Animation and Video Life

I recently discovered the 2009 short animated film, The Cat Piano , by Adelaide based studio, The People's Republic of Animation (who are also responsible for quite a few of Adelaide's local animated commercials on Television). The film is based on a poem by studio co-founder, Eddie White who also co-directed with fellow collaborator, Ari Gibson. It features the voice of Australian music icon, Nick Cave. The synopsis is as follows... In a city of singing cats, a lonely beat poet falls for a beautiful siren. When a mysterious dark figure emerges, kidnapping the town’s singers for his twisted musical plans, the poet must save his muse and put an end to the nefarious tune that threatens to destroy the city. Filled with strong visuals and some gruesome ideas in a story that is told quite economically it's not hard to see why this short is multi-award winning and as been screened at short film festivals world wide. What caught my attention though (apart from it be...

GoAnimator  Ẫᾔḡṝớῄ  is the January winner of my GoAnimate, Get Featured in TET's Blog contest . Angron has had his account with GoAnimate since June of 2011 and in that time has created 34 animations. Angron chose the very first episode of his Dragon Man series to be featured in my blog. The series tells the story of a Dragon Loving Hero. In part 1, 18-year-old James Howard has to rescue his widower Dad from one of evil Mayor's minions. The animation features mostly, GoAnimate's Lil' Peepz, Chibi Ninja theme. Dragon Man Episode 1 by Ẫᾔḡṝớῄ on GoAnimate Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate. Angron says about his choice... The reason why I chose this one is because this is one of the cartoons from my childhood, and it was so awesome I could finally make something originally from paper to animation. :-)  My inspiration was that I always loved Dragons, so I made a superhero named "Dragon Man", which happened back in 2006, and later in...

Contests are always difficult because you want to do something that really captures people's imagination or at least gets their attention. So, when you don't feel you've achieved that, it can be a little disappointing. If you've yet to read Part 1 or Part 2 of this series following the creation of my GoAnimate, What's Your New Year's Resolution contest entry then you may like to read them first before continuing. You can view my completed animation below noting that all the voices are mine. My natural speaking voice for my character and a digitally altered, lower pitch and faster tempo version of my voice for Kevin. Being More Ninja, TET Resolves by etourist on GoAnimate Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate. Once you've watched the animation you'll see there's nothing particularly ground breaking. It's a straight up conversation with a couple of cut scenes to illustrate specific points being made by the characters. You may also ...

Continuing on from Part 1: Evolution of a GoAnimate Contest Entry , I did transcribe my script from the video into written form. For script writing I use Celtix , the free script writing software just because it completely automates how the script is laid out and you can focus entirely on writing. I already mentioned that the idea for the script was inspired by Kevin Smith Podcasts so I named Friend 1 and Friend 2, Ralph and Kevin (after Ralph Garman - from HBO and, obviously Kevin after Kevin Smith). The script its self I transcribed word for word, then I wrote in  two cut away scenes, the first of a Ninja actually killing someone and the second of a person photographing their lunch (with a visual gag happening in the background). I don't usually storyboard scenes for my own personal GoAnimations because there's no real need to do that if you're not showing the idea to someone else or, in this case, the majority of the animation is just two people talking wi...

GoAnimate recently launched their What's Your New Year's Resolution? contest on Facebook and I plan to enter. Since the deadline for entries is January 31st, 2013 I thought this would be a great opportunity to document the creation of my entry in a series of three 'highlights' posts leading up to the closing date. Ordinarily I like to show viewers my finished animations first then talk about the behind the scenes stuff afterwards in this blog so this will be a new experience for both you and I. Unfortunately there will be spoilers. Stop reading if you would prefer to see the finished work first and come back here after my entry is complete to find out how it all unfolded. House keeping out of the way, let's dive in... Inspiration The contest is about New Year's Resolutions. The kinds of things life coaches and motivational speakers love. Quite a few of them base their philosophies around the teachings of Ninja. GoAnimate has two Ninja themes... can ...