Friday, May 05, 2006
Okay, so this is the inaugural post for my little side project "Upon Animation" (www.uponanimation,com) , henceforth known as UA.
A little about UA first I suppose. It stems from a hundred thousand ideas that flow through my head and the heads of my friends and co-workers. It gets supplemented every time I see a flash cartoon on TV and wonder why the heck something like that isn't being delivered via the web. And finally UA was conceived during my time working in the trenches of the animation industry. Seeing the shows that get bought up and the ones that are left to the wayside. Really cool and fun concepts that get left behind because the folks with the money don't wanna take a risk.
Macromedia supplied us with "Flash" and the deluge of quirky funny animation began. Unprofessional and far from polished, these works regardless found their way into as many homes as their televised counterparts. Animation studio's started using flash as an inexpensive tool to create content for TV, quality suffers however because Flash is a web design tool and NOT animation software, certainly not developed for animators. Ask any classically trained animator who's had to work on a flash show and he turn the air blue with artfully worded comments on it's shortcomings.
Enter ToonBoom. (www.toonboom.com) They've been developing animation software for years. Mostly for post production and compositing. Then came USOPUS and CONCERTO. I worked with early versions of these at Mercury Filmworks Ottawa. (www.mercuryfilmworks.com), they were buggy but dynamic. Each animator was producing around 40 seconds of animation a week, and soon we were popping out a full 11 minute show every 3-4 weeks. Mischief City, Gerald McBoing Boing and to a lesser extent 6teen (good because of the writing, our hands were a little tied by design when it came to animation.) are great shows and don't have that "FLASH" feel to them.
Anyway, inspired by the work we were doing I dropped the bones for a home copy of ToonBoom Studio. (A slightly neutered version of the software, the commercial version clocking in at 18 grand.) And after a trial by fire doing one of the animated segments for the "Final destination 3" DVD features. I decided to take a crack at developing a series of 5 minute shorts, to air for free on the web and to inject some of the professionalism acquired so far in my career.
It's tough going so far, I'm shooting for a general release of the website this summer with the help of Ms. Andrea Peters. And to start premiering the first 12 episode series in October/November 2006. ( I want to have a nice backlog of shows.) And to have a new show premier every two weeks. This summer I'll be at wizard world Chicago with a DVD containing three episodes and some supplementary material to spread the good word.
So that's that. Thanks for reading, and I'll try to keep this as updated as my crazy assed schedule allows.
Here's some of the character designs completed thus far.
A little about UA first I suppose. It stems from a hundred thousand ideas that flow through my head and the heads of my friends and co-workers. It gets supplemented every time I see a flash cartoon on TV and wonder why the heck something like that isn't being delivered via the web. And finally UA was conceived during my time working in the trenches of the animation industry. Seeing the shows that get bought up and the ones that are left to the wayside. Really cool and fun concepts that get left behind because the folks with the money don't wanna take a risk.
Macromedia supplied us with "Flash" and the deluge of quirky funny animation began. Unprofessional and far from polished, these works regardless found their way into as many homes as their televised counterparts. Animation studio's started using flash as an inexpensive tool to create content for TV, quality suffers however because Flash is a web design tool and NOT animation software, certainly not developed for animators. Ask any classically trained animator who's had to work on a flash show and he turn the air blue with artfully worded comments on it's shortcomings.
Enter ToonBoom. (www.toonboom.com) They've been developing animation software for years. Mostly for post production and compositing. Then came USOPUS and CONCERTO. I worked with early versions of these at Mercury Filmworks Ottawa. (www.mercuryfilmworks.com), they were buggy but dynamic. Each animator was producing around 40 seconds of animation a week, and soon we were popping out a full 11 minute show every 3-4 weeks. Mischief City, Gerald McBoing Boing and to a lesser extent 6teen (good because of the writing, our hands were a little tied by design when it came to animation.) are great shows and don't have that "FLASH" feel to them.
Anyway, inspired by the work we were doing I dropped the bones for a home copy of ToonBoom Studio. (A slightly neutered version of the software, the commercial version clocking in at 18 grand.) And after a trial by fire doing one of the animated segments for the "Final destination 3" DVD features. I decided to take a crack at developing a series of 5 minute shorts, to air for free on the web and to inject some of the professionalism acquired so far in my career.
It's tough going so far, I'm shooting for a general release of the website this summer with the help of Ms. Andrea Peters. And to start premiering the first 12 episode series in October/November 2006. ( I want to have a nice backlog of shows.) And to have a new show premier every two weeks. This summer I'll be at wizard world Chicago with a DVD containing three episodes and some supplementary material to spread the good word.
So that's that. Thanks for reading, and I'll try to keep this as updated as my crazy assed schedule allows.
Here's some of the character designs completed thus far.
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