anime style and seem to centre around sc...

A popular type of animation to make on GoAnimate is Interview Shows. Seems easy enough right? Send a bunch of questions to your guests, have them record their answers then put the whole thing together like a standard, TV talk show. I've watched a lot of these shows on GoAnimate and a common technique is to send off the same list of generic questions to every guest. Things like... Why did you start using GoAnimate? What is a favorite animation of yours? Who is your favorite animator on GoAnimate? What is your favorite animation on GoAnimate? There's nothing wrong with these type of generic questions in themselves and it's not wrong to ask them. However, when you get a whole list of these questions in a row and you ask them of every guest, it makes for a very impersonal interview. Especially if you have more than one guest on the same show. It makes the interviewer appear lazy. Interview shows are all about giving the viewer a personal experience with your gues...